Deep Into the Dream

Eileen's task was quite simple.

Basically, she just needed to find an unobtrusive spot, lie down, and not get up to cause trouble.

Yu Sheng approached the still-sleeping silver-white demon fox, circling her massive body and pile of tails. He found a spot that looked comfortable—a hollow formed where two large tails overlapped.

He bent down, tugged at the fur on one of Huli's tails to adjust its position, and then patted the fur of another tail to make it fluffier. Eileen, watching from the side, blinked in surprise. "Are you making a bed?"

"Isn't it for comfort?" Yu Sheng said, leaning back against the fluffy, silver-white tail as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "Heaven knows how long you'll need, and I'm someone who requires a good night's sleep..."

Eileen let out a scoff. Once Yu Sheng was settled, she floated over, the entire picture frame landing squarely on his chest. "Catch."

Yu Sheng fumbled to catch the picture frame falling from mid-air, momentarily thinking she was getting revenge for his inner chuckle and trying to smash him. "Damn it! Can't you say something before you fall?"

He managed to catch Eileen, avoiding being flattened by the frame. He then adjusted his posture, leaning back against one of Huli's large tails, cradling Eileen's picture frame in his hands. He let out a soft breath, waiting to drift into slumber.

Sinking into another dream within his own dream was truly an unprecedented experience.

Eileen's soft humming came from the oil painting—an ancient ballad, carrying a distant, nostalgic atmosphere. He couldn't understand the lyrics, but he could feel a gradually calming power seeping into his heart. Yu Sheng felt his eyelids grow heavy, and in his semi-conscious state, he glanced down at the oil painting he held before him.

It felt like holding someone's memorial portrait.jpg.

Yu Sheng: "..."

How does this puppet always manage to create such a vivid, lifelike situation!

The next second, his thoughts were abruptly interrupted by this rather wild notion. He then plunged into a void, falling straight to the deepest part of this dream.

He felt an immediate loss of control over his body, or rather... he couldn't feel his body's existence. He felt like a void, a perspective, rapidly traversing a series of memories, thoughts, and sensory information that weren't his own. The surroundings were hazy, with many overlapping fragments of images weaving into a continuous curtain, which in turn formed a tunnel with no end in sight.

Sounds rumbled, information flooded his mind. He couldn't even tell if they were sounds he was truly hearing or memories directly surfacing in his consciousness—

There were exclamations, explosions, whistling sounds from the immortal shuttle's propulsion systems. They were falling, the shuttle had gone off course, crashing into a world that wasn't on its path, a world that seemed to have suddenly appeared.

A massive impact. The immortal shuttle crashed into a dark mountain. The artifact spirit emerged from the Hengtian artifact and engaged in a fierce battle with the immortal piloting the shuttle, arguing about things like "withholding spirit stones," "reckless piloting," and "reporting to the immortal sect." Then, with an explosion, the artifact spirit died, and many people died.

Those who survived also died, one after another.

All the deaths and partings transformed into a rapid stream of fragments flashing before Yu Sheng's eyes. He saw those faded, blurry figures dying of hunger, of poisonous creatures in the mountains and forests, of infighting born from despair, of... the pervasive malice that filled this valley.

The valley itself wanted to kill them, by driving the power of hunger.

The seemingly endless "tunnel" suddenly vanished. Yu Sheng found himself in a faded scene—after passing through many chaotic memory fragments, he had finally reached Huli's current dream.

Just as Eileen had said, the colors in the dream were consistent. Everything here had a worn, lifeless, gray texture: a dark sky, dim forests, murky gray soil and stones. Just looking at it felt oppressive.

"Eileen?" Yu Sheng tried calling out in his mind, as he couldn't see her.

"I'm here."

"Where are you?" Yu Sheng looked around. "Why can't I see you?"

"With you," Eileen's voice seemed to come directly from his mind, a very... peculiar sensation. "You can't see me, and you can't see your own body. We're two 'intruding consciousnesses' right now. Having a perspective is already good."

