Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Trapped in the Dream Realm
Mist rolled in thick waves, turning the forest into a haunted maze. She couldn’t tell whether the shapes around her were twisted branches and shifting shadows, or ghosts reaching out to drag her away. Her heartbeat hammered in her ears.
Bare feet—pale in the dark—stumbled through the gloom. Dead leaves snapped beneath her steps. Song Wei Chen kept glancing over her shoulder, breath coming in ragged pulls, panic tightening her features.
She had been circling for half the night. The dead tree whose scars resembled a grotesque face had appeared at least three times. Aside from the noise she made, everything was so quiet it stung. A ghost loop. It had to be.
“But where is this?”
She whispered to herself, spinning as she searched the darkness. Since earlier, the feeling of being watched—hard, unblinking—had raised gooseflesh along her back.
“This is the Dream Realm.”
The voice came from behind her.
Song Wei Chen shrieked and whipped around. In the night stood a tall, straight silhouette—long-limbed, unmoving, half-swallowed by shadow.
“Who are you? What do you want…?”
Her voice shook. Her feet slid back without permission.
“Who I am doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is you shouldn’t be here.”
Cold. Flat. Like ice given a tongue.
He didn’t attack. He didn’t even step closer.
Song Wei Chen swallowed, forcing her knees to stop quivering. “Then how do I leave?”
He pointed over her shoulder. “Do you see that suspension bridge? Walk across it.”
She turned—and the dense forest that should have blocked her view opened as though someone had pulled a curtain aside. The trees stood in neat ranks like guards, their straight trunks and interlaced crowns forming an arched corridor. The path ran straight to a jagged cliff and, beyond it, the sway of a suspension bridge.
She had no better option. After one more wary glance at him, she bolted, afraid the path would vanish the instant she hesitated.
She didn’t get far before the world began to warp.
The ground turned soft and rippled like water. Trees near her sank with the swell and rose again from another crest. Everything stretched and shrank in impossible proportions: trunks squeezed down to chopstick stubs, leaves lengthened like little boats. The path was right there, yet Song Wei Chen ran until her lungs burned and still felt like she was jogging in place.
Fear and exhaustion finally forced her to stop. She bent over with her hands on her thighs, gulping air.
Her legs had been pulled longer by the distortion—absurdly, grotesquely long, like Luffy after eating a Devil Fruit. The ridiculous sight lit anger through her fear.
“What the hell is going on? Am I dreaming?”
“You are dreaming… but not entirely.”
She looked up.
At some point, the man had moved closer. He hovered in midair, hands clasped behind his back, dressed in ancient robes. The hem of his clothes snapped in the wind.
Gravity meant nothing to him.
Song Wei Chen stared at him, then at her own fingers, stretched into looping lengths. If this wasn’t a dream, what was it?
She exhaled. Strange, but the moment she accepted “dream,” her panic eased.
“I haven’t watched One Piece in ages,” she muttered. “Why am I dreaming something this weird and crappy?”
“I told you—you’re not in a dream,” he said, impatience sharpening his tone. “You’re in a doze.”
His gaze stayed fixed on her, like he was judging whether she could handle the answer. “Half-asleep, half-awake is called a doze. The Dream Realm is the place between dreaming and waking.”
“The Dream Realm?” She stared. “You’re serious?”
“The Three Realms—have you heard of them?” he went on, as though reciting a lesson. “Heaven, earth, and man. The realms of gods, ghosts, and humans.”
He spoke like it was common sense.
“The Dream Realm runs parallel to both the world of dreams and the Three Realms. The only passage between them is an 8-hertz brain entrainment. Only in that state can you cross.”
He said it like he was describing the weather.
“Stop.” Song Wei Chen rubbed her temple. “I don’t get it. And what does that have to do with me?”
“You’re stuck in the Dream Realm.”
Since it was “a dream,” Song Wei Chen snorted. “So you’re saying I got stuck on a loading screen. Like a glitch.”
That finally knocked his composure.
“A glitch? What’s that?”
“It’s like in a game—when you load into a new area or go in and out of a dungeon.” She waved at the twisted world around them. “Sometimes it freezes on the loading screen. You can’t go back, and you can’t go forward. You’re just… stuck.”
“And your Dream Realm is that loading screen between dreaming and waking.”
He stepped closer, studying her. In the shadow, she couldn’t see his eyes clearly, but she felt his attention lock on. Then, unexpectedly, his voice softened by a fraction.
“That metaphor… is the first I’ve heard. Interesting.”
