Chapter 175: Chapter 111 Infinite Loop_2
Yan Fei had just awakened and was running back and forth on the road, which had greatly drained his strength. Moreover, the shock of the images seen in the black hole face of the child left him unable to concentrate and unleash his true Strength. As a result, he was easily killed by the shadowy figure, dying in an extremely pathetic way…
As Yan Fei closed his eyes reluctantly, he was jolted at heart and suddenly shouted, sitting up in bed. He snapped to full alertness, only to realize that he had just had a dream. In that bizarre dream, he had been killed by a shadow that suddenly appeared.
After waking up, Yan Fei found himself lying in bed, sweating profusely. It could be considered the most terrifying nightmare he had ever experienced. He sat up and began to survey his surroundings. Suddenly, he felt a chill because he saw that the room was still shrouded in a dense White Mist; within the fog, his visibility did not extend beyond two meters, and everything in the room was indistinct and unclear.
Yan Fei felt a nameless tension in his heart. He took a few steps out of his room, only to find that the outside World was an expanse of white, with only objects within a two-meter radius visible; anything beyond was hidden in the White Mist, appearing and disappearing intermittently. He went to the neighboring room, Wen Rou’s, and began to knock on the door. Still, no one came to open it. He hit the door again, entered the room, and found that although Wen Rou’s daily items were there, Wen Rou herself was nowhere to be seen.
Yan Fei stood dazed in the room; it was only after a long while that he began to search for the traces of other people in the Mountain Stronghold. Just like before, everyone in the stronghold, even the animals and poultry, had vanished without a trace. Even the insects in the dense forest and birds in the sky could not be heard. Everything before his eyes was exactly as he had experienced in his dream.
Yan Fei attempted to sense his Drone Avatar but failed to make any contact. He tried to sense the Universal Space but could not feel it, let alone open it, as though he had lost the Drone Avatar entirely.
Yan Fei sank into deep thought; he was totally unclear about what situation he was facing now. If he was dreaming at the moment, then why did he feel like he was in a dream? Generally, when one realizes they are dreaming, they should wake up, right? Besides, he had been killed in his dream and then woke up. So had he woken up still inside another dream? A dream within a dream?
Yan Fei lifted his left arm in front of his eyes and then flicked it with the finger of his right hand, feeling a sharp pain instantly. This convinced him that he was not dreaming, for pain could not be felt in dreams, and a sleeper could not possess the logical thinking ability he had.
Then, Yan Fei pondered another question: in the dream where he was killed, he had seen a singing child with a black hole for a face, through which mesmerizing images could be projected. He had gained a lot of information from that black hole, information that enlightened him to the whole truth. Yet, after waking up, although he could remember everything else that had happened in the dream, he couldn’t recall the images from the black hole face of the child at all.
This feeling was similar to how Yan Fei would dream when he slept but forget the content upon waking, leading him to suspect that these oft-forgotten dreams might be connected to his encounter with the Black Hole-faced child.
Thinking carefully, Yan Fei realized he remembered everything about the dream in which he was killed, including all the details of his death by the sudden shadow, except the content performed within the Black Hole, which he completely forgot; he had no memories of that part. Therefore, at this point, he could not be sure whether his death by the shadow was a dream or not because it felt too real and unlike an ordinary dream. If that previous incident was not a dream, then what was his current state? Could he have become a Ghost?
With growing confusion in his heart, Yan Fei went to the giant rock at the top of the Mountain Stronghold, hoping to find the Black Hole-faced child there again. But to his disappointment, there was no one there, no trace of the child, nor was there singing. A notion struck him, and he looked down to find words written on the spot where the child had squatted, but several deep scratches had defaced the words, obliterating them to the point of being unreadable. Just before he was killed, he had only cared about the images in the Black Hole and not noticed what the child wrote on the ground; it was unfortunate that they were now destroyed.
At this juncture, Yan Fei was unsure about his state of being. If his previous death was just a dream, then how could he explain the words and scratches that appeared on the ground? Could the setting of the previous dream transfer to the next one? Or could elements of a dream manifest in the Real World?
Yan Fei thought for a moment and began replicating the actions that led to his death, searching throughout the Dai Ethnic Village, then trying to drive the tourist minibus to leave the place. Failing that, he walked along the Highway to leave but ended up back where he started, repeating the process several times until he returned to the giant rock, still finding no trace of the Black Hole child and hearing no singing.