Chapter 133

Chapter 133: Eerie Shadow

To be fair, Duncan was not any kind of expert in the supernatural field, and he knew little about disciplines related to dreams and the mind. But he could still vaguely judge that the scene on this street was not only what Shirley had “seen in her dream”.

Because those whispering, pleading ashes gave him a strange sense of déjà vu——

He thought of that factory, of the people there who had been burned to ash in the fire and hidden by the Veil.

Of course, the ashes in the factory had not asked him for help. Those ashes had given him a more direct and violent sign, letting him see the “echo” of the great fire eleven years ago with his own eyes.

Instinctively, Duncan felt that the ashes on this street in Shirley’s dream had some connection to the ashes in that factory.

He lifted his head and looked around. In the wavering, dim red light, the whole street showed the ruin left by the great fire. Amid the falling sparks and dust were countless piles of ash, and suspicious black shapes printed on the nearby walls.

He spoke: “Back then you were only six years old. No matter how much your subconscious may have noticed, it should not be enough to support such a huge dream world—and to create all these embers that call for help, and such large areas of phantom images in the distance on top of that.”

Duncan said quietly, and his voice suddenly made the tense and uneasy Shirley feel a little steadier.

Shirley raised her head and looked at Duncan standing beside her. The “Mr. Duncan” here did not look like the one she usually saw. Here he appeared as a gloomy and dignified captain. To be honest, he still looked pretty frightening like this. Even without Dog’s kind of “true sight”, she could feel a deep pressure coming off him.

But in this nightmare that was becoming more and more unfamiliar, such a powerful being still gave her a bit of comfort. At least for now, this being was standing on her side.

“Let’s keep going and see how far the reach of this dream goes.”

Duncan’s voice suddenly came from beside her. Shirley froze for a second, then quickly grabbed Dog and hurried to follow him.

Amid the endless faint whispers of plea coming from the piles of ash, the two people and one hound walked through the street covered in embers and sparks, slowly heading toward the cluster of buildings that twisted and shook in the shadows.

They walked along the street for who knew how long. Duncan kept carefully watching for changes in the scenery along the way, and what made him feel strange was that the view on this street remained the same as before.

No more twisted phantoms appeared. Things did not grow more blurred or bizarre, nor did any of the “dangerous dream creatures” Dog had described show up.

Duncan suddenly stopped, his brows slightly furrowed.

“Mr. Duncan?” Shirley looked at him curiously. “Did you find something again?”

“…How far have we already gone from the ‘origin’?” Duncan lifted his head and looked back in the direction he and Shirley had come from. The house they had set out from was already gone, swallowed by the hazy red mist.

“‘Origin’?” Shirley was stunned for a moment. “Oh, you mean the room where I was dreaming? We should… be pretty far already. I feel like we’ve walked at least most of a block.”

“Shirley, something isn’t right.” Dog suddenly reacted at this time. It stared tensely at the surrounding fog, its voice low. “Let’s stop for a moment.”

Shirley still had not caught up. She looked confused: “What is it?”

“A dream takes the dreamwalker’s subconscious base of knowledge as its ‘center’. In this dream, that base for you is that room, and all your memories and emotions are inside that room,” Dog explained quickly. “Everything outside the room is a ‘projected addition’ of the dream. In theory, the farther you go from that room, the more these projected scenes should drift away from reason and common sense. The edge of the dream should grow more absurd and dangerous, and there may even be cliffs that vanish into nothing. But we’ve already gone this far… and this dream still continues!”

Duncan listened and nodded slightly. He did not have such clear and complete theoretical knowledge as Dog, but his guesses were roughly the same.

Shirley finally understood. She took a light breath: “So… I should have already walked out of my own dream domain. In theory, this place should already be so twisted that I can’t recognize anything, or it should be a total void… So where are we now, exactly? Is this still my dream?!”

No one could answer Shirley’s questions. Duncan could only look around with a thoughtful expression.

