Chapter 428: Restructuring

"We are inside a vast dream."

At the instant he saw that line of words appear on the window, Yu Sheng felt as if a tremendous booming sound had erupted deep in his mind—a sound like a thunderbolt without light shattering the night. Then, the "curtain" that had been supporting the entire scene around him began to rapidly disintegrate under this cognitive thunderclap.

A gust of cold wind suddenly blew into the room, carrying icy rain. The doors and windows were tightly shut, but the wind and rain outside still swept across the living room unhindered, penetrating the windows, the walls, and all the furnishings in the room. Then everything seemed to melt and collapse, accompanied by twisting and violent shaking.

The wall not far away was first eaten away into a large hole, its edges flowing down like grease, revealing a crooked corridor outside. Half the roof of the corridor had been torn off, and a gale carrying a rainstorm poured into it. A long bridge, extending from somewhere unknown, hung upside down above the corridor. On the inverted bridge surface, pedestrians swayed, along with many pitch-black vehicle shadows that seemed to have been blurred into a single mass.

A strange roar came from very close by. The window, riddled with holes from the wind and rain, finally shattered into pieces amidst the roar, turning into a heap of chaotic colors that vanished from Yu Sheng and the others' field of vision. The living room shook violently, then collapsed lopsidedly, only to stop abruptly in midair, as if held up by an invisible hand. Not far away, buildings grew endlessly toward the sky amidst the gale, yet simultaneously, as if cut by invisible blades, they split into huge fragments during their "growth," floating loosely in midair. The metal skeletons that had once supported the structures spilled out from between those fragments, hanging down like hair from the sky, weaving into forest-like structures that spread throughout the city, tangling, stacking, and proliferating in clusters...

The entire Mo City had turned into a absurd and bizarre nightmare. The cold wind and sudden rain howled within the dream, sweeping up the whole city, letting it proliferate wildly in uncontrolled cognition and imagination.

"By the Ancestor of Puppets!" Eileen was the first to dart onto Yu Sheng's shoulder, clutching his head and letting out a yelp. "What in the hell is all this?!"

Hu Li's surroundings had already filled with layers of blue flames. She crouched slightly, growling threateningly at the wind and rain pouring in. Luna, in an instant, equipped her fingertip blades, her body leaping lightly to Yu Sheng's side, while the radar system built into her body scanned the surrounding environment.

"Not... an illusion," Luna whispered, maintaining high alert. "Changes... real existence."

A vast dream? Real existence?

Vast contradictions and confusion swirled in Yu Sheng's mind. Then, he recalled what Xuan Che had mentioned in his last message—the widespread cognitive anomalies.

Was all of this the result of cognitive anomalies? If the scene before him, defying common sense, was caused by cognitive anomalies... then was he the one experiencing the anomaly now? But just now, when the wind and rain poured in, he had clearly felt a thunderclap shatter some curtain, as if he had suddenly broken through an illusion... So was this the reality? Was the "everything normal" Mo City from before the result of an anomaly?

Which layer was the anomaly? Or was everything... an anomaly?

A cold, sinister sensation suddenly seemed to pierce his flesh and entangle his mind. Yu Sheng snapped out of his momentary daze, quickly shaking his head, and involuntarily looked toward the source of the cold sensation—Eileen sat on his shoulder, but the little puppet seemed unaware of anything, just looking around nervously.

Thin strands of black "spider silk" were unconsciously spreading in the air around her.

Seeing this, Yu Sheng quickly poked the little puppet, reminding her: "Eileen, you're pulling strings."

"Ah, huh?" Eileen then noticed the spider silk leaking around her and hastily retracted it. "I didn't notice... How did this happen... Ah, Yu Sheng, what do we do now? The place has turned into this. Where do we find the nephew and the others?"

"Maybe this is how we can find them," Yu Sheng said, now feeling calmer. Though he couldn't understand the principle behind the changes in front of him, reason told him that since the two reminders had appeared on the window just now, Elder Yuan Hao and the others were likely also trapped in this "twisted Mo City." "Hu Li, fire two flares into the sky—the more conspicuous, the better. Then we'll find a way down and see if there are any other marks left by Elder Yuan Hao in the vicinity."

"Alright!"

Hu Li nodded quickly, then immediately fired two Fox Radish flares into the sky. With two booming sounds, brilliant foxfire exploded within the rain curtain, spreading out to illuminate the entire sky above the district.

Yu Sheng looked up at the spreading firelight in the sky, then without hesitation, crossed the rain curtain that had pierced through the room and stepped out into the crooked corridor outside, which seemed to lead to the lower floors of the building.

