New author, new book. Parallel timeline, fictional world. Any resemblance in names is purely coincidental. You know the drill, dear readers—please don't draw real-world comparisons. Thanks.
[Brain drop-off point]—Peashooter and Doom-shroom are taking turns on duty!
The author reserves the right to interpret everything above. Cheers []~(￣▽￣)~*
—Also, I've been a Main God before. I'm not making this up~ Haha.
For humans, there was a question whose boundary was never quite clear: what was a dream, and what was reality?
A dream was a partly illusory movement of thought, a stream of shifting fancies, a construction of interwoven neural pathways. It was stray moonlight from the subconscious and its emotions, casting a faint shimmer across the surface of sleep... and concealing fierce currents below.
Dreams did not care for logic.
Though reality often cared even less.
All the same, few people had trouble telling dreams from reality while awake.
Yet at this very moment, Li Yun genuinely could not tell whether he was awake or... dreaming.
Waves rose, clouds vanished, and all things drifted between.
A lone, luminous moon shone over the mortal realm. Beneath it, a faint figure walked through its halo as a boundless sea of clouds rushed past, rolling like a long tide. Step by step, he took in the expanse before him.
A solitary moon hung in the vast sky. Clouds flew like frosted mist.
Almost instinctively, with a chill of loneliness rising deep in his heart, he gazed alone across the surging clouds at the vast, pale-jade moon high overhead. Beneath the rolling clouds and endless sky, the world felt so immense that only he remained.
The moonlight was beautiful, magnificent and desolate enough to bring tears to his eyes.
Yet alongside the deep, strange melancholy welling up inside him, Li Yun knew perfectly well that, in theory, he should not be having a dream like this.
Without any related memories to draw on, the human subconscious should not have been able to conjure such a finely detailed scene of a place he had never visited.
From an elective he had taken at university, he knew that dreams were usually no more than random elements "spliced" together by wandering thought: hazy associations projected by a brain operating at less than full capacity.
In anyone's dreams, countless fragments might flare and fade like fireworks.
But few people ever noticed that those fleeting fireworks... never showed every brilliant spark clearly as they burst.
The reason was simple. The faint stirrings of the sleeping subconscious had neither the processing power nor the "rendering material" to produce too many details.
How could a person walk among the clouds?
And yet he felt a cold touch against his temples, like threads of ice brushing past, complete with a faint sting. It was so real.
His rational mind had already sensed something wrong. But as his thoughts drifted, a barely perceptible indifference seemed to split his awareness, giving rise to some other, hidden consideration.
It made him quietly overlook everything.
It was like a fact many people noticed in dreams: anything that seemed abnormal could still feel perfectly reasonable to the dreamer.
Beneath the moon that had shone through the ages, the sea of clouds raced like waves and tides, swallowing his shadow.
Time seemed forgotten, and even his sense of space had grown uncertain. Li Yun felt no fatigue at all. No one could have said how long he had walked this endless road.
In the end, he simply kept moving, unaware, as though his body no longer belonged to him, leaving footprint after footprint along a path that seemed to have no end.
The scenery around him congealed into a blur of moonlit shadows. Only the winding trail through the clouds remained clear. But where did it lead?
No one knew. Even he had long since stopped wondering.
The sea of clouds gathered and scattered around him, churning like the ceaseless tides of an ocean through that vast emptiness.
Only the lone, bright moon remained unchanged. Its cool light pierced the mist and fell upon the lost, solitary figure.
...Until, in the thickest fog, a soft jade glow appeared. One step after another extended silently into the unknown.
Barely aware of himself, Li Yun stepped onto them by instinct.
He climbed.
Step by step, he crossed the jade-built stairway. It felt faintly cool beneath his feet, yet not cold. Rather, an ancient desolation seemed to spread silently from each step.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of steps appeared and vanished in the mist, until at their end—
A weathered stone platform stood in silence, bearing traces of chisel and blade. Its dull surface had been polished remarkably smooth. Upon it sat a hazy figure, too indistinct to make out, apparently facing away from him.
"Oh, you're here."
It was indeed a person. The figure greeted him lightly, with the easy familiarity of someone meeting an old friend, but did not turn around. They simply sat there, half-hidden in the drifting mist.
Li Yun paused. As if in a daze, he saw the clouds around him quietly recede, and his muddled thoughts grew clearer with them.
"Don't be nervous. This really is just a dream." The other person chuckled, sounding as casual as if they were making small talk. "Come sit down."