Everywhere he looked were charred streets. The district after the fire was like an ugly scar carved deep into the city-state, and this scar of burning stretched all the way to where his sight ended. He did not know how many more blocks it cut through ahead.

He looked in another direction and saw several tall buildings near the district. One factory’s distillation tower stabbed straight up into the sky through the smoky haze. Pipes coiled around the surface of the tower, and its frame was jagged, like a strange mountain peak.

Duncan could not help staring at the tall distillation tower, thinking that if one stood atop it, perhaps one could overlook the entire fire zone.

All of a sudden, his gaze froze.

The scene Nina had once described to him rose in his mind:

From a very high place, overlooking the city after it had been burned by fire, with streets like a scar that cut across the entire city-state…

This was the scene Nina had seen in her dream—only from a different angle!

An astonishing idea flashed through Duncan’s mind. He turned his head to look at Shirley: “We… may already have walked into another dream.”

“Another dream?” Shirley was stunned. “Whose dream?”

“Nina’s. Come with me.” Duncan spoke briefly, then at once strode toward the distillation tower.

He did not summon AI into the dream to “give him a ride”, because first, he did not know if that pigeon could enter this dream by walking through the Spirit Realm the way he had. Second, he still needed AI “on watch” outside, to monitor whether any other supernatural force tried to interfere with his actions.

Luckily, the distillation tower was not far from this block. It belonged to a factory next door, and a straight alley connected the two streets.

Shirley followed in a daze. She still had no idea why Mr. Duncan said she had already walked into Nina’s dream. Duncan, however, moved quickly, now and then lifting his head to look at the tall tower.

He was trying to find Nina’s figure.

If this really was Nina’s dream, then her figure should be standing on that distillation tower. It was already the highest building in sight here, and its location perfectly matched the conditions needed to look down on the entire burn zone.

But even when the two people and one hound were almost at the factory, Duncan still did not see any figure on the distillation tower.

He felt some doubt in his heart, but before he could think more, a strange feeling of being under a gaze suddenly came from not far away. It made him stop dead in his tracks.

Duncan lifted his head and looked toward the direction his senses pointed to. In his sight, a tall, thin figure in a strange black long coat, holding a black parasol, had appeared at some point at the corner of the street!

In this dreamscape full of traces of the fire, where embers still lingered on the street, such an umbrella-bearing stranger suddenly appearing was beyond strange. And this time, not only Duncan saw that figure; even Shirley beside him suddenly stopped.

“There’s someone over there!” Shirley cried out.

“You see him too?” Duncan asked without thinking. As soon as his words fell, a murky, eerie muttering suddenly came from the direction of that figure.

It was not any language Duncan knew. The sound was so complex and twisted, with quivering tones and layer upon layer of echoes, that he even doubted it was any “language” at all. But he could still hear a hint of shock in it——

The umbrella-bearing “stranger” seemed very surprised. It was as if he had never expected to meet a few wandering “uninvited guests” here.

And the moment the muttering ended, that strange umbrella-bearing figure suddenly moved!

Duncan could not see clearly what the other did, but out of the corner of his eye he sharply noticed several dark shapes suddenly dart out from the hem of the stranger’s long coat. They were pure “shadows”, rushing along the nearby walls and street toward them. Right after that, the umbrella-bearing figure in the distance vanished into thin air. In the next second, his body appeared again by riding one of the shadows racing toward them, and he lunged straight at Shirley, as if by teleportation!

But by then Shirley had already reacted. Her mind was linked with the Abyssal Hound, and she had a reaction speed as fast as the hound’s. At the very moment that figure finished forming and had not yet acted, she suddenly raised her right hand——

“Anyway, beating the crap out of him first can’t be wrong!”

The girl yelled, with a strange excitement in her voice. The black chain in her hand creaked as she swung Dog in a wide circle and smashed it toward the enemy!