I stared at the huge hourglass in the distance, feeling as insignificant as an insect.
This was a boundless sea of sand, sparsely scattered with pyramids and giant stone statues. These originally majestic structures looked like toy building blocks abandoned by a child in front of this hourglass.
The upper and lower ends of the hourglass blended into the colors of heaven and earth, and the dizzying light made me squint, yet I could not tell whether it stood on the ground or floated in the air.
Gravity seemed reversed, and the golden sand flowed upward through the hole in the middle of the hourglass, forming a pillar of sand that shot into the sky.
"What is this place?"
I did not know how to describe the shock in my heart, or perhaps it carried a bit of fear.
Fortunately I was not alone; less than five meters away from me stood an emaciated, white-haired old man. He stood straight with his hands behind his back, like a statue.
"This is where dreams begin and end," the old man said very cryptically.
"You mean this is a dream?"
I considered myself well-versed in dreams. Dreams relied on a person's Mental Power to extend, so the surroundings of a dream were all blurry, and only things nearby would clearly appear, yet the scene of this dream was a bit too vast.
"No," the old man shook his head, "no one can develop such a large space within an individual dream, nor can anyone's Mental Power bear the mass of such a large space."
"Then what on earth is this place?" I became all the more curious.
The old man sighed and said in a low voice, "The end of dreams."
"The end of dreams? Is it the boundary of the dream world?"
"Not the boundary, the end!" The old man emphasized.
I did not quite understand what difference there was between a boundary and an end.
The old man seemed not to see the confusion on my face, and gazing intently ahead, he asked, "Did you see that hourglass? Feel the sand under your feet."
My attention had been on that huge hourglass all along. In front of such a shocking sight, it was hard to pay attention to other things. Our feet were entirely covered in sand, and if not for his reminder, I really would not have cared what problem was under my feet. Only at this moment did I discover that the sand across the entire desert seemed to be flowing.
I looked around in astonishment, and those pyramids and stone statues seemed a bit taller than just now, emerging from the constantly depleting sand layer.
The shock in my heart grew increasingly intense, and a suppressible sense of fear began to assail my heart and brain.
I raised my head and looked at the part where the hourglass connected with the earth-in that hazy light and shadow, only gold was flowing.
"Good god!" I exclaimed, "Is that thing going to suck up all the sand on the ground?"
"What it sucks up is not just sand, but everything!" The old man's voice began to tremble slightly.
"What does that mean? The end of the world? Or that we will never dream again?" I said.
The old man was silent for a moment, then asked me, "Do you still remember the basics about dreams? What are dreams composed of?"
This was the most rudimentary psychological knowledge, and I didn't even bother to answer.
Dreams were independent spaces constructed by the subconscious; the stronger the Mental Power, the larger the space that could be constructed. And the materials making up this space were entirely our memories, only re-spliced and processed by our subconscious.
No!
Memory!
I suddenly thought of something, and looked at the huge hourglass again, my heart growing increasingly terrified.
"It's sucking away our memories?!" I said.
The old man nodded: "When the earth is devoid of everything, you and I will both become ignorant infants."
Infants of course do not dream, because infants have no memory.
At this moment, a faint sound of music rang out, with no way to discern its direction, as if it came from the sky, and yet seemed to come from the depths of the mind.
I heard the old man say to me: "Child, walk east; in the east there is a Divine Tree, and on the tree there is a black Divine Bird. Go, go obtain power to rectify the inverted time and retrieve the lost..."
The old man's voice grew smaller and smaller, while the music grew louder and louder, whipping up the surrounding yellow sand to dance wildly across the sky.
My vision gradually blurred, and I could see nothing at all.
Immediately afterward, the earth rolled upward, the sky collapsed with a roar, and a huge force dragged me out.
I felt myself like a tissue folded in a box, suddenly pulled out of one space into another by someone.
I opened my eyes and saw my phone flashing with a ghostly blue light, emitting a harsh ringtone.
Next to the phone lay my wallet, with no money in the wallet, only an ID card. I glanced at the name on it-Qingmu.
Oh, my name is Qingmu. I have a studio.
Aside from that, my memories were as chaotic as a clump of sand in the wind.