Free Web NovelChapter 787: The Severance of Dream and Reality
“What?”
April stared blankly at the figure her hand had passed through, and finally reacted.
The person before her was fake.
Watching the illusion before her eyes dissipated, she was once again left alone here.
At the moment those two figures dissipated, April felt a sliver of an urge to break down.
It wasn't because those two maids named Aila and Aini were so important to her, but because during the time she had been back, her pressure had reached its limit.
Aila and Aini were merely the final straw that almost crushed her.
She instinctively wanted to perceive whether someone nearby was playing tricks, but she discovered no abnormalities.
She was left with only her condensed, powerful mental power to perceive; she had lost all her auxiliary and sensory spellbooks, and at this moment, she felt somewhat at a loss.
She could only go to bathe alone.
Even though she had lived in the Witch Academy for many years.
The spellbooks originally used to maintain her personal cleanliness were gone too.
Bathing actually felt somewhat distant to her, but today she had no choice but to wash, or else her body's natural metabolism would give her an uncomfortable night.
“This is the one named April, right?”
In a corner of her guest room that no one noticed, two figures stood, yet the April who walked straight past them did not discover them in the slightest.
“Right, I didn't expect her to care so much about those two maids. From the perception of Heart Sense just now, she looked like she almost broke down.”
“Just the final straw, that's all.”
“What would happen if she knew those two maids had long since become the playthings of another old man in the Hawthorne Family? During the days she’s been back, those two maids knew the news and were even avoiding her a bit.”
“Somewhat pitiful…”
“Indeed.”
I nodded without objecting.
Everyone appears pitiful when showing their fragile side, but such pity is valueless.
“Let's give her a few more scenes.”
I flipped through the images of Earth Vein Backtracking.
Those were interactions between April and the two maids from when she was still small.
The atmosphere while bathing was also very happy; the warmer and happier the images, the more they could bring untouchable hope to someone in despair.
“Speaking of which, besides these two maids, what other bonds does April have? That father, or her deceased mother?”
I continued to inquire, not feeling at all whether this method of toying with others was a bit too much.
I had said from the start that I came to accomplish my goal.
During this period, I would harm many people.
This harm wasn't mere collateral damage, but harm from my direct actions.
As my main target for this trip, April was undoubtedly the protagonist most tossed around by me.
My gaze silently moved away from the bathroom, and then I quietly expanded my domain.
Accompanying the regular resonance of the domain order, the Primal Dream State of the Core Realm gradually overlapped within April's room.
I prepared to give April an unforgettable night tonight.
Since there were scruples in reality, the instincts in a dream could trigger a person's most primitive emotions.
However… the dream state was still a somewhat unreachable field for me.
Although I had the Soul Blessing, the Dream State Space, and mastered the Dream Rewrite Spell, it was very difficult to truly dominate the dreams a person had.
So I was likewise making an attempt.
Attempting to project a person's own dream into the Primal Dream State, and then dominating it through the Dream Rewrite Spell.
“Someone should be asleep by this time. Big Sis Bai, accompany me to perform some interesting experiments. It seems April still has some time before she falls asleep.”
“Okay.”
Big Sis Bai naturally followed my thoughts.
Although she also felt that what I wanted to do was a bit fantastical, she was willing to accompany Xiao Han in her mischief.
As the two figures left this room, it became as empty as before, with only the sound of water from the bathroom continuously drifting out.
“Thank you… Aila… I can wash myself… and also……”
April was just about to pick up the conversation when, under the rinsing of the shower, she turned around and that familiar silhouette vanished again.
There was only her alone in the bathroom, along with the pitter-patter of the water.
“Am I… having hallucinations again?”
After a long time, April held her forehead.
She would rather call it an hallucination than admit someone was playing tricks.
She had already begun to gradually fall into a world named the self.
“Aila, Aini… you've left again. Without you here, I don't even know whether to use the conditioner or the shampoo first…”
And at the same time, in another guest room, my dream overlap had already covered more than half of the castle.
But this time, there were no dream creatures here to cause trouble.