Up close she made out more: black clothing fitted for movement, subtle brocade patterns worked into the fabric. Hair bound with black jade. A sword at his side. Tall, straight, broad-shouldered. His face remained hidden by the night.
She was still trying to see him when he asked, “When that game freezes—how do you fix it?”
Song Wei Chen shrugged. The forest around them had already straightened, as though it too had grown bored with nonsense.
“What else? Restart.”
“If you’re lucky, the gear you farmed is still there.”
“And if you’re not lucky?”
He didn’t let it drop.
Song Wei Chen stared at him. “Then you end up meeting a weirdo like you.”
He didn’t react. His voice turned serious, heavier.
“You still don’t understand how serious this is. Once your hertz-lock breaks, you will never wake again.”
“And your 8-hertz brain entrainment is about to snap.”
Song Wei Chen felt like a thousand alpacas had stampeded through her brain, spitting as they ran.
“Big brother, when I say glitch you act like you’ve never heard the word,” she said, flinging her hands in the air, “but you toss out stuff like that—8-hertz brain entrainment? Next you’ll tell me Bach can’t wake up. And then Chopin’s trapped too. You’re jinxing me in my own dream.”
Then she brightened, smug as a child who’d found the answer key.
“Look, I do this thing. From 2:30 to 3:00 p.m., I set an alarm every five minutes. Unless you’re in a coma, it’ll wake you up.” She grinned. “So I’m about to wake up.”
“Easy win. Absolute easy win. I’m a genius.”
She gave him a little wave. “Goodbye, sir. Who would’ve thought my chronic trouble waking up would cure my dream anxiety?”
Watching her pep up, the man looked… almost amused. The expression was subtle, reluctant, like it had slipped out by mistake.
And still, against all reason, he explained.
“A hertz is a vibration frequency,” he said. “Birdsong is hertz. An avalanche is hertz. Rushing water, too. Even the movements of deer and the cries of birds. The Dream Realm is the necessary passage between dreams and the Three Realms. To cross, you must maintain the sensation of eight hertz—close to how cultivators enter trance by striking a chime.”
[Holy crap.]
Song Wei Chen’s head buzzed. The more he explained, the less it sounded like a dream—and the worse that made her feel.
She looked at him the way she’d look at a bronze statue dug up from San Xing Dui.
Then she suddenly clasped her hands and bowed with exaggerated sincerity.
“Big brother, I get that you’re trying, but I really don’t understand this eight-hertz vibration thing.” She straightened, putting on a bright, shameless smile. “If you talk to me about Bach, sure—we can awkwardly chat. Even Maybach.”
Then she spread her hands. “Or you can just… let me go. Let me live or die on my own. Deal?”
Her tone was half-pleading, half-joking.
The man stood still. Something flickered in his gaze, and he looked away for a heartbeat as if annoyed at himself.
Emotion—even the faintest ripple—had its own frequency.
And there were waves he would never allow again.
Long ago, he had carved the harshest emotion-severing ward into himself. If his emotional fluctuations rose beyond a threshold, the backlash would scorch him through heart and marrow until he begged for death.
He remembered joining the Dust Warden Office. The previous Dream Realm Dust Warden, Ji Bai Shou, had told him, “Human emotion is the Dream Realm’s greatest instability. When emotional hertz surges, it sweeps everything away. If it triggers a fall into doze, it becomes a calamity for all beings.”
A small hand waved at him in the distance.
“Hey. What are you spacing out for? Don’t tell me you’re stuck in a glitch too.”
He didn’t know why the memory surfaced. He only knew he couldn’t afford distraction.
He focused on her again, voice calm but cutting.
“Have you crossed the suspension bridge in the Sky Chasm? The deck has rotted for years. In the worst spot, only a single strip of planks holds, and it could snap at any moment.”
He lifted a hand.
“And your 8-hertz brain entrainment is that plank.”
White mist spilled across Song Wei Chen like smoke.
In the blink of an eye, she was no longer on the path. She stood on a ruined suspension bridge high against a cliff, boards creaking beneath her feet. Below gaped an abyss that seemed to swallow light.
The mist made her body feel weightless—so light she might float off the planks.
“I hope you… make it across,” his voice said, distant now, as if coming from beyond the fog. “And in this life, never enter dreams again.”
Song Wei Chen turned, heart squeezing.
“Who are you, really?”
She tried to see his face.
But the tall figure faded into cloud and haze, features dissolving until there was nothing to grab onto—nothing at all.