The righteous attitude of Qiu Mian temporarily silenced everyone present. Neither Weiyang nor Gale dared to make any random snide remarks, and instead looked toward their captain in unison.
Jiuying said coldly, “I said it before, the next time we meet, it won’t just be a warning.”
The palm severed from the wrist rose high into the air, instantly swelling to massive proportions. The pressure it emitted was akin to the Five Fingers Mountain used to suppress evil spirits, hanging menacingly and with extreme oppressiveness over the head of the uninvited guest.
“Just passing by, is it really necessary to waste time on me?” Qiu Mian remained entirely composed, merely tilting his head up slightly to gaze at the severed hand for a moment before suddenly looking bewildered. “Are you sick?”
The severed palm suspended in mid-air was trembling imperceptibly to the naked eye. The five fingers did not seem entirely under human control, a phenomenon that hadn’t been present during their clash last time.
Jiuying offered no verbal response, yet took another step forward, heightening the sense of threat.
Sensing that the situation was turning sour, Weiyang hurriedly stepped in to smooth things over. “Captain, the mission takes precedence. Let’s avoid getting into a conflict!”
Gale also chimed in with a weak reminder. “Headquarters also said we should try to recruit Passerby… Shouldn’t we be a bit more friendly?”
“Forget it. Work that requires you to come in sick is enough to make anyone want to quit,” Qiu Mian dismantled the attempt on the spot.
Jiuying remained silent for a long time before finally unable to resist pointing out, though his tone remained devoid of ripples, it was a rare instance of him speaking at length: “Is your own state any better? Your consciousness is scattered and your steps are unsteady, which is why you couldn’t conceal your form.”
“Dream traveling isn’t my main job anyway. I’m just treating it like a stroll right now,” Qiu Mian replied with genuine sincerity. “Alright, let’s get moving. Everyone’s sleepy-headed; wouldn’t it be better to finish up early and head back to rest?”
Who on earth is part of your “everyone”!
Weiyang and Gale muttered inwardly, but after waiting a moment, they received no questioning or attack from the captain. Hurriedly looking over, they saw Jiuying wearing a stern expression, his gaze staring off into the void as though observing with another pair of eyes far away.
Seconds later, he spat out two words: “Dead.”
“What?”
“Shouwu and Mercury.”
“Ah?!”
Jiuying offered no explanation, moving swiftly toward a certain distant location. As he passed by Qiu Mian, he paused his stride for barely a fraction of a second, but made no further move to forcibly drive anyone away.
The group hurriedly followed. Even though they had clearly changed their direction of travel, the landmarks along the road felt exceptionally familiar, with the surrounding environment largely mirroring what they had just seen.
“This dreamscape doesn’t seem to have a distinction between boundary and center; the scenes are all spiraling and continuous,” Weiyang reported his discovery in a low voice. “It’s hard to judge the distance to the fusion point this way, and we can’t estimate the remaining time.”
“Dongfang knows.”
Using the eyes he had split off to judge direction, Jiuying quickly located the other two members of the dream-solving team who had already been corroded down to white skeletons. Yet paying no mind to their miserable state, he walked straight into a concealed spot, retrieving the ears, eyes, and tadpole-like creature he had hidden there.
The tadpole-like creature was about the size of a brooch, possessing two short hind limbs that supported its round head alongside its tail as it stood upright, speaking directly in human voice: “According to the current expansion rate, the dreamscape will collide with fusion point 22 in thirty-six minutes.”
“Understood.”
Jiuying responded calmly, gathering his split organs and closing his eyes once more with a furrowed brow.
“Also—”
Before the tadpole could finish what it wanted to say, it was handed over to someone else. As the perspective shifted, it abruptly choked off its voice.
Qiu Mian lagged leisurely at the very end of the group, at which point he stuck out a faceless head and glanced down at the tadpole. “What is this?”
“Uh… special talent,” Weiyang answered vaguely.
So it’s a person.
Two black eyes protruded from the edge of the tadpole’s round head, though not constructed like frog eyes. Its pupils constricted as Qiu Mian drew closer, reflecting his faceless human visage in their glossy surface. Human and tadpole stared at each other in silence.
“How rare,” Qiu Mian stared for a moment. “And here I thought nobody else had a tadpole for a dream avatar.”
“You’re one to talk,” Weiyang muttered under his breath.
A flash of complex emotion flickered in the tadpole’s eyes, but its voice remained a mechanical countdown: “Thirty-five minutes remaining.”
Gale instantly grew anxious. “What do we do? There’s barely any time left! The real-world exit of fusion point 22 is near the airport; if something goes wrong, we’re completely done for! Captain… why is the Captain standing there frozen without moving…”
“Don’t panic. When the sky falls, the tall guys hold it up,” Qiu Mian poked the tadpole, speaking with supreme ease. “There’s plenty of time.”
The literal meaning sounded like comfort, but short-statured Gale looked down at his own legs and felt even sadder.