For some reason, that voice... sounded familiar.
Without thinking further—or, strangely, feeling suspicious of such an odd invitation—Li Yun walked toward the figure.
Yet no matter how much closer he came, the seated figure seemed to remain an impossible distance away. Perhaps it was only his imagination.
The figure was clearly right before him, yet also impossibly far away—as though an entire world lay between them.
...Farther than he could imagine.
The illusion lasted only an instant.
When Li Yun reached the platform's edge, he finally saw what lay before the lone figure: a tranquil stretch of water. At the meeting of water and sky, the bright moon shone in reflection, turning the whole surface into a silver mirror.
The figure had already cast a fishing line and sat at ease while mist drifted down and white moonlight covered the water.
Their composure seemed almost otherworldly.
"You say this is a dream?" Li Yun sat at the platform's edge, keeping a comfortable distance between them. He watched the fishing line disappear into the water, his calm voice carrying a hint of curiosity. "I've never had a dream this clear."
He had hardly ever fished before, yet for some reason, he suddenly felt an urge to try.
"In a dream, one forgets one is a guest... Of course this is a dream."
As though noticing his guest's gaze, the shadowy figure tapped the plain green fishing rod beside them. It was as crude as one a child might painstakingly make from a freshly cut stalk of bamboo. Ripples spread across the mirror-smooth water, circle after circle, lingering for a long time.
"...The difference is that you may not have dreamed of someone. You may have been dreamed of."
"I was dreamed of? That sounds rather strange..." Li Yun paused, narrowing his eyes behind his glasses. "Then do we know each other?"
"We do, and we don't."
A strange, evasive answer.
Yet despite facing an unfamiliar "person" of unknown origin, Li Yun felt none of the awkwardness he should have. He merely shook his head.
"All right. Let's say I'm dreaming. Then what is this place?"
"This place is a dream too. Strictly speaking... just a somewhat 'special' one."
The figure had evidently noticed his confusion.
They merely waved a hand. The fishing rod trembled, its bamboo joints giving a thin, crisp creak. Moonlight shattered into countless silver scales on the water, and ripples spread in layers until even the moss along the platform's edge seemed to glow.
"...While dreaming, one does not know it is a dream. Only upon waking does one know."
After quoting the old saying, the angler stared at the ripples that refused to fade. A trace of helplessness seemed to enter their manner.
"Simply put, this was never your dream, nor is it mine. We're both just traces that happened to be dreamed into it. Hmm... Think of us as projections on a cinema screen."
"To be precise, this was once a dream left behind by a great figure. Like Zhuang Zhou dreaming he was a butterfly, unaware of the vast worlds arising and perishing within his dream, unable to distinguish truth from illusion. When he woke, the dream ended."
The voice suddenly grew solemn and distant, as if rising from beneath the water, and recited a passage—
"O Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness, nor emptiness from form. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. So too are feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness."
Li Yun could almost sense a faint sigh from the other person.
"All things are impermanent, all appearances are illusory. Conditions arise and pass away, beyond emptiness and form."
"Even if this is rootless water, a sourceless dream that has lost its original shape, to one who has realized the great Dao, the myriad worlds and their inverted dreams are no more than a thought. Every appearance seen at a glance is but a dream, a bubble, a shadow."
The last words echoed through the mist.
"So even though this is only a stray fragment of an old dream, a lingering thought, there is no meaningful distinction between 'real' and 'false.'"
"To such a being, it is merely an illusion they could discard at will, arising and fading with circumstance..."
The figure tapped the stone platform, drawing a dull echo from the ancient rock. "But to you and me, it is the real Mortal World."
"That's why I said you didn't dream of someone. You were dreamed of... It dreamed of you by chance, and that is why you are here."
"Even something that happens for no reason can be a kind of 'fate.' Such is the wonder of it."
The other person sounded almost wistful.
"'Fate,' is it? That does sound rather mystical. Unfortunately, I'm an ordinary man. I doubt I can grasp all that..."
Li Yun adjusted his glasses. After a brief pause to think, his expression remained composed and unmoved. "So tell me, what exactly does it mean for me to be 'dreamed of' by a dream like this?"
"What does it mean? That's a good question. Though I can't say I'm entirely certain myself."
A smile entered the figure's voice.
"Do you know what determines the essence of a dream?"
"Nothing else matters. Only that tiny, seemingly insignificant thing called the 'heart.'"
