Chapter 104 Dream Catchers They saw their own faces. ...
"Young...boss, what can I do for you?"
Tian Yinuo lowered her head, her voice low and husky, with a distinct ending, like a puppy with a bad cold.
Du Yu raised an eyebrow. She had previously asked Tian Yinuo to call him "boss," but the other party always subconsciously called him "Miss," which sounded very similar to what Tian Yinuo had just subconsciously said, but she always felt that the meaning was not quite right.
Previously, Tian Yinuo subconsciously wanted to call her "Miss," but realized it was wrong and corrected herself; the sentence just now, however, sounded like she called out "Miss" halfway through, but couldn't finish it, so she changed the way she addressed her.
The difference is huge, so Du Yu asked directly:
"Why won't you call me 'Miss'? And why have you been avoiding me?"
“Miss, I wasn’t hiding… I just… I feel like I’ve forgotten something. Lately, I’ve been having strange dreams, dreaming that you tell me ‘she’s not me.’ It’s so weird… I might need to rest…”
As Tian Yinuo spoke, her brows furrowed, one hand kneading the bridge of her nose, the other hand digging into her hair roots, constantly rubbing her scalp. Her hair dye wasn't as good as Du Yu's; at the starting point of her red hair, a patch of black had already grown out.
Du Yu looked at her without saying anything.
Even the most obtuse person, if a friend who has been with them day and night for several years has a completely different soul, wouldn't they recognize them?
How big of a heart can a person be to continue living with a monster after their friend's body has been taken over by it?
"Whoosh—whoosh."
Tian Yinuo seemed to suddenly be unable to breathe. She arched her back, forcefully tugged at her collar, and her lips trembled as if she were gasping for air. Her red hair slipped down as she moved, revealing a section of her fair and slender neck.
Such a painful and defenseless posture.
It wouldn't take Du Yu a second to snap her neck.
The air paused for a few seconds of staring, then resumed its flow with Tian Yinuo's intermittent, painful breaths. A purple light flashed in Du Yu's eyes. He half-squatted down and supported Tian Yinuo's shoulder, his movements swift but his words still clear:
"Tian Yinuo, look into my eyes! Now, pray!"
“Good, good… the time traveler in the eroding rift… the six-winged white dove that devours the riddles of time… the listener who hears at both ends…”
Tian Yinuo recited the three simple prayers intermittently for a long time. Her eyes were still somewhat vacant, but her lips, which had turned slightly purple due to lack of oxygen, regained some color. She subconsciously looked up at Du Yu.
Du Yu did not avoid her gaze.
“There are still some things I don’t understand, so I can’t tell you yet, but I won’t lie to you or stop you from doing what you want to do.”
"No."
To Du Yu's surprise, Tian Yinuo refused. Her unfocused eyes looked at Du Yu, as if she had regained some confidence, and she said loudly, "No! I promised Miss that I would never leave Miss. I must have been staying up too late lately and not getting enough sleep. Yes, it's all my fault for staying up late!"
Tian Yinuo seemed to have suddenly figured it out. Her tightly furrowed brows relaxed slightly, she patted her face, and decided to start work early and leave early.
Du Yu was not as carefree as her. She was wondering whether to go to the lower city to find a doctor to take a look at her. After all, Du Yu had just "seen" that when Tian Yinuo was breathing in pain, there was a very abnormal fluctuation of mental energy in the back of her head.
Du Yu wasn't a doctor after all. Although she managed to calm Tian Yinuo down by having her recite prayers, she could only see the problem but had no idea how to solve it.
"Miss, it's alright, I'm all better now. Teacher Gu still has work to do, so I'll be going now."
As if sensing Du Yu's silence, before leaving, Tian Yinuo patted Du Yu's shoulder, just like Du Yu had done earlier, and comforted Du Yu instead.
Tian Yinuo's departing figure moved with light, quick steps, seemingly no different from usual, but...
[Ding dong! Congratulations to the astute player for discovering the problem and triggering the main quest [Tian Yinuo's Heartfelt Thoughts]!]
Du Yudu was almost startled by the elusive system, but the next moment she caught the key point that had just been announced—"Main Quest"! Tian Yinuo's abnormality was related to the main quest?
