After her body fell into the black hole, Hu Xing's consciousness grew somewhat hazy. Several times, she nearly slipped out and returned to that nightmare state between sleeping and waking. Once, she even saw the disorienting light and distorted figures in the study.
Fortunately, a pair of hands held her firmly, and a voice kept murmuring in her ear, "Relax. You can do this. Hold on a little longer, and you'll wake up and see your dream."
The space finally stabilized.
Hu Xing felt her body find support, her feet touching solid ground, and the scenery around her slowly came into focus.
She saw the sea.
The coastline stretched into the distance, indistinct, while mist shrouded the open sea, leaving nothing clearly visible. Only nearby could she see the turquoise waves surging, washing onto the beach one after another, submerging the fine white sand along with a trail of scattered, small footprints.
Wearing a white dress, Hu Xing wandered barefoot along the beach without any destination. The sea breeze lifted the hem of her dress and tousled her long hair, whistling behind her. A seagull flew over and circled above her head.
"Am I dreaming?"
"Yes, you're dreaming. You're awake."
Hu Xing saw Qingmu standing a short distance away. Though the sea breeze was strong, his old trench coat remained utterly motionless, as though cast in iron or sculpted in bronze.
Hu Xing's chest rose and fell unevenly. She felt a little nervous and a little excited.
"Is this a lucid dream?"
Hu Xing had learned about lucid dreaming in her psychology classes. Scientists called the kind of dream "in which you know you're dreaming" "mind-body projection," also known as lucid dreaming. The English term, "Lucid Dreaming," had been proposed in 1913 by a doctor from the Netherlands named Frederick.
"I thought you had to have a special constitution to have lucid dreams!" she said.
"No," Qingmu said. "Actually, anyone can have lucid dreams with the right training."
Hu Xing believed what Qingmu said was true.
"The sea is so beautiful! This feels wonderful!" She watched the waves wash over the tops of her feet, then cast her gaze into the distance. "But why can't I see anything far away?"
"That's the boundary of your dream," Qingmu said.
"The boundary of my dream?"
"Yes," Qingmu explained. "A dream is a space you create yourself. In Professor Mei's words, when you project things from the real world into your dream based on your memories, that space acquires mass. But a person's mental power is limited and can't bear the mass of the space they create indefinitely, so dreams have boundaries. The extent of that space depends on a person's mental power. The stronger his mental power, the larger the dream space he can create."
Qingmu walked toward her step by step. When he reached her, he looked at her and smiled. "Your mental power is already quite strong. Many people can only see a small patch right in front of them in their dreams! Their dreams all rely on constantly changing scenes. Some people think they've dreamed of enormous places, but that's all something they fill in and piece together when recalling their dreams after waking."
"So that's how it works." Hu Xing only half understood. "It's so amazing. I can create such a wonderful space myself. Am I God?"
"In your own dream, you are God," Qingmu said. "You created everything here, including yourself."
"Myself? How can I create myself? If I'm something I created too, then where is that other me?" Hu Xing asked a string of questions that left even her own head spinning.
"When you dream, your real body is asleep," Qingmu said. "Only your cerebral cortex is active. So the you here now is really just your consciousness. Human consciousness is like an iceberg. When we're awake, we're the part of the iceberg above the surface, which we call the conscious mind. The much larger part hidden underwater is what we call the subconscious. The subconscious is the foundation of the conscious mind, but it never shows itself. It only comes up for air when you're asleep and takes you into dreams. At that time, your conscious mind is resting."
"What about me right now?" Hu Xing asked.
"As a successful lucid dreamer, your consciousness is now fully united. Your conscious and subconscious minds are both awake," Qingmu said.
"Then can I change something? If I created all of it." A sudden idea struck Hu Xing.
"Have you ever played with building blocks?" Qingmu asked.
Hu Xing nodded.
Qingmu pointed, and a pile of building blocks suddenly appeared on the beach.
"Creating a space is like building with blocks. You need extremely meticulous calculations to make it both big and beautiful."
He crouched down and began building on the ground. Before long, he had constructed a tall, square, hollow building.
"You're the one who builds your dream space, and your memories are the building materials. You extract and organize your jumbled memories, then use meticulous calculations to reconstruct astonishing three-dimensional images, stacking them layer by layer. If you don't have a firm grasp of the rules but try to change it anyway, it's like suddenly pulling a little block out of the structure..."
As he spoke, he chose a block from the middle of his tower, seemingly at random, and pulled it out. The tower instantly came clattering down.
Hu Xing understood, but, quick-witted as she was, she immediately spotted a problem. "Wait, where did those blocks come from? Doesn't something suddenly appearing violate the rules of my space too? And how did you get in here?"
Qingmu smiled. "Do you want to become fat from a single bite? This is only your first lucid dream! You've already used up quite a bit of mental power. When you wake up later, you might have to sit in a wheelchair like your grandfather!"
Hu Xing shrieked. "Oh! Where's my grandfather? Weren't we in his dream? How did we end up in mine?"
Qingmu stood up and pointed into the distance. "Look carefully."
Hu Xing knew he was pointing at the boundary of her dream. Against that hazy gray backdrop, she noticed a faint, almost imperceptible fluctuation, as though a protective barrier made of air stood there, under assault from some mysterious force.
"What's that?" she asked.
"When people dream, their cerebral cortex emits strong brain waves. Besides that, our bodies also emit bioelectricity. Professor Mei said he once detected a special kind of ray that still can't be verified or captured," Qingmu explained. "Right now, you and your grandfather are both dreaming."
"You mean that's my brain waves and Grandpa's interfering with each other?"
"More or less," Qingmu said.
"Then how do we get into my grandfather's dream? Oh, we've been here so long. Isn't he about to wake up?" Hu Xing asked in surprise and uncertainty.
"Don't worry. Dreams are a product of your consciousness and aren't bound by space or time. So time is only a feeling you have. It doesn't exist in dreams."
Having said that, Qingmu took her hand. "Close your eyes."
Hu Xing closed her eyes, and darkness descended. Suddenly, she felt her body tighten, as though the entire space had wrapped snugly around her like a cocoon.
Only when Qingmu said, "All right," did she open her eyes and discover that everything around her was dim.
A mysterious, powerful force pulled them rapidly down toward an endless abyss.
She looked down beneath their feet and saw her grandfather being pulled by a dark shadow, plummeting at tremendous speed.