"Oh, so that's how it is," Yu Sheng understood and immediately began searching for Huli in the small grove.

He didn't search for long. In fact, almost the moment he had the thought to look for her, he heard a sound from not too far away.

It was the sound of digging into the earth.

Yu Sheng immediately followed the sound. His perspective floated through the shadowy trees, and soon he saw a flash of white.

A silver-haired girl in ragged clothes knelt at the edge of a clearing in the woods. Her once fluffy, beautiful fox tails were now dirty and disheveled, covered in mud. She was digging intently into the soil, muttering to herself. Around her, the ground was riddled with numerous pits of various sizes, dug out by her hands.

Yu Sheng "floated" over, arriving beside Huli.

Huli couldn't see him and continued digging with all her might, her hands plunging into the soil again and again.

Eileen's voice suddenly entered Yu Sheng's mind. "Talk to her. Talk to her."

"She can't see either of us."

"It's fine, just talk to her. This is a dream, she'll respond—for the dreamer, nothing in the dream is unreasonable."

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then looked at the demon fox girl. "What are you digging for?"

"Mommy and Daddy..." Huli, as expected, showed no surprise at the sudden voice and answered naturally. "I remember I buried them here... I definitely buried them here..."

For some reason, Yu Sheng felt a pang in his heart and instinctively asked again, "Why... why do you want to dig them up?"

"I... I miss them," Huli gradually stopped digging, her eyes filled with a vacant emptiness, yet she still instinctively answered. "I'm so hungry, I want to tell them I'm so hungry... But I held on. They said not to listen to that monster. I held on, but... I'm so hungry..."

Huli lowered her head, looked at her mud-covered hands, and continued digging, muttering as if to herself, "They should be here. They must be here, right underneath here... I listened to them, always listened to them. I didn't listen to that monster..."

"Her mental state is unstable," Eileen's voice entered Yu Sheng's mind. "Very unstable..."

"I know, I felt her mental state was off the first time we met," Yu Sheng replied in his mind as well.

"I'm not talking about that. I mean... something else has mixed into her mind. Something is trying to intervene, to interfere with her thoughts," Eileen explained, trying to convey a complex situation to the layman Yu Sheng. "There's someone else's voice in hers—her own will is holding on, but the foreign thoughts are about to break her."

Eileen suddenly stopped speaking.

Huli stopped digging, her expression blank. She stood up and walked a few steps to the side, then stood dazed in the clearing.

Yu Sheng immediately followed. The next second, he seemed to hear a faint, indistinct voice.

The voice seemed to originate directly from his heart, almost as if he were whispering it himself—

"Dig. Dig them out..."

"You just want to see them, you just want to confirm that you've been listening to them properly. You haven't seen each other in a long time, right...

'I' miss them..."

Huli turned her head blankly, looking at the deep pits she had dug.

"I miss them..." she said softly.

Yu Sheng suddenly realized that the voice he had just heard, coming from within his own heart, was the "external interference" Eileen had mentioned!

He was connected to Huli's dream and mind, so what he had heard wasn't from his own "heart's depths," but from Huli's!

Huli slowly turned towards another direction in the clearing, as if wanting to continue digging.

Every handful of soil was gradually digging through her own mental defenses.

Yu Sheng finally understood what that voice was trying to tempt her with. A chill suddenly rose from the depths of his heart, causing him to instinctively cry out, "Huli!"

The fox demon girl stopped blankly, turning to look at the empty edge of the forest.

After a while, a bit of clarity returned to her eyes, and she remembered where she had heard that familiar voice.

"...Benefactor?"

However, the forest was empty, and Yu Sheng's voice didn't come again. That cry just now seemed like an illusion.

Huli stood dazed in the clearing. After a moment, she finally noticed the large pits around her that she had dug.

A look of terror gradually appeared on the fox demon girl's face.

She had woken up, jolted awake at the very last step before her defenses collapsed.