Main Quest - Tian Yinuo's Heartfelt Thoughts
[Task Description: As a deity, managing believers is an essential skill. Tian Yinuo, your first believer, has always been a staunch supporter, but recently she seems troubled. How can a qualified deity ignore this?]
[Mission Requirements: Investigate the cause of Tian Yinuo's abnormal behavior and encourage her with love to help her regain her spirits! Work, believer!]
[Task Reward: Spirit Body Recovery Accelerator Nourishing Essence * n (The quantity of nourishing essence will be distributed based on the task completion progress)]
Although the system description is still very nonsensical, this task seems to be a simple task to help Tian Yinuo solve her worries.
But after these few days, Du Yu has figured out the system's temperament to some extent—anything that the system pops up on its own, whether it's a main quest or a seemingly unimportant side quest, if you don't take it seriously, you'll be jumping into a pit.
As Du Yu pondered the mission, he turned his foot and, upon closing the system panel, arrived at the core area of the mahogany church.
The spacious hall is three meters high, with a huge crystal openwork cylinder in the center, its top just touching the ceiling, resembling a floor-to-ceiling fish tank. Around this "fish tank," rows of seats are arranged in a circular pattern.
Du Yugang arranged several big tasks for all the believers. The benches in the prayer room were sparsely populated. Only a few villagers, whose spirits were too broken and who were delirious, sat there, looking up at the "fish tank" in an orderly fashion, their unfocused pupils reflecting colorful light.
The transparent material has a smooth and hard surface, with hazy colored light swirling and drifting within it, like a swarm of jellyfish searching for something in the depths of the ocean. Each point of light is like the soft tentacles of a jellyfish, swaying in the "fish tank".
Almost instinctively, Du Yu lowered his eyes, his gaze catching two points of light, one gold and one silver. Apart from being exceptionally small, these two points of light were no different from the hundreds of colorful points of light in the [Dream Petri Dish].
But in Du Yu's view, deep within these two points of light that always seemed to huddle together, a faint purple light appeared—a sign that the believer's faith had reached the level of a fanatic.
Shi Wei, Wen Xi...
Du Yu pursed her lips and looked at the [Dream Petri Dish], a special synthetic object that she would visit every time she came to the Redwood Church, which had become one with the church space.
According to the system requirements, each church space needs to be enhanced by a special composite. After different composites are bound together, the church will change accordingly based on the properties of the special composite.
The Redwood Church has a peculiar characteristic after being bound to a petri dish—growth. All believers in the Redwood Church will grow to varying degrees over time, and the growth effect is inversely proportional to the believer's original state.
In other words, the worse the believer's condition, the more obvious the "growth" effect, which is particularly evident in the spirits within the [Dream Petri Dish].
Even though these spirits had been parasitized by iron for a long time, after spending a long time in the redwood church filled with faith, these spirit fragments all showed visible growth. The few that recovered the best were even able to answer Du Yu's questions simply.
The two fragments belonging to her friend were the only ones that were recovering more slowly than the other. If Du Yu hadn't used her spiritual vision to "see" that the spirituality of the two fragments had been slightly enhanced, she would have thought that there was something wrong with the [Dream Cultivation Dish].
He tried to communicate with his mind, but as expected, it failed. Du Yu's shoulders slumped, he sighed, and suddenly felt a sharp pain in his fingertips as a white light flashed past in his peripheral vision.
Du Yu touched his finger, his eyes changing slightly—it was the pearl Bu Manyin had given him. It seemed to have a mind of its own, jumping into the [Dream Petri Dish].
A system announcement stopped Du Yu's actions.
[Beep beep, special item [Divine Revelation Pearl] (original version) detected. [Dream Petri Dish] has undergone unknown changes—do not move the synthesized items during this process.]
[Ding ding! The [Dream Petri Dish] has been upgraded for a limited time, adding the new features [Dream Catcher] and [Dream Fulfillment]. Players are encouraged to explore these new features on their own!]
[Dream Petri Dish] Has a new function? The Divine Pearl rolled around in the liquid and flew out exactly as it was, without any change in luster. Du Yu casually put it in his pocket and began to study the new options of the petri dish.
The new function of the petri dish is integrated into the system's [Architecture] section. Du Yu first clicked on [Dream Fulfillment], and a message popped up saying, "Dream energy is insufficient. Please perform [Dream Capture] first."
