Chapter 10 The Collective Dream: Quark Pharmaceuticals and the Dim Pearl
The strange feeling came and went quickly. Du Yu snapped back to reality, grabbed the pigeon perched on his shoulder, and demanded an explanation.
166 gently tidied her hair behind her ear with its beak, saying ingratiatingly, "Goo~ A blind person can only see the world by installing eyes, and a mortal who wants to enter the realm of gods must naturally first install the corresponding 'organs'."
"Like this?"
Du Yu floated above the well. Besides her mutated ears, her hair had also grown longer. Curious, she touched the wings that had sprouted from her cheeks. "This thing can actually hear sounds. Physics is truly dead."
"It only happens when wandering in the spirit world, and the change in appearance is only the most insignificant part."
The pigeon cooed in dissatisfaction, but when Du Yu asked about the other changes, 166 pretended to be clueless and changed the subject, "Let's begin today's spirit world tour! Players, please close your eyes and feel it with your wings~"
Du Yu took a second to react before remembering that he was now a person with wings and skin. He closed his eyes with some doubt, and the hazy dream world gradually faded into darkness, with a ball of light purple light shining beside him.
Is that the location of the altar?
They all drifted over with their eyes closed. The closer they got, the brighter the light became, but it wasn't dazzling at all. It was as warm as a baby bathing in amniotic fluid.
A tiny red dot, about the size of a firefly, floated above the cluster of light, rotating and moving randomly, but never leaving the area illuminated by the purple light.
This is……
Du Yu's "gaze" shifted to the small red dot, and the image of Tian Yinuo snoring in her sleep automatically appeared in her mind. A white duck was startled awake from its dream, looked up warily, and went back to sleep suspiciously after finding nothing.
'Miss……'
Du Yu kept recalling this image in his mind. It seemed that the red light revolving around the altar represented a part of Tian Yinuo.
Du Yu tentatively poked the light spot with his mental power, and a burst of earth-shattering laughter came to his ears. The light spot twisted and extended into a screen.
"Hahahaha, Bian Shaoyan, you've finally met your match! You dare to beg for mercy? Have you forgotten how you treated my young lady back then?!"
In the scene, Tian Yinuo has one hand on her hip and the other holding a laser gun with the latest signal, pointing the gun at the man kneeling in front of her.
The man was tall, his features shrouded in mystery. He was kneeling with his hands bound behind his back. Hearing this, he looked up in astonishment, his voice a mixture of surprise, anger, and disbelief:
"Do you even know who I am? Which god's chosen one are you, daring to enter my dreams and toy with me like this? Do you believe me...?"
"Pooh!"
Tian Yinuo flew into a rage and pulled the trigger, firing wildly. She used the laser gun like a machine gun, and the man was riddled with bullets before he could even utter a word of rebuttal.
"You're truly unrepentant! What kind of thing are you to dare harm Miss! Let me tell you, I now have the protection of the great Lord of Hearing, ha, you come here every time I want to beat you up!"
"Yinuo, you're amazing! Thank you for getting justice for me..."
Du Yu's lips twitched as he saw "himself" holding Tian Yinuo's arm, on the verge of tears, one eye filled with sorrow and the other with a relieved smile, trustingly resting his head on Tian Yinuo's shoulder.
"Hehehehehehe, Miss, don't worry! With me here, no one will dare to hurt you—hey! Shao Yan dares to come here again, Miss, watch closely, I'll teach him a lesson for you right now!"
The man's "corpse" gradually faded into mist, then gradually materialized into a tall, kneeling man.
This time, just as the fan-shaped diagram in his eyes was half-formed, Tian Yinuo pulled out a rocket launcher from thin air and blasted him into a fog.
"Hehehehe..."
Seeing that "his" eyes were red and tears were about to fall, Du Yu hurriedly clicked away the light spot before the ridiculous line could be uttered, and patted his chest with lingering fear.
