C119 — The New Moon

He Fei was indeed a terrifyingly efficient man.

Back then, after being polluted by the octopus plushie, he had climbed into Mu Sichen’s bed in the middle of the night attempting to murder his roommate. And now, in a dream, he could just as easily conjure a full feast and pick up a loudspeaker, shouting down the list name by name until everyone showed up.

Maybe people really were idle in dreams…

Or maybe He Fei’s loudspeaker was simply too loud.

Either way, more than half the people he called actually came.

After yelling for about half an hour, only two had not shown up: the granny from 1-1-101 and the guy who gave He Fei the poisoned cola.

The former was either hard of hearing or simply too steady-tempered to be annoyed into coming; the latter… probably feared He Fei had poisoned the food and drinks.

The organizer of this “team-building event,” He Fei, counted heads and said to the gathered crowd:

“Two still missing. Wait here, I’ll go pick them up.”

Then, right before everyone’s eyes, He Fei grabbed Sister Ji—the only one who had seen the 1-1-101 granny before—hopped onto his motor-air-bike, and sped off through the clouds.

With the only dreamer gone, that left Mu Sichen and Chi Lian alone facing a group of people…

…And the bizarre Dream Beasts attached to each of them.

Both Mu Sichen and Chi Lian felt the suffocating crisis of being surrounded by monsters.

The worst part was that they each had a monster clinging to their own backs as well. It was mentally exhausting.

Fortunately, Chi Lian still had “Yang Yunyun.”

She simply turned around and hugged “Yang Yunyun,” burying her face in her arms—choosing not to face the nightmare creatures at all.

Because of that, the Dream Beast behind Chi Lian remained half-asleep, making no further attempts to frighten her.

Mu Sichen, however, wasn’t so lucky.

He had to explain to the crowd why He Fei had called them over, help them find their seats—imagined by He Fei—and prompt them to chat with people they recognized or make small talk with those they didn’t.

He had to force himself to face these eerie, horrifying Dream Beasts.

He even had to pretend he couldn’t see them and walk right through their bodies.

It was an extreme test of his mental endurance.

All the Dream Beasts shared a spider-like base form twisted by human imagination—making them nearly impossible to look at.

Take the security chief of Shouwang Community, the man with sixteen little purple stars. His Dream Beast’s head was a single little purple star, which wasn’t too bad.

But everything behind that was horrifying:

its “neck” was made of sixteen hair-linked masks, each mask able to talk among themselves. They were lively, constantly circling the security chief’s neck, whispering into his ears.

This grotesque form likely came from the security chief’s pride in his identity—an identity earned through those sixteen purple stars, each representing a human life. Naturally, his Dream Beast took that shape.

Then there was the girl who had dismembered the swimmer—the real culprit for whom Mu Sichen had taken the blame. Her Dream Beast resembled a beautiful carnivorous flower.

Most of the time, the flower bloomed quietly, looking much like the legendary Red Spider Lily—red petals, purple stamens, stunningly beautiful.

But occasionally, the stamens would transform into a gaping mouth, revealing sharp teeth and a long purplish-red tongue. That tongue would flick out and tap the girl’s cheek from time to time, checking whether she was awake.

Mu Sichen no longer wanted to think about why her Dream Beast looked like that.

Everyone had secret, unspoken desires.

Dreams reflected the subconscious, and the subconscious both restrained and fueled one’s waking mind.

Consciousness collected external information for the subconscious, while also restraining the beastly parts of the subconscious with logic and social norms.

The subconscious, in turn, fueled the consciousness, and released the pressures and unspoken desires of daily life through dreams.

The secrets of the heart weren’t meant to be exposed.

Let them remain hidden, sealed away.

Only now did Mu Sichen fully understand why “the Butterfly” and “Dreams” belonged to the deep sea, not the sky.

The sky was for looking up, for vastness.

It gathered and dispersed; it was visible, lofty, filled with longing and aspiration.

But the deep sea—

was for diving,

for lurking beneath the surface,

for the unknowable hidden beneath.

Dreams were mental fluctuations
submerged deep within human consciousness.

They were nothing like the mental states revealed through speech, writing, glances, or expression.

Mental states could be sensed by others.

Even someone skilled at controlling their expression could still perceive their own state of mind.

But dreams couldn’t be grasped.

The subconscious couldn’t be sensed.

When people thought they’d captured a dream, that dream had already been processed by the conscious mind—no longer the original.

Thus, “Mental Dominators” belonged to the sky,

while “Dream Weavers” belonged to the ocean.

If so, then the true locations of the Dreamcatcher and the Causality Chain weren’t anywhere visible.

They must lie deeper—far more hidden.

As Mu Sichen continued to chat casually among the monster-filled crowd, an overloaded He Fei returned on his motor-air-bike.

The vehicle, which normally carried at most two and only barely managed three, was now supporting far more weight than it was designed for.

In the very front lay the Poison Cola Guy—
not sitting, but lying.

