CHAPTER 428: CHAPTER 428: RECONSTRUCTION

"We are inside a vast dream realm."

Upon seeing this line of words appearing on the window, Yu Sheng felt as if a tremendous boom resounded from the depths of his mind, shattering the night like a thunderclap in the absence of light. Immediately, the "curtain" that sustained all the scenes around him began to rapidly disintegrate under this cognitive-level thunderclap.

A cold wind suddenly swept into the room, carrying with it chilling rain. Though the doors and windows were tightly shut, the storm outside invaded the living room without obstruction, penetrating the windows, the walls, and everything in the room—after which, all objects seemed to melt and collapse, accompanied by twisting and intense shaking.

The wall not far away was the first to be eroded into a large hole, with edges flowing down like grease, revealing the winding corridor outside. Half of the corridor’s roof had been lifted away, with the fierce wind and rain pouring into it. There was also a long bridge extending from nowhere, hanging upside down over the corridor, with shaky pedestrians and numerous darkened car silhouettes blurred into one.

A strange rumbling came from a direction close at hand, and that window riddled with countless holes by the storm finally shattered amidst the rumble, dissolving into a chaotic swirl of colors disappearing from Yu Sheng and the others’ sight. The living room shook violently, then tilted and collapsed askew, only to abruptly halt in midair as if held by an invisible hand, while nearby buildings grew skyward amidst the gale, simultaneously sliced into gigantic floating chunks by some unseen blade, with the metal frameworks used to support the structures spilling out between these fragments like hair, creating a forest-like structure that spread and entwined through the city, heaping and proliferating...

The entirety of Boundary City had turned into an absurd and bizarre nightmare, with the storm whistling through the dream realm, uprooting the city, yet allowing it to proliferate freely in uncontrolled cognition and imagination.

"Oh, Lord of Puppets!" Erin instantly leaped onto Yu Sheng’s shoulder, clutching his head with an exclamation, "What the hell is all this—"

By Hu Li’s side, layers of ghostly blue fire had already accumulated. She crouched slightly, a low growl threatening the storm blowing in from the outside. Meanwhile Luna swiftly equipped her Fingertip Blade, leaping lightly to Yu Sheng’s side, with her onboard radar system immediately scanning the surrounding environment.

"Not an illusion," Luna whispered with a high degree of vigilance. "The transformation, truly exists."

A vast dream realm? Truly exists?

Yu Sheng felt a huge contradiction and confusion rising in his mind. Immediately, he thought of the circumstances Xuan Che mentioned in his last message—widespread cognitive anomalies.

Is all this the result of cognitive anomalies? If the absurd scene before his eyes, defying common sense, is caused by cognitive anomalies...then is the anomaly happening to him now? But when the storm surged in earlier, he distinctly felt a thunderclap shattering some kind of curtain, as if in an instant he broke through an illusion...so this is reality? Was the previously ’normal’ Mo City the result of an anomaly?

Which layer truly is the anomaly, or...are all of them "anomalies"?

A cold sensation suddenly seemed to penetrate his flesh, tagging onto his mind. Yu Sheng jerked awake from this momentary stupor, shook his head quickly, and instinctively looked in the direction of the cold sensation—Erin sat on his shoulder, but the little puppet seemed unaware of anything, just looking around nervously.

Threads of black "spider silk" unwittingly spread in the air around her.

Seeing this, Yu Sheng hurriedly poked the little puppet to remind her, "Erin, you’re letting out threads."

"Ah, huh?" Erin only then noticed the spider silk spilling out beside her, hastily raising her hand to retract them. "I wasn’t paying attention, how’d this happen...ah, Yu Sheng, what do we do now? Everything’s turned like this, where do we find the others?"

"Maybe this is how we find them," Yu Sheng, having settled in his heart by now, reasoned, though he couldn’t grasp the causes of these changes. But reason told him that since those two reminders appeared on the window earlier, then Master Yuan Hao and the others were very likely also caught in this layer of ’distorted Mo City.’ "Hu Li, send two Fox Radish Missiles skyward, make them as conspicuous as possible—then let’s find a way down, see if any signs from Master Yuan Hao are around."

"Got it!"

Hu Li nodded swiftly, then immediately fired two Fox Radish Missiles towards the sky. With two bangs, the dazzling fox fire burst apart within the rain veil, its scattered firelight illuminating the sky above the entire district.

Yu Sheng glanced briefly at the firelight flooding the sky and, without hesitation, stepped across the storm sweeping through the room, moving towards the skewed corridor seemingly leading to the building’s lower layers.

