Chapter 432

Chapter 432: A Startling Dream

After Yu Sheng told the young woman what he currently knew, she stayed silent for a long time.

“I know it’s hard to accept,” Yu Sheng said at last with a sigh. “It sounds unbelievable. But it’s true. Look around you. This is the anomaly squeezed out at the boundary of the collective subconscious, where the unreal and the real collide.”

He gestured to the rain and warped skyline. “I still can’t say how you suddenly woke up. But if you think back carefully, you should be able to sense the wrongness that was always there—always close—yet never quite visible.”

Mo Ran didn’t answer right away. After a long, thoughtful pause, she finally spoke, voice low.

“For many years now, Shu Ji has had a strange illness. Very few people get it, but the symptoms are eerie. For no clear reason, the afflicted will have heart demons flare up, or suddenly fall into madness in broad daylight, claiming they saw terrifying, grotesque sights.”

Her fingers tightened around her sword hilt. “But often, within a short time, they return to normal. They may not even remember ever going mad. Their vitality is badly damaged, though, and their cultivation can no longer advance.”

“There’s more,” she said. “Cultivators on Shu Ji are also more prone than others to qi deviation. Not by much—only a little—but no matter how people investigate or try to fix it, the rate stays higher.”

People had always blamed Shu Ji’s earth veins. Or the planet-wide mining and refining facilities for spirit ore. Over time, when no one could find anything, it became something everyone simply accepted.

“Shu Ji is a bit strange,” Mo Ran said softly. “The qi veins are poor in the borderlands. That’s what people say.”

She exhaled, her expression settling as if she’d decided not to flinch again. Her gaze returned to Yu Sheng.

“Since you can move freely through this bizarre realm and came here to investigate on purpose, you must be highly capable. Immortal Envoy Xuan Che… must have been wary of me, so he didn’t tell me many truths.” She bowed her head slightly. “What should we do next? Please advise, Expert. I will cooperate fully.”

“For now, there’s nothing you need to do,” Yu Sheng said, as if he’d already laid the plan out in his head. “But in a moment we may need you, as City Lord, to take charge.”

He looked into the rain. “Right now we need to find the Yanxing Entity as soon as possible and drive it off this planet before it completes metamorphosis. And to do that, we have to reach the real Shu Ji—which means we need a way to pierce this nightmare border.”

“Pierce it?” Irene glanced up at him. “How? Don’t tell me you already have an idea.”

The corner of Yu Sheng’s mouth twitched. “The Yanxing Entity hid the real Shu Ji under a cognitive screen shared by everyone on the planet. So the key is drilling a hole in that screen.”

He paused. “A big hole. Big enough to tear reality across a wide area.”

“Okay,” Irene said slowly. “And how do we do that?”

“You’re asking me?” Yu Sheng stared at her. “You do it. Aren’t you the best at shocking people awake from dreams?”

Little Doll stared blankly for a second before her brain caught up. Then she looked around and visibly shrank. “Holy shit. You make it sound easy.”

She jabbed a finger at the city below. “Do you know how many people live in a city this size? You want me to wake all of them? Even if you handed me twenty thousand mass-production units right now, it might not be enough!”

“There are a lot of people,” Yu Sheng agreed. “But what if there’s only one dream you need to intervene in?”

Irene blinked. “…Huh?”

“Did you forget what I said?” Yu Sheng replied. “Collective subconscious. The cognitive screen covering Shu Ji is connected at the base level—at least in a major gathering point like Ink City.”

As he spoke, he remembered the moment Irene had released her silk threads without thinking. “If I’m right, you already sensed this when we entered the nightmare border. You just instinctively avoided the collective dream because it was avoiding you. To it, you’re a threat.”

Irene listened, stunned, as if she were slowly remembering something—feeling for something she’d ignored.

“Irene,” Yu Sheng said evenly, “think back to when we were still on Immortal Conclave Isle—when we first saw that reminder on the glass window. Think back to whether you felt something then, and then…”

He stopped.

Because thin black threads were already spreading through the air.

Irene vanished.

