Chapter 317: The Nightmare at Hand
When the Ground Patrol Team took action, even the most irrational crowd was forced to calm down.
Violence is the most effective way to communicate with unreasonable people.
This moment was no exception.
However, when the Ground Patrol Team was preparing to escort me to the safe zone, I politely declined.
“No need to escort me. Don’t forget, even if these people band together, they cannot harm me in any way. I am from two different worlds.”
“But… this place is still too dangerous. There are nightmares roaming here, and if something unknown happens to you, we…”
“Don’t underestimate me. I’m not just a weak scholar who deals in theory. Step aside.” I looked at the captain of the Ground Patrol Team, my gaze cold.
For some unknown reason, my tone and demeanor carried indifference and contempt when facing these people.
It was as if I regarded them with disdain, completely disconnected from one another. I didn’t know what had provoked me; perhaps it was their attitude or the normalcy of their lives that unfolded before me without reservation.
“This scholar, please don’t make it difficult for us. Protecting you is my duty. Even if you want to protect these little ones, we won’t care. Please cooperate with us. Even if you are an outsider, this is our home turf, and even if you are a distinguished scholar, we…”
“You also need to step aside; you can’t stop me.” I interrupted them, then bowed my head to the little ones nearby and said, “Stay put. I’ll come back after I take care of something.”
Then I headed straight toward the area they were blocking. The captain instinctively wanted to stop me but couldn’t quite reach me.
“Tsk… d*mn… all Ground Patrol personnel! Enter the blocked area and protect that scholar!”
With this command, the Ground Patrol people exchanged glances, wondering if the captain was joking. He couldn’t even reach me, so how could they protect that scholar?
“Fools… just go through the motions. You all go disperse those fools; the rest come with me. Regardless of whether it works or not, we need to show we tried, understand?” the captain angrily walked over to the Ground Patrol members and whispered, then took the lead and charged forward.
Soon, everyone realized what to do and followed. Some were responsible for dispersing the crowd, and after the captain’s intimidation, those people didn’t dare stay.
If specific charges were laid against them, they would be crying; no one wanted to be accused of gathering to confront a scholar, so it was essential to get back quickly.
At that moment, I entered the area of the nightmare invasion.
As I got closer, I “saw” the remnants of the unique power and information left by the nightmare.
Entering a house, I looked at the person who had already been invaded by the nightmare. The aura around them, and… the things I could touch…
After being attacked by the nightmare, do these people have their consciousness escape their bodies, forming a ghostly presence in the dream?
I looked at a dream body that almost overlapped with reality, the aura of the nightmare entwined around them. In their dream, they struggled continuously as if encountering something terrifying, their reactions causing their real bodies to display fearsome expressions.
Their behavior after being attacked by the nightmare seemed somewhat different from us outsiders; perhaps it was worth researching. However, I was still more interested in the primary culprit behind all this, which was the nightmare itself.
Nightmares don’t have a specific form. Initially, I had trapped the nightmare using elemental weaving to create a seamless cage. But now, with the Dream Rewriting Spell, everything became much simpler.
When my power touched this nightmare, it immediately became alert and began to move. This dark energy coalesced into a grotesque human face, issuing a wailing scream toward me.
“This? This is what scares people?”
I waved my hand and trapped this nightmare energy; this operation was effortless for me.
Suddenly trapped, the nightmare showed a hint of disbelief on that grotesque face, then began to struggle frantically but couldn’t escape.
“Exactly. It’s just a fragment of a complete nightmare. To disperse its power like this and invade so many, doesn’t it fear self-destruction?”
At this moment, Ground Patrol personnel slowly appeared at the scene. When they clearly saw the dark nightmare, they were too terrified to advance.
“Looks like the troublesome ones have arrived.” I turned to look at them. Upon noticing their trembling legs and their refusal to advance, I realized they were all cowards.
But from another perspective, the Ground Patrol was just workers there for a paycheck—why risk their lives for that meager salary?
“Are you all just going to stand there? Don’t you realize you’re in the way?” I said, holding onto the piece of nightmare I had just captured. The nightmare’s fragmented nature meant that it couldn’t be dealt with without special means.
Moreover, I found that the smallest segments of nightmares seemed to contain a thread of fortune, indicating that these nightmares had already been “assimilated” by the script, becoming tools—no, tool nightmares.
“You… you… is this a nightmare? You’ve captured a nightmare?”
