Chapter 868: Chapter 402: The Zealot and the Female Dormitory Supervisor
Gradually, a bizarre lody echoed faintly from the depths of the mist, as though it was a song drifting across the ocean, or fragnts floating up from distant recesses of mory.
Unconsciously, he walked toward the music, each step tinged with a dazed anticipation.
The music seed like a thread, drawing him deeper and deeper into the edges of this dreamscape.
His gaze began to turn hollow, the anticipation that once flickered in his eyes slowly replaced by a sense of numbness.
Before him, fragnted canvases unfurled and closed again, but they were not his mories, nor those belonging to “Dream Builder-HX-S-023.” These seed to be shards of anguish experienced by certain Descenders, transford into a visualized recollection. Stripped of the boundaries of matter and ti, these mories surged like fierce tides, wave after wave inundating him, drowning him in a despair-laden abyss.
He saw disease, terror, the eerie, and unspeakable abominations worm their way into the world of the living, devouring what was once vibrant…
And then the world began to decay, its chanisms ceasing to operate like a machine aging into stagnation…
His breathing grew heavier as if his own body were undergoing the agony of this life spiraling toward death.
He felt the warmth of life slowly slipping away, consciousness cloaked in darkness, like the last rays of sunset being rcilessly consud by the night…
At the edge of this dreamscape, he bore witness to the cold visage of death. Death was no longer an abstract notion; it was silence, an ending, the disappearance of all sounds and colors…
“I tried to wake myself up, tried convincing myself this was just a dream, but my consciousness felt trapped in an unyielding cage, no amount of struggle could break free…”
“I shouted aloud, but my voice was swallowed by the boundless mist, leaving not a trace of an echo…”
“My body grew heavier and heavier…”
“At the mont I was about to collapse completely, I glimpsed a weak shimr of light — a beacon in the darkness. Summoning every ounce of strength, I crawled toward that glimr, my fingers carving marks into the illusory ground… Yet the light always seed just out of reach, as if intentionally mocking …”
“…”
He was drowning in despair, yet at the deepest depths of that despair, he seed to catch sight of a new radiance — a light rising from the ruins of death, reminiscent of embers rekindling the soul…
That luminescence, like the final rays of the sun, like ashes of an angel, hovered and spread along the liminal boundary between life and death. It resembled blooming yet decaying frost flowers, dazzling yet eerie…
“Ashes…?!”
“Along the dreamscape’s edge, countless ashes linger amidst decay!”
The ashes drifted like dust, suspended in chaotic voids, like eternal blossoms that only fall in dreams.
Lin Yi continued his descent as the surrounding mist began to seep into his nose and mouth, making his breath difficult. He felt his soul slowly being extracted by this dreamscape, his consciousness growing ever hazier…
The consciousness of “Dream Builder-HX-S-023” collapsed, but Lin Yi’s did not. He felt himself beginning to depart…
“At the boundary of infinite dreams, I continuously experienced the cycles and transformations of ‘life’ and ‘death’… My reason dissolved into disarray; I felt the world abandoning …”
“I seed to traverse unspeakable dinsional spaces, where finite matter turned infinite, and infinite ti beca visible fragnts…”
“No… Everything lost its form, matter and ti ceased evolving, leaving only boundless chaos…”
“In the chaos, a murmuring seed to rise…”
“A cantata…”
“A word spirit…”
“Or perhaps rely the slumbering, horrific breathing of so dormant entity at the boundary of the dreamscape…”
“—— ‘Moon-III’ reconnaissance team, Gu Fangqing, ‘Dream Builder-HX-S-023′”
March 5, X002 Year
…
May 10, X023 Year, 4:42, Library Ground Floor, [Dream Studies (Drømlære)] Sector.
Lin Yi leaned against an aged bookshelf, holding a book in his hands, flipping through its pages with wooden gestures. The soft light filtered through the glass of a lampshade, cascading onto him, making him appear like a sculpture from afar.
Within the illumination, the text on the book seed to shimr faintly, as if the touch of Lin Yi’s fingers instilled it with deeper significance. The letters, resembling symbols, rose and fell within the glow, as though opening a gateway to another realm.
As ti passed, the shimr’s phantom took on an increasingly horror-infused tone, and the doorway to that world began to resemble a vortex leading into the abyss…
Engrossed in reading, Lin Yi remained oblivious to the gathering of bizarre figures around him, their presence unnoticed.
They stood rigid like tombstones, encircling Lin Yi. So bore eyes filled with fervent intensity, others void of any spirit — yet regardless of expression, all had unnaturally large mouths. Not grotesquely gaping to their ears, but unsettling in their abnormality.
They bore striking resemblance to the Pseudo-Human Sculptures, yet differed in that they wore dark green, slightly tattered robes.
Those robes were the attire of art students.
But they were not art students.
They were art students transford into zealots.
As they gazed upon Lin Yi in this mont, they were not looking at a person, but rather an artifact, a piece of art.
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