As the words fell, a spark of light appeared at the tip of the bamboo rod beneath the water, stirring a few wisps of drifting mist.
The tiny "lure of light" flickered at the rod's end, casting shifting shadows through the water. It barely illuminated the depths of the unfathomable lake, where countless faint lights seemed to rise and sink.
"It is not the wind that moves, nor the banner. It is the heart that moves. When the heart stirs, a thought gives rise to myriad worlds. Wherever the heart resides is the source of all change, birth, and death."
"Like a reflection in this water. Since it dreamed of you, you have naturally dreamed of it as well—and stirred it."
Li Yun looked down from the platform. Though the little glow had lit up the water beneath the moon, he saw no reflection of a face as he had expected. There was only that wavering light under the surface.
A stretch of water without reflections.
"Even if you say so, where is the reflection?"
He looked up and asked calmly.
"No... it is there."
The equally calm reply gently refuted his question.
Only then did the faint figure turn. As they did, their form seemed to take shape little by little, like dust being brushed from a page to reveal the angler beneath—slowly, yet all at once.
The face was strikingly familiar.
"Oh. I see."
Li Yun heard himself give a low sigh. His chest felt so heavy he could scarcely breathe.
Within a few breaths, nothing remained to obscure the figure in the mist.
The person before him wore wide, draping sleeves. Long hair fell like a waterfall beneath a starry crown. Their bearing was elegant, faint patterns flowing across their robes. Even their skin held a soft radiance—not pale, but luminous like polished jade, as though moonlight flowed beneath it.
Strip away those differences, though, and the face bore an unmistakable resemblance to the one behind Li Yun's glasses. They looked seven or eight parts alike.
But one wore glasses, with tiny droplets still clinging to the lenses. The other wore a Daoist crown and offered a soft greeting, hands forming a salute as fluidly as the turning of tai chi—
"May your blessings be as boundless as the Heavenly Venerable."
At those words, the guest blinked hard. At last, the corner of his eye twitched.
The two faces, alike yet different, stared silently at each other. Their details and expressions were not the same...
Yet the sight gave him the uncanny feeling of looking into a mirror.
That was "himself."
A "himself" who was not him.
A lingering reflection with neither origin nor destination.
The instant Li Yun saw that face, he understood the answer without warning or reason.
"How strange... I'm guessing this isn't about to turn into some urban-legend doppelgänger story? Or that tired plot where the man in the mirror tries to take my place, and I tell him, 'Brother, don't push yourself. If work's too exhausting, we can take turns'?"
They looked at each other for a long time.
Then he blinked, still composed, and even took the initiative to make a dry joke.
"Of course not."
Despite the Daoist's indescribably serene bearing, he could not help shaking his head with a wry smile.
Large beads hanging from his starry crown struck together with a clear sound, like a mountain spring flowing over stone.
"You can probably sense the truth yourself. I'm only a reflection that arose by chance within this dream. I appeared when the conditions were right, and I'll vanish when they pass. That's why I'm here waiting for you."
That did seem to be true...
It was no empty claim. Once the Dreamer pointed it out, it felt as though a thin sheet of paper had been pierced. A subtle realization came over Li Yun, and insights he could not put into words surfaced in his mind from nowhere, like old memories quietly returning.
But there was something about the other man's speech that felt both like his own and strangely unfamiliar, so he said nothing more.
He knew he ought to be surprised. Somehow, he was not quite surprised enough.
The other man did not seem to mind.
"A dream is born from the heart, and when the heart departs, the dream should end."
"This dream was once cast aside with a single thought. Having lost its original intent, it had, in a sense, never 'existed.' Yet somewhere in the unseen, it dreamed of another 'heart' and stirred. That heart gave it a reason to exist, so it manifested within it."
"To that unspeakable being, this dream is now 'nothing,' cut off from all ties and causality. To you, it is 'something.' Your stirring heart can hold it."
"Now that it has found that 'heart,' it is no longer what it once was. It is your own dream."
"You happened to pick up a good dream. You got a bargain, that's all."
The young Daoist had an air of serene openness. Yet when he spoke of getting a "bargain," a quick, sly smile crossed his lips beneath a look of apparent helplessness. It made him seem far more alive than when he had been reciting scripture.
Li Yun saw it clearly.
His eyes narrowed slightly behind his glasses. After a moment's thought, he gave a practiced little shrug.
"Why don't you put it more plainly?"