He had been tied up tightly like a rice dumpling with a long rope, then strapped horizontally to the front of the air-bike.

Behind him sat Ji Xian’an and the granny.

The granny was wedged in the middle, held firmly in Ji Xian’an’s arms—unable to escape even if she wanted to.

Clearly, both of them truly didn’t want to come, but had no choice.

He Fei, like some overlord of the dream realm, stopped the air-bike, placed the dumpling-shaped Poison Cola Guy onto a chair, and Ji Xian’an set the granny into another.

Finally, everyone with grudges involved had arrived.

“Your stage,” Mu Sichen whispered to He Fei.

He Fei immediately conjured a full table of drinks.

Everyone had one glass of wine and one cup of tea.

He Fei lifted his own cup first and said:

“We folks here—well, we met through fights more than anything.
There are grudges, resentments, and even favors among us.”

“If it were daytime, just gathering all of us in one place would probably end in bloodshed. Like me and Brother 4014 here—first thing he did when we met was feed me a bottle of poisoned cola.”

“And that young artist over there—met me by smashing a flowerpot on my head. Of course, I did repay him with a kick that’d end his family line.”

“In short, more than half the people at this table have beef with someone.”

“But now we’re in the Dream Nation—
a land without worries, without hatred.
Inside the neighborhood, we may kill each other, but here, in the Dream Nation…
Let’s smile and forget our grudges.”

“Otherwise, we’d be insulting this blue sky and white clouds.”

After finishing, he emptied his glass in one go.

Those present were moved by He Fei’s words.

Those who could drink raised their wine; those who couldn’t lifted their tea.

Everyone gently clinked glasses with the person beside them, then raised their cup toward He Fei in acknowledgment, and drank it all in one shot.

To clearly see the exact location of the Causality Chain, Mu Sichen reluctantly activated the “Eye of Truth” the moment everyone took their seats.

When He Fei spoke about “failing the blue sky and white clouds,” the corner of Mu Sichen’s mouth twitched uncontrollably.

In his eyes, the blue sky had long since turned into a sea of blood, and the white clouds into chunks of flesh.

With such a sight before him, he couldn’t force down even a sip of the drink in his cup.

Looking at the flesh and blood ocean, he couldn’t help thinking that if all the people with grudges at this table suddenly broke into a massive fight, it would actually suit the scene perfectly.

[Your friend has the potential to become a fanatical believer.]

Since he opened the Eye of Truth, Shen Jiyue appeared again, chattering nonstop.

Mu Sichen still hadn’t found the Causality Chain and could only endure it.

[Sichen, someone like you would be quite unloved by any god in a small town.]

[You’re calm, rational, intelligent. Even when polluted, as long as you haven’t gone mad, you can examine yourself, find the source of the pollution, and rely on your own strength to stay awake.]

[Worst of all—you can disguise yourself. You can stay lucid while pretending to be a follower.]

[You’re the real fallen one. No god would be fond of you.]

[But your friend is different. He is passionate and devoted. He believes wholeheartedly in everything he perceives. He would happily throw himself into a god’s embrace and take pride in it.]

[He can stir people’s hearts. He has the ability to make those around him joyful. What he believes in can influence others.]

[In any small town, a god would treasure him, turn him into a favored one—perhaps the strongest favored one—and let him act as the god’s agent.]

[The two of you were meant to be mortal enemies, yet you became best friends. How amusing.]

[Sichen, I truly appreciate you, but I’m no longer interested in turning you into my chosen.]

[I’d rather turn He Fei instead. Seeing him fight for me, and you suffer because of it—now that would be a beautiful sight.]

As the long string of words appeared before Mu Sichen’s eyes, he couldn’t stop his arm from trembling.

At this moment, he actually understood how the crossaxe must feel when trembling in the weapon slot.

It was that feeling—seeing someone you desperately want to beat up, but not being able to actually reach out and do it.

If Shen Jiyue could hear him, Mu Sichen would definitely say:

“Shen Jiyue, did the mic-ban earlier drive you insane or something?”

Otherwise, why would he chatter for so long?

Of course, Mu Sichen knew clearly that Shen Jiyue was trying to sow discord between him and He Fei—planting seeds of suspicion to splinter the Mu Sichen squad.

A truly pervasive, god-tier monster. Terrifying.

Mu Sichen could only endure Shen Jiyue’s visual and mental pollution while focusing intently on observing each person present.

He had gathered everyone connected to his squad inside the “pillar” because he wanted all the people tied to the Causality Chain in one place—to search for its whereabouts.

Normally, the Causality Chain was invisible because it belonged to the power of the “deep sea.” It “dove deep,” and no one could perceive its full form.

But here, in a group dream, under the influence of the ocean’s power, abstract concepts that usually stayed submerged could manifest physically.

Here, he should be able to see the Causality Chain.

Mu Sichen reviewed all the information he possessed.