It seems this red dot is Tian Yinuo's dream. She shouldn't look at it again. Putting privacy aside for now, if it happened again, she wouldn't need to upgrade the altar; she could dig a high-level temple out of her toes.
Phew, after examining Tian Yinuo's light spots, Du Yu's perception of the dream light spots deepened. Within her perception range, she could sense dozens of gray-black light spots flying around randomly.
Du Yu could vaguely sense something calling to her from the darkness in the distance, but her perception was limited and couldn't reach that area for the time being.
The game defines believers very broadly; anyone who can recite the entire prayer is considered a minor believer.
As for devout believers, they are much rarer. People with such unusual thought processes as Tian Yinuo are hard to find. However, she is currently focused on the "quantity" and is not pursuing the "quality" yet.
The longer the night, the more things could go wrong. It was best to finish that survival task tonight. Du Yu had made up his mind, and his "gaze" fell on a peculiar sphere of light, composed of multiple intertwined points of light.
——
"Quietly, do you know that only three kinds of madmen in the world would enter the Mist Rift?"
"Oh, Sister Cat, what are the three categories?"
"Listen carefully, this is all based on my experience. I haven't told people outside the group who paid me to say this."
"First, there are those religious lunatics who dedicate their brains to evil gods. If you encounter them, just pretend you didn't see them and run away. Don't provoke them."
"The second type is those scientific madmen employed by conglomerates. If you encounter them, you have to run away, lest you be captured and used for human experiments."
"Of course, when facing these two types of madmen, you can only run away if you are not their target. If you are unfortunate enough to be targeted by them... you can only pray to the evil god for protection."
"That scary? But, Sister Cat, you only mentioned two."
"You idiot! The third type is none other than us poor, crazy people who would rather die than be rich! Hahahaha, you didn't expect that, did you..."
On the path shrouded in gray mist, the figures of a five-person squad gradually came into focus. They were all dressed in full combat uniforms, and although their weapons were somewhat worn, they were well-maintained.
The one in the lead was a girl who looked to be five or six years old, who was sitting on the shoulders of a short-haired young woman, telling corny jokes with great interest.
Behind the two children were, in order, a middle-aged woman with a buzz cut, a young woman with a head full of boxer braids, and a young girl with round cheeks and gold-rimmed glasses.
Aside from Shen Xijing, who was carrying the little girl, who widened her eyes and laughed twice, the three people behind her all rolled their eyes in unison.
The middle-aged woman with a buzz cut retorted without any mercy, "Old Hu, if you keep telling your lame jokes, get off and walk away! We finally had a promising talent, but your lame jokes scared him away!"
"I was just trying to lighten the mood, and what do you mean I scared her away? I just asked her if she could accept not getting paid for three months, and she scared herself away..."
Meeting the woman's sharp gaze, the little girl pouted defiantly, but shrank back and didn't dare to continue the conversation.
The group gradually disappeared into the distance, their six shadows elongated until they merged into the gray mist and vanished...
"Quietly, do you know that only three kinds of madmen in the world would enter the Mist Rift?"
"Oh, Sister Cat, what are the three categories?"
Shen Xijing spoke up enthusiastically, but the little girl who was always restless and would wriggle every few seconds on her shoulder suddenly stopped responding. After a few seconds, her hair was grabbed, and the childish voice that sounded in her ear became more serious:
"Something's wrong! Old Cai, something's up!"
Shen Xijing stared in astonishment, but her body had already subconsciously turned around. Behind her, the woman with the boxer braid and the middle-aged woman were on guard, surrounding the round-faced girl who was holding the little girl. In an instant, the marching formation turned into a three-person fighting formation surrounding the middle!
"Old Hu, what's going on?"
The girl held in the middle showed no sign of playfulness; three silver beams gleamed deep within her dark pupils, and her expression was solemn beyond her years.
