Chapter 27: Into the Depths of Dreams
This novel is translated and hosted on Bcatranslation.
What Irene wanted Yu Sheng to do was actually quite simple.
Basically, find a spot where he wouldn’t be in the way, lie down, and not cause any trouble.
Yu Sheng approached the still-sleeping silver-white fox demon. He circled around her enormous body and multitude of tails, looking for a comfortable place—a hollow formed where two of her large tails overlapped.
He bent down, tugging at the fluffy fur on Foxy’s tail to adjust its position. He patted another tail to make it fluffier. Irene watched from the side, dumbfounded.
“Are you making a bed?” she asked, incredulous.
“Just trying to make it comfortable to lie on,” Yu Sheng replied casually, leaning against the big, fluffy silver tail. “Who knows how long you’ll take, and I care a lot about my sleep quality…”
Irene scoffed. Once Yu Sheng settled down, she floated over, and her entire picture frame dropped straight onto his chest.
“Catch,” she said.
Yu Sheng hastily caught the falling frame, fumbling in surprise. For a moment, he thought she was getting back at him for laughing at her earlier and intended to smash him.
“Hey! Could you give a warning before you drop down?” he exclaimed.
At least he managed to catch Irene without being flattened by her frame. He adjusted his posture, half-lying against one of Foxy’s big tails, holding Irene’s picture frame in both hands. He exhaled softly, waiting to sink into the dream.
Sinking into another dream within his own—it was an experience he’d never had before.
From the oil painting came Irene’s soft humming. It was an ancient melody filled with a distant and nostalgic atmosphere. Though he couldn’t understand the lyrics, he felt a calming power slowly seep into his heart. Yu Sheng’s eyelids grew heavy. In the hazy space between waking and sleeping, he glanced down at the painting he held.
It felt as if he were holding someone’s memorial portrait.
Yu Sheng thought, “Seriously?”
How does this puppet always manage to create such eerie situations?
The next moment, his thoughts abruptly ceased amid these wild musings. Suddenly, he plunged into a void, sinking straight into the deepest part of the dream.
He felt he had lost control of his body—or rather, he couldn’t feel his body at all. It was as if he had become a disembodied perspective, rapidly traversing through a series of memories, thoughts, and sensations that weren’t his own. Shadows surrounded him; overlapping images intertwined into continuous curtains, forming a tunnel with no end in sight.
Sounds buzzed, and information flooded his mind. He couldn’t tell if he was actually hearing these sounds or if they were memories surfacing in his mind.
Someone was shouting in alarm. Something was exploding. A whistling sound came from the power structure of the immortal tour ship. They were falling. The vessel had veered off course, crashing into a world that wasn’t on their path as if it had suddenly appeared.
A tremendous impact—the ship crashed into a dark mountain. The artifact spirit emerged from the Heaven Measuring Device and fought fiercely with the immortal piloting the ship. They argued about “embezzling spirit stones,” “reckless driving,” “reporting to the Immortal Sect,” and so on. Then, with an explosion, the artifact spirit died, and many people perished.
Those who survived died one after another.
All the deaths and farewells turned into a series of rapidly passing fragments before Yu Sheng’s eyes. He saw those blurred figures dying of hunger, from poisonous creatures in the mountains, in desperate fights, and from the pervasive malice that filled the valley.
The valley itself wanted to kill them, wielding the power of hunger.
The seemingly endless tunnel suddenly disappeared. Yu Sheng found himself in a faded scene. After passing through many chaotic memory fragments, he had finally arrived at Foxy’s current dream.
Just as Irene had said, the colors in the dream were uniform. Everything had an old, lifeless, grayish texture—the dark sky, the gloomy woods, the dirty and gray soil and stones. Just one glance made him feel overwhelmingly oppressed.
“Irene?” Yu Sheng called out in his mind, not seeing her anywhere.
“I’m here,” came her voice as if directly from his thoughts. The sensation was… odd.
“Where are you?” Yu Sheng looked around. “Why can’t I see you?”
