Hearing this, Qiu Mian raised an eyebrow.
He stood motionless as a thumb-sized bullet whirred past his cheek, striking the iron railing behind him with a crisp ring.
The aim seems a bit off… Qiu Mian was just about to comment mentally when a chill suddenly hit his back. Feeling as though he had eyes in the back of his head, he swiftly sidestepped. The thumb-sized bullet brushed past his face a second time, gliding smoothly to land right in the palm of its shooter.
Rather than a coincidence with the railing, the bullet’s trajectory was clearly being controlled by someone.
Although anything was possible in the dream world, this wasn’t the owner’s personal dream; they were all intruders here. Wanting to freely manipulate objects within someone else’s consciousness still took a fair amount of difficulty, which meant this Dream Traveler was quite powerful.
It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, though.
Despite being repeatedly attacked for no reason, Qiu Mian’s attitude could hardly be called angry. “A show of force?”
“A warning.” The person’s tone carried zero emotion. “The East District is now under my management. Any prior agreement between ‘Acorus’ and you is completely void. If we run into each other again, it won’t just be a warning.”
Oh, aren’t they arrogant?
Who on earth was “Acorus,” though? And what agreement?
Dismissing the other party as putting on a one-man show, Qiu Mian went right back to doing things his own way.
“Warning,” he said coolly, “instead of focusing your attention on me, you’d do better to pay more attention to your actual jobs.”
“Now you’re lecturing us…” muttered the short man’s sidekick with disdain. But before he could even finish his sentence, he let out a shrill cry, “Watch out!”
The “captain” reacted the fastest the moment Qiu Mian issued his “warning.” Reloading a thumb-sized bullet into the chamber, he fired a quick shot toward a spot slightly above and behind Qiu Mian.
With a bang, the shot accurately struck a fleshy monster face. A silkworm-like creature plummeted from the air, twitching as it slammed into the ground. It bounced elastically, bursting with sickly green plasma and minced tissue.
Yet the sudden ambush involved far more than just a single monster. Countless plump, horrifying fleshy worms began crawling out from the corners of the teaching building, vastly outnumbering the ones previously exposed outside. Moving at lightning speed in twisted, spasm-like postures, they even used the elasticity of their expanding and contracting mouth-faces to leap high into the air, clearing the iron railing and charging straight toward the nearby Dream-Decoding Squad.
Yet Qiu Mian was clearly standing closer to them, only to be inexplicably and collectively ignored. Combined with his relaxed posture—back against the playground fence, hands buried in his pockets—he looked for all the world like the mastermind controlling this swarm of worms.
“Damn it! I seriously can’t believe this—is this even a dream a human is supposed to have?!”
The sidekick shouted loudly, though his actions remained relatively orderly. He swung a wrench, smashing the lunging worms one by one. Qiu Mian noticed he had a rather peculiar rhythm: hitting one on the left, then making sure to hit one on the right, even if there was no monster on the right at all.
“Stop acting on your OCD right now, come help me!”
The bald middle-aged man was being driven up the wall by the frantic chaos. The densest cluster of writhing worms had swarmed around him, thrusting abyss-like fleshy mouths from their faces in an attempt to climb and devour his body. Although the middle-aged man managed to carve out a temporary safety zone around himself using his fiery baton, two fists were no match for a multitude of mouths, and it looked like he wouldn’t last much longer.
“Mercury, go help him too,” the captain said.
“Okay.”
At the response, Qiu Mian realized that the fifth member of the opposing Dream-Decoding Squad was a short-haired woman. She spoke very little, but her actions were crisp and decisive. The monster swarm basically gave her no trouble either; when she moved to the side of the bald middle-aged man, the worms there even bypassed her path.
The monsters’ attacks really did vary from person to person.
So what was the factor behind their choice of targets? It probably wasn’t revenge, because the “captain,” who had made threats with a gun and kicked up a racket, was still moving around with ease and being targeted by very few monsters. Nor was it strength, because the short-haired new guy, trembling with fear after losing his defensive means, was likewise ignored by the worm swarm, not even receiving the slightest detour in his direction.
Unable to recognize human faces or quickly discern the differential traits between himself and the five people opposite him, Qiu Mian thought somewhat mischievously and playfully: Could the dream owner be afraid of baldness?
…Actually, that was quite possible, considering Brother Liang, who also suffered slightly from hair loss, had been attacked as well.
Perhaps this was just a nightmare belonging to some middle-aged man.
Lost in wandering thoughts, Qiu Mian watched the show leisurely, having zero intention of offering help. The Dream-Decoding Squad’s poor attitude was one thing, but he also wanted to see what these Dream Travelers were truly capable of.
Under the captain’s direction, “Mercury” and the sidekick stood guard on the left and right flanks of the middle-aged man, watching his back. The three of them reached a stalemate with the worm swarm.
The captain himself hovered in mid-air above them, scanning the distance and picking off the worms continuously leaping into the sky, seemingly holding everything in total control.
Only the obvious newcomer—the short man—was holding his head and crying, on the verge of a breakdown. “Captain… my gun! Help… am I really going to die here…!”
The sidekick didn’t forget his duties even in the heat of battle: “Bro, this is a dream. There aren’t even any pain sensations, what’s there to be scared of if you die?”