Weiyang also remained relatively calm, waving a hand. “Relax, the Captain will take care of it. He’s just brewing right now. The only reason we let this dream linger is because it’s a continuous dream, and we wanted to gather more information on the dreamer.”
“But the Captain’s state today isn’t very good…”
That was also the reason Weiyang’s confidence lacked sufficient backing. Yet in front of a newbie and Passerby, how could he let Jiuying lose face? He immediately snorted with disdain. “Where are we even at right now? The Captain having old quirks like this is nothing new; we’ve faced far more dangerous moments, but he’s never dropped the ball. Do you know where the real-world exit of fusion point 3 was? Beihai Park! Packed with people, and surrounded by what kind of area? If something went wrong there, I wouldn’t even dare to imagine. And the result? Weren’t things peacefully resolved for all these years, all sorted out by the Captain? Rest easy!”
Weiyang successfully convinced himself, managing to pacify Gale’s panic as well. However, he failed to realize that his loose lips had just leaked information to someone who shouldn’t have heard it.
“Thirty-four minutes.”
“Beihai Park? You guys got transferred over from the Central District?”
Weiyang’s heart skipped a beat. Seeing that Passerby was no longer paying attention to the tadpole, but had slowly straightened up to glance in Jiuying’s direction—
“Uh… what about it?” That wasn’t strictly a secret, Weiyang comforted himself.
“I’ve been there. Quite fun. I even took a boat to check out fusion point 3 right at the center of the lake to confirm the situation,” Qiu Mian shared his travel insights. “Can’t believe they didn’t tightly seal off the entire circle surrounding the fusion point. The Central District is certainly bolder than the Eastern District on that front.”
Why was his focus on that? Weiyang felt that Passerby’s personality deviated somewhat from the psychological profile provided by base experts.
He coughed, attempting to fish for information: “I-is that so? When did you go? Did you visit any other tourist attractions? When it comes to Beijing travel tours, nobody knows better than me…”
“Thirty-three.”
Yet Qiu Mian completely ignored him because, directly above the dream space, a mass of foul, filthy slime had appeared.
The slime stood as tall as a building, coated entirely in mud. Aside from the position of the mouthparts, which could be deduced from the opening and closing of a mouth, it seemed to possess nothing else: no hands, no feet, no eyes, no ears. It dragged its bulk along, sliding and drooping down to the ground with extremely sluggish movements.
This was Qiu Mian’s first time seeing the creature within this dreamscape, yet he vaguely felt it looked somewhat familiar.
Just as Qiu Mian had a fleeting thought, the slime suddenly moved. Completely defying its massive build and sluggish appearance, it seemed to have installed an ejector device inside its body. In a mere split second, the foul, viscous bodily fluids lunged directly toward them.
Simultaneously, Jiuying opened his eyes.
It was as if Jiuying had reached a bargain with his rebellious limbs while his eyes were closed, detaching them from his torso right off the bat and instantly splitting them into distinct components of head, torso, and legs-hands.
Yet immediately afterward, the legs and hands continued fracturing from the joints. Every single finger and bone segment abandoned its original position without a shred of lingering attachment, completely devoid of any connecting flesh and blood tissue. The head and torso were simultaneously hacked straight down the middle from the center, then sliced diagonally from bottom to top, from abdominal muscles to collarbone and scapula, into uneven chunks of meat. The left brain, carrying the left eye, left ear, left nose, and left lips, flew toward high altitudes, while the right brain, carrying the right eye, right ear, right nose, and right lips, dived into low altitudes. Within the exposed half-torso, only blurred flesh and blood could be seen; the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys remained vividly vibrant and lively, while a severed section of intestines twisted along with the floating meat chunks like a flexible rope.
“Captain… what is he even doing…?”
Gale was witnessing this kind of sight for the very first time and was scared out of his wits, a crying lilt creeping into his voice. In the past, Jiuying’s splitting at most involved a severed wrist or eye, which was nothing major, but the current scene was beyond terrifying, it was downright hair-raising.
“If you’re really that scared, you can exit the dreamscape first… The Captain will sort it out soon enough,” Weiyang, who had been Jiuying’s teammate back in the Central District, had witnessed this kind of situation a few times and wasn’t shocked enough to lose his voice, though he still averted his gaze, finding it a bit hard to watch.
Qiu Mian was also slightly caught off guard, murmuring softly, “Turns out an image like a tadpole isn’t much after all. There’s even rarer stuff, dismembering oneself.”
Resting his chin on his hand, he observed quietly for a moment before growing suspicious: “How come I don’t see his sex organs? Did he hide them?”
Weiyang was on the verge of a breakdown. “What on earth are you focusing on!”
“I’m analyzing it seriously,” Qiu Mian evaluated honestly. “Self-fragmented into seventy-two pieces—maybe seventy-three. Controlling seventy-two consciousnesses to act simultaneously in someone else’s dream is impressive; I have to admit that much—maybe seventy-three.”
