Creating land

Ke Meng opened his eyes and gazed silently into the dark, unfathomable seawater.

The game's shutdown did not affect order in R'lyeh. The level 999 sea creatures were still engaged in their mindless melee contests.

But that was not the point.

The point was that he sensed a great many unknown dreams. Somewhere beyond sight, they were all dreaming the same dream.

At first, each had been a desolate personal world, but once connected, it was no longer one person's dream. It was a dream everyone shared.

"There are too many."

Ke Meng marveled at just how absurd the dream-spreading skill was.

He had already lost count and had no idea how many people were dreaming.

Having too many dreamers was a problem in itself.

Ke Meng wanted to stop the nightmare from spreading, but after searching through his skills, he found no such option.

The dream could not be interrupted. It had already begun spreading and would continue to spread unless people cut off its verbal transmission and took measures to keep it secret, such as suppressing information or isolating the dreamers together.

If specific memories could be erased, that would also be a good way to isolate it and maintain secrecy.

Ke Meng considered it. Perhaps erasing specific memories was one way to cure nightmare disease for good.

Since he could not dispel the nightmare for now, he could only put some effort into developing the dream, making it seem more normal and helping everyone feel happier.

He first used Synesthesia on a dream with a relatively close connection to him: White Milk's dream.

One person's dream connected to countless others. Through this entrance, Ke Meng saw an even vaster dream world.

In that dream, he saw countless people living in the city built inside Great Whale.

The forests, the grasslands, the residential buildings-there were people everywhere.

Ke Meng had initially designed it on the scale of a small city, so the city inside the whale could accommodate several hundred thousand people.

Judging by its growth in the single day he had been away, the number might exceed several million over the next few days.

That was terrifying.

Ke Meng did not know when Orange Star would discover how nightmare disease spread. For now, he would focus on developing the dream.

Countless new people had joined, contributing a vast amount of mental energy that he could use to reshape the dream world.

Incidentally, this dream world was a Joint Dream formed by all the dreamers, and they also supplied the mental energy it used.

Ke Meng did not intend to use an evil god's mental energy as construction material, so the dream was still fairly normal for now.

With a single thought, Ke Meng invaded the Joint Dream world.

The players were all trapped inside Great Whale. They could not see the cloud of mist appearing above the sea, so naturally, they felt no fear.

They merely felt the atmosphere inside the whale suddenly grow somewhat oppressive, with an inexplicable tightness in their chests.

"What's going on? Something feels off."

"I don't know either."

The players whispered among themselves inside the whale, discussing the sudden change.

White Milk, meanwhile, had gone from her initial fear to feeling somewhat reassured.

She was not alone here. A group of players who also came from Orange Star surrounded her.

Humans were social animals. As the number of their own kind increased, their sense of security soared, and everyone gradually went from being afraid to no longer being quite so frightened.

But the next problem was water. At present, only the well by the farmland could draw seawater into the city.

The players had not spent much time here yet. They woke after each dream, which lasted only a few hours, so they would not die of thirst.

Combat-oriented players gathered beside the well, eyeing it hungrily, but none made a move. Too much was at stake.

The Orange Star authorities had already sent people into the dream to take control of the well. Anyone who caused trouble would be locked in a dark cell.

Above Great Whale.

Ke Meng saw a new person fall into the water upon joining the Joint Dream. Unable to swim, he drowned.

Great Whale was not fast, and each cycle of swallowing and expelling water took time. Some people could avoid drowning, but others could not.

The starting point was in the middle of the ocean. That setting was far too cruel. Anyone who could not swim was bound to drown.

Even those who could swim struggled. This was the ocean, after all. A single great wave could easily sweep them into a current.

With a thought, Ke Meng mobilized the mental energy everyone had contributed and created a continent in the middle of the sea.

The next second, the player who had just drowned respawned on land.

He lay sprawled on the ground, his face filled with horror, gasping for breath. Clutching his throat, he tried to cough up the seawater, but there was none in his mouth.

