Separated by a single wall, there are two beds.
On the bed to the west, Li Sanjiang's brow is deeply furrowed, occasionally muttering sleep talk, with his arms and legs flailing irregularly.
Yet despite such strong reactions, he still cannot awaken from his nightmare.
In the obscure darkness, it feels as if an invisible person is pressing down on him.
This person is heavy, causing a suffocating pressure on his chest, nearly making it impossible to breathe.
But no matter how hard he tries, he cannot push it away.
Li Sanjiang never expected that he, who had carried corpses all his life, would one day experience sleep paralysis from a ghost.
Yet even in such a frantic and anxious state, he still managed to find some comfort for himself:
"It seems like Little Yuanhou's evil spirit has indeed transferred to me, the Array is successful!"
At this time, on the bed to the east, Li Zhiyuan is lying quietly.
His face shows no trace of pain, his breathing is steady, as if he's still sleeping soundly.
However, in his dream, Li Zhiyuan has opened his eyes.
He sits up on the bed, initially thinking he has woken up, but a glance outside reveals pitch darkness.
He realizes that he is still dreaming, because the gauze window in his bedroom should allow moonlight to penetrate in, it shouldn't be this completely dark.
Looking around, Li Zhiyuan finds that the only thing visible is the bed underneath him.
This is an old wooden bed with many details worn away by time, but upon careful exploration, one can still find the delicately crafted carvings.
Li Zhiyuan removes the blanket from his body, kneels and moves to the edge of the bed, and tries to stretch out his hand to touch something outside.
After all, this is a dream.
During the day, Liu Manting asked him if it was boring in the countryside?
He had replied that there were many fun things here.
Yes, indeed there are.
In previous years, he couldn't understand why the word "study" was often prefixed with "hard".
Isn't studying just about reading concepts, theories, formulas once, and then solving those simple problems?
Later, he realized that some people really do feel agony in the learning process.
Being young and lacking extensive life and social experiences, having spent most of his time in classrooms as a student:
you can't feel frustration and torment from difficult problems, nor joy and exhilaration after solving them, there's no sense of repression, no sense of effort, naturally, there's no sense of achievement.
Facing a sea of problems is like doing an extremely tedious squared graffiti.
Especially when he tried like other students to report his grades to his parents in hopes of approval, his own mother always looked at him with an increasingly cold gaze.
As if he was making a mistake, and the more mistakes, the worse.
Thus, he couldn't derive any emotion from studying, only... numbness.
came from that moment when he fell into the water and saw Little Huang Ying.
He felt oppressed, he felt pain, and more so when witnessing Big Beard and his son drowning in the pond, and Little Huang Ying's final dance on the water surface. He experienced a sense of achievement.
Grandmaster then saw him in a daze there and advised him to think of happy things, like eating a feast.
He didn't tell Grandmaster,
at that moment, inside... he felt exhilarated.
A brand-new door had cracked open in front of him.
He started to unknown and bizarre feeling,
he finally experienced ignorance and bewilderment, that sense of powerless and uncontrollability brought him some pleasure.
He thought that his grandmother's action of calling his soul with a needle and dropping it into a bowl of water was amazing.
He looked at Liu Jinxia, looked at Li Sanjiang, and realized they were more amazing.
They understood so many concepts, they remembered so many formulas, they could solve problems,
was just a poor student.
Li Zhiyuan's hand, explored beyond the edge of the bed, he seemed to feel a breeze, very slight, so slight he even doubted if it was just his imagination.
Moreover, he couldn't see his hand that he had extended beyond the edge of the bed.
He drew his hand back, placed it in front of him, hmm, the hand was still there.
Then, he stretched out his hand again, this time, downwards.
It seemed to feel a bit cold, still very slight, but at least he could be sure there was a difference in the tactile sensation.
At the same level as his bedside, in the invisible space outside, there were two different mediums of sensation.
Li Zhiyuan closed his eyes, he started to concentrate his attention, trying to sense as much as possible, his hand that reached downwards also began to slowly sway back and forth, his fingers making irregular movements.
More real, more delicate, continue.
The first two dreams, the first was dreaming of Little Huang Ying coming home, the second was dreaming of the hunchbacked grandfather carrying the old lady.
So, this time's dream, shouldn't just be simply dark.
Finally, he felt it, just now it seemed like something slender had brushed past his fingertips.
He immediately lay on the bed, allowing his arm to reach down as far as possible.
Before long, that feeling recurred, and the frequency began to increase.
Li Zhiyuan immediately thought of the black seaweed he last saw, could it be, hair?
Constantly brushing past, threading through, stroking his fingertips and forearm, pinching his fingers still enabled him to grasp a fine hard sensation.
It seems, really like hair.
Li Zhiyuan's eyes lit up for a moment, just now it seemed like something gently tapped his palm, not the soft texture of hair, it was something else.
Like what, like what indeed?
Li Zhiyuan began to contemplate, trying to compare similar texture collisions in his memory as much as possible.