"So you really did give all your language lessons back to your teacher... Fine, let me put it this way. After walking all this time, are you hungry?"
"...Now that you mention it, I think I am."
He had not noticed before. But when the shadowy Daoist mentioned it, Li Yun realized he had walked a long way in a daze. He ought to be hungry by now.
The thought had barely arisen when a sudden, unmistakable hunger gripped his stomach.
A hollow ache woke with the clear knowledge that he was hungry. It was as though a bell silent for years had been struck, and the sensation spread like wildfire through every corner of his nerves.
His legs weakened, and he clutched his stomach.
Hunger was already squeezing his thoughts dry, making him hunch over. A powerful, almost primal craving spread through his body, all the way to his fingertips.
Before he could think further, his need to eat nearly broke through the first line of his reason—
Almost by reflex, Li Yun remembered the cheap bowl of fresh noodles he used to buy from a street stall below his office after working overtime until midnight, steaming beneath a generous layer of chili oil and chopped scallions.
With an empty stomach, who could deny the appeal of alkaline noodles cooking in a great pot, green scallions floating on the broth, and two or three slices of braised meat as thin as cicada wings? He could almost see them before him.
No. It was not his imagination. That smell...
Only when the familiar, savory aroma reached his nose did Li Yun come back to himself—
Between them, on the stone platform, sat a bowl of noodles he knew all too well. He had no idea when it had appeared. Light-brown broth, chopped scallions, chili oil, sauce—it was all there.
The steam rising from the soup brushed his face with a real, damp warmth unlike the surrounding mist...
His Adam's apple bobbed uncontrollably.
Yet despite his growling stomach and the urge to dive in and eat his fill, he said nothing for a long while. Instead, he frowned.
"Not going to try it?" The Daoist smiled, sounding as though he were teasing an old friend. He tapped the rim of the bowl, drawing a familiar, crisp ring from its imitation porcelain.
From somewhere, he produced a pair of disposable bamboo chopsticks and offered them over. "Leave the noodles any longer and they'll turn to mush."
Something about it was strange.
Li Yun took the chopsticks without thinking and expertly snapped them apart. Even the rough prickle of splinters from the fast-grown bamboo felt frighteningly real against his fingers.
Still, he did not start eating. After a thoughtful pause, he asked, "What is this? Anything can happen in a dream?"
"You could put it that way, but I prefer to call it One Thought Gives Birth to All Things."
"A dream is, in the end, shaped by the mind. You have become that spark of intention within it. Grasp the moment between stillness and motion, and you can naturally change its form at will, giving shape to whatever you imagine."
"Your state of mind can already affect the dream itself."
"You were vaguely puzzled and, unable to see clearly from within, came looking for answers. So another 'you' appeared by chance to explain things. You believed you ought to be hungry, and you truly felt hollow and ravenous. Your thoughts shifted, and you felt this bowl of noodles should be here, so here it is."
The Daoist spread his hands with the same easy familiarity.
"Everything you've seen and heard is merely a form drawn from the limits of your own experience, a faint trace rising from your subconscious. It's a small matter. There's no need to dwell on it."
"This dream may have lost its origins, had its ties of cause and effect severed, and no longer resemble what it once was. But its essence remains, and its stature is far from ordinary. A world born of a single thought turned inward—neither true nor false. That is all there is to it."
"Such a chance is hard to come by. Make good use of it."
Though he spoke only a few words, they carried earnest weight. Even his expression grew solemn.
Li Yun studied the young face so like his own. After a long moment of thought, he nodded calmly.
"...I think I understand some of it."
Without any visible movement from him, the untouched bowl of fresh noodles vanished from before his eyes. The fierce hunger vanished with it.
If this is a dream, none of it is real. What does it matter if I feel hungry?
It's only an illusion.
Yet for some reason, the man opposite him shook his head and sighed at Li Yun's reply. He glanced at the spot on the stone platform where the bowl had been. A few damp marks from its base remained.
"Seems I haven't explained it very well."
The young Daoist turned and reached toward the verdant bamboo pole before him—
"I know you still have doubts. To you, anything seen in a dream can be false. That belief is as deeply rooted as the thin rope that holds an elephant fast. So there's little use in telling you more right now. You'll only believe it when you see for yourself."
"...After all, fooling other people is hard. Fooling yourself is harder."
The fresh bamboo, lush and green, had already been roughly shaped into a long pole, save for one leafy twig. The Daoist snapped it off, bent to rinse it in the lake, and it changed shape.