“B-but… that faceless freak said there’s a chance of brain death too, wah wah…”
“Please! That’s only possible if you can’t tell reality from dream apart. Can’t you tell these big meat lumps apart?!”
The “faceless freak” Qiu Mian poked his head out from afar to continue the scare-tactics: “Better safe than sorry; if something really goes wrong, it’ll be too late. Besides, isn’t being sucked into a worm’s intestines a terrifying death method even if it doesn’t hurt?”
“…Ahhhhhhh!!!!!!”
“Damn it! Why are you listening to his nonsense? Forget it, why don’t you just exit the dream first?”
“How do I exit? I don’t know how!”
Bang!
The surroundings suddenly quieted down. The captain of the Dream-Decoding Squad calmly lowered the muzzle of his gun, not sparing even a half-glance for the fallen short man, and continued hunting the worms leaping into the air, acting as though his teammate were no different from the dream monsters.
“This… isn’t this a bit harsh?” The bald middle-aged man shuddered all over, unable to hold back his words. “Won’t it leave psychological trauma for ‘Hurricane’?”
The sidekick laughed offhandedly. “Our captain’s just like that, you get used to it. Don’t worry, the base has plenty of psychologists; next time we should just have the newbies finish training before letting them enter dreams on a team.”
Having watched the whole process, Qiu Mian couldn’t help pausing slightly, shifting his weight to his other leg to relax.
How this captain treated his teammates was none of his business, but the guy was clearly trickier to deal with than he’d imagined, and might end up relentlessly tracking him down to make trouble.
When dealing with someone like that, rather than frustrating him, letting him owe a favor was much more practical.
Qiu Mian quietly hopped over the railing.
Hiding under the brim of his hat, his body gradually grew transparent, blending into the surrounding environment until his presence dropped to the absolute minimum. He moved upstream against the momentum of the worm swarm, steadily closing in on his target without attracting the slightest bit of attention.
His target of observation just moments ago hadn’t been limited to the five-person squad; it also included the suddenly frenzied worm swarm. Perhaps due to the adage that onlookers see most clearly, he had quickly discovered the secret of the worm swarm—they had a leader and commander.
It was that pale pink grub he had spotted first thing on the playground.
Right now, it was hiding beneath the shade of a tree, glaring with a hostile gaze toward the bald middle-aged man. Its plump body stood proudly erect, swaying rhythmically from side to side like a commanding signal flag.
Another milky-white grub curled up behind it. Compared to the valorous general or the frontline soldiers, it looked like a concubine scared out of her wits by the slaughter, trembling as she pressed close against the pale pink grub, seemingly hoping to use its body to shield herself from fear.
Amidst its commanding duties, the pale pink grub didn’t forget to turn its head to check the milky-white grub’s position, ensuring it remained right behind it. It even allocated a few pairs of short, thick fleshy claws to tightly grab its limbs, as intimate and inseparable as lovers.
Interesting in a way, Qiu Mian thought.
This place was actually on the periphery of the dream, not the core. The consciousness projected by the dream owner was usually weak, typically resulting in sluggish, dull NPCs mindlessly repeating actions, and even more frequently lacking conscious creatures altogether.
Yet right now, even brainless grubs possessed rich emotions—excitement, fear, and even romance.
And they were doing romance better than his own acting.
Qiu Mian’s eyes were truly opened.
For a split second, he even wanted to learn the secrets of acting out romantic scenes from the two grubs. After all, while he couldn’t recognize subtle facial expressions in human faces, these grubs didn’t have faces at all! Instead, he could easily read their affection through their opening-and-closing, stretching-and-retracting mouths.
…Is that actually viable? Qiu Mian suddenly had a bold idea.
However, before he could apprentice himself to them, a large gloved hand suddenly appeared ahead.
Severed at the wrist, that hand grabbed the pale pink grub’s “long mouth” out of thin air, dragging it off the ground bit by bit. No matter how much the pale pink grub bounced and struggled from side to side, no matter how desperately the milky-white grub tried to pull it back, and no matter how the rest of the swarm surged forward, sinking countless sharp teeth deep into the fingers and wrist, the hand refused to let go. It hoisted the pale pink grub up to the height of more than a dozen stories before violently hurling it down.
Thud. The pale pink grub gave a slight wobble and stopped moving entirely.
Lacking its command, the rest of the worm swarm directly retreated. Only the milky-white grub crept to its side, trembling all over. Seemingly drained of all its strength, it slumped limply over the other’s body, freezing all movement.
A long while later, the milky-white grub cautiously extended its mouth-face to gently touch the other’s body.
It was like a caress, yet also like a lick, seeming both in disbelief and in excruciating pain.
Simultaneously, the surrounding scenery began to collapse like a tide. Qiu Mian knew this was the precursor to the dream’s disappearance.
With a thoughtful look, he glanced one last time at the two grubs before shifting his gaze into the distance.
There, the four remaining members of the Dream-Decoding Squad had gathered, fully equipped and preparing to head toward the next dream. Meanwhile, the hand that had operated independently had reattached itself to its owner’s wrist.
Before leaving, the owner of the wrist subconsciously turned his head, casting a distant backward glance in the direction where Qiu Mian was.
Their eyes met, but Qiu Mian acted completely oblivious. Maintaining his invisibility, he closed his eyes and exited the dreamscape.