After all, there was no high concentration of transcendent energy here, nor was there the soul-substance they loved.
To dream creatures, this place was probably equivalent to a corner in the Primal Dream State.
But I was conducting attempts with great curiosity.
This was my first time feeling the inclusiveness of the “Primal Dream State” so intuitively.
Primal Dream State was a collective name for a concept.
Life occasionally produces dreams while sleeping, mainly because the life essence unintentionally touches the Primal Dream State.
But soul-substance was soul-substance after all.
Dreaming was basically a shallow-level dream.
Once one fell into a deep-level dream, the soul-substance itself couldn't take it, so situations where one could sleep and never wake up would occur.
Taking my soul essence as an example, the soul essence could be carried by the dream state, so the dream could be very stable and very deep, and one wouldn't be trapped because it was too deep.
If there were no external causes or stimuli, situations where one never woke up basically wouldn't happen.
But what I wanted wasn't the pros and cons of these comparisons; what I needed was how to dominate the dream.
This feeling was somewhat similar to an illusion, but there was a fundamental difference between this and an illusion.
“Xiao Han, encountered a difficulty?”
“It's fine, just a minor problem. Soul-substance is mainly too fragile; it can't withstand my overly precise operations.”
I waved my hand to indicate it was a minor issue.
Although I couldn't absolutely dominate the dream a person had, being able to achieve intervention was enough.
As for the remaining dream, as the masters of the dream, they themselves—or rather, their own instincts—would perfectly make up for this deficiency.
To accomplish this, the key was actually the other party's subconscious.
As long as I grasped the basic instinctive rule that the more one feared something, the more it would happen, grasping the rhythm and tone of a dream was relatively simple.
At this moment, the person on the bed I was using for testing began to curl up involuntarily, as if dreaming of something not very good.
As the progress slowly advanced, the other party began to struggle violently, accompanied by mutterings.
Finally, after reaching a certain threshold, a cry of alarm woke him up in a fright.
“It looks like the effect is pretty good,” I said very casually.
But what I wanted to give April wasn't any nightmare.
On the contrary, I was giving her a beautiful dream.
Only when a beautiful dream made her increasingly reluctant to leave would the gap with reality become even more violent.
Night.
April, who could no longer hold out, finally entered the land of dreams.
Although April was a former teaching assistant with an extremely high life level, it was impossible for her to constantly experience such internal self-consumption and the mental exhaustion brought to her by the entire family without becoming sleepy.
After gradually losing consciousness in reality, April's consciousness gradually woke up in the dream.
She discovered she seemed to have become young again.
The rationality originating from the dream allowed her to accept such a setting without any suspicion.
I planned to build this dream into a harbor for her soul, following her current heart.
Since she was willing to immerse herself in her own world, I would create a perfect world for her.
Her father was very good to her, and her mother was the same.
She would personally save her mother, mending the nightmare of her childhood.
She would enter the Witch Academy once more.
She would experience a completely different academy life, meet the purest friends, and be assigned to Mentor Chris, who cared for her the most.
The Mentor Chris in the dream would once again teach her the principles of life and the principles of the transcendent.
She would once again review her Witch Project research, and she would once again face a choice in life……
Letting her know that life could actually be this complete, and that life seemingly never required forced choices.
“This truly is… an enviable life.”
Big Sis Bai, watching the simulated scenes I shared and the progress of the “plot” I wrote, also let out a burst of emotion.
“If the premise that this is my handout is added, is such a life still worth envying? Life always needs to be fought for by oneself.”
I sighed and responded to Big Sis Bai's words.
“True… looking at it this way… she becomes even more sorrowful. But in just one night, can such a long life really be lived through?”
Big Sis Bai asked with some confusion.
“As a Time Sense Body Cultivator, how can Big Sis Bai ask such a question? The plasticity of time rules in a dream is immense. But doing it that way would be too hasty, so I split the dream into many days. Only by letting her feel the accumulation of time and the contrast with reality, coupled with her slight escape from reality, will she look forward to the arrival of the dream even more.”