"You think dreams aren't real... But a human life, with all its comings and goings, life and death, darkness and light, ignorance and awakening, will eventually fade away. How is that not a great dream as well?"
His sigh held a hint of regret and loneliness.
As he broke off the bamboo twig, something seemed to be drawn out of him. Within a few breaths, his figure grew faint and hazy again. Even his robes and features gradually began to lose their solidity.
The young Daoist before Li Yun was turning back into that insubstantial shadow, little by little.
Li Yun realized it almost at once.
But the nameless Daoist at the platform's edge said nothing more. He shook the water from the object in his hand and casually tossed it to Li Yun.
He looked almost indifferent, as though he were throwing away something worthless.
"What is this?"
Li Yun caught it on instinct, feeling its weight settle in his hand. He blinked.
It was a simple little mirror, half the size of his palm and the color of green jade. It felt faintly warm and smooth, though it was not quite jade. Its surface had no gleam, as if it had lain dusty for years.
"This is the 'dream' you see."
Like ink slowly bleeding across wet paper, the fading figure lowered his gaze to the lake, seemingly unconcerned.
"You believe dreams are illusions, reflections like flowers in a mirror or the moon in water. So the 'dream' you see now would naturally be a mirror."
"More words won't help. Better to let you see for yourself."
The dim shadow beside the stone platform waved a hand and picked up the long green bamboo pole again. In the moonlight, its shaft glimmered faintly.
"Time to reel it in..." He suddenly smiled. "Whatever happens, at least this time I didn't come away empty-handed, did I?"
Beneath that easy smile, the unfamiliar face Li Yun knew so well was losing its shape. Only his eyes remained bright, filled with an inexpressible freedom, spirit... and weariness earned over long years.
The long pole swept high, then bent in his hand until it was almost a full moon. Its joints groaned under the strain.
The speck of glowing bait beneath the water rose inch by inch, trailing sparks of brilliant light. It was as though something enormous had been hooked deep below and was being dragged against its will.
Clouds reflected on the lake churned violently. Mist coiled like dragons, and the stone platform beneath Li Yun's feet began to tremble.
"What is—"
Before Li Yun could finish his question, a flood of light swallowed him.
As the tip of the pole rose high, the silver disk in the sky shattered like a bubble. In its place, a boundless halo burst from the water!
Pale moonlight poured down like spilled quicksilver, turning everything a vast, luminous white!
A bright moon rose from the great lake!
...And beneath that crude fishing pole, the whole long lake rose with it! An entire boundless ocean followed!
In an instant, the ascending moon seemed to pull at heaven and earth. Countless waves surged upward, hanging in the sky, each vast current reflecting a different phase of the radiant moon!
Full and crescent, waxing and waning, dark and bright.
As the boundary between sky and water blurred, moonlight shone over the dim shimmer of waves. Li Yun seemed to stand upon a mirror spanning the world, with an inverted river of stars beneath his feet and a sunken, endless sea above his head.
For a moment, he could not tell which was sky, which was moon, or which was water. All he saw were surging waves, an overturned ocean, and a mirrored sky over a floating world!
No—the moon that hung in the sky was the reflection. The one fished from the lake... that was the real moon!
The truth struck him.
Starlight filled his sleeves; jade-bright radiance swept through the white night!
The guest, who had yet to speak again, had time only to lift his head for one last look—
The boundless moon amid the light of heaven... was rising into the sky!
In the dim room, the faint sound of breathing suddenly stopped.
A figure sat bolt upright and began to pant. He looked around in a daze.
But in the gloom, only a faded, cracked ceiling, the outline of an unlit bulb, and a few old, dusty cobwebs in the corners stared silently back at him in the weak light.
A long exhale rang out with startling clarity in the silence.
Only after a long while did Li Yun come to his senses. He lay back down, letting his head sink snugly into the hollow of his pillow.
Better get some rest. If the contracts for the business department aren't done tomorrow, I'll have to work overtime again.
It was the same tired thought he had had on countless days and nights before.
Yet only when he lay down did his skin belatedly register the slight difference in temperature between his fingers.
Something in his hand still felt a little cool.
Wasn't my phone charging on the desk?
Still groggy, Li Yun instinctively gripped the object beside him and brought it before his eyes for a blurry look.
A shiver ran through him. His whole body nearly froze.
...It was a familiar little antique mirror, the color of a clear blue sky.
Before you continue