Ahead lay a boundless, dark space without any absolute sense of up, down, left, or right, expanding infinitely like the vast universe. If one’s willpower were not resolute enough, gazing at it for even a moment would fill the heart with despair.
The space was not entirely empty. On the contrary, it held countless white holes and black holes.
These were the dream worlds of countless people.
If the content of a dream brought joy, surprise, or excitement to the dreamer, their dream world, a spherical region, would emit warm light, illuminating a corner of this dark space. Traveling dreamers commonly referred to these pleasant dreams as white holes, likening them to celestial bodies.
Conversely, if the dream content was full of misery, terror, or bizarreness, the spherical region would take on a pitch-black, gloomy hue. The deeper the pain and sorrow, the deeper and colder the gloom, resembling a black hole capable of devouring even light.
Right now, Qiu Mian was walking through this myriad of spherical bubbles out of thin air, occasionally lowering his gaze to peer at the scenes inside them. He was lenient with the white holes and harsh with the black holes, yet he never stopped walking, acting much like a passing stroller.
Until he spotted a sufficiently special bubble.
Ahead, a massive, gloomy black hole bubble floated in the air, with a radius of about three kilometers, roughly the size of a town, radiating an aura of sorrow from afar.
Beside the bubble, a tall, thin man wearing a custom-lettered short-sleeved t-shirt waved. “Qiu Mian, over here.”
“Brother Liang,” Qiu Mian acknowledged. As he drew closer, the sheer scale of the black hole became even more pronounced; looking up, he could only see a fraction of its curved surface. “It really is approaching B-grade. Have you investigated what the dream content is?”
A B-grade dream referred to one capable of affecting the scale of a county, potentially covering tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand people. If it were to merge with the real world, even state intervention would struggle to fully control public opinion and hazards.
Liang Rui said in a deep voice, “The dreamer’s hostility toward strangers is immense. I took just one look and suffered a violent attack. The dream scene is an ordinary town with blocks, a school, a hospital, and so on, but what appears isn’t humans, but many distorted, shapeless monsters. I don’t know the specifics beyond that.”
He was around the late thirties, with a weathered, stern face and concise speech. “This dream is massive in scale and still expanding. After investigating, I felt it necessary to report it to you. I didn’t interrupt your work, did I?”
“It’s fine, break time.”
Qiu Mian’s avatar in the dream remained dressed in casual sportswear, complete with a sports watch on his wrist. Though it couldn’t actually tell time, he tapped his wrist lightly to signal: “Three in the afternoon. Very few people sleep at this hour. The probability of it being just a nap is high, so the dream’s duration might not be long. We just need to control it and keep it from spreading.”
“Right, I didn’t even notice that.” Liang Rui nodded. “Staying in the dream all this time makes you lose track of real-world time.”
Qiu Mian paused slightly. “Sorry to trouble you, Brother Liang.”
“What are you thanking me for! I’d rather you be busy with real-world work.” Liang Rui smiled. “If you didn’t make money in reality, who is going to pay our salaries? Feel free to order me around!”
Qiu Mian appreciated this straightforward explanation and relaxed his expression, though his faceless dream face showed no features to reveal it.
“I’ll keep an eye on this dream. You go look after the other areas.”
“Alright… Oh, right!” Liang Rui suddenly remembered something. “The official authorities recently dispatched a dream-solving team here. I ran into them once. They’re pretty hard to communicate with, insisting on checking our identities, especially the leader. He attacked without even speaking a word. Be careful; if you run into them, just fall back immediately and leave the dream to them to handle.”
Qiu Mian blinked. “Got it.”
Though he had guessed as much long ago, it was only now that he confirmed a new team of official traveling dreamers had been deployed.
Ever since the dream worlds began merging with the real world, causing numerous anomalies and hazards that science could not explain, the government had placed high importance on the matter. Through the intensive research of national resources, some dream rules were gradually uncovered, and a small number of people who could remain awake within the dream world or even influence other people’s dreams were discovered.
These individuals were called traveling dreamers. They maintained their sense of self and rational awareness as they wandered through the dreams of ordinary people, utilizing dream rules to eliminate dreams that might cause harm to the real world.
