Fantasy Clock～Dream Ruler～

When the battle intensified and the scenes of the past came to light, Lin Yu and I were suddenly caught between dreams.

This is the result of the mutual construction of the imagination provided by us as the rulers and the recognition provided by the criminals as the observers, and the scene of the domination war is reproduced. As long as any party is killed in this collective imagination or fantasy, the other party will naturally become the winner of the dominating war.

Lin Yu's plan is to use step-by-step foreshadowing to visualize our fantasies and reproduce the cracks in dreams. When the decisive battle between us is deemed to dominate the war, the final victory will be decided. Therefore, our imagination plays a vital role and is the cornerstone supporting the existence of the entire "imaginary domain". The recognition of the observers maintains his existence.

After that, he expected to persuade me in the "imaginary domain" and win my recognition to him, so that my death could be concretized into reality and become a proof of his victory.

But to his surprise, I backed down. When the plan reached the last step, I regretted it.

All recognition and imagination are like clouds and smoke in the past, the imaginary domain collapses in an instant, and everything planned is in vain.

Can't die yet.

I blocked the hole in my chest with my hands, and tried to look in the direction of the strong light.

Lin Yu, who was standing in front of him, did not respond for a long time. The spotlight on his back made his figure facing me disappear into darkness. I can't see his expression.

I have an unspeakable apology in my arms. His vision gradually loses his sense of color, and the scene in front of him is agitated with colorful colors, like an overturned paint can spilling on his face.

The darkness engulfed the surroundings and gradually spread to the center of the field of vision, depriving the remaining sound.

The body that lost the last bit of strength fell into the bottomless abyss. When the brain formed the image again, the feeling of falling in the body disappeared instantly, and the scene in front of him was completely different.

Beneath him was a crumbling wooden chair, making creaking noises. There were two blood-red scratches on the wooden table in front, which seemed to be the marks left by someone who used nails to fasten the table.

I already knew where this place was in my heart, but the lingering confusion didn't want to let me go easily.

I raised my gaze slowly, and a young man with a scruffy beard sat across from me, staring into my eyes without saying a word.

Between us is a mirror that spans time. He is the me from the future, another me standing on the far side called fate, who is about to reach the end of life.

He knew exactly what was going on in my life, and I could empathize with his past, even if I hadn't lived his life.

Although I don't know what will happen to the future planned by the Creator for me, what awaits me on the other side of my fate is definitely not a happy ending. I can't have a bright future, and his existence is the most powerful proof that I will end in tragedy.

What confuses me is that the person in front of me should have completely disappeared a few weeks ago. It was crushed by the Creator together with consciousness.

Or, the man in front of me is just my spontaneous fantasy. Just like the tea cat reflected by Lin Yu's longing in the past, he is also a reflection of my obsession with the future.

"I said, will you atone for a crime you haven't been convicted of?"

The words are subtly different from usual.

"The mistakes you have forgotten are worth remembering and making up for the consequences of your mistakes. If it were a crime you couldn't be sure whether you committed it, would you still atone for it without hesitation?"

I silently stared at the smiling young man in front of me, did I seem to be indifferent in his eyes? I actually heard his question and wanted to respond to his question, but my whole body was blocked and I couldn’t freely control my body. Everything was like a movie based on a virtual reality program, and I could only observe myself With everything I see, I can't make any interference.

To some extent, the dream is like the so-called fate. Developing according to the established trajectory, it seems that changes can be made, but it has reached the destined ending.

I figured he probably knew every thought in my mind, so he didn't respond with any confusion at my non-response, just the same smile.

"Now, it's not too late."

The words I heard before were conveyed to my ears again, but the mood at this moment was completely different. Not as full of confusion and doubts as I used to be. What I feel now is a feeling of suspected grief, and a great sense of redemption.

"Only now, you still have time. Please recognize the world you live in, give up the attachment of resettlement, and remember the essence of reality you believe in."

He still had a smile in his eyes, watching me and accepting all my reactions indifferently. It seems that every emotion of mine has been continuously input into his body, and he can empathize with it.

"We grew up under the betrayal of the world, and we are forever without a fixed place, so let's give up relying on those seemingly reliable external objects. Whether it is the earth or reality. This time it is not too late, you have not enough but enough time, you can save your loved ones, and yourself."

