Chapter 11 A Dream Enveloped in Mist: Was My Own Transmigration Accidental or...?

【Guda~】

166 nodded in agreement, nearly fainting from depression. She grabbed "Xiao Ran's" bangs and climbed up, curiously eyeing the five living people in the dream world. [They really can't see me.]

Of course, dreamers can't see people in reality.

So, spirit travel allows one to enter the dream world within the rifts of mist without being discovered by others?

Du Yu nodded thoughtfully, then tugged at "Xiao Ran's" hair and asked 166 in her mind, "What about her? Why is she different from the others?"

While she could only observe the others in the group, upon seeing this strange person, she had a strange premonition—she could control this body, or rather, "enter" it.

The white dove lowered its head and preened its breast feathers with its beak. [This is a "container," and containers, of course, don't dream. If we hadn't taken over this body, they wouldn't be aware of the other person in their dreams.]

Even though Du Yu has now entered, due to the special nature of the "container," Lao Cai and the others subconsciously ignored the abnormality of "Xiao Ran" and reduced their attention to her.

"container?"

This is a new term. Du Yu took a moment to consider it and felt that the adjective 166 was very accurate. She was currently entering "Xiao Ran's" body in a projection-like manner, able to change the observer's state and interfere with the dream through "Xiao Ran's" hand.

But Du Yu was able to do this because there was no conscious activity in "Xiao Ran's" body. Like an empty water glass, Du Yu easily filled himself in.

But this "container" state just doesn't make sense. Looking at Lao Cai and the others, "Xiao Ran" was a living person before, and only became this "container" state after entering the dream.

Who did it? Quark Pharmaceuticals, which they mentioned? Or another force? If it's the latter, then at least three of them, including myself, are being watched.

It's so lively!

[Gulp~ After all, any human who enters the Mist Rift is as conspicuous as a star.]

While chatting with one person and one pigeon, the five-person team had already passed through the fog and stood in front of a wall.

As the gloomy fog dissipated, the dilapidated wall before us, with its iron railings and brickwork, gave us a sense of familiarity, as if we had returned to civilized society.

The woman with the buzz cut, referred to as "Old Cai," looked even more unwell. Dreams within the rifts of mist are often more abstract and distorted; those who manage to escape from a dream often cannot remember the details, only the lingering sense of horror.

However, there are exceptions to this dream world. In the deeper layers of dreams, illusions that are very similar to reality often appear. These illusions may seem ordinary, but they are more dangerous than those in the shallow and middle layers of dreams.

But they had no choice. In the shallow dream layer, there was still a possibility of being awakened. But once they entered the middle dream layer, there was no way to leave the dream except to find the core of the dream in the deep dream layer.

Old Cai suppressed his unease and said in a deep voice, "We are about to enter the deep dream layer, especially since this is a dream with many people. Everyone here is experienced, but I still want to say a few words: be careful in everything you do, and don't easily change the dream."

If the dream in the deepest layer doesn't change, it's fine; but if it does, it changes in a bad direction. Du Yu noticed that Lao Cai seemed to be giving him a stern look, so he quickly manipulated "Xiao Ran" to nod.

Old Cai withdrew his gaze with a heavy heart, and the question that had just arisen in his mind, "How could I have agreed to bring such a newbie into the Mist Rift," quickly sank to the bottom of his consciousness.

"This building doesn't resemble the architectural style of the city in recent years."

The round-faced girl held her companion in one arm and adjusted her glasses with the other, causing the lenses to turn a deep blue for a moment.

Her eyes widened in surprise for a moment, but she still said what she saw: "This seems to be a building from three hundred years ago."

Three hundred years ago?

Everyone felt a jolt of unease; three hundred years ago was indeed a very special time.

That very year, humanity faced an unprecedented catastrophe. Strange events descended, a fog descended, civilizations shattered, and humanity could only eke out a living in settlements.

It wasn't until the construction of the megacity "Sun Chaser" that humanity finally recovered from that disaster.

To remember that devastating disaster and to remind future generations that the catastrophe is not over, people call it the "Great Catastrophe"!

How could a building from before the Great Cataclysm be here? Old Cai's ominous premonition reached its peak. Could this be what those damned tycoons wanted them to find? A building from before the Great Cataclysm?

Are you kidding me?! Even the newest of the newest, the absolute newbies, know that anything from before the Cataclysm, no matter how ordinary it may seem, is off-limits. It's best to turn and run the moment you see it!

"Qiuqiu is right."

The round-faced girl was holding a four- or five-year-old girl who had somehow transformed into a child. The six symmetrical black lines on her face had turned red. "This is the building from before the Great Cataclysm. The core of the dream is inside... and we have no way out."

"Damn Quark Pharmaceuticals!"

Old Cai turned around and couldn't help but swear. Where was the swirling mist behind them? The ground extended only two or three meters behind them, and beyond the ground, the void swallowed all the light, leaving only a void of blackness.

They are now like a deserted island in the sky; the only way to survive is to move forward!

