My Dream

Orange-red light spread across the horizon.

After walking Xiao Ning home, the young man returned to his apartment alone.

He stood on the apartment's second floor, gazing at the horizon. The setting sun marked the end of another day, heralding the darkness that would soon cover the earth.

It also meant he could enter his dreams again.

His dreams of the Metaverse.

There were still too many mysteries.

Just how far could the symptoms of his various serious illnesses take him?

Every time he entered the Metaverse in his dreams, he arrived in the Experimental Zone. If he headed back toward "Core Earth" within the Metaverse, could he return to his school? Could he see Clam? Would his abilities still work?

Perhaps his abilities would disappear.

After all, only within the Experimental Zone did Reality Enhancement occur, giving rise to "logic" that defied logic.

In short, everything was unknown.

It held an utterly captivating allure.

The young man put away the clutter in his room and shut the windows, plunging the room into complete darkness before the world outside.

He lay on the bed with his eyes closed.

This time, he needed to figure out how to acquire and increase his Fusion Rate, use it to strengthen his abilities, and pay off his debt!

After a long while, he finally drifted into sleep.

The spiderweb scar flickered repeatedly.

His dream began with the same scene as always, like a prologue.

He dreamed of himself rising from the bed again and again, then walking into a black hole, eleven times in all.

Amid his hazy consciousness.

The young man wondered why he had previously needed to get up twelve times before his turn came, yet this time it had come early.

Not that cutting in line was a bad thing.

Last time, he had silently repeated Snow City of Heavenly Light before falling asleep, and that was where he had appeared. Though the city had already risen into the sky, the coordinates had been correct.

This time.

I want to go somewhere in the Experimental Zone with plenty of people.

That way, I can learn more about the Experimental Zone and figure out its rules.

The young man's consciousness gradually dispersed, and his thoughts ceased.

Time ticked by. Suddenly, the young man's brows knitted tightly despite his even breathing.

Veins appeared on his forehead, swelling more and more.

Moments later, though his eyes remained closed, his expression turned vicious. Deep furrows formed between his brows, and his teeth ground audibly.

His face was no longer peaceful. It was as though he had become another person in his sleep, filled with brutality, resentment, and malice.

Whoosh.

The young man abruptly opened his eyes. His pupils were pitch-black, his gaze brimming with hostility!

In the darkness, he jerked upright.

He got up and walked along the side of the bed, but instead of the young man's straight-backed posture, he was somewhat hunched, his arms hanging loosely and swaying slightly.

He went to the storage cabinet, opened a drawer with practiced ease, found half a candle, and slowly lit it.

The candlelight cast his shadow across the floor.

He slowly turned to look at his own shadow and gave a low chuckle.

The shadow writhed and twisted, as though black flames were rising all around it.

At that moment, anyone who knew Qin Yiguan would have cried out at the sight-he looked possessed by a demon!

"Heh heh..."

He chuckled, eerie and chilling, as he searched the room. More accurately, he seemed to find previously hidden items with ease.

They were two packets of powdered drugs.

Qin Yiguan "himself" had no idea when those packets had been placed in the room, or by whom.

One contained methamphetamine, the other concentrated caffeine.

"In this era, drugs like these are an extremely outdated form of 'entertainment.' They aren't hard to get."

"Heh heh."

The "young man" smiled eerily.

He mixed the contents of the packets in a certain ratio into a red liquid, then poured it into a beaker and heated it over the candle.

In the old era, such a mixture had been called Magu.

A psychoactive drug.

It could give users the illusion of boundless energy and invulnerability to injury, while also reducing their self-restraint and making them less alert to danger.

Vapor billowed, spreading the drug through the sealed room.

He closed his eyes and took a deep sniff through his nose. "Heh heh, little by little, you'll lose your vigilance. You won't save yourself. Then you'll exhaust your strength and immune function, and then... your body will die!"

"When that happens, I'll be free!"

Just then.

His expression abruptly changed, and his arm began to tremble, as though someone else were fighting him for control. It kept reaching toward the beaker, trying to knock it over.

Another voice suddenly rang out from the depths of his soul, a furious roar-"Guard!"

It was deep and mighty, like an ancient god.

Smack!

Crash!

His arm swung out, knocking the beaker away. Red liquid splashed across the wall like spattered blood!

He was furious, his eyes bloodshot. "You! You again! You're stopping me again! If he dies, we'll all be free! Why are you so stubborn?!"

There was no one else in the room. He was talking to himself.