As soon as the words fell, the whistle of the train broke through the ears. The field of vision collided with the high-speed rails and was fragmented. I stretched out my hand in a panic, and broke free from the spell that was immobilizing my body. What came into view again was a violet sea reflected by the sky, which was so beautiful that it was not like the scenery in reality.

Looking back in a daze, I was on an unmanned train. The seats are wrinkled and wrinkled from time to time, there are no windows to block the gentle sea breeze, and there are no doors that can be closed.

The body can also be controlled by oneself.

"As expected, I still don't want you to 'go back'."

The voice is pleasant and clear as ice, maintaining a subtle distance, but for the first time with a gentle voice. I couldn't help but turned around in shock from this sudden conversation, and my eyes happened to meet the girl's eyes looking directly at me. Qianyan stared at me with those eyes that seemed to freeze people's hearts without any scruples, her beauty was still breathtaking.

"All of us once believed that the earth under our feet was the reality. It was not until later that we realized that the earth that was thought to be immutable is actually taking us to wander among the stars at a rapid pace. The so-called reality is just wishful thinking. We seek external objects to place us My heart is always wandering in nothingness, like sitting on a never-ending train.”

As Qianyan said, she gently put her head on my head, and her petite hands protruded from the cuffs, stroking my hair.

"The reliance we rely on will eventually betray us. So we must use our own way to fight against the unreliable feeling of being betrayed. Because we can still walk on the train, and we can reach out the window and touch the distant world. Bihai, you can still jump off the train to interpret your own freedom. Tell me, why does lucid dream exist for this train that wanders in reality?"

The train was running on the track without going forward, rattling and rattling. I looked into those bottomless eyes, thought about her words, and couldn't help opening my mouth in an instant.

Recalling the encounters so far, there are incredible things everywhere, and even fate seems to be a deliberate joke. Doesn't the reality I live in seem like a free dream to the Creator?

Qianyan gently let go of the hand rubbing my head, and jumped off the seat soundlessly. Her hood fell back in the wind, and her straight silver hair swayed in the wind. She just stood in front of me.

"You've already found the answer, haven't you?"

The dream itself is reality. The reason reality is dominated by the individual is because it is someone's dream turned into reality. The reason why the train has no end and no direction of travel is because we are always sitting on someone else's train. To the owner of the train, it must be heading for a destination we don't know. And "lucid dream" is like walking on a train, my only freedom.

Myths are dreams shared by everyone in the world, and dreams are private myths.

We live in a dream shared by everyone, in a private myth.

Suddenly, a cold hand pressed my cheek, and I stared at the girl in front of me absent-mindedly. The speed of the train gradually slowed down, and the eternally passing scenery outside the window also tended to be still. Qianyan's icy expression faded away, and a smile appeared on her face. Just a few smiles were enough to melt half of the ice that had frozen her heart.

Finally, the train came to a complete standstill, and I regained my senses and returned to the previous room. The touch of the palm is only slightly warm, and there is only myself looking at me through the mirror in front of me.

"Okay, it's time to move forward. Your enemy is an unnatural fate, right?"

In the mirror, I let out a sigh of relief and smiled reluctantly at me. But I still can't suppress the anxiety in my heart.

"Can I really deny the future you symbolize? Your existence is the proof that I ended up in tragedy. How can I rewrite your existence?"

The smile faded from his eyes, only to turn into a toothy grin. Just barely disappeared, he laughed sincerely.

"You have denied my existence. Just before you met me."

I frowned in confusion, but suddenly woke up in his finally hearty laughter.

"You mean, I would have died in the battle with Lin Yu?"

Suddenly, the figure in the mirror is like Avalokitesvara with thousands of hands, and countless mes are scattered out. I see countless mes, from different possibilities.

"Now you, in a place that none of us have ever reached, in front of you is a future where no one knows the ending. From now on, the future you face may be lonely, sad, or countless despairs. This is the path we must take, but no matter what, please believe in what you believe at the end of the day. Even if the reality betrays you, you should never betray your decision.”

"my decision?"

"In the near future, you will also remember the decisions you made in the distant past. I believe you can find the exit and leave here."

In a trance, the countless overlapping voices had disappeared like bubbles, and my figure in the mirror scattered into indigo crystal chips, as if it had never appeared in my life. And the room that had held me captive for so many nights was once again like a scattered puzzle, falling into a blank nothingness.