“Just one of them; the main one hasn’t been dealt with yet. This isn’t a matter you can intervene in; don’t you get it? Just staying out of my way is the biggest help you can provide.” After mocking them, I stepped over them and left.
The piece of nightmare in my hand should also count as the bait I’ve found.
“Nightmare, if you don’t come out, this fragment of yours will be gone.”
As I spoke, a fireball suddenly appeared in my palm, the intense heat prompting the trapped nightmare to thrash wildly, but in the end, it still couldn’t escape my grasp.
I looked around; there seemed to be no response. Was I not threatening enough? Or was the thread of fortune in this nightmare fragment not enough to grab its attention?
But the next moment, countless dark nightmare auras began to converge from all directions in the blocked area, gathering into a massive nightmare not far in front of me.
The swirling black mist seemed to solidify the air around it, causing the Ground Patrol personnel who had followed me to hold their breath. Such a horrifying scene was something they had never witnessed in their years with the Ground Patrol. If they had known that the nightmare they were blocking looked like this, they wouldn’t think it was an easy task at all.
My gaze was fixed on the nightmare; this was the first time I was examining the form of a nightmare so seriously. However, the information it reflected was beyond my comprehension—it even started to make me feel uncomfortable after a while.
But nightmares were not merely there for me to observe. It formed a face reminiscent of a human, opening a large mouth and howling as it charged at me.
The intense aura emitted by the nightmare created a huge pressure, sweeping over everyone present with fear and dread, and this emotion began to grow within everyone’s hearts.
Without special spells to counter it, I could hardly withstand it just relying on my will and emotional control. Clearly, it surpassed the bounds of what could be suppressed by sheer will. Without equal extraordinary means to counter this spreading emotion, the consequences would be unimaginable.
I had to admit the nightmare’s methods; at least in terms of emotion, it had already surpassed me. While this drain seemed to hone one’s will, I clearly had no time to use this nightmare as a sharpening stone.
In the next moment, the nightmare’s formed face tried to penetrate my body to deal a blow to my mind, but suddenly it slammed into something that felt like a barrier and could not advance.
“Being led into a tiger’s den is no different.” With a wave of my hand, the Dream Rewriting Spell surged, transforming the barrier against the nightmare into a cage that trapped it.
I had previously said that since I obtained the Dream Rewriting Spell, I had become “invincible” within the dream dimensions. If they wanted to resist the effects of this spell, they were essentially battling against the entire dream.
Or perhaps the spell effect isn’t entirely accurate; the essence of this spell is to replace the information channels of the dream itself, thereby causing effects that are the direct actions of the dream itself, or rather, the laws of the dream.
Therefore, I said that opposing this spell is like opposing the dream itself, and this constitutes the core concept of the spell—using the environment.
The immense and intimidating nightmare was, at this moment, isolated by the dream itself, transformed into a swirling mass of black energy in my hand.
Such a stark contrast was truly astonishing, especially to the Ground Patrol present, who had never encountered a situation like this.
“Looks like you’re all here… indeed, it’s time to clean up the aftermath.” I turned to look at the Ground Patrol; at least now, they had some usefulness.
“When you go back, you can explain the situation directly. The nightmare has been taken by me and contained in the Extraordinary Research Base. I will dissect it and find a way to eradicate nightmares. You should understand how to explain it to the outside world, right?”
“Y-yes… we understand…”
At this moment, the middle-aged man who served as the Ground Patrol captain quickly got up to respond.
“Good.”
Seeing they had the sense to cooperate, I stopped regarding them, leading the nightmare to the earlier gathering of dreamers. However, as I approached, they instinctively revealed fearful expressions, their gazes fixed on the object in my hand.
“Don’t be afraid; it’s already trapped by me.” I reassured them. It seemed the fear of nightmares was deeply ingrained in them.
Even though they had once been a part of these dream creatures, when they chose to become true life forms, that instinctive rejection of nightmares resurfaced.
“It’s okay. Next time you encounter difficulties, come find me directly. If I hadn’t been here with you this time, you might have suffered, right? Now go back and have a good rest; I hope to see you in my laboratory full of energy tomorrow.”
I reached out, instinctively wanting to pat these little cuties, but my hand met empty air.
After saying goodbye to those lovely dreamers, I prepared to return to the Extraordinary Research Base with the nightmare. Maintaining regular working hours was part of my routine. At the base, all-nighters were commonplace for those geniuses.
I needed to attempt to create a device to trap this nightmare tonight. After all, what trapped it was my spell, and if I didn’t maintain the spell’s effect, the dream would cease receiving the corresponding information, and the cage confining the nightmare would dissipate.