Du Yu became interested and clicked the [Dream Catcher] button. This time, no failure message popped up; instead, a small pixel progress bar appeared below.
Du Yu waited for five seconds, mentally estimating that if the progress bar moved at a constant speed, it would take at least six hours to reach the end.
Du Yu glanced at the snail-paced progress bar, then at the nonsensical main quest in the [Quest] section. She had brought the pearl to the church many times, but this time something was amiss. She had every reason to believe that the new function of the petri dish was related to this main quest.
Unfortunately, the system has never been human when it comes to being inhuman.
Now all that's left is to wait. With nothing else to do, Du Yu took out the sales plan that Gu Yinglan had prepared and flipped through it.
According to Du Yu's vision, the "Everything-Collecting Waste Recycling Company" has three main business segments.
The first point is the "waste recycling" mentioned in the company's name. According to Dong Shiwu's memory, buying a bottle of nutrient solution in the lower district only meant that she was buying the liquid in the glass bottle. The glass bottle and other packaging belonged to the company. Customers were only renting it for a short period of time without charge, and they had to return it to the company after use.
Apart from nutrient solutions, materials with recycling value such as canned goods, batteries, and new energy vehicles are all monopolized by the production companies. They must be returned to the companies within a specified period, and those who fail to do so will be fined.
Naturally, in this situation, what hasn't been collected yet is the worst of the worst, something with absolutely no recycling value.
However, the merge game in Du Yu is unreasonable. As long as there are three sets of materials containing the same element, regardless of the difficulty, they can be upgraded into a higher-level material.
The residents of the downtown area turned their garbage into cash, and she obtained a large amount of basic materials at extremely low prices. How can this not be a win-win situation?
The second business is selling high-level synthetic materials. While B-grade and A-grade synthetic materials are practically useless to Du Yu, they hold considerable appeal for Mist Hunters in the Lower City, where the Security Department almost monopolizes sealed items.
Du Yu delegated some of the synthesis permissions to Gu Yinglan, who was unable to leave the mahogany church. She had been busy synthesizing and organizing unused synthetic materials recently. Once she made a list, the company could officially open for business.
The third business is the regular sale of certain synthetic compounds.
Currently, Du Yu only has two recipe slots, one for [Divine Revelation Pearl] and the other for [Green Meat]. The former is too scarce and cannot be easily sold, so the company's business is concentrated on the latter.
However, Du Yu's ability to defeat the Fallen Ones is like cutting melons and chopping vegetables. Within the company's operations department, there are fewer than one person with this ability. Du Yu is currently conducting a frantic experiment to find ways to reduce the cost of synthesizing Green Meat.
Time flies when you get busy.
After spending sixteen hours processing the pile of tasks from the church, Du Yuxin was startled awake by the sound of pigeons flapping their wings. He glanced at the screen and saw that the countdown had reached its end.
"Gugu, don't worry about me."
These days, 166, who looks more and more like an ordinary fat pigeon, stands in front of the petri dish, its scarlet eyes reflecting specks of colorful light, giving it a strangely mysterious look—if only it didn't have stolen fries tucked under its claws.
Du Yu glanced at the pigeons, shifted to a more comfortable position on the bench, and clicked on the "Dream Catcher" option.
A familiar sense of detachment washed over him, and countless flickering afterimages flashed by, finally settling on a scene that seemed both real and illusory. Du Yu looked around, a look of surprise in his eyes. Had he... entered a dream?
"Bang!"
The door slammed shut with a bang. Du Yu looked over and saw a girl with a face full of anger and tear stains still in her eyes turning back angrily. Both of them were startled.
They saw their own faces.
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Author's Note: I'm late, lol. I fell asleep on the keyboard halfway through writing yesterday, and when I woke up, the sky had fallen... Lately, I've been preparing for exams, doing an internship, and busy job hunting to cover for potential failures. I don't want to bring negative emotions to everyone, but I'm just too tired. I think I can keep going, but my body says it's not working, QAQ. After much thought, I've decided to temporarily change the update frequency to every other day. With exam deadlines approaching, I might have to take time off. You can wait until March or April to read more. I'm really sorry, lol. I'll write more free bonus chapters to make up for it when it's finished.
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