Recap
“Please remember, the dream that everyone will face in this instance is a world built on your fear.”
“But a dream is a dream, it’s a fake world. Everything you fear that happens to you in the dream is also fake. Fake things ‘shouldn’t’ be able to kill anyone.”
“Unless you think you will be killed.”
“Then you will also be forever trapped in this dream.”
“If you want to live, face your fear and wake up from the dream completely.”
As his voice trailed off, a wave of dizziness struck everyone.
In dormitory 414, Song Yang and the old lady heard the sound of water droplets falling on the ground at the same time.
The sound of water droplets was also transmitted to the three people in dormitory 417 through the mobile phone.
Everyone couldn’t move and could only hear the constant “drip” and “drip” sounds, as if water was continuously overflowing from the pool…
At a certain moment, a weak whimper emerged, as if someone had woken up.
—The not-so-clear whimper quickly turned into a terrified cry, followed by indistinct cries for help like drowning, and the sound of limbs slapping and struggling in the water.
No one could move, everyone could only listen with their hearts in their throats, waiting.
Liu Yi and Jia Qing were already crying. They recognized the weak female voice, it was Wang Yueran’s voice!
Xia Jing looked at the clock hanging on the wall. The dial was enveloped in a faint green fluorescence, and the second hand was moving forward mercilessly, not planning to stop at all.
“Help…呜…huh…”
Amidst the sound of water, Wang Yueran’s cries for help gradually became desperate and weak.
A few seconds later, her whimpers and the chaotic splashing sounds disappeared completely.
It was as if she had completely stopped struggling.
Jia Qing and Liu Yi felt a pang in their hearts, unease washing over them.
Only the “drip” and “drip” of water remained on the phone, hitting everyone’s hearts, mercilessly revealing how deadly silent this moment was.
Xia Jing’s black eyes were motionless in the darkness.
The second hand kept turning, turning… until it reached twelve o’clock, zero minutes, thirty-nine seconds.
—Everyone was released from their confinement in advance!
Before Jia Qing and Liu Yi could react, a hurried knock sounded on the door.
Xia Jing rushed to open the door, Song Yang pulled the old lady in, closed the door, and quickly said, “Wang Yueran has disappeared!”
Liu Yi and Jia Qing were startled, “What?”
The old lady was also anxious, “Just now, just now she was in my arms, as soon as midnight arrived, she fell asleep, and the double vision also came. I couldn’t move, and I saw a water bubble suddenly emerge from the air and cover her whole body.”
At this moment, the old lady’s clothes were all wet.
Song Yang whispered, “Wang Yueran started struggling after she woke up, and suddenly stopped moving at the thirtieth second, and disappeared from our sight at the thirty-ninth second. Then the water bubble completely fell to the ground, and we could move.”
Jia Qing’s face was pale, “Is she dead?”
“Death won’t make a player disappear from our sight,” Xia Jing’s eyes flickered, and he chuckled, “She is a smart girl. This materialized death imagination came very suddenly, but she still bravely tried to face her fear and successfully escaped from this dream.”
Jia Qing and Liu Yi: “Escaped?”
“After midnight passed again just now, we have already arrived in Wang Yueran’s dream world. If I’m not mistaken, she escaped from this dream and should now be in Jin Nan’s dream world.”
Jia Qing was dumbfounded, “She escaped from her own dream world, what about us?”
—Why were they left behind instead?!
Just then, another knock sounded on the door.
They had been knocked on too many times tonight, and coupled with the urgency of the situation, everyone was very irritable. Jia Qing directly cursed “Damn”, and this also made the NPC outside furious.
“In the middle of the night, why aren’t you sleeping, what are you doing gathered here!? Open the door! Open the door for me!”
The knocking was very loud and hurried, like drums beating on everyone’s hearts.
Jia Qing was going crazy, “Yang-ge, Brother Jing, what should we do now?!”
Song Yang thought for a second and said, “Every night a player will be chosen, and the dream that overlaps every night is a world built around that player’s fear. So—”
Xia Jing narrowed his eyes, “Their fear is the key for them to leave this dream world, and it is also our key.”
The two confirmed that their thoughts were the same, and Xia Jing said to Jia Qing, Liu Yi, and the old lady, “We need to imagine the source of Wang Yueran’s fear in our minds. After the water bubble descends on everyone, don’t panic, remember that this is a dream, everything is fake, then open your mouths and breathe normally.”
Jia Qing and Liu Yi opened their mouths wide, obviously unable to accept this seemingly absurd approach for a while.
However, seeing that they didn’t open the door, the NPC outside had already started banging on the door, making a “bang bang” sound.
The dormitory door was a very thin door panel. If nothing unexpected happened, it would be smashed in no time.
It would be even more troublesome if the NPC broke in and they had a conflict!
Song Yang pressed Jia Qing’s head, who was dumbfounded, and said in a serious tone, “Did you hear clearly? Do as Xia Jing said, even if you don’t believe him, believe me, okay?”
