Chapter 632: Reconciling Accounts in Dreams

Ai Lin—in her eight-legged form—wandered back and forth on the small hill, eventually discovering that aside from grass and rocks, there was nothing here. As for whatever might have originally been on the other half of the hill, it had probably been flattened when the Boundary Bridge crashed down.

So she ended her exploration and walked down the slope covered with rubble and debris, heading toward the open wilderness at the foot of the hill.

Wind blew over the hill, carrying what sounded like whimpering whispers. Ai Lin stopped and turned to look toward the hilltop, but saw only that lonely dark tower standing askew in the distance, piercing through the chaotic clouds in the sky like a pillar connecting heaven and earth. Broken spatial rifts surrounded the tower, making it look like a bizarre tree.

"It's getting weird… really weird…"

Ai Lin muttered a few words, unconsciously quickening her pace as if feeling a touch of unease from this "dream." Subconsciously, she moved away from the broken tower and the collapsed hill.

The chaotic whimpering wind grew stronger, forming a barrier around the hill, using a gentle but omnipresent force to prevent her from reaching the plain. But suddenly, that obstruction vanished like an illusion—Ai Lin burst out from the encircling wind, feeling a familiar and calm aura around her. The nameless tall grass swayed gently in the breeze, making her eight legs feel a little itchy.

The doll (Omen) stood there blankly for a while, then turned her head again to look toward the small hill, only to find that the hill was now far away, and the "Boundary Bridge" on it and the spatial rifts in the sky had all disappeared, as if they had never existed.

Her eight long segmented limbs scratched the ground a few times. Ai Lin turned to look in another direction and saw, ahead in the swirling mist, the Astral Crystal Tree standing tall in the wilderness. Beneath its magnificent canopy stood the solemn black cathedral.

The happy home that C-clip and her knights had built—honestly, it was much prettier than the toilet Yu Sheng had cobbled together.

The doll's dream had ended. Her consciousness drifted across the border of memories and illusions, and now she had finally crossed over to the Soul Wilderness.

Ai Lin thought for a moment, then suddenly laughed happily and strode toward the cathedral.

She was going to cause trouble for C-clip—starting with messing up the garden.

But she had only taken a few steps when she sensed a familiar aura appear nearby, and then a voice reached her ears: "…How did you get here?"

Ai Lin screeched to a halt and turned to see Yu Sheng standing in the wilderness with a bewildered expression.

"Hey, Yu Sheng!" Ai Lin greeted him happily. "I was just having a dream…"

"I was dreaming too! I was just dreaming that Sun City was having a barbecue festival with unlimited grilled meat, and I was about to take Hu Li to eat there, but when I turned around, I ended up here—so you sleepwalked and dragged me over?" Yu Sheng stared dumbfounded at the giant spider Ai Lin before him, still looking dazed from his dream. "Hey, wait, why are you in this form over here?!"

"I didn't drag you," Ai Lin said, waving her hand first, then putting on a proud expression. Looking down at Yu Sheng from above, she showed off her long legs. "How about that? Pretty awesome, right? Now that I'm not limited by that oil painting, I'm way cooler than before when I could only float around like a paper cutout! Look at my height, look at my legs… I can use this body directly in dreams! It seems like once I unlock it here, there's no cooldown…"

Yu Sheng wasn't sure whether to remind her that "only being able to grow taller in dreams" wasn't actually something to be proud of, but the words stuck in his throat. He forced a change of topic. "You said you were just having a dream? What did you dream about?"

The doll (Omen), who had been showing off, immediately stopped, a brief confused expression appearing on her face.

Right, she had been dreaming. It seemed like a very long dream, and it got stranger and stranger toward the end… She had so much to tell Yu Sheng, but what exactly had she dreamed about?

"You haven't forgotten already, have you?" Yu Sheng's voice came from beside her.

Ai Lin frowned deeply, trying to work her not-so-bright brain while attempting to block out the chaotic interference in her mind. She waved her hand subconsciously and turned to look at that "hill that could never be reached" in the Soul Wilderness. Some scattered dream fragments finally pieced together.

In that split second.

Yu Sheng saw the giant Ai Lin in front of him suddenly tense up. Although he didn't know what was happening, he instinctively shut his mouth and focused. Then Ai Lin took a deep breath—and the next second, the doll lady's super nimble mouth began to unload:

"I dreamed that I was an experimental model personally created by the Ancient Spirit specifically to handle the Boundary Bridge thing but the first mission failed and I saw the previous version of the Borderland which looked like a box garden map and the Boundary Bridge connection failed because it didn't fully connect to the Borderland but instead pierced through the map and crashed into another dimension and that place looked like it was this Soul Wilderness and the bridge pier crashed onto that hill over there I didn't figure out what happened and when I came down from the hill I crossed over to your side here ahhh my tongue hurts so bad…"

