Ying Le opened her eyes, snapped her fingers, and quietly listened to the screams rising outside. It was only when she heard a scream she had no memory of that she smiled.
She pressed her temples and let out a soft laugh.
"It's been a long time since I had a dream within a dream. That felt nice."
She bit down on her cigarette, ignited it with a spark from her fingertip, drew a deep lungful of smoke, and exhaled. Her entire body relaxed. She looked like a girl in the prime of her youth, and even counting her true age, whether as a mortal or as a Foundation Establishment Herald, she was still in what could be called the prime of life. Yet now, her face held the dusk of someone weary of the world, like a lonely ghost that had lingered among the living for too long.
"In recent years, it's usually been four layers of dreams. Five layers aren't unusual, and even three layers count as a great stroke of luck." She tapped the ash into a skull-shaped ashtray, a strange look appearing on her face. "The last time I had a two-layer dream within a dream... seems to have been four years ago, right?"
"In other words... Little Ru Shi plundered the Golden Nature of my Reflecting the Mortal World? The deeper she sinks over there, the more room I have to breathe over here?"
Although the family had no records of it, Ying Le was still a Foundation Establishment Herald, and Reflecting the Mortal World was her Bloodline Supernatural Ability. With a little deduction, she could basically arrive at the truth.
"Any farther ahead, and it'll be hell, Little Ru Shi."
Ying Le did not move until the cigarette in her hand had burned out.