Deep sea. Butterfly. Dreams. Subconsciousness. Deep diving…

Suddenly, countless butterflies appeared before his eyes.

It was a sign that he was understanding too deeply—becoming gradually polluted.

Yet precisely because of this, Mu Sichen discovered a clue.

He immediately picked up the wine cup, let his hand pass straight through the pink-dress Dream-Hunting Beast, and firmly pressed his palm onto He Fei’s shoulder.

 

Mu Sichen said to He Fei, “Brother Fei, do you still remember the cushion we saw at the company? What does it look like? Give me one.”

The image of the cushion surfaced in He Fei’s mind, and the cushion naturally appeared in his hands.

Mu Sichen took the cushion and looked at the butterfly totem embroidered on it. The color in his left eye gradually turned purple — the contamination was intensifying.

But it was all right; this time he wasn’t staring directly at the Dreamweaver, so the corruption was still controllable.

Butterflies multiplied before Mu Sichen’s eyes; soon people’s faces ceased to look like faces and instead became butterflies. The tide sound rose in his head again, and this time the tide conveyed information to Mu Sichen — it was his own voice.

He wasn’t hearing other people; after being tainted by the butterflies, the voice came from deep inside his subconscious — his own subconscious voice made manifest.

People often called sudden insights “a flash of inspiration.” In reality that was the subconscious signaling the conscious mind after it had accumulated and transmuted too much input: quantity turned into quality, and the subconscious handed a signal back up to consciousness, becoming the source of inspiration.

Mu Sichen believed that to seize the Causality Chain that arose from the subconscious, he had to rely on his own subconscious. But he couldn’t read his subconscious directly; he had to use the butterflies’ power to materialize it.

Sure enough, the voice at his ear kept telling him: “Do you know? Inside every person’s brain there lives a latent butterfly. For some people the butterfly never appears; for others it does. Modern medicine calls this a lesion, but they don’t know the butterfly has always been there.”

“Can you see this butterfly?”

Mu Sichen widened his eyes and stared at the people chatting and drinking around him. He saw butterflies dormant inside their minds.

Some were still in cocoons; others had already burst free and become butterflies.

He Fei… the butterfly in He Fei’s head was already about to take flight.

Mu Sichen also saw chains on butterflies in different states

These chains bound the butterflies, coiling around people’s brains, then stretched out from those brains and plunged into the sea of blood beneath their feet.

Mu Sichen lowered his gaze and followed a chain down into the blood-sea. His purple eyes gleamed faintly; he clearly saw, deep within that sea, a massive spider the size of a small island sleeping in ambush.

On the spider he saw countless webs; the webs spread across the seabed and climbed upward, the silk ends attaching to the Dream-Hunting Beasts on everyone.

And the webwork that extended from the bottom of the blood-sea was far greater than the few threads connected to the people here — the webs fanned outward, linking to the brains of every real soul throughout the dream-space, shrouding the whole dream realm.

The dream-space’s formation was actually founded on the “Dream-Catching Net,” with false souls as the filling elements — a vast subconscious space.

So this — this was the “Dream-Catching Net”!

He had thought it a net; he hadn’t expected a spider so enormous, larger than a blue whale, comparable to the legendary Xuanwu beast.

No wonder Shen Jiyue said the Dream-Catching Net had the power to harm the Heavenly Star tiered beings.

Harm was an understatement. Mu Sichen thought that even if the Big-Eyed One came personally, it might be ensnared by the Dream-Catching Net and have its true body severely wounded.

[Don’t just stare at the Dream-Catching Net — find my dream, too.]

Shen Jiyue’s handwriting appeared more entangled than before; every stroke’s end connected into a knotted mess, making the text look like a snarled tangle when examined closely.

But it was precisely these domineering, chaotic lines of text that forced their way into Mu Sichen’s field of vision, shoving aside the butterflies fluttering everywhere and giving his butterfly-corrupted mind a moment of breathing room.

Shen Jiyue was right. With his own strength alone, Mu Sichen couldn’t defeat the Dream-Catching Net. Even the now-evolved crossaxe couldn’t do it.

He really did need Shen Jiyue’s help.

Even knowing he was bargaining with a tiger, he still needed Shen Jiyue’s power — only together could they contend with the Dream-Catching Net.

Through the tangled strokes of text, Mu Sichen searched across the giant spider’s body. At last, on the creature’s abdomen, he found a sphere wrapped layer upon layer in thick webbing.

Even though it was wrapped into a white cocoon, Mu Sichen still recognized it — it was a New Moon.

The new moon was normally invisible — the dark side of the moon, a part that even Shen Jiyue himself had never been able to capture. It was also a Hidden star-level relic.

Mu Sichen faintly realized that this was a missing piece of Shen Jiyue. If Shen Jiyue were to obtain this new moon, his power would surge dramatically — bringing him even closer to Mi Tian.

He absolutely couldn’t allow Shen Jiyue to obtain this New Moon!

 

---