Was this Dawn City?
Mo Ling recalled what Station Master Liang had said when he first entered the Monitoring Station.
Dawn City should have been the city above the Abyss.
Had this Black Horn brought him out of the Abyss?
Following the road, Mo Ling entered the Dawn City Library.
The library's interior was still incomparably luxurious, with lofty ceilings and sunlight streaming through the glass windows.
It was the same kind of glass as the Monitoring Station's—tiles from the outside, glass from within.
Many reading machines stood on the library's first floor, and Mo Ling walked over to one of them.
As he sat before it, the machine thoughtfully began explaining how to operate it. Mo Ling quickly got the hang of it.
Opening the search bar, Mo Ling entered the term "black horn."
The information that appeared was mostly the same as what Li Luo had looked up before.
Mo Ling then tried entering Li Luo's name, but the information panel returned nothing.
"Sure enough, citizen identities can't be searched."
After thinking for a moment, Mo Ling typed "hunter levels" into the search bar.
Countless entries immediately appeared:
"Hunters are people who explore the Abyss."
"At first, hunters had no level classifications and came in all sorts."
"However, as exploration of the Abyss gradually went deeper, someone discovered that the Abyss had layers. They descended to the Abyss Second Layer and brought back a Relic known as the 'Judgment Balance.'"
"This Relic can grant every hunter an identification plate, upon which the hunter's level and a title bestowed by the Abyss automatically appear in Abyssal Language."
"Dawn City used this opportunity to regulate all hunters. Anyone wishing to enter the Abyss had to carry an identification plate for administrative purposes."
"The hunter level on the identification plate rises along with the Abyss layer reached."
"Beginning with Level Two Hunter, hunters are bestowed titles by the Abyss."
So that was why everyone had an identification plate on them.
At that moment, Mo Ling had a sudden idea. Setting aside the black horn, he began searching terms based on his own experience:
"Black hole/dizziness/memory loss."
The progress bar moved slowly. Before long, a piece of information appeared before Mo Ling:
Relic: Dream
Cost: 500 grams of Korean kimchi in a Glass Jar
Ability: Causes the user to enter an unawakable sleep
Location discovered: Earth
Discoverer: Zhou Ming
This was a type of Relic that had appeared right at the beginning of the Great Cataclysm.
At the time, smoke and fire filled the world, and panic gripped people's hearts.
A sect had emerged on Jeju Island.
—The Dreamscape Sect.
Naturally, they did not call themselves the Dreamscape Sect. That was merely a name given by later generations.
This sect claimed that the current world was fake, that it was a world within a novel, artificially created by someone.
They needed to escape this world and flee to another world that the creator could not be bothered to control.
It was an utterly ridiculous claim.
Yet in that environment, strange phenomena occurred one after another. All sorts of bizarre Abyss Creatures and Relic Phenomena shook people's worldview.
As a result, many foolish people believed them.
The Dreamscape Sect organized its followers to meditate upon a black hole constantly falling downward.
They even printed flyers of that black hole and handed them out everywhere.
They explained to their followers that as long as they visualized the black hole at the head of their beds, then placed 500 grams of Korean kimchi in a Glass Jar beneath their pillows,
and fell into a deep sleep, they could escape this world toyed with by the creator and reach paradise—a world beyond control.
During the Great Cataclysm, there were many such sects. A sect that sounded this absurd did not attract the authorities' attention at all.
The authorities were busy dealing with more pressing matters and had no time for such nonsensical sects.
However, one day, the son of a Dreamscape Sect believer discovered that he could not contact his elderly father.
His calls went unanswered, his messages received no replies, and even when he reached the front door and knocked, no one responded.
He hurriedly opened the door and rushed inside, only to discover that his elderly father was still at home.
Sleeping peacefully.
A Glass Jar was pressed beneath his pillow.
The growing number of reports finally drew the authorities' attention.
But it was too late. Nearly all the Dreamscape Sect's followers had fallen into deathlike sleep and could never awaken again.
No method could wake them.
When the military stormed into the home of the Dreamscape Sect's Cult Master,
there was only a smiling corpse on the bed, with another Glass Jar beneath its pillow.
The authorities urgently destroyed those Black Hole Flyers and encrypted the black hole's appearance for storage.
They had thought that would be the end of it, but Cleanup Personnel searching for the flyers caught a Madman.
The Madman kept telling the Cleanup Personnel,
"This world is a dream!"
The Cleanup Personnel immediately notified the research institute.
The Madman recounted his experience to the researchers:
One day, a friend gave him a flyer
and told him about the Dreamscape Sect's beliefs and the method of reaching another world.
He did not believe in another world, but he found it amusing and decided to try it.
At first, he did not have a Glass Jar at home, so he put 500 grams of kimchi into a bag and placed it beneath his pillow.
He slept, but nothing happened.
The next day, still doubtful, he went and bought a Glass Jar.
Then he followed the method his friend had taught him.
That night, amid a wave of dizziness, he felt the black hole in his thoughts pull him into another world.
He also lost his memories, believed that world was real, and began living his daily life there.
One evening, he went to a bar with his friend, who told him an interesting rumor.
"As long as you look at this flyer before sleeping, then put 501 grams of Korean kimchi in a Glass Jar beneath your pillow, you can reach another world once you fall asleep!"
Looking at the flyer his friend gave him, he found it hilarious!
On his way home that time, he bought a Glass Jar.
"As long as you look at this flyer before sleeping, then put 1,997 grams of Korean kimchi in a Glass Jar beneath your pillow, you can reach another world once you fall asleep!"
"Can a pillow even hold that? Isn't that too much? Could you sleep at all?" he asked his friend.
He began imagining what he would look like with a crick in his neck.
In that instant, a sense of wrongness erupted from within him, and countless memories surged forth.
When he realized he was dreaming, he discovered that he could wake up.
So he began waking up over and over again...
After finishing his account, the Madman told the researchers, "There's no point telling you this. I'm going to keep waking up."
Then the Madman's face twisted as he forced his eyes wide open, looking as though he were holding back some ultimate move.
When nothing happened, he asked the researchers in confusion, "In your world, how many grams of kimchi do you put beneath your pillow?"
"500."
Upon hearing that, the Madman stared blankly at the researchers as tears streamed from his eyes.
This Madman, who had been lost in dreams for so long, was Zhou Ming, the discoverer of the Relic Dream.
In the end, the researchers classified the incident as a Relic Phenomenon.
After all, the cost of 500 grams of Korean kimchi in a Glass Jar was simply too much in line with a Relic's style.
Although they never found the Relic's main body, the incident was resolved smoothly because of this.
Before you continue