Alice in Dreamland (梦境中的爱丽丝)

What. The. Fuck! (Part 2)

The pain had ceased in his head, and his limbs felt numb and considerably lighter than they had mere minutes ago. He couldn't help but look down. He found nothing unusual, something he'd never thought he'd say, considering he was practically living in a dream.

An invisible force, intangible yet undeniable, seemed to guide Shen Luyu's every step forward. Despite the desolation of the tunnel, its barren walls stretching endlessly into the darkness, he felt an eerie familiarity, as though he had traversed this path countless times before. Each footfall echoed hollowly, a solitary sound in the vast emptiness surrounding him.

Shen Luyu's movements were mechanical, driven by a compulsion he couldn't comprehend. It was as if unseen hands tugged at his sleeves, propelling him onward with an urgency that left no room for hesitation. His mind, usually a sanctuary of clarity, now swirled with confusion, something that he'd dealt with a lot as of late, thoughts slipping through his grasp like sand through clenched fists. What mysterious force drove him forward?

With each step, the tunnel reverberated with faint chanting—something he couldn't hear profoundly, yet he knew it was there. Shen Luyu walked amidst the echoes of a mere speck in the vast expanse of time. The air itself hummed with latent energy, vibrating with the weight of forgotten memories.

The tunnel held vast inner workings and passageways that had yet to be explored, and Shen Luyu hoped to keep it that way for the time being.

In the depths of the tunnel, time seemed to lose its meaning. He had felt like he'd been walking mindlessly for hours. The more he walked, the more fragments of memories came to him. Shen Luyu clenched his head and scoured his brain for answers. These were indefinitely not his visions but someone else's, so why would he have them?

The man in his vision had a blurry face. It wasn't because he actually looked like that, but because this was only a fragment of a vision. The man was saying something incomprehensible to a tree. What the hell!

Shen Luyu was aware that some people were naturally mad in the head, but this opened a new gateway to things he'd never seen before. Furthermore, he seemed to be in a deep discussion with this tree, and it looked as if the tree was talking back. Shen Luyu didn't want to say "obviously" because, in a world such as this one, nothing was obvious—people had magical powers, could get teleported at random, and apparently, they could also talk with the trees. This tree was different, though. The whole memory was hazed over in a fog that made it hard to see, but something that was discernible was the lack of a face the magical tree had. How exactly was the tree communicating? Furthermore, the magical tree didn't use regular words, but rather, the leaves rattled and made up for its candid lack of speech. How interesting.

The last thing he saw in the vision was a golden ball-like object floating out of his chest. The clothes he wore had soaked through in blood because this thing was being forcibly removed. What was even stranger was the fact that the man welcomed the idea and had zero intentions of stopping this process. His face held a small smile throughout—one that didn't falter even for a second.

Shen Luyu was confused. This man—a man he hadn't seen in his entire life but felt a peculiar familiarity with, had shown up in a vision. What exactly was at play here? Shen Luyu couldn't view it any longer because the vision had blurred beyond comprehension and, in a matter of seconds, had completely ceased.

Shen Luyu couldn't help but sigh a little sympathetically. Even if he didn't know this man, he still figured the process of removing this golden ball was painful, and having experienced countless painful beatings, Shen Luyu knew it was nothing to just shrug and bat an eye at. Even so, he needed to keep moving to try and escape this cave, so he pushed down the lingering thoughts and feelings of his and this strange man's memories and kept walking.