They left, leaving only the room with its pouring rain and howling wind.

The barrier between reality and illusion had been breached. Some kind of cognitive interference that had shrouded Mo City for years fell like a torn curtain, the wrinkled "cloth" piling up into this grotesque scene within the city.

Then, after quite some time, the empty room suddenly heard a soft click—the sound of a door lock opening.

The door leading to the master bedroom, in a corner of the living room, was pushed open from inside.

A girl with a head of golden hair swaggered out, one hand holding half a fried pancake, a water bottle tucked under her arm. Behind her was the scene of the living room at 66 Wutong Road.

The wind and rain howling on this side of the door crashed down on her head. The golden-haired girl, who had walked right into it without looking, was drenched instantly, even the fried pancake in her hand getting wet.

The long-haired princess stared blankly up, watching the wind and rain howling through the living room beyond the door. Outside the eroded roof and walls was a wildly twisted alien landscape. A fragmented black awning boat tilted across the sky and smashed into a pavilion less than a hundred meters from her.

The next second, the golden-haired girl turned and bolted back.

"Ah! Scared me to death! Scared me to death!... Red Hat! White Snow! The boss moved the house to another weird place again! Today's outing is canceled!"

...

Yu Sheng and the others quickly walked through the crooked corridor, then descended more than a dozen floors of stairs that had long since warped and deformed, even feeling as if they would never end.

The walls nearby had holes in places, revealing the unrecognizable street scenes of Mo City outside. Wind and rain irregularly passed through the holes or even straight through the walls, swirling and dancing in the stairwells and corridors. Yet some areas remained abnormally dry despite the wind and rain, as if the rainwater couldn't interact with the surrounding "scene," passing across the walls and roofs, and even the chill in the wind seemed illusory and fleeting.

While passing through those corridors, Yu Sheng couldn't help but think of the rain falling in the Soul Wilderness—rain that also came from Shu Ji, as if constantly falling in the illusion.

They arrived at the lobby on the first floor—in Yu Sheng's memory, their room was originally on the seventh floor, but this time they had walked down more than ten floors to reach this lobby. It, too, was being battered by wind and rain, and compared to his memory, the floor area of this lobby had clearly grown much larger. Some interior spaces that seemingly didn't originally belong to this building had been "merged" into the lobby, abruptly fused not far away.

"Someone's over here!"

Hu Li, sharp-eyed, pointed to a corner of the rest area as soon as they came out of the stairwell.

Yu Sheng immediately hurried over and indeed saw several human figures in the direction Hu Li pointed.

But up close, he found they were indeed just "human figures."

Several blurry humanoid outlines, seemingly composed entirely of vague color patches, lay in the rest area—two lying on the sofa, two on the floor, and one even lying on a bed that shouldn't have been on the first floor. These blurry humanoid outlines tossed and turned, as if deep in a nightmare.

Yu Sheng reached toward them, only to find his fingers easily passing through the color patches.

Eileen blinked, holding Yu Sheng's hair with one hand, and cautiously extended the other. Several thin threads extended from her fingertips, connecting to those humanoid outlines.

"...They're dreaming," the little puppet muttered. "But... it's weird. Their dreams aren't in their dreams. Can you understand what I mean?"

Yu Sheng: "Nonsense. Of course I can't."

Eileen pouted. Then, she saw another few human figures suddenly appear in the lobby.

Those were also blurry color patch outlines, not there a second ago, but now abruptly appearing at the entrance. The figures floated a few centimeters above the ground like a poorly projected image, flickering, maintaining a frozen posture of standing or about to walk forward, suspended in midair.

Black threads immediately spread to those newly appeared figures, too.

"They're also dreaming, but it's a 'waking dream,'" Eileen said quickly. "I can't read their minds very well, but they seem to be walking into this hotel, ready to check in... No fear, no confusion. In their eyes, the world seems normal."

Yu Sheng frowned deeply, a dawning realization in his heart. Just then, a slight vibration came from his pocket.

He immediately pulled out his phone and was surprised to see that the screen, which had had no signal before, now flashed with a message—

"Anomaly detected... Signal restoring."

Then, in quick succession, several messages poured in, the phone vibrating nonstop.

The messages were from the Special Affairs Bureau, Bai Liqing.

Yu Sheng was stunned for a moment. Though he didn't understand why the communication had suddenly been restored, he subconsciously opened one of the messages.

"There are records in the database. You are very likely encountering the Dim Angel 'Derivative Star'...

Beware of the Level IV cognitive restructuring it creates—which can cause reality reconstruction on a planetary scale."

(End of chapter)