Even before Qingmu left Wuzhong, Yao Jingjing already possessed the ability to enter other people's dreams.
When Qingmu taught her lucid dreaming, he discovered her potential. Unlike Hu Xing, who could learn it quickly, or Meimei, who was a natural Awakened, Qingmu taught her purely to facilitate the observation of Mama Yao's Mental Power. However, after Yao Jingjing learned lucid dreaming, her abilities suddenly burst forth.
Qingmu said that Yao Jingjing was a dormant, dry well, so much so that he did not discover her potential in this area when he was in Southern Yunnan. He only needed to dig a few more meters down, and the groundwater would flow up continuously, never running dry.
Yao Jingjing's Mental Power wasn't strong enough at that time, and she wouldn't dare to enter dreams casually without Qingmu's help. After Qingmu left, she slowly tried to enter other people's dreams, mainly her mother's dreams. From Qingmu, she already knew that her mother had been invaded by Parasites, which terrified her. This was probably the motivation for her to desperately train her physical and Mental Power. She didn't want her mother to be hurt again while she could only helplessly watch from the sidelines.
Yao Jingjing sometimes Mental Power with Hou Biao, entering each other's dreams. Their abilities were roughly equal; Hou Biao's Mental Power was strong and fierce, while hers seemed more delicate and enduring.
A year has passed since Qingmu left, and Yao Jingjing and Hou Biao have become adept at entering dreams. Although they are not as skilled as Qingmu, it is still a miracle in the eyes of ordinary people.
Yao Jingjing found it very strange to see the desert in her mother's dream. With her mother's Mental Power, it was impossible for her to support such a large desert scene, but the screen-like thing in front of her made sense, because it was just a two-dimensional image she was seeing.
The old lady on the screen must be her great-grandmother; she heard her mother calling, "Grandma! Grandma!"
The old lady asked again, "Where's Xue'er? Wasn't Xue'er with you? Where did she go?"
Mama Yao thought blankly, "Where did Xue'er go... where did she go...?"
The old woman turned and left, disappearing in a moment, leaving only a long trail of footprints in the sand, stretching towards the boundless horizon.
Mama Yao burst into tears. "Grandma! Grandma! Don't leave me! Grandma!..."
She ran towards the desert. Just as her hand touched the golden expanse, like touching a soft LCD screen, ripples spread out, and then she was bounced back by an invisible force, while the screen shattered into pieces.
The yellow sand disappeared, leaving only a small, dark gray space. The shattering force continued, causing the space to crack open. Then, with a bang, everything vanished.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, holding the square wooden box in her arms, Mama Yao called out "Grandma, Grandma" twice, and two tears welled up in her eyes.
Yao Jingjing went over and put her arm around her mother's shoulder. "Mom, what's wrong? Were you dreaming?"
"Oh dear, how could I have fallen asleep!" Mama Yao exclaimed softly.
Yao Jingjing knew that Xue'er was the cat her mother had raised when she was a child. Through Qingmu, she already knew about Ruxue and the Dream Corridor. Qingmu originally wanted to hand over the Dream Corridor to her because it belonged to her great-grandmother, but at that time her abilities were not enough to control such a zero-dimensional passage that connected a vast desert space.
What puzzled and unsettled Yao Jingjing was that her mother didn't know that Ruxue had once guarded the Dream Corridor in her mind, nor did she know that there was a desert at the other end of the corridor. Moreover, apart from the time she drove away the shadow in her nightmare and the later time when Qingmu entered her dream to cure her illness, she had never dreamed of her own cat in decades.
Why does she frequently dream of her great-grandmother asking her where the cat is? Is it a latent influence left by Ruxue in her subconscious, or is there another reason? And is there any connection between the desert she dreams of and the desert at the other end of the Dream Corridor, or is it just a coincidence?
Yao Jingjing tentatively asked, "Mom, what did you dream about?"
Mama Yao said, "Oh, it's nothing, I just dreamt about my grandma again."
Of course, Yao Jingjing couldn't say, "I entered your dream," for fear of scaring her mother. So she said, "You're just reminiscing about someone. You must be dreaming about being naughty as a child and being scolded by your great-grandmother, right?"
"No, that's not it. I just dreamt of a vast desert." said Mama Yao.
"Mom, you've never been to the desert, have you?"
"I've never been there. I guess it's because I watched too many TV dramas about deserts recently."
As she spoke, Mama Yao stood up and wiped the box in her hand.
"Mom, what are you holding?" Yao Jingjing asked.
When Mama Yao woke up, she vaguely sensed an unusual mental fluctuation coming from the box, but she wasn't entirely sure if it was caused by her mother holding it. Later, when she tried to sense it again, she couldn't sense it at all.
"This was brought back from the north by your great-grandmother when she was young. It was full of her letters, manuscripts, and photos. Later, she probably felt that her time was coming to an end, so she burned all the letters inside. I was still young at the time and didn't know why she did that, so I begged her to leave the box for me. She gave me the box and left a few photos inside," said Mama Yao.
Yao Jingjing pointed to the glass on the dressing table and said, "Why aren't those photos put together?"
Mama Yao said, "Those were left there when Grandma was alive, so they've never been touched."
Yao Jingjing said, "It's so difficult to preserve old photos. They could have been taken to a photo company for restoration, but the photos and glass were all glued together. What a pity!"
"It can be repaired?" Mama Yao's eyes lit up. "Then take a look at these photos, can they be fixed?"
She carefully opened the box, took out a very old photo album, and handed it to Yao Jingjing, saying, "It's all here. Your great-grandmother treasured it like a precious gem back then, and wouldn't let anyone but me see it!"
When Yao Jingjing heard her say that, she felt a sense of reverence, and her hands couldn't help but feel a little nervous as she took the photo album.
She opened the photo album and found that the photos inside were all faded and moldy, only slightly better than those on the glass table. She saw one group photo, in which female soldiers in military uniforms were lined up neatly in an open space in front of an old-fashioned building, in three or four rows. The writing at the bottom of the photo was still legible, and it read:
Photograph of the entire female corps of recruits from the General Political Department of the Central Military and Political School Wuhan Branch
March 5, 1927
Yao Jingjing tried to find her great-grandmother in the photo, but the picture was too blurry and the person was too small to see clearly, so she had to give up.
The album contained some old photos, most of which were too blurry to identify the people or buildings. Only the last photo was somewhat clearer and more like a picture book, and this photo particularly piqued Yao Jingjing's interest.
My great-grandmother looks very young in the photo, wearing a fashionable scarf. A young man stands next to her, and even in this blurry photo, she exudes an air of extraordinary elegance.
In those days, it was rare for young men and women to take photos together so closely, and their expressions and actions made them look quite like a couple.
Yao Jingjing had never heard of her great-grandfather. She asked her mother, but her mother also said she didn't know, saying it was a taboo subject for her grandmother and that no one was allowed to mention it.
For some reason, Yao Jingjing felt she had seen the man in the photo somewhere before. She also had a strange sense of familiarity with the background of the photo.
Behind the great-grandmother and the young man was a very thick old mulberry tree, with lush, gnarled and strong branches. In the top corner of the photo, there was a wing-shaped black patch, like a pair of large bird wings, which was captured by the photographer just as it was taking flight, leaving half of its body in the photo.
Yao Jingjing carefully took the photo out of the album and noticed faint writing on the back.
Huasheng Sang and Cuan Yifang, photographed in the Mulberry Garden, 1931.