The invader's thinking response disappeared, but it was not because he was destroyed by himself, but because he somehow escaped from this "building" formed by the distorted dream.

Heidi frowned, sensing the information constantly transmitted back by the personality clones she had released, while her eyes swept across the "ward" in front of her.

As the invader's mental reactions disappeared, the ward quickly returned to its original appearance. The horrific and deformed scenes caused by the pollution gradually faded away. The walls that looked like withered flesh and blood turned into the neat white walls of the medical facility, and the cracked and rotten scorched earth turned back into the floor. Outside the ward, the eerie atmosphere that filled the entire facility was also quickly dissipating.

But Heidi didn't relax her brows at all. Instead, she became more alert to the strange changes at the moment.

Because this is abnormal: the eroded and distorted dream is a closed structure. The invader's consciousness is the attacker of the dream, but is also the part affected by the dream. If one wants to forcibly escape from the dream, it will definitely cause a lot of "noise". Of course, a sufficiently powerful "dream expert" can suppress this noise to a very small extent, but that invader... is not that strong.

Heidi knew her abilities. As an "excellent student" who had studied at the Academy of Truth and had received meticulous instruction from her father since childhood, she had always been confident in the realm of dreams. She did not believe that the "invader" could escape from this twisted nightmare without her noticing - the other party must have hidden himself in some way, or was hiding in some cognitive gap.

She hesitated for a moment and slowly walked towards the bed in the middle of the room.

The strange elf girl was still lying quietly on the sickbed with a frown on her face, showing no signs of waking up.

In theory, this girl is the core of this dream, and her entrapment caused this distorted "medical facility" to appear in her dream, but normally she should be awake by now.

Because the invader's power has left - whether the cultist hid or really ran away, the pollution he left here has obviously subsided. After the pollution subsided, it is reasonable for the trapped person to wake up from his dream immediately.

Because in most cases, people can do countless strange things in their dreams, but there is only one thing they cannot do - continue sleeping in their dreams.

Even if it is a dream within a dream with layers of nested dreams, human consciousness must be "active" in the last layer of the dream.

Heidi went forward to check the elf girl's condition, then she hesitated for a moment, reached out to help her sit up, and then pushed her hard to the **.

It had no effect, and her "patient" remained asleep.

"The fall reaction is ineffective..." Heidi muttered to herself with a serious look, "Isn't this the last layer of her dream? The 'middle layer' of the dream within the dream? That's not right... Even if it's the middle layer, the 'fall reaction' can be awakened..."

She muttered to herself, then suddenly stopped, as if she suddenly thought of something, turned around and ran out of the ward.

The sound of hurried footsteps echoed in the medical facility. Heidi ran quickly in the deep and long corridor. Along the way, she saw a personality clone she had released before - the "Heidis" holding golden cones were still wandering around the facility searching, checking the corridors, the stairs, and the empty rooms with half-open doors and strange atmospheres. They looked busy.

Heidi ran through these personality clones. Every time she passed one, the clone would turn around and catch up, quickly returning to her body. The personality clones scattered to other parts of the facility also received the command and appeared from nearby forks in the road, returning to their original bodies one by one.

The medical facility was no longer the structure she was familiar with. The misplaced projection of the dream caused a large number of messy corridors, dead ends and forks to appear in the building. Some stairs were even upside down and twisted, connecting rooms and halls that were not rational in terms of spatial structure like an absurd abstract painting. It looked extremely weird.

However, such a chaotic space was nothing to Heidi, who often dealt with dreams. She easily identified the correct path, avoided the dead ends that would lead to infinite loops, and finally successfully reached the end of the road.

A big door stood quietly in front of her sight, with the word "Exit" written on it.

Heidi stopped, and the last personality clone ran up from behind her and quickly merged into her body. She took a deep breath and slowly walked towards the door.

That was the exit of the "medical facility" and, in theory, the "boundary" of this distorted dream.

She placed her hand on the door handle and slowly calmed her heartbeat.

The boundaries of dreams are dangerous, as they represent the "cognitive limits" of the dreamer. As a "visitor", if you rashly cross the dreamer's cognitive limits, it means that your consciousness will fall into a huge "undefined" area. In this chaotic area that is no longer under the control of the dreamer and is dominated by the subconscious, unwelcome intruders will encounter various dangers, and even... encounter those terrible things that linger on the edge of mortal sanity and lurk in the spiritual world.