For an instant she became a painting—so brief the dream barely had time to react. Then the painting rose into the air and dissolved into the wind and rain.

Black silk began to grow across the sky, weaving into shape at an astonishing speed. In the blink of an eye, a massive spiderweb covered the clouds, then spread out to swallow Ink City. Endless strands dropped like rain. Inside the web of black silk, the entire city began to tremble.

Everyone stared, slack-jawed. Even Yu Sheng hadn’t expected it.

He hadn’t realized that once she understood his hint, Irene’s power could spread so explosively in this special kind of dream. Before, she simply hadn’t grasped the dream’s true nature. The moment she did, everything changed.

For a doll who could invade dreams, this place was practically a hunting ground built for her.

And this mountain in the city center was the perfect anchor for her to unleash that power.

The ore veins were exhausted. The city had declined. Its former glory was being forgotten, day by day, until only the last prosperous district remained—fixed in the minds of millions like a shared pillar. In the dream, the buildings that symbolized that past prosperity piled and grew like living things. The city’s center swelled into a mountain covered with neon and welcome messages.

Mind-bodies gathered around it. In their subconscious, they missed the good old days when the refining towers could still roar with life.

Now, they had gathered in exactly the right place.

The enormous black spiderweb spread outward from the mountain. Wherever it reached, countless mind-bodies popped into bubbles and shattered with a touch. Twisted buildings collapsed and melted in silence. The chaotic stacked roads fell into endless darkness.

Above, the sky split open with a terrifying tear. Wind and rain howled inside it, spider silk crisscrossed, and a shadow larger than the entire nightmare revealed itself within the breach.

That was the Weaver.

She crouched at the edge of her hunting ground, spinning her web with ruthless speed. And when the whole city was wrapped in black silk—when millions of minds were bound and peeled away from Shu Ji’s cognitive screen—two crimson lights reflected in every mind at once.

Cold.

A bone-piercing, soul-stabbing cold.

In that instant, everyone in Ink City dreamed.

No matter what they’d been doing a second earlier—strolling the streets, resting at home, sitting in school, working in factories or malls, chatting with friends, arguing with family—within what they believed was normal life, a brief nightmare slammed into their consciousness at the same time.

Mo Ran lifted her head and saw the whole city become a tiny insect, with everyone clinging to it like dust.

She saw that insect land at the center of the black spiderweb. She saw the Weaver—crimson-eyed and half-hidden in a vast shadow—crawl slowly along the strands.

Then the Weaver looked over.

Each breath she took felt like the final warning before the end of the world.

Everyone heard that warning.

“Stop sleeping! Get up and party!”

The Weaver’s words were crude.

But there wasn’t a trace of malice in them.

So the city woke.

Yu Sheng felt as if he’d heard a thunderous boom, but in reality there was no sound at all. What he sensed was a collapse on the level of cognition. And when that collapse finished, he watched the city’s disguise peel away in an instant.

It wasn’t the “everything is normal” Ink City.

It wasn’t the grotesque dream where buildings twisted and stacked.

Tall towers stood in the wind and rain, old and worn. Gray-white crystal spread over every surface like mold—layered, tangled, endless.

Pale clusters pried open crack after crack in the ground. They clung precariously to elevated rails. They wrapped around the distant refining tower like branches and vines. Beyond the city, they formed a crystal jungle that swallowed the wilds, spreading from one settlement to the next.

Under their feet, the mountain returned to its true shape.

This was the rooftop terrace of the City Lord’s manor.

Those strange “pillars” in a ring weren’t pillars at all. They were models of twelve refining towers. As the city’s symbols, they had always stood at the manor’s highest point.

And even the City Lord’s manor itself had been covered in crystal matter—possibly for centuries.

Mo Ran stared at everything in shock. Even after bracing herself, her mind still shook violently, and her dao heart nearly wavered.

Then she snapped back, jaw tightening. She had to stabilize order in the city immediately.

“Now it’s on you,” Yu Sheng said, nodding to her. “Hold the city together. We’ll deal with the bigger trouble.”

Mo Ran drew a breath and nodded once. “All right.”