Chapter 026

Chapter 26: Irene’s Skill

Irene has the power to slip into other people’s dreams, and she says she can even nudge what happens there, like ringing the end of exam bell to Summon a dump truck or something like that.

To be honest, if used well, it sounds pretty strong. Maybe she could plant ideas, cling to a mind, or even reshape memories.

But Yu Sheng doubted how much of this doll’s bragging was real. So far she looked useless even inside a dream. She could not even hide in the grass without messing up.

And even in a dream, she was still trapped inside that painting.

Irene’s oil painting floated in front of Yu Sheng. The doll girl in the frame looked a bit embarrassed, and the way she hung in midair made Yu Sheng feel awkward. She looked better on a wall than dangling like this.

He pulled a face and finally asked what he had been thinking: “Even in a dream, you can only stay inside the painting? I thought since we are already in the mind Domain, you could at least run around a little.”

“With a curse, what else do you expect,” said Irene with a helpless look. “I am trapped in the painting in the real world, and it is the same in the mental world. No matter where I go, I cannot leave this painting unless I find the right vessel. Freedom? Not even in dreams.”

“That is rough,” said Yu Sheng from the heart.

“But the dream world is still a little different from reality,” Irene hurried to save face when she saw his pity. “I am a bit freer here. See, I can float around. Don’t laugh, there is, there is more than that.”

Yu Sheng raised a brow, now curious: “More than that?”

Irene thought for a second, then struck a pose like the power up stance from King of Fighters 98. Inside the painting she acted like she was charging some great move. Even Yu Sheng got fooled for a moment and watched the portrait doll with a serious face. In the next second, ripples of strange light really flowed across the painting’s surface.

As Yu Sheng’s eyes widened, the painting went pop and changed into an old style poster from the eighties.

Irene took on a vintage movie tone and stood in the poster staring at Yu Sheng.

She said with pride: “I can change art styles.”

Yu Sheng stared: “…”

“You laughed out loud inside!”

He kept a straight face: “I did not.”

“Inner voice!”

Yu Sheng decided not to deal with this doll. The big fox lay nearby, and he still did not know what was going on with her.

Irene looked a little hurt. When Yu Sheng ignored her, she floated aside and muttered: “I can turn into other things too, like woodcut prints or a hanging scroll. I am still working on becoming a bas relief. Then I would have thickness, and you could not call my character paper thin.”

Yu Sheng could not stand the muttering anymore. He turned his head and said: “First, when did I ever say your character was paper thin? Second, that is not how the term is used. Same idea, even if you became marble you would not suddenly have a deep character.”

Irene opened her mouth to argue, but before she could speak, pop, she turned back into a painting. Her change time was up. It had lasted less than three minutes in total.

Yu Sheng was dumbfounded. He knew this doll was useless even in a dream, but he did not expect this level of uselessness.

This time, though, Irene did not look upset. She finally noticed the white fox lying on the grass. Or rather, she sensed how that big fox did not quite match the rest of the dream around them. Curiosity pulled her attention away: “By the way, what is with this fox? Why is her color different from everything else?”

Seeing the doubt on Yu Sheng’s face, she explained: “Most things in a normal person’s dream have a united color tone. The dreamer might not notice, but I can when I watch. In your dream the sky and grass are all a hazy gray. That is the base tone of this dream. But this fox looks like she walked in from the wrong set.”

She paused, then looked at Yu Sheng with suspicion: “Why is there such a weird thing in your dream?”

Yu Sheng went quiet, turned to the sleeping white fox, and spoke slowly: “Her name is Foxy.”

“I know, she is a fox at one glance.”

“I mean her actual name, Foxy,” Yu Sheng corrected with a sigh. “Remember when I told you I was trapped in that Otherworld? I met a fox there. White fur, red eyes, lots of tails, that kind.”

Irene froze, and her slow memory finally creaked into motion. She recalled what Yu Sheng had told her before. Her expression turned colorful. She stared at the huge demon fox, opened and closed her mouth several times, and at last squeezed out words: “What? How did you grab her into your dream, wait no, how are you strong enough to lock a person inside your dream…”

“This is not someone I caught, and I do not think she is truly locked in here. It feels more like a shadow of her,” Yu Sheng explained. “I saw her soon after I fell asleep, but I cannot wake her up no matter what.”

Irene looked at Yu Sheng, then at the demon fox, back and forth many times, trying to sort out the logic. It was not easy.

“I have never heard of this,” she murmured. Then she snapped the frame around to stare straight into Yu Sheng’s eyes. “Are you really a person?”

Yu Sheng frowned at once: “What is that supposed to mean? If I am not a person, are you?”

Irene did not look away. Her face was more serious than ever: “Fine, a human, a normal person, who lived in an Otherworld for a long time without knowing it, then wandered into another Otherworld and met a vicious Entity, escaped alive somehow, and even cut off a local specialty from that Entity, cooked it, ate it, and still hopped around fine. Now he can store another mind inside his own dream, while that mind’s real body is trapped somewhere else.

“All these absurd things happened to you, and you still say you are human, a normal person?”

Her crimson eyes made Yu Sheng uncomfortable. He turned his gaze aside. [You even forgot Resurrection. Compared to that, the rest is nothing.]

“It is true a lot of strange things happened. I am confused too. But if you insist, even you count as one of the recent weird things,” he said helplessly. “Stop staring at me. I do not know why this is happening. Foxy will not wake up. If she did, maybe we could ask her what is going on.”

Irene studied him for a while, decided he was not joking, and finally turned her focus back to the silver white demon fox.

She thought for a long time.

Then she said: “I have an idea.”

Yu Sheng asked with interest: “An idea? Tell me.”

“I will try to slip into this fox’s dream. If she happens to be dreaming now,” she pointed at the demon fox, “then her mind looks locked, but no matter how tight a lock is, dreams are hard to guard. Maybe I can see something. If I get a chance to wake up her shadow here, even better.”

Yu Sheng was surprised. He had just been thinking how unreliable this doll was, and now she tossed out a high level plan. He could not hide his surprise: “You can do that?”

“It is not hard, as long as she is dreaming. Even if she is not, your two minds are clearly linked right now. I can still squeeze my way over for a look. But there is risk, and I will need your help.”

Yu Sheng’s face turned serious at once: “No problem. Tell me what to do.”

“To jump between minds is like doing a Deep Dive in rough water,” Irene said, watching him closely. “If the link between us breaks, I might get stuck on the other side. So I need a rope. You will be that rope.

“You must dive with me. From your own dream you keep sinking, down into the depths of this big fox’s mind. You should also carry some of the strain, so I can spare focus to find the way. If something really goes wrong, I will use a more forceful method to wake you up.

“Your awakening has the highest priority in this chain of dreams. It will yank my mind back too. That way we both return to the real world safe. But I should warn you, my wake up method may not feel pleasant.”

“How unpleasant?”

“Like this: you are dreaming you are taking the big entrance exam. You forget to write your name. The end bell rings. You cannot react in time. Then a dump truck crashes into the test hall and turns you and your first love from high school into paper cutouts, the kind whose character is very thin.”

Yu Sheng could not make sense of her wild example. [What is she even talking about?]

He figured it was not a big deal anyway. It was just waking up. How bad could it be? Compared to dying, discomfort was nothing. He wanted to know what was going on with Foxy and with his dream more than anything.

“No problem. Let’s start,” he said, taking a slow breath and nodding to Irene. “What is step one?”

She answered: “Go over there and get close to the big fox, as close as you can. Just lie down on her tails.

“Then hold my frame, close your eyes, and we jump in the dream.”