Heidi hesitated—it would not be medically correct to go any further.

The amethyst pendant hanging on his chest was no longer hot. This "fake product", which was essentially just a piece of cheap glass, was now ice-cold.

Feeling the coolness from the pendant, Heidi made up her mind.

This magical pendant had never had any problems so far, so she decided to trust its response.

"This step will deduct at least 15 points from the professional course..."

The psychiatrist muttered something and pushed the door open with force.

The expected vast darkness and chaotic shadows did not appear, nor were the terrifying abyss rifts and monsters from the spirit world seen.

Heidi stood at the edge of this dream, staring at the scene in front of her in amazement.

A lush...forest appeared in her sight.

Everywhere you look, there are towering trees that you have never seen before. The huge treetops with lush branches and leaves are stacked and intertwined in the sky, blocking out the sun. There are also countless flowers, plants and shrubs covering the ground. In between, you can see many small bushes of varying heights and vibrant vines. From time to time, the calls of unknown birds echo between the giant trees, which sounds novel and... strange.

The sunshine filled the dense forest, bringing a vitality that Heidi, who had lived in a city-state since she was a child, had never seen before.

She couldn't even comprehend it all.

She simply could not imagine why there were so many huge trees growing together, why the precious land was covered with strange plants, but there was no human figure, why she could not hear the sound of the waves, but could only smell the scent of plants and soil.

She fell into confusion, a double confusion from the senses to the cognition. Even though she was a top student enrolled in the Master's and Doctoral Programs at the Academy of Truth with a full scholarship, she was so dazed that she almost forgot where she was and what she was doing.

But fortunately, her professional qualities cultivated over the years and her strong mental self-control skills allowed her to quickly wake up after just a few seconds of confusion. She took a deep breath and forced herself to return to a state where she could think calmly.

Then she looked back in the direction she came from.

The "medical facility" was right behind him, surrounded by a large number of huge trees and countless crisscrossing vines. The walls were covered with unknown plants. The man-made building appeared abruptly in the forest, looking out of place.

But Heidi quickly made some judgments from this incompatible scene——

"The scope of the dream should indeed be confined to this medical facility. This strange place outside the gate is not the structure of a dream... some kind of mutated 'edge consciousness zone'?

"I can't see any elements related to the Pland city-state. All of them are unfamiliar plants... Is this a scene in the subconscious of this elf? But even in the elven city-states like Breeze Harbor or Moko, there is no vegetation of this scale...

"Or... this outside is the real 'last layer of dreams'? Then the scale is too large, and there are so many details... her brain should have burned out long ago..."

Heidi muttered to herself in confusion, then felt around and pulled out a brightly colored ball of yarn.

She grabbed the end of the yarn ball with her fingers and threw it hard into the distance.

Brightly colored balls of thread rolled on the ground, jumping and spreading among the wet stones, soil and vines.

Heidi carefully watched every moment of the ball of thread rolling, checking whether there were any blurred or abnormal lines on the ground.

If so, it proves that this seemingly "detail-rich" place has hidden "cognitive gaps", and she must carefully avoid those gaps to prevent herself from falling into a nightmare.

The ball of thread rolled smoothly to a long distance without any abnormalities in the middle.

Heidi breathed a sigh of relief, followed the approximate path that the ball of yarn had rolled, and finally took the first step towards this "weird place" covered with plants.

She had temporarily put away her revolver and was only holding the "golden cone" for self-defense in her left hand.

In this "marginal area" where the situation is unclear, it is best not to use anything that makes too much noise - although the lush vegetation here looks pleasing to the eye, there may be something hidden in the silence of the surrounding environment.

She must be careful not to awaken those "existences" sleeping on the borders of mortal consciousness.

As she moved forward cautiously, Heidi couldn't help but gradually began to wonder:

Did the cultist escape the dream in a similar way? Instead of "waking up", he ran directly to this strange place outside the dream?

Is there any trap ahead...?

All kinds of thoughts were running through Heidi's mind, but suddenly, she had an idea.

The next second, she suddenly looked up in a certain direction that her intuition pointed to.

Among several unknown trees, in a small clearing in the forest, a figure stood quietly with his back to himself.

It was a stranger wearing a light-colored coat in the southern style, with messy blond hair and a slightly hunched back. Although he had his back to her, the two long pointed ears sticking out from the edge of his hair caught Heidi's attention at the first moment.

An elf?