Chapter 027

Chapter 27: Into the Depths of a Dream

Irene’s own task was simple.

She just had to lie somewhere and not make trouble.

Yu Sheng walked to the sleeping silver white demon fox. He walked around her huge body and the pile of tails, looking for a good spot. He found a dip where two big tails crossed.

He bent down and tugged the fur to adjust the position of Foxy’s tails, then patted another tail so the fur would fluff up. Irene watched, stunned: “Are you making a bed?”

“This is for comfort,” said Yu Sheng, as he leaned back on the big silver fluffy tail. “Who knows how long this will take, and I am picky about sleep quality.”

Irene clicked her tongue. Once Yu Sheng lay down, she floated over and let the whole frame drop straight onto his chest: “Catch.”

Yu Sheng grabbed for the falling frame in a panic, thinking for a second that she meant to smash him for laughing at her inside: “Come on. Warn me before you fall.”

He managed to catch her and did not get flattened. He adjusted his posture, half lying against Foxy’s big tail, holding Irene’s frame in both hands. He let out a slow breath and waited to sink into the next layer of dream.

Diving into another dream from inside your own was a first for him.

A low, old song hummed from the painting. It sounded like some ancient lullaby, far away and full of longing. He could not understand the words, but a calm force seeped into his heart. His eyelids grew heavy. Half awake, he glanced down at the painting in his hands.

It looked like he was holding someone’s memorial photo. [Why does this feel like I am holding a memorial picture?]

His thought cut off. In a rush of nothing, he dropped, falling straight toward the deepest part of the dream.

He lost all sense of his body, or rather, he could not feel a body at all. He became an empty viewpoint, flying through a stream of memories, thoughts, and senses that were not his. Shadows layered over shadows. Many overlapping fragments of images wove into curtains, and the curtains formed a tunnel that seemed to stretch to The End Web.

Roaring sound filled his head. Information poured in. He could not tell if he was hearing real sounds or if memories were appearing right in his mind.

Someone shouted. Something exploded. The power system of a Celestial Shuttle howled. They were falling. The Celestial Shuttle left its path and plunged into a world that was not on the route, a place that seemed to appear out of nowhere.

There was a huge impact. The Celestial Shuttle smashed into a black mountain. An Artifact Spirit rushed out of a Heaven Scale Apparatus and fought the Immortal who was driving the shuttle. They argued about skimming spirit stones and reckless driving and reporting to the Immortal Sect. Then another explosion came. The Artifact Spirit died. Many people died.

Those who lived at first also died one by one.

Every death and parting turned into a string of quick images across Yu Sheng’s sight. He saw faded figures die of Hunger, die from poisons in the woods, die in fights born from despair, die because the valley itself was full of malice.

The valley wanted to kill them by driving the force of Hunger.

The tunnel to The End Web vanished. Yu Sheng found himself in a faded scene. After pushing through many messy memory bits, he had finally reached Foxy’s dream.

Just as Irene said, the colors matched each other. Everything had an old, lifeless gray tone. A black sky. Dark trees. Dirty gray soil and stone. One look pressed on the chest.

“Irene?” Yu Sheng called in his mind, because he did not see her.

“I am here,” she answered.

“Where are you?” He looked around. “Why can’t I see you?”

“With you,” said Irene, her voice sounding right inside his head. It felt strange. “You cannot see me or your own body. We are two outside minds that slipped in. Having a viewpoint at all is already lucky.”

“Oh, I see.” He understood, then started to search the small wood for Foxy.

He did not search long. Almost the moment he thought of finding her, he heard a sound not far away.

It was the sound of digging.

Yu Sheng floated that way between the trees. Soon he saw a flash of white.

A silver haired girl in torn clothes knelt by the edge of an open ground in the woods. Her once fluffy tails were dirty and matted. Head down, she dug hard at the soil, muttering as she dug. Around her, many big and small pits showed where she had used her hands to claw at the dirt.

Yu Sheng drifted closer and stopped beside Foxy.

She could not see him. She kept digging, her fingers pushing into the soil again and again. Irene’s voice sounded in Yu Sheng’s mind: “Talk to her. Say something.”

“She cannot see us.”

“It is fine. Just talk. This is a dream. She will respond. For the dreamer, nothing in a dream feels unreasonable.”

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then spoke to the fox maiden: “What are you digging for?”

“Father and Mother,” Foxy answered without any surprise at the voice. She sounded natural. “I remember I buried them here. They are here.”

Yu Sheng felt his heart sink and asked without thinking: “Why do you want to dig them up?”

“I, I miss them,” Foxy slowed and her eyes went a little empty, but she still answered by habit. “I am so hungry. I want to tell them I am so hungry. But I held on. They told me not to listen to that monster. I kept holding on. But I am so hungry.”

She looked at her muddy hands, then kept digging. She muttered like she was talking to herself: “They should be here. They must be here, resting under this ground. I listened to them. I always listened. I did not listen to that monster.”

“Her mind is not right,” Irene said in Yu Sheng’s head. “Too off.”

“I know. I could tell when I first met her,” Yu Sheng answered inside.

“I do not mean that,” Irene said. “I mean something else is mixed into her mind. Something is trying to get in and push her thoughts around. There is another voice in her voice. Her own will is holding, but the foreign thought is close to breaking her.”

Irene stopped talking.

Foxy stopped digging, stood up with a blank face, walked a few steps, and stood dazed in the open ground.

Yu Sheng followed right away. In the next second, he heard a faint, blurry voice.

It sounded like it rose from inside his own heart, as if he himself whispered it.

“Dig. Dig them out.

“You only want to see them once. You only want to make sure you really followed what they said. It has been so long since you met, right.

‘I miss them so much.’”

Foxy looked back at the holes she had dug.

“I miss them so much,” she said softly.

Yu Sheng snapped to attention. He realized the voice he heard from his heart was the outside push Irene had warned about. His mind and Foxy’s dream were linked by a Spiritual Link, so what he heard was not his own heart, but Foxy’s.

Foxy slowly turned toward another spot on the open ground, ready to dig again.

Every handful of soil was also clawing through the last line of defense in her mind.

Yu Sheng finally understood what that voice wanted. A chill rose from his core. He shouted without thinking: “Foxy!”

The fox demon girl stopped, confused, and looked toward the empty edge of the trees.

After a long moment, a bit of clarity returned to her eyes. She remembered where she had heard that familiar voice.

“…Benefactor?” she whispered.

But the woods were empty. Yu Sheng’s voice did not come again. That call felt like an illusion.

Foxy stood in the open ground, dazed. After a while, she noticed the many pits around her.

Slowly, fear showed on her face.

She woke up at the last step before her defenses fell.