They left, with only the room’s pounding rain and gusting wind remaining.

The barrier between reality and illusion had been punctured, the cognitive interference looming over Mo City for years crumbling like a severed curtain, the crumpled "drapery" stacking within the city into such a fantastical and bizarre form.

Some time later, an empty room suddenly echoed with the soft click of an unlocking door—

In one corner of the living room, the door to the master bedroom was pushed open from within.

A girl with a head of golden hair casually walked out, holding half a pancake in one hand, with a water bottle tucked under her arm, while behind her was the scene of the living room at No. 66 Wutong Road.

On this side of the door, the raging storm slammed down onto her. The golden-haired girl, stepping out with little regard and not watching her step, was immediately soaked, her pancake wetted through.

The long-haired princess raised her head dazedly, looking at the storm swirling through the living room, with the half-eroded roof and walls beyond revealing the wildly twisted alien planet scenery. A shattered, twisted black canopy boat teetered across the sky, crashing into a pavilion less than a hundred meters away from her.

The next second, the gold-haired girl turned around and started running back.

"Oh my! I’m scared to death! I’m scared to death! ... Red Hat! Snow White! Brother moved the house to a weird place again! Today’s hike is canceled!"

...

Yu Sheng and his group quickly walked through the twisted and crooked corridor, then proceeded down more than ten floors of already bent and deformed stairs, which even gave the illusion of having no end.

Occasionally, large holes appeared on the nearby walls, outside which was the distorted street view of Mo City. Winds and rain passed through the holes or walls irregularly, swirling and dancing in the passageways and corridors. However, some areas strangely remained dry despite the wind and rain, as if the rain couldn’t interact with the surrounding "scenes," sweeping past walls and ceilings, and even the chill in the wind seemed illusory and brief.

While traversing those corridors, Yu Sheng couldn’t help but think of the rain descending in the Soul Wilderness—the same rain from Shuji, endlessly falling in the illusion.

They arrived at the hall on the first floor—in Yu Sheng’s memory, their room was originally on the seventh floor, but this time he had walked down more than ten floors to reach this hall—this place was also besieged by wind and rain, and compared to his impression, the hall was significantly larger, with some indoor spaces that seemed like they didn’t belong to this building "merged" into the hall, abruptly integrated a short distance away.

"There are people over here!"

Hu Li, sharp-eyed, pointed loudly the moment she walked out of the corridor towards a corner of the resting area.

Yu Sheng immediately walked over quickly and indeed saw a few silhouettes in the direction Hu Li was pointing.

But upon getting closer, he realized they were just a few "silhouettes."

A few hazy, humanoid outlines, seemingly pieced together by vague color blocks, lay in the resting area, two on the sofa, two on the floor, and one even on a bed that logically shouldn’t be in the first-floor hall. These vague humanoid outlines tossed and turned, as if trapped in a nightmare.

Yu Sheng reached out towards them, only to find his fingers easily passing through those color block outlines.

Erin blinked, one hand holding Yu Sheng’s hair while the other tentatively stretched forward, with several fine threads extending from her fingertips, connecting to those humanoid outlines.

"... They’re dreaming," the little puppet muttered, "but... odd, their dreams aren’t in the dream. Do you understand what I’m saying?"

Yu Sheng: "Of course not, that’s nonsense."

Erin pouted, and just then, she saw a few more silhouetted figures suddenly appear in the hall.

These were also soft color block outlines that weren’t there a moment before but suddenly surfaced at the doorway. The figures floated a few centimeters above the ground like disrupted projection images, flickering while maintaining a static pose or seemed about to step forward, suspended in mid-air.

Black threads immediately spread to those new figures that emerged.

"They’re dreaming too, but it’s a ’lucid dream,’" Erin quickly said, "I can’t quite understand their minds, but they seem to be entering this hotel, preparing to check in... no fear, no confusion, as if everything in their world is just normal."

Yu Sheng frowned deeply, with a faint understanding dawning in his mind, and at that moment, a slight vibration suddenly emanated from his pocket.

He quickly took out his phone and was surprised to see a prompt flashing across the previously no-signal screen—

"Anomalous fluctuation... signal recovery in progress."

Straight after, several messages rushed in, causing the phone to vibrate incessantly.

The messages were from the Special Service Bureau, Baili Qing.

Yu Sheng hesitated for a moment. Although he didn’t know why the communication had suddenly resumed, he instinctively clicked open one of the messages.

"There are records in the database; what you’re encountering is likely the obscure angel ’Inference Star Body’...

"Beware of its IV-level cognitive reshaping—it could lead to reality reconstruction on a planetary scale."