Dream Interaction Space

After Liu Erlong discovered that their current position matched the location on the map, she stopped wasting words and took the lead, quickly guiding Li Ming along the route marked on it.

They walked for a full three hours and encountered quite a few Soul Beasts along the way.

With Liu Erlong, a Spirit Saint, present, he did not need to expend any effort avoiding those Soul Beasts.

"Are you sure you don't want them? Those are all Century-level Soul Beasts. Maybe you can absorb them."

Liu Erlong repeatedly asked for Li Ming's opinion. In her view, Li Ming's Martial Soul was so unusual and bizarre that all he needed to do was fuse with whatever he encountered. Whether it would work depended on luck. There was truly no need to specifically seek out a Nightmare Beast, and whether there was even a Nightmare Beast at the location on the map was another matter entirely.

But Li Ming rejected them all.

This time, he had come specifically for the Nightmare Beast.

It could be said that the Nightmare Beast was a crucial part of his plans for himself.

"All right."

Liu Erlong helplessly shook her head and could only respect Li Ming's wishes.

"Eh! There really is a Nightmare Beast. You definitely got your money's worth with that map.

Since when did Heaven Dou City have maps this accurate?

All right, step back a little. Be careful of its Dream attacks.

With your current mental strength, once you're swallowed by a Dream it creates, you'll have quite a time of it.

They say Dreams show you the things you hate most.

However, a Nightmare Beast can only attack one person at a time. As long as I break free from the Nightmare, it will have difficulty launching another Nightmare attack anytime soon.

Once I break out of the Nightmare, I'll help you deal with it."

Liu Erlong stepped in front of Li Ming, positioning herself between him and the Nightmare Beast to prevent him from falling under its Nightmare, even as she warned him.

The next moment, Liu Erlong fell silent. Li Ming observed her from the side and saw that her eyes had closed. She stood motionless where she was, apparently having truly been dragged into the Nightmare Beast's Nightmare.

At that moment, Li Ming studied the Nightmare Beast. It actually looked somewhat cute, like a capybara. Soul Power spread from its body as it used its Soul Skill.

Yet second after second passed, and Liu Erlong still did not awaken, leaving Li Ming somewhat stunned.

This was only a Nightmare Beast of a little over seven hundred years. Could its Dream really be that difficult to deal with?

Several minutes passed in the blink of an eye, and Li Ming began to suspect that Liu Erlong had encountered some mishap in the Dream.

He was considering whether to try attacking the Nightmare Beast and rescue Liu Erlong from the Nightmare.

He did not possess an offensive Soul Skill, but with his physical strength and the long saber he had bought for several dozen Gold Soul Coins, it was not impossible for him to kill it outright.

"Phew..."

Just then, Liu Erlong finally woke up. She let out a long breath, her eyes filled with complicated emotions—a trace of fear mixed with anger.

"Sorry to keep you waiting. I didn't expect the Nightmare Beast's Dreams to be more than just Nightmares.

It first shows you a beautiful enough scene to keep you there, then suddenly turns it into a nightmare.

It's really infuriating!"

Liu Erlong gritted her teeth. This was indeed her first time encountering such a Nightmare Beast.

At the beginning of the Dream, she saw Yu Xiaogang. The young Yu Xiaogang smiled gently at her. Thinking it would be easy to break through the Dream, she lingered in that beautiful illusion for a moment.

And at first, it truly was a sweet dream. They had even bowed in marriage.

But on the second day after their wedding, her father appeared.

The entire Dream instantly became a nightmare.

Under her father's repeated interrogation and pressure, Yu Xiaogang could not bear the humiliation and chose to take his own life.

Even though she knew it was a Dream, witnessing that scene still felt painfully real. Her face was somewhat pale after escaping the Dream.

Then endless rage rose within her.

How dared a mere Century-level Soul Beast humiliate her like that!

"If you really obtain the Nightmare Soul Skill, remember one thing.

If you encounter an enemy you cannot defeat and cannot escape from, never use this move on them.

Otherwise, you might die a very miserable death."

Suppressing her anger, Liu Erlong walked toward the Nightmare Beast. The next moment, dragon scales appeared across the surface of her body, revealing a dangerous aura.

Then her arms became covered in dragon scales, and both hands looked much larger and thicker.

This time, the Nightmare Beast knew to run. It clearly sensed the terrifying rage coming from Liu Erlong and immediately turned to flee.

But how could it possibly outrun Liu Erlong after she transformed into a Humanoid Tyrannosaurus?

Liu Erlong quickly caught up to it.

Then Li Ming witnessed an extremely savage scene.

She slammed it down, brutalized it, then slammed it down again as though she were beating a punching bag.

Liu Erlong gripped the Nightmare Beast's hind legs tightly in both hands, then alternated between smashing its front and back into the mud. She did not even give it a chance to cry out in pain.

Seeing the enraged and cruel Liu Erlong, Li Ming's mouth fell slightly open. He could only feel that a woman's anger was indeed terrifying.

After Liu Erlong vented her anger, the unfortunate Nightmare Beast was flung from afar and landed before Li Ming. There was not a single part of its body left intact.

Liu Erlong, meanwhile, wore an extremely refreshed expression. She had clearly vented all her anger.