"Find the exit and get out of here."

Consciousness fell into the darkness of nothingness again. Like sleeping, like dying. As if drowning in the long river of time.

I don't know how long it has passed, but the indomitable water flow ushered in a change. The fishing nets in the water brought me to the shore.

The back is wrapped in a soft touch, and the sound of dripping water keeps swirling in my ears, like the hands of a clock that never sees the sun. The rhythm of the heartbeat is getting faster and faster, catching up with the whirling pointer, and the moment I broke through consciousness, I suddenly opened my eyes, and the white light from top to bottom immediately attacked the drowsy and hazy vision, bringing an abnormal scene into my field of vision——

The bottom is not the hard wooden bed in the prison, and the pain of being cut by the steel cable just now has become a phantom pain. Now all I can feel is the comfort of cotton wool. But what I was wearing was neither the usual home clothes nor the prison uniform, nor the prison guard uniform, but a blue and white hospital gown, with something like a magnetic pole attached to the chest, which was connected to the equipment beside me.

The surroundings are not the layout I am familiar with, but a place similar to a ward, and the beds are full of drowsy patients on intravenous drip.

The medical staff are all dressed in white, as if blending into this room, coming and going dazzled me. A nurse not far away straightened the mask, picked up the needle tube from the cart, held the arm of the patient beside her, and pushed the liquid into the needle.

As for the patients in the nearby beds, they cannot be said to be complete strangers. When I recognized the face of the clinical person, I immediately felt an inexplicable chill, because I had met him once in the square of that prison. In order to make sure that I was not mistaken, I quickly looked at the other beds, and suddenly found that the middle-aged man who was one bed away was the one who had left me a note before.

The gradually expanding sense of weirdness knocked away my finally stable consciousness, and my eyes wandered around in a trance. The brown liquid in the needle tube on the passing cart made my stomach feel inexplicably nauseated. I suddenly noticed the clues of the matter, and I almost sat up from the bed, but at least I restrained my restlessness so as not to attract attention.

The scene in front of him confirmed the black cat's conjecture. The essence of this prison is indeed a core research association laboratory established in a dream under the guise of a prison.

This ward is not unfamiliar to me, it is the room where the Core Research Association used me for experiments. Although the layout of the room has undergone many changes, it is impossible for me not to have an impression of the experimental device in the middle, let alone forget that my consciousness was once connected to this device, which caused me to lose my memory in childhood at first, and later made me I recalled the sins I had committed.

Memories go back further into the past, and I had an early encounter with this device.

This huge laboratory was once called the "beyond dream" by my mother, the president of the Core Research Association.

Restraining the turbulent anxiety in my heart, I quietly tore away the needle used for the drip on the back of my hand, and then pretended not to wake up, squinting my eyes to peep at the passing medical staff. They all pushed silent medical trolleys, refilled the medicine bottles in the nearby hospital beds, sometimes pulled out the needles to squeeze some medicine, and injected liquid into the arms or backs of those people.

Although there is no precise concept, those liquids that resemble potions must be the truth that makes us sleep in a dream and cannot wake up.

All the "patients" here are criminals in that prison. When we spend the long and sunless years in the prison, in reality we just lie on the soft hospital bed, with our eyes closed and motionless, as if we are dreaming a peaceful dream.

We are as peaceful as a person in a dream, but behind the calm is numbness, a habit of being imprisoned, and forgetting our own destination.

I don't know if they have replenished my medicine bottle before I woke up, and they still have no tendency to come to our row of hospital beds, I secretly breathed a sigh of relief in my heart. But at the same time, I understand that if they find out, I will be forced to inject medicine and be driven back to the dreamland.

In this way, there may be no such opportunity next time. I have to find a way to escape from here now, and even try to take Lin Yu, Black Cat, and Xiao Lulu out if possible.

Thinking of this, I immediately searched for Lin Yu's hospital beds quietly, but there seemed to be more than hundreds of hospital beds lined up in the huge laboratory. The hospital beds farther away could not see their faces clearly at all.

But it is true. It is normal to see distant things easily only in dreams. This made me more convinced that I was not in another dream, but really returned to reality.

"Hey, how far has the experiment progressed? It's time to wake up K-0203, right?"