Jia Qing came back to his senses, his eyes turning red.
He was trembling with fear, but he still nodded heavily, and also pulled Liu Yi, “Come on, let’s do it with Yang-ge and Brother Jing!”
Song Yang also pulled the old lady closer.
The five of them huddled together, and Xia Jing was not moved by the frantic banging on the door at all.
He lowered his eyes, his tone as calm as if he was telling a bedtime story.
“You just choked on water, and there is still a feeling of swelling and suffocation in your throat. You start to be afraid of water, and can’t help but imagine the feeling of being wrapped in water, of it entering your mouth and nose…”
Not everyone among the five present was afraid of water.
Liu Yi, Jia Qing, Song Yang, and the old lady had all learned to swim.
Liu Yi had even learned to dive.
Water wasn’t their biggest source of fear.
However, perhaps it was the tense atmosphere that added to the fear, or perhaps because this was a world built on Wang Yueran’s fear of water, when they imagined that cold feeling in their minds, they had all unconsciously fallen into a huge water ball that appeared out of nowhere.
The cold water enveloped them.
“Drip”, “drip”, “drip”.
The water bubble was still a few centimeters away from the ground, and water droplets kept falling.
But for these five people, all sounds were blocked by the water.
Their vision began to distort and shake. Jia Qing and Liu Yi subconsciously held their breath. The old lady hesitated, then closed her eyes, and opened their mouths with Song Yang and Xia Jing, taking a deep breath.
Xia Jing looked up, his slender neck showing a fragile posture in the water.
His expression was calm and happy.
It was the joy of finally reaching the climax of the story.
……
Unlike the creator of the dream, those who enter the dream don’t need to fall asleep first.
And people are dazed and confused in the moments after waking up.
They suddenly find the thing they fear most right in front of their eyes, suddenly feel the coming of death, they struggle, but fear keeps climbing up their bodies from their heels until it completely envelops them.
Before they even realize that this might just be a dream, they are already killed by fear in the dream.
However, the challengers of the dream are in a different situation.
They already know the core fear of this dream, they are prepared, and they face this challenge awake.
So when everything officially starts, although there is still a moment of panic, seeing the partners around them and opposite them bravely remain calm and take deep breaths…
Jia Qing and Liu Yi looked at each other, gritted their teeth, and with the mentality of “die if we die”, opened their mouths wide and took deep breaths.
At first, water poured into their mouths and noses, they started choking, suffocating, and struggling.
Jia Qing shouted in the water, “This is fake… this is fake!”
His indistinct voice reached Liu Yi’s ears through the waves.
Liu Yi closed his eyes, his heart pounding.
All of this was a dream, it was fake, Wang Yueran had also left this place by facing her fear, she had succeeded, this was feasible…
Strangely, as this thought arose, he suddenly found that he could breathe normally…
Then, a wave of dizziness hit him.
Liu Yi woke up from the dormitory and found himself sitting on a stool in dormitory 417, with Jia Qing sitting opposite him and Xia Jing standing in the middle of the dormitory.
The three of them were holding their mobile phones, maintaining the posture they had before midnight.
Jia Qing’s face was still dazed. Xia Jing was the first to put down his mobile phone, ran to open the door, and Song Yang and the old lady pulled Wang Yueran in, quickly closing the door!
Wang Yueran was completely unharmed, and she shouted excitedly in a low voice, “We did it! We all did it!”
Just now, when Wang Yueran was being attacked by the water ball and was about to suffocate to death, she suddenly remembered Xia Jing’s words before she was forced to fall asleep.
She told herself, it’s worth a try, there’s no way out anyway, might as well give it a shot.
She opened her mouth and told herself that all of this was fake, as long as she faced her fear, she could leave the dream world!
Then she found that the water ball had disappeared, and she could breathe!
But she was the only one left in the dormitory!
Until three seconds passed, Song Yang and the old lady suddenly appeared beside her!
Xia Jing looked at the luminous clock and said, “We stayed in your dream world for three minutes, and returned to Jin Nan’s world three seconds after midnight.”
However, Jin Nan’s dream world was a world where time had been reversed.
So they actually stayed in Jin Nan’s world for more than two hours.
“Damn, won’t someone have another dream?” Jia Qing asked subconsciously.
This time, even Liu Yi was smarter than him, “It’s already past midnight, and no one is dreaming. This means that as long as we start going back along the nested dreams, no one will have any more dreams, right? Because we have already started to ‘gradually wake up’!”
As soon as he finished speaking, the sound of “bang bang bang” banging on the door sounded again, and the teacher NPC outside started yelling again, “In the middle of the night, why aren’t you sleeping, what are you doing gathered here!? Open the door! Open the door for me!”
“We have to keep moving forward, right? Let’s hurry up and start!” Wang Yueran whispered.
“Speaking of which, the source of fear in Jin Nan’s world is bugs!” Liu Yi’s face was distorted.
___
T/N: Mine would be bugs too 🤢🤢
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Update: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
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