At that point, the nightmare would regain its freedom, and I certainly could not allow such a thing to happen. I still had many questions to extract from this entity.
I hoped that the folks at the base wouldn’t get a fright from this nightmare.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Underground City,
Bai Yu strolled along the bustling streets, muttering to herself.
Her gaze penetrated the splendor and commotion of this place. The passersby and street thugs appeared to her like scenes in slow motion; through their actions, she saw their essence, and through essence, she perceived human nature.
The sights here were things she had never before witnessed—an absolute impossibility in the world she resided in.
She saw people harming others for their own selfish desires, observed individuals revealing their ugly human nature beneath their unmasked instincts. She questioned if this really was what ordinary meant.
To her, ordinary was a norm, a life’s standard, yet that did not signify mediocrity, nor did it suggest a lack of value and meaning.
If this world’s ordinary people displayed their norms like this, what then was their value and significance?
She needed to continually shift perspectives, to immerse herself in their understanding of the ordinary, but this undoubtedly disrupted her own beliefs.
Bai Yu suddenly halted, standing still. Taking a deep breath, as a body cultivator, her ability to control her state had become instinctive for her—indeed, body cultivation, not just body techniques.
When she previously chose her graduation topic, she selected the most common branch, the Soul topic: Ordinary, because Bai Yu felt that if she were to be described in one word, her journey had indeed been exceedingly ordinary. She had once entered the Witch Academy filled with aspirations, but reality dulled her edges.
Perhaps her mentor wasn’t wrong; her experiences at the Witch Academy had been about continuously accepting her part as an ordinary being among the masses.
So, how exact was her ordinary life’s turning point?
Was it… when Xiao Han decided to fill out her application for the Witch Academy?
Bai Yu didn’t know; she was simply filling her mind with these thoughts, hoping they would clash and produce an answer for her.
But once again, it bore no fruit.
Bai Yu looked at those around her, their greedy attempts to satisfy their desires, recklessly displaying the ugliness of their humanity. Was it their fault?
Perhaps it was, but more so, it was the environment. The environment shapes one’s character; the beauty and ugliness of human nature intertwine, just like ordinaryness, where everyone’s definition holds variations.
Everything seemed to return to square one—in understanding the ordinary, in researching the subject of ordinariness. She started from exploring the external world, only to redirect to her recognition of it.
Perhaps she shouldn’t evade like this but should instead seek to understand, just like she had accepted and understood her own ordinariness during her long stay at the Witch Academy; she should also accept their definition of being ordinary.
She looked at a disabled person sitting in a wheelchair passing by her; even with a physical disability, shouldn’t they continue to live?
This is the most genuine form of ordinaryness.
As Bai Yu pondered thus, a woman who was clearly dressed in nurse attire hurriedly approached, grabbing the backrest’s handle.
“Are you trying to k*ll yourself out here? Don’t you know where this is? If you keep this up, you’ll be going back early; forget about coming out for the next few days!”
“Isn’t it too much to speak to a patient like that?” Bai Yu, following her conscience, stepped forward to say, for just moments prior, that disabled person had indeed been part of a vague insight she gained during her contemplation.
“Who are you? Don’t flaunt your excessive sympathy in front of me.”
“No, I’m merely questioning how you, as a nurse, treat a disabled person in this manner.”
“Question me? Are you the nurse, or am I the nurse? I advise you not to pity this guy; his circumstances and everything else ensure that his psychology is different from that of a normal person…”
“Oh… pretty girl…” Before the nurse could finish her words, an incongruous voice interrupted.
The nurse instinctively pushed him away, missing with her hand.
“Now you understand how this guy broke his legs, right? Don’t meddle in other people’s business.”
At this moment, Bai Yu was astounded by what had just occurred, the nurse’s words echoing in her mind.
Yes… this is a problem she needs to confront…
Regardless of whether it was innate or developed, their disabilities meant they would receive unusual glances from others. Growing up in such an environment equated to a psychology naturally being somewhat different from that of a normal person… they might turn out bad, or they could still face life optimistically—these are points she needed to take seriously. Her kindness and compassion wouldn’t alter this reality.
And how were those living at the bottom of this Underground City different from that disabled person?
The environment, external factors shaped them; they were not at fault.
Bai Yu watched the white figure fade away, unexpectedly awakening her consciousness in this manner.
Ordinary isn’t just about beauty and happiness; suffering and ugliness are also parts of ordinary life.