"I smell the scent of [memory] and [cycle]... It's a dream! We're dreaming in the Mist Rift!"
"What?"
To dream within the rifts of mist is tantamount to suicide! Everyone was horrified; it felt as if a clear mirror was shattering within their minds.
The middle-aged woman, referred to as "Old Cai," grew increasingly pale.
"Old Hu, how long have we been looping?"
The silver light in the girl's eyes disappeared, replaced by three thin black lines on each side, which at first glance looked somewhat like a kitten's whiskers.
"The scent at the boundary between the superficial and intermediate layers... We haven't entered the intermediate layer yet."
"Thankfully, there's still hope."
The middle-aged woman spoke, her expression not improving much. She sorted through the memories she had just regained, her gaze slowly sweeping across the group, finally settling on the sixth person next to the girl with the boxer braids:
"Xiao Ran, I remember you were on duty last, right? Why didn't you wake us up?"
"I...I..."
The girl called Xiaoran, who had been keeping her head down, stiffly raised her head upon hearing this, staring blankly at the middle-aged woman. A faint purple light seemed to flash in her eyes, and her whole body trembled as if she had been electrocuted. "Team Leader Cai, I'm sorry, I... I don't remember very well..."
Old Cai's gaze grew increasingly hostile. The girl scrutinized Xiao Ran for a moment before shifting her gaze. "It's not her fault, it's that commission."
"A commission? The commission that sent us into the Deep Dream Realm to our deaths? Didn't we already turn it down?"
To put it nicely, they are treasure hunters; to put it bluntly, they are black-gloved thugs who will do any dirty work. However, their organization, the "Cat Whiskers Pirate Gang," is somewhat famous in the lower city and can pick and choose their missions.
Not long ago, Quark Pharmaceuticals made a request, but Catwhisker rejected it because it was too difficult. However, they were persistent and even used the company's name to pressure them, so Catwhisker and his team hurriedly chose a lost item mission to avoid trouble.
The girl pulled a dull pearl necklace from her breast pocket, a sinister glint in her eyes: "It's a disguised [Dream Pearl]. Someone wants us to enter the deep dream layer."
These company dogs! If they can't get away with open attacks, they'll resort to underhanded tactics!
Seeing the changed mission items, everyone understood perfectly well. Even the usually silent boxer with the braids cursed, "Damn it."
Only someone behind him remained standing there, staring at the pearl with curiosity, and asked, "What is a Dream Pearl?"
"[Dream Pearl] is an item that can only be obtained in the deep dream layer. Once bound to a dream, it allows a person to enter a specific dream at any time. Don't you have all of these things in the induction training? Don't you remember how you passed your internship?"
Although she knew that this incident couldn't be blamed on the intern named "Xiao Ran," the intern's ignorance had directly crossed the line with the woman's criticism. Old Cai was exasperated: "When you get back, you'll copy the group rules three times!"
The impetuous intern finally behaved himself. Old Cai frowned and looked at Cat Whiskers, "Old Hu, what Quark did was really underhanded. What do we do now?"
The Deep Dream Layer is too dangerous, but staying here isn't necessarily safe either. Cat Whiskers closed his eyes, his chubby face wrinkling like an old dried orange, and his two braids turned silvery white.
In the blink of an eye, the five- or six-year-old girl being held by the round-faced girl had transformed into a petite woman who looked as old as a woman in her fifties or sixties.
Cat Whiskers' voice also became hoarse, "...Fate guides us forward."
"Damn Quark."
Old Cai cursed again, ordered everyone to be on guard, and cautiously walked into the deeper gray fog.
Wow, as expected of the [Fate] element, it has a mystical feel to it.
Unseen by anyone, a pigeon with three pairs of wings was perched on the head of "Xiao Ran," an intern with a slightly dazed expression, and on the pigeon's head perched a tiny person the size of a thumb.
A note from the author:
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Tian Yinuo: I like to kill people in my dreams XD
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