"Sister Cai, don't be too pessimistic. Didn't Sister Cat say we can get out? Relax, when has Sister Cat ever made a prediction..."

"Okay, okay, I got it."

Old Cai gasped and quickly covered Shen Xijing's mouth with his hand.

She knew the other person meant well, but Shen Xijing seemed to have a strange ability to make her words come true; however, the good things would not come true, but the bad things would, and the good things might even come true in reverse.

After Shen Xijing's outburst, Lao Cai calmed down considerably. Seeing the little girl nestled in Wenren Qiu's arms with her eyes closed, she knew that making predictions in this kind of place would be too taxing on her. She squinted at the seemingly ordinary pre-cataclysmic building and said, "Gather information first, don't go in rashly."

"There's a door here!"

Shen Xijing was the first to notice the half-open iron gate. Everyone's gaze followed the somewhat old iron gate. Wenren Qiu glanced at the rickety sign hanging on the iron gate and cautiously approached.

"It's ancient script from before the Great Cataclysm... Dali, keep an eye on me."

The distortions caused by the Great Cataclysm were not limited to the physical realm but also extended to the spiritual realm, even distorting written language. After the Cataclysm, countless texts recording knowledge, history, and information were reduced to ashes. This spiritual decay inflicted even more severe damage on civilization than that caused by the bizarre creatures.

The language used in the City of the Sun today is generated by AI, with chaotic word formation and redundant grammar, almost killing literature. But it is precisely this error-ridden "miswritten language" that has preserved the spark of civilization.

Now, these three-hundred-year-old texts have become taboo due to their eerie aura, and only a few taboo scholars who walk the line between madness and lucidity can still decipher them.

Wenren Qiu pressed down on the temple of his glasses, and three lenses of different thicknesses popped out, each emitting a different shade of blue light. Only after doing this did he look up at the words on the sign.

"...Affiliated Research Institute of Jinjiang Quark Medical Co., Ltd..."

"Quark? Quark Pharmaceuticals existed before the Great Cataclysm?"

"Research Institute?"

Everyone was surprised for different reasons. They all manipulated "Xiao Ran" to look up and were in a state of shock. These so-called strange characters were just Chinese characters, weren't they?

Both experienced a bizarre catastrophe, so why didn't their world's writing system mutate? Was it due to the difference in time? In the novel, humanity lived for three hundred years in the post-apocalyptic world, while their own world collapsed thirty years after the catastrophe.

Could that be the reason?

But—she's currently using a "misspoken language" learned from the original owner's memories, so why did the two worlds use the same language three hundred years ago?

Physical structure, language, social structure, the laws governing planetary motion—all of these are so similar that it's almost frightening.

Is it because the novel's author, "The Book Reader," is from the original world that the novel's world is set exactly the same as the original world? But I've already transmigrated, so is the novel's world really just a novel?

Du Yu stared intently at the sign. Compared to the impact of the so-called strange power, the information contained on the sign had a greater impact on her.

Glancing at 166, who was pretending to be stupid again, she realized that the connection between the novel world and the original world was much deeper than she had imagined.

"Watch out, it's a mutated monster!"

The girl with the boxer braids, known as "Dali," confirmed that Wenren Qiu was normal and had no mental problems. Suddenly, her brows furrowed, and she raised her gun towards the depths of the iron gate.

A mutated monster?

Everyone's mind was now filled with the same questions as Du Yu's had just been.

As is widely known, aberrant monsters refer to mutated creatures that, after the Great Cataclysm, embraced corruption and distortion, are on the verge of falling into depravity, and are about to transform into corrupted beings.

It is also well known that in the deep dreams within the rifts of mist, before the core of the dream is disturbed, the deep dreams still relatively conform to the patterns of the scenes they manifest. And this time, the scene is three hundred years ago, before the Great Cataclysm.

Why are there mutated creatures here?!

Long before the boxer braid noticed anything unusual, Du Yu had already sensed the monster slowly wriggling inside the wall, but what she saw before her eyes raised a new round of doubts in her mind.

The long, soft, seemingly main body, the countless tentacles with slightly transparent edges extending from the main body, and the fleshy ball tightly wrapped around the monster's tail—except for being a bit larger, this was no different from the monster she encountered when she entered the Mist Rift!

What a coincidence!

Du Yu's heart sank. Was his encounter with Cat Beard's group a coincidence? Or was the misty rift he had entered just a chance occurrence?

It's not that Du Yu is overly suspicious, but rather that among the nine superior elements that constitute all extraordinary things in the theory, [Fate] is clearly one of them! Moreover, the trait that the original body lost was precisely the element of [Fate]!

My encounter with Catwhisker and his group, my entry into the Misty Rift, and even... my own transmigration—was all of this a coincidence, or an arrangement of fate?

A note from the author:

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The worldview is starting to be revealed!

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The comment section is so quiet, it's like I'm writing in a single-player game. Is anyone even reading this? qwq