“With the same and continuous dreams for several days in a row, won't she be suspicious?”
“Of course she will but who told her to be so good at deceiving herself? In short, don't worry.”
I waved my hand to indicate it was no problem.
“Just treat it as watching a bit of fun. When the dream wakes, the fun should end.”
“Xiao Han… sometimes I feel your ability to control people's hearts is even more terrifying than I imagined…”
“Is it? Probably not? If I were very good at controlling hearts, would my social skills be so poor? Would I have so few friends?”
“That's different…”
“It's the same anyway, don't mind these details. Next, we should arrange the scenes in reality.”
I looked up at the pitch-black sky.
These words meant that I was going to start shaping the fools in reality.
“Are you going to take action against those people?”
“Mhm-hmm.”
I nodded lightly, deciding the fate of many people in an instant.
However, what went slightly beyond my plan was that while Mo Nuo Peng City was the base of the Hawthorne Family, the important figures controlling the entire family's operation didn't have normal routines like ordinary people.
They were busy with very important matters every single moment, belonging to existences whose every minute involved millions.
But it didn't matter; I wasn't in a hurry for these one or two days.
Even if I spent ten days or half a month here, it was no problem.
When I had nothing to do, I would research the Self-generating Magic Power Perfection Ritual; naturally, nothing would be delayed.
In the blink of an eye, two or three days had already passed.
After sharing the new Self-generating Magic Power Perfection Ritual with Tan Han through the Great Tree of Knowledge, I followed Big Sis Bai out of the Dungeon World.
During these days, Big Sis Bai and I had also finished building the little house in the Dungeon World incidentally.
However, many things hadn't been arranged yet, and many utensils hadn't been decorated, so it looked relatively empty.
But it didn't matter.
As long as there was a large bed in the house that could accommodate Big Sis Bai and me, then everything was enough.
During these days, the Hawthorne Family had also visibly experienced several major changes, as well as a policy error and unpleasant incidents during exchanges with other families.
Quite a few large families, also around the Wizard Academy, soon realized the Hawthorne Family's abnormality, but they couldn't be certain exactly why, or who was dissatisfied with the Hawthorne Family and secretly pulling strings.
And if one were to speak of the greatest change, it would have to be April.
One dream after another had brought her a massive sense of severance from reality, to the point that for these past few days, she had already begun to lose the distinction between dream and reality.
And during these days, she was also scolded by her father—a roar of venting emotions.
In her impression, her father was never this emotional, but it was precisely this emotionality that thinned the majesty of his aura.
She increasingly felt that her father seemed to be gradually shedding his hypocritical mask, and she was also gradually recognizing the other party's true face.
So… father was also just a person capable of incompetent rage…
The massive contrast originating from the dream began to gradually construct a special thought in her mind, and that was… was he truly worthy of being her father?
This wasn't her first time resisting her father, nor was it her first time disobeying the family's will, but she felt she had never been as courageous as she was now.
Perhaps this wasn't just the “rebirth”-like metamorphosis the perfect family in the dream brought her, but also her Mentor Chris in the dream… teaching her those principles of life.
She was like a person silently encouraging her from behind, letting her understand what was right, what was wrong, what was brave, and what was persistence.
But she still had a kind of fear originating from instinct.
It wasn't that she hadn't experienced this kind of fake “self-awakening,” but every resistance had ended in failure.
More than one attempt made her fear the inevitably failing conclusion.
“As expected… there are still things April fears in the bottom of her heart…”
I sighed and lamented to Big Sis Bai.
“The lock on the spiritual level from the Earth Vein Chains isn't that easy to undo.”
“Then Big Sis Bai, with what kind of mindset did you advance back then? At that time, it was truly quiet, without showing a single trace of movement.”
I lightly touched Big Sis Bai with my hand and asked with a smile.
“Me… of course I was thinking of you.”
“Liar! At that time I hadn't even confirmed our relationship…… oh I understand! You were playing hard to get back then. In your heart, you already had improper thoughts about me, didn't you!”
