The white cat stood about a dozen steps away from him. The air between them rose like asphalt scorched by the summer sun, as if molten lava lay buried beneath the rocks.
Petru suddenly felt very suffocated, his breathing became thick and difficult to sustain. His eyesight also became dull, and he could not see the distant scenery clearly.
He rubbed his eyes and saw Lawiye, wearing the same purple-blue dress they had worn when they kissed on the Tiber River. In the shifting light and shadow between the white cat and him, she smiled gently at him like a holographic projection.
Petru realized in an instant that he was dreaming. But whose dream was it? Mine? This woman's? Or the cat's?
If this is someone else's dream, why would they see Lawiye? Even if they had seen Lawiye before, they couldn't have seen Lawiye like this—it's how they looked when they were young and spending their happiest years in Rome.
If it was a dream, Petru had never seen that white cat. He had heard that the Thailand royal family liked to keep a kind of white cat, but he had never seen it. Moreover, he clearly felt that the cat was a conscious entity. Even from this distance, he could feel the cold and intense spiritual aura emanating from it, which was definitely not something created by his consciousness through memories.
Lawiye was waving at him.
Seemingly drawn by a mysterious force, Petru uncontrollably walked towards Lawiye step by step. Lawiye reached out her hand to him, and he reached out his hand as well. As they drew nearer, their fingers touched, and a jolt of electricity coursed through Petru's body. He was both excited and saddened. He gently took Lawiye's hand, pulled her into his arms, and embraced her, saying:
Lawiye, I love you!
Lawiye sobbed softly in his arms, blaming him for leaving her alone in the Egypt prison for far too long. Petru was tormented by immense self-reproach and pain, and could only hold Lawiye tightly, unable to utter a single word.
Then, he felt Lawiye melt in his arms, turning into a pool of tears, half of which soaked his lapel, while the other half floated in the air, transforming into a rain-laden cloud that drifted away into the distance.
Petru got up to chase after him, and suddenly felt a sense of disorientation, as if he had passed through a thin film of soap bubbles, moving from one bubble into another.
The rain clouds disappeared, and the white cat became clear, opening its pink lips and meowing at him. Petru felt a powerful Mental Power strike his chest like a stone.
He immediately realized that at this moment, he was truly in the cat's dream. He just couldn't understand why a yellow cat would turn into a white cat in a dream. It was as unbelievable as an Indian dreaming of subconsciously transforming himself into a Slav.
Qingmu watched as Su Huilan led Hanran and Petru into their dreams simultaneously, the two dreams overlapping, and then Petru himself entered Hanran's dream. He couldn't help but admire Su Huilan's exquisite control over dreams.
Her method of bringing Petru into the dream was very clever and gentle, unlike the simple and crude way Qingmu led Hu Xing into Xia Wenyuan's dream. Although there was the factor of Qingmu teaching Hu Xing at that time, even without that factor, Qingmu probably wouldn't have been able to control his Mental Power so delicately. Perhaps this is the difference between men and women, Qingmu guessed.
In the Ruxue dream, Petru and Su Huilan had already begun to talk. Petru began to tell his past story and why he came here. Scenes from his subconscious memories played out like a movie.
While the story of the Redbeard Pirates was certainly thrilling, Qingmu's attention was entirely focused on Su Huilan at the moment, because he had smelled a faint fragrance when Su Huilan initiated the hypnosis.
Although the fragrance is very faint, as faint as the scent of the first new bud sprouting from the old willow tree in Liuying Lane before the snow melts, even if you get close enough to smell it, you can't detect the scent of spring. But for someone who has seen spring, it clearly tells you that spring is coming.
Qingmu recalled that humid Xia Tian night, in the darkest corner of the bar, a woman whose face he couldn't see, exuding an irresistible fragrance.
That goes back to the beginning of the story --
That day, Qingmu replaced Professor Mei Yiqiu and went to the Criminal Investigation Team to help Shi Dazhuang interrogate Zhao Pengcheng. After the interrogation, Hu Xing took him back to Liuying Lane and bought him a lighter on the way. Later, Bi Shenghua became very jealous because of that lighter.
That afternoon, he met Ma Fuqing, who seemed honest and unassuming at the time, in his studio, along with the pitiful headless woman from Ma Fuqing's dream, who was later confirmed to be his wife.
That night was Mo Yu's first time singing at a bar, and he could tell at a glance that she was sleepwalking. Later, Mo Yu told him the story about the mirror, Qingmu heard the name Situ for the first time.
Many stories that later became extremely complicated began on that day. Qingmu's life was like a tangled mess, and on that day, the thread was pulled out. To this day, the thread has grown longer and longer, but the tangled mess is still a tangled mess, only it has split into several smaller tangles.
However, of all that happened, what impressed Qingmu the most and what lingered in his mind was the refreshing fragrance emanating from the woman whose face he couldn't see in the dim corner of the bar, and the mysterious symbol she had drawn on the table.
While in Southern Yunnan, Qingmu encountered a woman with a similar fragrance— Du Juan. However, unlike Dujuan, Du Juan had been raised in aromatic medicinal baths since childhood by Duwa, which is why her entire body carried a fragrance.
But that woman was different. Her fragrance didn't come from her body or her mouth, but from a kind of mental hypnosis. Her Mental Power directly targeted the olfactory center in your brain, allowing you to "smell" the fragrance directly, without needing chemical molecules to enter your nasal cavity to stimulate the terminals of the olfactory nerve system.
That night, Qingmu never clearly saw the woman's face because the light was too dim and the fragrance was too strong. The woman drew a symbol on the table that puzzled Qingmu, yet remained closely connected to him in a series of subsequent events—a symbol resembling an hourglass. Mei Yiqiu said it was a mirror symbol representing time and space, while Duwa said it was the symbol of the Awakeners' Alliance.
Aside from the scent and the symbols, all he could remember from that night was the woman's silhouette as she rushed into the pouring rain.
Qingmu finally understood why he had felt a strange sense of familiarity when he first saw Su Huilan's back in Professor Mei's lab. He hadn't thought of it at the time, probably because the lab wasn't humid enough, the light wasn't dim enough, and it hadn't rained that day.
A thought flickered in his mind, and he looked up at the sky.
The scene in the white cat's dream changed slightly. A dark cloud drifted in, hanging low above their heads, and the light dimmed.
White Cat and Su Huilan turned to look at Qingmu at the same time. Qingmu smiled at them, signaling them to continue.
Then, raindrops began to fall.
The Crow perched atop the Qingmu lowered its head and said, "Hey, what are you doing? They'll get soaked. My Ruxue, with such beautiful feathers, are you going to let them get rained on?"
Qingmu chuckled, "Aren't they afraid of getting wet in the rain?"
The rain is getting heavier.
Su Huilan had her back to Qingmu at that moment.
Qingmu saw the woman's delicate yet indistinct silhouette against the dim light and drizzling rain.
It's her!
Qingmu was certain once again.
Petru, who was "telling a story," also felt the rain and stopped to look up at the sky. Su Huilan used her Mental Power to protect him and prevent him from being affected.
However, the cold and damp feeling on her body clearly told her that it was really raining, and it wasn't just a dream!