Chapter 26: Irene’s Ability

Chapter 26: Irene’s Ability

Irene possessed the ability to enter other people’s dreams.

And according to her, she could do more than just enter dreams. To a certain extent, she could even influence the course of a dream, such as pressing the exam-ending bell in a dream to summon a dump truck and the like.

Honestly, if used properly, it sounded like an extremely powerful ability. It might even be capable of advanced operations such as psychological suggestion, mental parasitism, or memory restructuring.

However, Yu Sheng seriously doubted how much of Irene’s boasting about her abilities could actually be trusted.

From everything he had seen so far, she was unbelievably useless even inside dreams. She could not even hide properly in a patch of grass.

And even after entering a dream, she was still trapped inside that oil painting.

Irene’s painting floated before Yu Sheng. The doll girl inside the frame looked somewhat embarrassed, while Yu Sheng found her current state increasingly awkward to look at.

Frankly, her floating in midair looked even stranger than when she was hanging on a wall.

“So even in dreams you can only stay inside the painting?” Yu Sheng twitched the corner of his mouth and finally voiced his doubt. “I thought once you got into a spiritual realm, you’d at least be able to come out and run around...”

“That’s why it’s called a curse,” Irene said helplessly. “Trapped in a painting in reality, trapped in a painting in the mental world too. No matter where I go, I can’t come out of this painting unless I find a suitable vessel. Freedom? I don’t even get that in dreams.”

“That really is miserable.”

Yu Sheng’s sigh came straight from the heart.

“Hey, but dreams are still a little different from the real world!” Apparently feeling that she had lost face, Irene hurried to defend herself when she saw his sympathetic expression. “I’m a bit freer here than in reality. Look, I can float around and stuff... Don’t laugh. Th, that’s not all!”

Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow. He genuinely became curious.

“Not all?”

After thinking for a moment, Irene struck a pose resembling a power-up stance from The King of Fighters ’98 and began exerting herself dramatically inside the painting.

She looked exactly like someone about to unleash a special ability.

Even Yu Sheng was fooled. He instinctively grew serious and watched closely for changes in the doll inside the painting.

The next second, a layer of dreamlike light actually began rippling across the surface of the painting.

As Yu Sheng’s eyes gradually widened, the painting finally transformed with a Bang!

Into an advertising poster from the 1980s.

Irene had changed into the color palette of an old movie and stood inside the poster, staring at Yu Sheng with wide eyes.

“I can change art styles.”

Yu Sheng: “...”

“You laughed out loud!!”

Yu Sheng forced his face straight. “I didn’t.”

“Your inner voice did!”

Yu Sheng no longer wanted to pay attention to this doll.

The giant fox was still lying nearby, and he had not figured out her situation yet.

Irene immediately looked hurt. Seeing that Yu Sheng was ignoring her, she floated off to the side and began muttering to herself.

“I can turn into other things too. Prints, scrolls, all kinds of stuff... I’m still researching how to become a relief sculpture. Once that works, I’ll finally have thickness. Then you won’t be able to say my character setting is shallow anymore...”

Yu Sheng could no longer endure her rambling.

Suddenly turning his head, he said, “First, when have I ever said your character setting was shallow? Second, that’s not how the term is used. By the same logic, turning into a block of marble wouldn’t make your character setting any deeper.”

Irene opened her mouth, wanting to argue.

But before she could speak, she transformed back into an oil painting with another Bang!

Her transformation duration had expired.

Altogether it had lasted less than three minutes.

Yu Sheng was dumbfounded.

He knew this doll was useless even in dreams, but he had never imagined she could be useless to this extent.

Yet this time Irene did not seem disappointed at all.

She finally noticed the white fox lying on the grass nearby.

Or rather, she finally noticed that the giant fox seemed strangely out of place compared to the rest of the dreamscape.

Curiosity quickly redirected her attention.

“By the way, what’s up with this fox? Why is her color different from everything else?”

Noticing the confusion on Yu Sheng’s face, she elaborated.

“Normally, things in a person’s dream tend toward a unified color palette. Even if the dreamer doesn’t notice it, I can see it when observing. Like your dream. The sky and the grass are all gray and hazy. That’s the baseline color scheme of this dream. But this fox... she looks like she wandered in from the wrong movie set.”

She paused, then looked suspiciously at Yu Sheng.

“How did something this strange appear in your dream?”

Yu Sheng was silent for a moment.

Then he turned and looked at the sleeping white fox.

“Her name is Hu Li.”

“I know that. She’s obviously a fox...”

“I mean that’s her name, Hu Li,” Yu Sheng corrected helplessly. Then he reminded her, “Remember what I told you when I was trapped in that Other Domain? I met a fox. White fur, red eyes, a whole bunch of tails...”

Irene froze.

Her less-than-reliable memory finally started functioning as she recalled what Yu Sheng had told her before.