Yu Sheng felt that the words exploding out of her were like a machine gun, every character slamming into his forehead like a storm. He was completely stunned after hearing it, almost choking on his breath. "Holy crap—"

Ai Lin was panting heavily with her tongue out, and when she saw Yu Sheng's reaction, she glared. "I'm telling you, if you ask me to repeat that, I'll get pissed. I almost bit my damn tongue off…"

"No, no, I heard you, I heard it all," Yu Sheng quickly waved his hand. While he hadn't forgotten yet, he mentally replayed that string of words several times to reinforce his memory. After going over it four or five times, he finally had the spare attention to think about what he had just heard—he felt that sorting out the content was like decompressing a zip file, and there were clearly many layers of detail missing. "But let me sort it out… Starting with that sentence about the Ancient Spirit. What do you mean by 'personally created by the Ancient Spirit as an experimental model'? What exactly did you remember?"

Ai Lin immediately used that sentence as a keyword to retrieve her messy memories. She hugged her arms and thought seriously for a few seconds, then nodded and pointed her thumb at herself. "Me, Alice doll special modified type, awesome."

So that was her summary.

Yu Sheng: "…Awesome enough to fail on the first mission?"

Ai Lin: "…Yu Sheng, you bastard!!"

…

Yu Sheng and Ai Lin spent who knows how long reconciling accounts in the dream, and were finally woken up by a phone call in the real world.

When he opened his eyes, it was already broad daylight, about noon. His phone was still buzzing on the nightstand. Yu Sheng rolled over and saw that the caller was Bai Liqing.

Ai Lin also scrambled up, sitting on the edge of the bed and pointing at Yu Sheng. "Ahahaha, even you get woken up by the Steel Expressionless's phone call… Owww—"

The little doll was laughing too hard and rolled off the bed.

Yu Sheng ignored the cursing little thing and answered the phone. "Hello? Director Bai?"

The familiar cool voice came through: "Mm, it's me… Still not up?"

"Went to bed too late yesterday," Yu Sheng said casually. "But no big deal. What's up?"

"About the Hermit Society members who invaded the border city yesterday," Bai Liqing said directly. "I have limited information. Can you come over so we can talk in person?"

Yu Sheng agreed at once: "No problem, I'll get ready and head over."

"Okay, I'll wait for you in my office," Bai Liqing said, then added, "You can bring Hu Li over for lunch. Song Cheng said the braised chicken legs in the cafeteria are really good today."

"No problem!"

Yu Sheng hung up the phone but didn't rush to head to the bureau. Instead, he watched Ai Lin (blonde) climbing back onto the bed with both hands and feet, and watched the four boxes by the wall open one after another, with a string of dolls crawling out and walking sleepily toward the bathroom.

Ai Lin (blonde) clung to the edge of the bed, gripping the bedsheet with both hands, half her body hanging off, looking up at Yu Sheng with wide eyes.

"Could you help me already!"

"Oh, oh." Yu Sheng finally reached out and pulled the little doll up.

"In the end, we never figured out what that scene at the end of my 'dream' meant—when the Boundary Bridge appeared in the Soul Wilderness," the little doll said, sitting cross-legged in front of Yu Sheng, arms folded, rocking back and forth. "Mostly because I can't remember the details… I just have this impression of 'a tower piercing through the sky and landing on a hill.'"

Yu Sheng stroked his chin, thinking while staring at Ai Lin for a long time, until she started baring her teeth. He finally spoke: "Do you think that all really happened?"

Ai Lin blinked. "What do you mean?"

"Although a lot of content in your dream was generated from your messy 'memories,' making them seem very real, a dream is still a dream… Maybe that scene was just because there really is an Astral Crystal Tree in the Soul Wilderness now, and a 'Boundary Bridge' really is fused onto that tree? Your impression of that caused you to see that tower appearing on the hill at the end of your dream…"

Ai Lin stared straight at Yu Sheng with her blue eyes, a rare serious expression on the little doll's face. "Come on, do you believe that explanation yourself?"

Yu Sheng opened his mouth, but in the end just raised his hand and scratched his messy hair.

"See, you don't believe it yourself," Ai Lin said, scooting forward on her crossed legs, leaning slightly. "I think that scene must be conveying some very important information… Thirty-seven hundred years ago, in the previous version of the Borderland—Steel Expressionless calls it the 'Classical Era'—on that day, the Omen Goddess came to this world. I went out to execute my first mission. The Boundary Bridge pierced through the Borderland. The tower fell onto the Soul Wilderness. Yes, that day… everything happened…"

Yu Sheng stared blankly at the doll before him, feeling that such a serious Ai Lin… actually had some presence.

The little doll with strong presence raised her hand and pointed at Yu Sheng.

"So," she said with a serious face, "what about you? On that day… were you there too?"

(End of chapter)