Seeing a bewitching yet eerie woman in a dark cave was a terrifying prospect, and Han Bo was indeed terrified, breaking out in a cold sweat. But for some reason, he felt an itch in his heart; certain primal desires were being activated, gnawing at his heart like insects. His heart pounded wildly, and his blood surged through his body's acupoints like a flood.
Han Bo felt like he was about to burst.
If he glanced to the side at that moment, he would see his three companions standing there in terror, blood flowing from their seven orifices.
Unfortunately, Han Bo's entire attention was on the woman; his eyes couldn't leave her body, and he couldn't move his feet.
The lighter had long since gone out, but strangely, the cave didn't darken; instead, it was dimly lit, like a cloudy day without the Sun.
Han Bo felt a damp heat on his face, wiped it with his hand, and discovered that his nose was bleeding.
He pinched his nose, trying to stop the bleeding, but his whole face began to swell, and his eyeballs were almost squeezed out.
Then, blood began to seep from the corners of his eyes, mouth, and ears, slowly flowing down his cheeks and neck before dripping onto the ground.
My heart, which had been pounding wildly, felt like a dam after a flood had been released, and the pressure suddenly eased.
Finally, I can relax!
His body went limp, and he collapsed to the ground.
In the last moment before he lost consciousness, he heard a series of clattering footsteps, approaching from afar, sounding particularly loud in the silent cave.
Qingmu hadn't encountered someone with truly powerful Mental Power in a very long time. How long exactly? He couldn't even remember. Perhaps, he had never encountered one at all.
So, he watched as Du Juan jumped out of the window and escaped, but he didn't rush to stop her.
He simply strolled downstairs and exited through the back door.
In what seemed like an easy battle of wits, Qingmu's victory was anything but. He had forced Du Juan into two layers of dreams, but she retained a last shred of clarity and eventually managed to wake up.
Although the Du Juan was flustered when she ran away, she did not appear desperate.
As the small wooden building behind her collapsed in the fire, and she found herself with nowhere to go but the mountainside, she realized that she was in a semi-conscious state. So she immediately bit her tongue, spitting out a mouthful of blood, and the ravine covered with decaying leaves appeared before her eyes.
This was a road she knew well. Once she reached the cave behind the mountain, that was her domain, and no one could do anything to her.
"Come with me if you dare."
She ran while calling out to Qingmu behind her, and stopped to wait before reaching the cave. She only felt relieved when she heard the clattering of footsteps, and then slipped into the cave.
The decaying leaves in the ravine made Qingmu very uncomfortable, not only because he had to be careful where he stepped, but also because there was a faint, unpleasant stench emanating from under the decaying leaves.
Upon reaching the cave entrance, Qingmu suddenly felt a sense of disorientation, as if he had been hypnotized.
This was something he had never encountered before, because he never dreamed.
Qingmu looked up at the sky; it was overcast and there was no sunshine. He remembered it had just been a bright and sunny day.
The iron gate at the cave entrance was open. He hesitated for a moment, then went inside.
The cave was very damp, and the cold air chilled you to the bone.
Qingmu glanced back and saw that the iron gate, which had been open, was now closed. Thick iron bars divided the inside and outside of the cave into two separate spaces.
The scene seemed somewhat familiar, but he couldn't quite place where he had seen it before.
Qingmu was a person who was too lazy to think, and now that he was certain that he had fallen into a dream, he had to be careful to keep his mind clear at all times.
He was certain it wasn't his own dream, nor did it seem like Du Juan's dream. He had already experienced Du Juan's Mental Power firsthand, and judging from the sky above the cave entrance just now, it was beyond Du Juan's capabilities.
The spatial expansion of dreams depends on the strength of one's Mental Power.
Dreaming is like digging a tunnel in a dark mountain. You not only have to hollow out the surrounding rocks and soil, but also retrieve your memories and create your own world in this space, like building blocks.
The stronger you are, the bigger you can dig this space.
Sometimes, even people with very little Mental Power can have seemingly grand dreams about the ocean or the starry sky, but that's just self-deception or something they imagine after waking up, like having a starry sky poster pasted on the ceiling.
Is it Duwa, the Du Juan's teacher?
Qingmu was eager to test his skills against a true master. So instead of retreating, he ventured deeper into the cave.
The further you go in, the brighter the light becomes, but it always feels pale and unreal.
Before long, Qingmu saw Du Juan, who looked like a white-haired witch, standing in the center of the cave, her silver-white hair spreading out eerily in all directions behind her.
Not far from her, Han Bo and three other strange men lay on the ground, bleeding from their seven orifices, their faces extremely gruesome.
Qingmu frowned.
"You actually dared to come in!" Du Juan's face was frosty, her tone cold and sharp, completely unlike the woman in the small wooden building who exuded fragrance.
Qingmu asked, "Where's Duwa?"
Du Juan sneered, "Do I really need my master to deal with you?"
Qingmu shook his head and said, "You can't create such a dream yet. Call your master out."
"Since you're aware that you're in my dream, how can you think I can't create such a dream?"
"I've already witnessed your Mental Power. Creating such a deep cave in a dream isn't difficult, but I clearly entered the dream at the cave entrance. You couldn't recreate the mountains and sky outside the cave."
Qingmu felt the hissing, swirling wind inside the cave. "Besides," he said, "If I don't want to, you're not powerful enough to drag me into a dream."
"Hahaha..." Du Juan burst into wild laughter, "So you're nothing special after all, you have no knowledge at all. Don't you know that the power of consciousness can be enhanced with the help of special environments and formations?"
"An array? Do you think you're practicing some kind of magic, just like that poor Medicine Granny?"
As Qingmu said this, the image of the twelve mirrors in the row house in the Spring Moon Garden suddenly popped into his mind.
"You don't believe me?" Du Juan strode towards Qingmu. The wind in the cave picked up, causing the strips of cloth covering her and her hair to flutter wildly. "I know your Mental Power is very strong, strong enough to alter the rules of my dreams without my knowledge. But you can try again now and see if you can still control your power so freely!"
Even without Du Juan's reminder, Qingmu had already noticed that the surrounding space was frozen solid, and that using even a little bit of his consciousness would result in an extremely powerful counterforce.
Ordinary people's dreams do not accept the existence of consciousness entities other than themselves, unless that consciousness entity is much stronger than the dreamer's Mental Power. Otherwise, once discovered, it will suffer a backlash. The final result is mostly that as the dream space collapses, both consciousness entities simultaneously experience the nightmare of falling into the abyss and withdraw.
When strong people meet, it's not as simple as both withdrawing at the same time. It's a contest of hypnosis and anti-hypnosis, control and anti-control, rules and anti-rules. You might be in his dream one moment and then be hypnotized by your opponent and enter your own dream the next.
Qingmu couldn't believe that Du Juan had suddenly become so strong. But if it wasn't Du Juan, then where did the power preventing him from changing the rules come from?