Her expression immediately became animated.

She stared wide-eyed at the enormous demon fox and opened her mouth several times before finally forcing out some words.

“What?! How did you drag her into your dream... Wait, that’s not right. Since when are you powerful enough to lock somebody inside...”

“I didn’t drag her here. And I don’t think she’s really being ‘locked’ here either. This is probably more like some kind of shadow or projection? I’m not sure myself,” Yu Sheng explained. “I saw her not long after I fell asleep, but I can’t wake her up no matter what I do.”

Irene looked at Yu Sheng, then at the demon fox.

Her gaze bounced back and forth between the two several times as she tried to sort out the logic behind what she was seeing.

This was obviously not easy.

“I’ve never heard of anything like this...” she muttered in astonishment.

Then she suddenly spun her frame around and stared directly into Yu Sheng’s eyes.

“Are you really human?”

Yu Sheng immediately frowned.

“What kind of question is that? If I’m not human, then are you?”

But Irene continued staring at him, her expression more serious than ever.

“Okay. A human. An ordinary person. You unknowingly live inside an Other Domain for years. Then you wander into another Other Domain and encounter a hostile entity. Not only do you make it out alive, you even cut off a local specialty souvenir from the entity, bring it back, stir-fry it, and eat it. After eating it, you’re perfectly fine. And now you can even store another consciousness inside your own dream, while the original body of that consciousness is trapped somewhere else.

“All these ridiculous things happened to you.

“And you’re telling me you’re human? An ordinary human?”

Under Irene’s crimson gaze, Yu Sheng gradually became uncomfortable.

He unconsciously shifted his eyes aside.

You’re still missing the death-and-resurrection part. Compared to that, everything else sounds almost normal...

“It is true that a lot of strange things have happened. Even I’m confused. But if we’re being honest, you’re one of the strange things that recently happened to me too,” Yu Sheng said helplessly. “Stop staring at me. I don’t know what’s going on either. Hu Li won’t wake up. If I could wake her, maybe we could ask her ourselves.”

Irene continued staring at him for a while longer, apparently confirming that he was not joking.

Only then did she slowly withdraw her gaze and focus once more on the silver-white demon fox.

She thought for a very long time.

“I have an idea.”

Irene suddenly spoke.

“An idea?” Yu Sheng asked curiously. “Let’s hear it.”

“I’ll try entering this fox’s dream. Assuming she’s dreaming right now.” Irene pointed at the demon fox. “Her current condition looks a lot like a locked-down consciousness. But no matter how well a consciousness is sealed off, it’s difficult to maintain defenses inside a dream. Maybe I can ‘see’ something. It would be even better if I could wake her up from this side.”

Yu Sheng was genuinely surprised.

Just moments ago he had been lamenting how unreliable this doll was.

Yet now she had suddenly proposed such a sophisticated plan.

“That’s actually possible?”

“It’s not difficult, as long as she’s dreaming. Even if she isn’t, your two consciousnesses are obviously connected right now. I still have ways to squeeze through and take a look. It’s just...”

She paused.

“It’s a little risky, and I’ll need your help.”

Yu Sheng’s expression instantly turned serious.

“No problem. Tell me what I need to do.”

“Jumping between consciousnesses is like deep-diving in unstable waters. If the connection breaks in the middle, I could become trapped on the other side,” Irene said very seriously. “So I need a rope, and you’re going to be that rope.

“You’ll dive with me. Continue descending through your own dream and sink into the depths of this giant fox’s consciousness. You’ll share part of the pressure with me, which will let me focus on finding the way.

“And if something goes wrong...”

She paused.

“I’ll use a somewhat aggressive method to wake you up.

“Your awakening has the highest priority within this chain of dreams. When you’re jolted awake, my consciousness will be dragged back as well. That way both of us can safely return to the real world.

“But I should warn you first.

“My wake-up method may not be very comfortable.”

“How uncomfortable can it be?”

“...Imagine you’re taking the national university entrance examination in a dream. Before you’ve even written your name, the collection bell rings. Before you can process what’s happening, a dump truck crashes into the examination hall and turns both you and your high-school first love into paper cutouts. The kind with extremely shallow character settings...”

Yu Sheng was completely unable to understand whatever Irene was trying to describe through that bizarre metaphor.

But he figured it could not be that serious.

It was just being startled awake.

No matter how uncomfortable it was, could it really be worse than dying?

Compared to that hesitation, he was far more interested in figuring out Hu Li’s condition and understanding what exactly was happening with his dream.

“No problem. Let’s do it.”

Yu Sheng took a slow breath and nodded solemnly at Irene.

“What’s the first step?”

“Go over there. Get close to the giant fox. The closer the better.

“Actually, just lie down on one of her tails.

“Then hold my frame, close your eyes,

“and we’ll jump inside the dream.”