"I held back. It's not dead yet."

Liu Erlong said immediately.

Li Ming promptly drew his long saber. He prodded the Nightmare Beast's body with the tip, then stabbed directly into its heart and twisted the hilt.

The Nightmare Beast soon died completely, and its Soul Ring emerged.

Looking at the yellow ring of light gathering above the Nightmare Beast, Li Ming felt a little excited. Whether his plan could succeed depended on this moment.

He immediately reached out and began absorbing the Soul Ring.

As Li Ming began the absorption, Liu Erlong boredly kept watch over the surroundings and guarded him.

More than an hour passed before Li Ming finally completed the fusion.

He now felt that his body had been further strengthened, while his Soul Power surged from level twenty directly to level twenty-two.

He raised his hand and summoned his Satellite Spirit. A yellow ring of light had appeared around it.

"So, did you obtain its Soul Skill?"

Seeing that Li Ming had truly fused with it successfully, Liu Erlong could not help being surprised.

It seemed Li Ming's strange Martial Soul really was an auxiliary-type Martial Soul.

"Yes, I got it."

Li Ming could not help smiling in satisfaction. He had already acquired the instinctive memories related to the Soul Skill.

His deduction had been correct. This Soul Skill truly suited him extremely well.

"Since the fusion succeeded, let's go. If we head back now, we can still enter the city before evening."

Liu Erlong nodded and spoke directly.

Under normal circumstances, she would definitely have tested her student's newly acquired Soul Skill. Only firsthand experience could reveal the value of the Soul Skill and allow her to give her student the best advice.

But after what had just happened, she had no desire to experience it again.

After all, Li Ming was half a disciple of Yu Xiaogang. She was afraid she might not be able to stop herself from beating Li Ming senseless, and that would not be good.

Li Ming nodded. He had much information to process, but that could wait until after they returned.

The two quickly left Sunset Forest, then rode their horses at full speed back to Heaven Dou City.

After entering Heaven Dou City, he parted ways with Liu Erlong and returned home.

The moment he got home, he impatiently returned to his room and directly summoned the Martial Soul Satellite.

Looking at the two Soul Rings around it, Li Ming could not help grinning.

Neither Soul Skill granted by these two Soul Rings was offensive, but both were extremely important to his future.

The Soul Skill he had obtained was not actually called Nightmare, but Dream.

It could pull people into a Dream and autonomously create its contents.

Calling it Nightmare was, in truth, greatly underestimating it.

Nightmare was merely one of its applications. It could also be used to customize beautiful dreams.

It could create any kind of sweet dream. If it had existed in his previous life, it could even have been used to treat psychological trauma.

The reason Li Ming had set his sights on this Soul Skill was precisely because it could create Dream content.

Only with it could his series of Satellite Spirits truly become Starlink.

Starlink was the interaction of information between satellites, but this world had no mobile phones. Without fusing with satellites, the information they contained was difficult to directly display.

Therefore, he needed a medium to present and transmit satellite information.

Li Ming's medium was the Martial Soul in his hands, but he could not be the sole user of Starlink, or it would be meaningless.

Thus, Li Ming had spent the past several years searching for something that could replace mobile phones as a receiving terminal. Now, he had found it: Dreams.

He could use Dreams to realize the exchange of satellite information, pulling people into Dreams through the Dream Soul Skill and enabling information exchange within those Dreams.

In a sense, he intended to use his Starlink to build an internet in this world. Of course, it could not be called the internet here. It would be called the Star Network.

The satellite that had fused with a Soul Ring was no longer merely a technological satellite. It was a Martial Soul that also possessed the power of Soul Skills.

Li Ming could even use his Martial Soul and Soul Skill to create a multiplayer Dream Space.

This was the strength of his Martial Soul: a Dream Space where multiple people could gather together.

For the Satellite Spirit, this would not be difficult, because the value of a Satellite Spirit lay in transmitting information.

This so-called multiplayer Dream Space was, in essence, one satellite receiving information from a Soul Master, then transmitting that information to other satellites. Those satellites would transmit the information to another Soul Master, thereby enabling interaction—the uploading and downloading of data.

He could choose one person as a signal station and transmit the appearances, movements, and other data of other Soul Masters to that station's Dream. As data was constantly uploaded and downloaded, everyone at that signal station could communicate in real time within the Dream.

This was Li Ming's ambition: to create a Star Network, a platform for information exchange that possessed sufficient concealment while directly shortening real-world distances.

Just like the internet in his previous life, who could refuse such a Dream interaction space?

Once he built up the platform and gained enough users, he would naturally be able to profit from it.

Nobody besides him could likely create such a Dream Space. It was practically a monopoly.

A Soul Skill was the product of a Soul Ring fusing with a Martial Soul, which meant that Soul Skills appeared in ways suited to the Martial Soul.

This Soul Skill even contained the functionality of the satellite's internal AI.

The AI would be responsible for constructing the Dreams.

In other words, Li Ming did not need to control the Dreams himself or create their contents. He only needed to give the satellite its task.

Li Ming's eyes gleamed. He planned to first build the Dream Space, then find users to test it.

But what style should this Dream Space have? He needed to think it over carefully.

He had to make those country bumpkins utterly stunned the moment they entered.