He raged hysterically for a long time.

Eventually, he slowly calmed down. An eerie smile curled his lips, as though he had devised another plan.

He looked at the shards of glass, which reflected the young man's face.

"Heh heh..."

"How could I be so stupid?"

"Since..."

"You've already entered the Metaverse, I'll kill you there!"

With that, he stepped back three paces, collapsed heavily onto the bed, and closed his eyes to sleep.

Heaven and earth spun wildly like a tumble washer, with no distinction between up and down.

Even in his panic, the young man could not help laughing.

He finally understood. Running on this drum would take him farther and farther, out of the real world, through Core Earth within the Metaverse, until he finally landed somewhere in the Experimental Zone!

Boom.

The young man landed on the ground.

He was in a wilderness surrounded by towering boulders, with plenty of stones buried beneath the ground as well.

It looked much like rocky terrain in the real world.

The young man tilted his head and saw God's Abandoned floating gently above his shoulder.

That presence meant this was the Metaverse's Experimental Zone!

"What are you looking at? I'm your..."

God's Abandoned swallowed the last two words.

The young man shook his head helplessly.

But...

I asked to go somewhere with lots of people. Is there... anyone here?

The young man turned around.

He saw a wooden cabin standing on a stretch of level ground in the distance.

Though it looked like a wooden cabin, it was actually a room constructed from some kind of portable alloy equipment, merely made to resemble wood grain.

A little girl of eleven or twelve in a floral dress stood in front of the cabin, watching Qin Yiguan with wide, dark eyes.

"Big brother, are you here to dig for source matter too?"

"Daddy and I came to dig for source matter. Daddy went to look for a mine, but he said there isn't much source matter here!"

The young man froze.

Source matter?

Boss Meng had said he would give him ten pieces of source matter. It was a substance produced within the Metaverse, and it was extremely expensive.

Now that he had some idea of the little girl's background and why she was here, he lowered his guard and waved from a distance. "Hello, little girl. Could you tell me where this is..."

Before he could finish.

A whistling sound suddenly came from the sky.

A metal sphere covered in spikes tore through the air and slammed down beside the cabin!

Though the ground was full of rocks and extremely hard, the sphere still embedded itself in it.

Then beams of red laser light shot out from the spikes on its surface.

The sphere spun like a top. Its incredibly sharp lasers sliced furiously through the surrounding ground, melting the soil with intense heat as they cut!

In little more than ten seconds, a black hole a full hundred meters across had appeared in the ground.

Looking down into it, he could see no bottom. A cold wind howled from within.

A startled cry snapped the young man out of his shock.

The little girl in the floral dress had been standing close to the hole. In her panic, her foot slipped, and she pitched toward it!

Fortunately, at the last possible moment, she grabbed a thin cord secured to the cabin beside her with both hands. It was a rope her father used for mining, thin but incredibly strong.

Her body hung over the mouth of the hole.

Naturally, the young man could not stand by and do nothing. He rushed forward and reached for the cord.

But the next instant.

He froze. His hand seemed to refuse to obey him. He had clearly reached for the cord, yet his movement felt unfamiliar. He missed by several centimeters and grasped empty air.

"Big brother, save me!"

The little girl dangled about four meters below him, sliding steadily downward. The thin cord had cut into her palms, leaving them covered in blood.

The young man hurriedly reached for the cord again.

But he felt like a patient who had suddenly gotten out of bed after being paralyzed for a long time. His arms were stiff, his movements utterly imprecise. Every time he reached for the cord, he missed by a small distance.

"It's just a thin cord. How can I not grab it?"

The young man was horrified, his eyes stretched wide.

God's Abandoned suddenly said, "It's your Fusion Rate! Your Fusion Rate is zero. You're completely incompatible with this world. That creates an overwhelming sense of 'unfamiliarity,' leaving you unable to control yourself precisely!"

The young man stared blankly. "Even this has to do with Fusion Rate?!"

Scenes from earlier flashed through his mind.

Since entering the Metaverse, he had only walked alone or talked to people-talking to Baixiaosheng, talking to Boss Meng.

His only highly precise movement had been throwing Ke Qiming over his shoulder.

But at the time, he had been imitating the judo murderer.

Do I need to become "someone else"?

The young man's pupils contracted!

But it was too late.

The little girl cried out. Unable to hold the thin cord any longer, she released both hands and plunged straight into the black hole.

The young man watched her body fall into the depths.

The red lasers sliced her to pieces, then burned her to ash.