“Stop emphasizing that there might be an extra piece!”
“Well, maybe it was too small and I missed it, or maybe there isn’t one.”
Gale’s terror and Weiyang’s complex emotions instantly vanished, leaving them both suffering even more as they clutched their heads. Terrified of facing the flesh chunks yet somewhat tempted to search for serial number seventy-three, even the tadpole slipped on its footing, its round head projecting an expression of speechlessness.
Qiu Mian, however, acted as though nothing was amiss and continued observing.
The seventy-odd meat chunks split off by Jiuying served more than just a distraction; flying wildly through the air, they severely disrupted the slime’s judgment. The slime’s massive body crashed around blindly without managing to touch a single fragment.
Time rushed past. The tadpole reported the time steadily, while the slime grew impatient first, launching into an erratic, disordered assault like a mad beast, frantically thrashing its head and tail. The adhesive mud splattered in all directions. Whenever a meat chunk was stained or corroded, the slime mobilized its entire strength and slammed down upon it with the force of Mount Tai, shaking the entire dream space violently.
Gale and Weiyang crouched low, hugging the ground behind a cover, not daring to expose even half a buttock. The tadpole alternately retracted and poked out its head, barely managing to steal one or two glances thanks to its size advantage. Only Qiu Mian, who remained invisible and merged with the dreamscape, stood calmly in another direction, witnessing some marvelous changes.
After swallowing Jiuying’s meat chunks, the slime’s original violent rampage actually slowed down. Or rather, a portion of the slime remained restless while another portion suddenly lost interest. It split two competing consciousnesses from within to vie for control of the main body, and as the consumed meat chunks increased, the shut-down consciousness gradually seized the upper hand.
“So that’s how it is.” Qiu Mian watched the whole process unfold and found it quite interesting. There were many ways to resolve abnormal dreams, including but not limited to guiding and changing the dream contents, making the dream master realize they were dreaming, waking the dreamer through strong stimulation, and so on. Among them, directly fighting the dream master for control over consciousness belonged to the most difficult and perilous kind.
The slime was the dreamer’s conscious projection. Both he and Jiuying had figured this out; after all, in this dreamscape, there wasn’t even a second non-native creature.
The number of surrounding meat chunks noticeably decreased, and the rhythm frequency of the slime also dropped significantly. All signs indicated that the dream was about to be safely brought under control. Perceiving the dream shift, Weiyang dared to poke his head out slightly to observe the situation.
Yet right when everything was developing stably and favorably, the fluttering meat chunks suddenly froze in their movements, and the limp slime began struggling frantically once more. The alternative consciousness controlling its behavior seemed to have suddenly disconnected, and the situation instantly reverted back to square one.
“Crap! Captain—”
Qiu Mian stepped forward instantly, extending his right hand from his pocket to touch the desperately resisting slime. The exact same instant, Jiuying’s disconnected consciousness came back online, and three trains of thought simultaneously manifested within the dreamer’s conscious projection.
“Twenty-six.”
“Stop.”
“…Ma…Mama…”
Qiu Mian raised his gaze slightly, locking eyes calmly with Jiuying’s floating half-face, hearing each other’s inner thoughts for a fleeting second.
Jiuying was silently counting down, he was issuing a simple freeze command, and the third consciousness naturally belonged to the slime.
With dual control offering no escape, the slime rapidly curled its body, lying completely flat and motionless. Only its mouth continued to bubble, smacking its lips as if greedy.
“Pop.” The bubble burst, and the corrosive liquid around its mouth gradually drained away, revealing a pristine interior that could almost be described as clean.
No wonder it looked familiar.
He naturally remembered this freely telescoping mouth-face; after all, that former milky-white silkworm had served as one of his teachers in method acting.
But how did it turn into this? Transforming into a blob of rotting mud wasn’t something he could act out very well.
The surrounding space began to shake, the edges of the hospital progressively collapsing, and the dream was about to end in an unconventional manner.
Since the official traveling dreamers were all here, he couldn’t be bothered to handle the cleanup.
“Alright, B-grade dream, resolved.”
Qiu Mian glanced at Jiuying, who was using his remaining meat chunks to piece his body back together, noticing he was missing roughly his entire left side. Pity that his attention had shifted just now, leaving him unable to confirm whether Number Seventy-Three actually existed or had been successfully reassembled.
“You’re welcome. Clock out early, bye-bye.” Qiu Mian exited the dreamscape in a single second.
Only then did the traveling dreamers dare to voice their thoughts.
“He… he finally left… I’m so terrified of working as his colleague…” Gale felt like his psychological trauma had deepened.
Weiyang also let out a sigh of relief, secretly winking at Gale. “Good thing the Captain didn’t hear the nonsense he was spouting.”
Jiuying uttered not a word, his reassembled teeth tightly clenched as his eyes stared coldly in the direction where Passerby had vanished.
He paused for a long time before speaking again: “Continue. Next dream.”