The government absorbed and nurtured traveling dreamers, organizing them into dream-solving teams dispatched to different major districts for dream-traveling work. These were the official traveling dreamers on the payroll.
However, with the massive population, even if traveling dreamers were scarce, there were bound to be a few wild traveling dreamers hiding in plain sight, some undiscovered by the authorities, others with their own considerations.
Qiu Mian belonged to the latter.
Yet due to certain unstable factors, the authorities had always maintained a tough stance toward wild traveling dreamers, demanding that they remain under official surveillance. Those who refused to cooperate would be hunted down, though Qiu Mian had never been caught, leaving the head of the Eastern District so angry it made his teeth itch.
Still, having traveled through dreams for many years, he always remained well-behaved and diligent, never causing trouble using dreams. Instead, he had helped official traveling dreamers share a significant portion of their burden. Over time, even though he was elusive and operated outside the system, the authorities no longer made a fuss trying to track him down, tacitly accepting this subtle existence.
Therefore, Qiu Mian wasn’t worried about the newly arrived dream-solving team causing trouble for him. New officials always implemented strict measures upon taking office; most likely, they were just full of drive at the start, wanting to catch him, this famous wild rogue king, to score merit, before eventually losing interest.
After all, with so many dream-traveling tasks every day, who had the spare time to bother with a well-behaved passerby who quietly cleared away hidden reefs and dangerous shoals for them?
Of course, all of this was predicated on keeping the chaotic dreams under control.
Qiu Mian pulled down the brim of his hat, extended his other hand close to this massive black hole, and his palm quickly merged into the pitch-black dream. Following that, the sphere expanded, swallowing his shoulder, his upper body, and his entire person into this black hole thick with an aura of sorrow.
Qiu Mian opened his eyes once more, landing on a street.
Right beside him was a sign indicating this was South Guanyang Road, with a small park on the left, some shops on the right, and an experimental primary school ahead. The road, however, was completely empty, devoid of a single living organism.
Yet this was actually quite normal; Qiu Mian walked forward without batting an eye.
He had entered the dream from the outside of the sphere, arriving at the edge of the dream. Such locations usually did not belong to the dreamer’s deep memories, so the degree of influence was weak, and not even any anomalies were visible.
The scene details of the edge dream were also incomplete. Qiu Mian passed the park, where the grass and trees were just blurred, shadowy phantoms, with only two swings looking distinct enough. Among the shops on the right, only a single Beibei Stationery store hung a sign.
Looks like an actual existing location, Qiu Mian thought.
Compared to entirely fictional dream worlds, scenes based on reality required much more cautious handling.
Walking further ahead was the playground, featuring a visually estimated 400-meter running track, a sandpit, a set of parallel bars, and a low basketball hoop. The details were far richer than the park, along with two four-story teaching buildings. The dreamer had probably observed this place many times.
Yet none of this was the main point for Qiu Mian.
The main point was that he saw the distorted, shapeless monsters Liang Rui had mentioned.
In the shaded area of the playground, two plump, fleshy creatures curled up. One was entirely milky white, while the other emitted a pale pink hue. At a glance, they closely resembled mature silkworms, only vastly larger. Eight pairs of fleshy claws were evenly distributed along both sides of their bodies, while the area in the middle that could be called a face lacked eyes or nose, featuring only a mass of twisted wrinkles and a freely telescoping organ that looked like a mouth used for feeding.
They looked like a cross between fatter silkworms and larger water bears.
The milky-white monster scratched its belly, wriggling its fleshy body coyly as if acting shy. The pale pink one was far more ostentatious, stretching out its retracting mouth-face and looking toward Qiu Mian’s direction, as if it had discovered his existence.
Simultaneously, the windows of the two teaching buildings swung wide open, and dozens of distorted, chubby monsters crowded their heads out, curiously peering over as well. A few bold ones spat out round mouths, their tumor-like faces sagging high down as if attempting to approach him.
What kind of bizarre dreams are humans having nowadays.
Even Qiu Mian, with his wealth of dream-traveling experience, was somewhat speechless. Yet he didn’t act rashly, simply waiting quietly for the monsters’ next move.