“I’m with you,” Irene’s voice replied. “You can’t see me, and you can’t see your own body. We’re two external consciousnesses that have infiltrated her dream. Having a viewpoint is good enough.”
“Oh, I see,” Yu Sheng understood. He began to search for Foxy in the small woods.
He didn’t search for long. Almost as soon as he had the thought to find her, he heard a sound not far away.
It was the sound of digging.
Yu Sheng immediately followed the sound. His perspective floated through the shadowy woods, and soon he saw a glimpse of white.
A silver-haired girl in tattered clothes was kneeling at the edge of a clearing. Her once fluffy and beautiful fox tail was dirty and matted with soil. She kept her head down, desperately digging into the ground, muttering as she worked. Around her were numerous pits she had dug with her hands, both large and small.
Yu Sheng “floated” over to Foxy’s side.
She couldn’t see him and continued digging, her hands clawing into the soil repeatedly.
Irene’s voice suddenly came into his mind. “Talk to her.”
“She can’t see us,” he replied.
“Doesn’t matter. Just talk. This is a dream; she’ll respond. In a dream, nothing is unreasonable to the dreamer.”
Yu Sheng thought for a moment and looked at the fox girl. “What are you digging for?” he asked.
“Mom and Dad…” Foxy didn’t question the sudden voice at all and answered naturally. “I remember I buried them here… They were definitely buried here…”
Yu Sheng felt a heaviness in his heart for some reason. He subconsciously asked, “Why do you want to dig them up?”
“I… I miss them,” Foxy gradually stopped, her eyes vacant and confused, yet she still answered instinctively. “I’m so hungry. I want to tell them I’m so hungry… But I held on. They told me not to listen to that monster. I’ve been holding on, but… so hungry…”
Foxy looked down at her hands, dirty with soil, and resumed digging. As she dug, she muttered to herself, “They should be here. They must be here, right under here… I listened to them, always listened. I didn’t listen to that monster…”
“Her mental state isn’t right,” Irene’s voice said in Yu Sheng’s mind. “Something’s very wrong…”
“I know. I sensed that the first time we met,” Yu Sheng replied internally.
“No, I mean… something else has infiltrated her mind, trying to interfere with her thoughts,” Irene explained, attempting to convey the complex situation to Yu Sheng. “Her voice carries someone else’s words—her own will has been holding on, but the external thoughts are pushing her to her limit.”
Irene suddenly fell silent.
Foxy stopped digging, stood up with a confused expression, and walked a few steps away. Then she stood motionless in the clearing.
Yu Sheng immediately followed. The next moment, he seemed to hear a faint, blurred voice.
The voice seemed to come directly from within him as if he himself were whispering:
“Dig them up… Bring them out…
“You just want to see them. You just want to make sure you’ve been listening to them. It’s been so long since you’ve met, hasn’t it…
“‘I’ miss them so much…”
Foxy turned her head blankly, looking at the pits she had dug.
“I miss them so much…” she whispered.
Yu Sheng suddenly realized that the voice he heard was the “external interference” Irene had mentioned!
Since he was connected to Foxy’s dream and mind, what he heard wasn’t his own inner voice but the voice within Foxy’s heart!
Foxy slowly turned toward another spot in the clearing, seeming ready to dig again.
Each handful of soil was gradually breaking through her mental defenses.
Yu Sheng finally understood what that voice was tempting her to do. A chill rose from his heart, and he instinctively shouted, “Foxy!”
The fox girl stopped in confusion, turning to look at the empty edge of the woods.
After a long while, a bit of clarity returned to her eyes, and she recalled where she had heard that familiar voice.
“Benefactor…?” she whispered.
But the forest was silent; Yu Sheng’s voice did not come again. That shout seemed like an illusion.
Foxy stood dazed in the clearing. After a while, she noticed the large pits she had dug around her.
Fear gradually appeared on the fox girl’s face.
She woke up, suddenly snapping back just before her mental defenses collapsed.