The player, Wright, froze for a moment. Something seemed off, and he realized he might have come back to life.

He wore a black warlock robe and was tall and thin. His normally handsome face now looked weary and haggard.

The experience of drowning in seawater had been truly terrifying.

Another horrifying sensation came from overhead, as though a dreadful monster were passing through the sky. His instincts told him that the terrifying thing was not looking at him, but merely passing by was enough to make his heart pound and his adrenaline surge.

He did not dare look up at the sky, so he cautiously surveyed his surroundings instead.

What was all this?

A desert without a blade of grass?

He rubbed his eyes and saw that a green shoot had suddenly appeared beneath his feet.

"What's going on?"

Wright blinked again. The green shoots had suddenly multiplied, with hundreds appearing around his feet!

He blinked once more, and the entire desert was covered in green sprouts.

Was this a horror game?

Why did everything change every time he blinked?

Wright deeply regretted reading that nightmare story. Perhaps if he had not read someone else's account, nothing would have happened to him.

But he knew that was just wishful thinking.

Even if he had not read the nightmare stories on the online forums, he would still have fallen victim.

The authorities had already said that the way nightmare disease spread was unknown. No one yet knew how it bypassed the barriers posed by cities and sleep pods.

Nightmare disease was an unprecedented super-contagious disease. Its mechanism was unknown, and it ignored all physical isolation.

The Orange Star People who had not experienced the blue nightmare were now terrified of sleeping.

Driven by excessive curiosity, Wright had deliberately looked into the nightmare disease's patient zero case, as well as news reports of its rapid spread in various regions.

The more he learned, the more curious he became.

He was bold, and as usual, he had set his alarm to wake him after three hours of deep sleep.

Now he regretted it. His mind was filled with thoughts like, I'm such an idiot. Really. I shouldn't have slept. I shouldn't have set it to wake me after three hours...

Sleep pods had an automatic wake-up mechanism that could reduce the time spent dreaming. The authorities strongly urged everyone to force themselves awake after just half an hour of deep sleep and tough out this period for now.

He had set his wake-up time for three hours. Who knew what he would experience in the nightmare before then?

No one online had ever seen anything like the scene before him!

The green shoots beneath his feet extended their branches as though brushed by the hand of time. Time accelerated, and they grew at incredible speed. Some became green trees, others flowers. The desert vanished for good, turning into grassland in an instant.

At that moment, Wright wanted to say only one thing.

Fuck!

It was a kind of plant.

Cursing inwardly, Wright saw new things emerging.

Patches of soil in the grassland bulged and shifted, as though something unknown were about to break through.

The terrifying pressure overhead grew even more frightening. Wright trembled, finding everything he saw strange.

The next second, bizarre-looking insects burrowed out of the soil, hopping everywhere and chirping.

And those little stones-Wright could personally guarantee that he had watched them emerge from the soil in exactly the same way as the insects.

Then a rumbling sound came from the horizon.

He could not tell what it was. There was only a streak of brilliant white light in the distance. A few seconds later, that light swept through, splitting the grassland.

Only when it drew closer did Wright see that it was a stream of water that could cut through anything, breaking through every obstacle. Its white glow came from refracting the sunlight.

After roughly a few minutes, the land stopped changing.

An enormous snow-covered mountain stood before him, towering into the clouds. The river flowed down from it.

The great trees stood six or seven meters tall. Their dense canopies blocked the blazing sun overhead that never set. Occasionally, sunlight slipped through gaps in the trees and spilled down, forming bright passageways.

Some strange-looking plants unfurled ghostly flowers, releasing fluorescent substances that drifted throughout the forest.

The pressure on his shoulders quietly faded. The terrifying presence in the sky really seemed to have only been passing by and had not stayed.

Wright's legs gave out, and he sank to his knees, staring helplessly at this unfamiliar environment.

Time for a little backroom promotional trade: a chapter recommendation for Seraph's "The Very Missy."