However, since he didn’t move, the monsters didn’t push forward either. A few of them even lost interest, retracting their mouths and closing the windows.
The two monsters hiding on the playground also lost a bit of interest, their mouths opening slightly, lifting high before shaking and shrinking back, looking as though they had yawned.
Unlike what Liang Rui had described, the monsters didn’t seem to have a strong desire to attack.
Perhaps they hadn’t run into the same type? Or did the monsters judge people by their appearance? Surely it couldn’t be that he looked kind-hearted and resembled one of their kind?
Qiu Mian guiltily touched his faceless face.
Dream avatars were based on self-perception and might differ somewhat from reality. As for Qiu Mian, looking at his own face was like looking at a blank clay mannequin, saving him even the trouble of disguising himself. This was one of the reasons why he had interacted with official traveling dreamers for years without ever worrying about his real-world identity getting leaked.
Now, since the monsters showed no desire to attack him, he couldn’t be bothered to waste effort. He didn’t even have the urge to explore the center of the dream; anyway, the goal was just to wait for this dream to end peacefully, and sometimes letting things take their natural course was the most appropriate approach.
Inspired by the monsters, Qiu Mian wanted to let out a lazy yawn, but halfway up, his hand changed direction, intercepting an object shooting toward his back with two fingers.
“Damn it!” someone blurted out.
Qiu Mian withdrew his hand and took a closer look. Unbelievably, it was a bullet.
“What are you doing?! I told you to stay alert, not to shoot!”
“I saw him move… thought he was trying to ambush… my hand slipped…”
Qiu Mian turned his head, displeased.
“Damn,” someone stepped back. “Thought it was a person, why is it a faceless freak?”
Who are you calling a freak? Qiu Mian stared unhappily at the five people ahead. Their uniform clothing style clearly marked them as officials. He lingered his gaze on the short person holding a gun for a few seconds: “Newbie? Didn’t anyone tell you that if a traveling dreamer dies suddenly in the dream world, there is a probability of brain death occurring in the real world as well?”
The short person was shocked. “You… you’re a traveling dreamer?”
What is this? Though I’ve been a bit lazy lately, have I really lost all sense of presence?
The entertainment industry hadn’t made him famous yet, but the traveling dreamer circle had made him obscure first. What a circle of life.
Qiu Mian said coldly, “At least I look more like one than you do.”
At that moment, another person in the group hurriedly stepped out to smooth things over, their voice sounding relatively steady unlike the rookie just now: “Cough, Teacher Passerby, Gale is on his first mission and got too nervous, making a mistake. Truly sorry.”
For certain considerations, traveling dreamers often preferred not to expose their real names, using code names instead. Qiu Mian had never specially conceived a code name for himself, but because he frequently crossed paths with official traveling dreamers, meaning he came and went without a trace, the head of the Eastern District had intentionally dubbed him Passerby, labeling him the number-one wanted criminal.
Qiu Mian swept his gaze over this middle-aged man who spoke: neither tall nor short, neither thin nor fat, with exceptionally sparse hair. If he recognized him, he was most likely a member of one of the eight official dream-solving teams in the Eastern District, but otherwise, there was nothing particularly memorable about him.
“He is that Passerby?” another muttered. “Vice-team leader, why are you being so polite to him? Who is the cop and who is the thief here?”
“Stop running your mouth!” The elder slapped the other’s head, wanting to scold him further, but suddenly realizing he wasn’t the one calling the shots, he had no choice but to report to the tall person in the middle: “Captain, the situation in the Eastern District is slightly special. A few wild traveling dreamers are unwilling to be co-opted, but they’ve never caused trouble and have always helped out. So for now, our stance is cooperative. The headquarters mentioned it to you before…”
“Passerby.”
At the very center of the group, the tall traveling dreamer spoke softly, his voice cold and merciless: “I’ve heard of him.”
He revealed ten fingers wearing half-cut black gloves, and under everyone’s watchful eyes, he silently unscrewed his own right thumb.
Then he took the gun from the short person, inserted the thumb into where the ammunition was supposed to go, aimed at Qiu Mian, and pulled the trigger.
“But the Eastern District’s tacit approval is not my approval, and the Eastern District’s attitude is not my attitude.”