The sudden voice came from the center of the laboratory, and came far away with an impatient tone. I swallowed the heart that was beating wildly into my throat, and looked at the center cautiously. I saw two experimenters in white coats standing in front of the bulky computer, and the one who was accosted continued to type on the keyboard without looking up.

"Wait a little longer. You also know that girl is not a fuel-efficient lamp. If you wake her up in advance, in case something goes wrong, it is not an exaggeration to say that she can tear down our painstaking efforts. I don't want us to do so. Long-term preparations are ruined.”

I immediately recognized the speaker as Professor Huan. It was impossible not to recognize the voice of the man who had led to my imprisonment several times.

Professor Huan's tone didn't have any ups and downs, but there was almost weird excitement hidden. He leaned down as if to identify the content on the computer, and then fidgeted with his hair forever.

"Also, while you were meddling in your own business and thinking about these things, a stray mouse slipped out."

"Rat? What kind of mouse is there? If you are talking about Xue Xueer, she has no intention of causing trouble. She just stole the device just out of curiosity."

Hearing Xue Xueer's name from the man's mouth, I couldn't help but feel my chest tighten, and suddenly remembered the words Xue Xueer left me the day I first came to the prison.

But before I had time to think about it, Professor Huan's response made me lose my remaining composure.

"The rats I'm talking about are in the lab."

As soon as the words fell, I immediately felt a creepy sight, and suddenly I realized that the "mouse" in Professor Huan's mouth was not referring to others, but myself.

Thinking of Professor Huan's action of looking at the screen just now, I quickly looked at the equipment connected to me. It must be that it transmitted abnormal values ​​to the main computer in the center of the laboratory, which aroused Professor Huan's vigilance. Realizing that my disguise was useless, I hurriedly tore off the patch on my chest, jumped off the hospital bed and tried to force my way out.

But the more flustered I am, the more my hands and feet can't control me, or because I've been in a deep sleep for too long, my body can't follow my commands. I have a deep understanding of this when I wake up from extreme sleep disorders, and even more so. What's more, the tearing pain in the back still exists in the form of phantom pain.

Anyway, as soon as I got up, the soles of my feet felt weak as soon as they touched the ground, and I staggered and fell to the ground with my arms knocking down the bracket. I grabbed hold of the bracket of the medicine bottle and straightened up in embarrassment.

The abnormal sound attracted the attention of all the medical staff. Many nearby medical staff let go of their carts and gathered towards me. I pushed away the nurse who approached first, and hurried to the next bed, shaking her body vigorously, trying to wake him up.

"Hey, wake me up... Didn't you guys create a carnival atmosphere just now, clamoring to fight to the end?"

I raised my hand and patted the other person's cheek, but the person on the hospital bed remained unmoved like a corpse.

"It's useless. This is the result of our years of research on extreme sleep disorders. No matter how much the outside world shakes them, they won't be able to wake up even if it's the end of the world."

Professor Huan shouted at me provocatively. Sure enough, under the influence of the potion, we will not wake up anyway. But I faintly felt that his tone implied displeasure.

Seeing that the medical staff had approached and blocked my way out. I looked around for a week, and rushed onto the hospital bed in a panic, stepping on the edge of several beds and approaching the edge of the laboratory. With an attempt to make a mess here, the more chaos there is, the more chances I have to escape.

However, I can't find where the exit of the laboratory is hidden. In my impression, the doors of the Core Research Association are similar to transparent doors, and only when they get close will they appear like automatic sensor doors.

In other words, the existence of the door will only be noticed when it is close to one meter away. Therefore, it was impossible for me to plan the direction of escape. My whereabouts could not help but turn into a simple circle, fleeing around the hospital bed to reduce the chance of being caught. But my physical strength does not allow me to do such nonsense, if there is no feasible way, then I am just a headless chicken.

I jumped to the bed closest to the edge of the laboratory, and when I tried to grope for the edge of the wall one by one, I was sure to find the exit by going around the walls of the laboratory.

But before he took action, there was a dangerous breath behind him, and he was suddenly grabbed by the shoulders roughly, and fell off the hospital bed.

In the next second, the slender needle pierced into the skin of the neck involuntarily, and the medicine was injected into the body, instantly turning into an inviolable drowsiness, which suddenly deprived me of my clear consciousness.

The field of vision immediately returned to nothingness.