(1)
What is the world of dreams truly like?
Each person has different dreams every day, so perhaps the world of dreams doesn’t have a fixed form.
But today, An Jing saw what the dream world looked like.
Every dream people had was like a bubble, squeezed together.
The dreams of those familiar to her appeared exceptionally large and clear, while those of strangers nearby were small and blurry.
1 An Jing rarely had such dreams—she found it most interesting that she knew she was in a dream.
3 Q 5 “If these bubbles are everyone’s dreams, then where is my dream?”
She tilted her head, looking around in confusion.
The world of dreams seemed no different from reality, but upon closer inspection, she’d find many differences.
For instance, in An Jing’s room, instead of the old, bulky monitor, there was a popular flat-screen LCD.
Strangely, the monitor wasn’t connected to a computer tower—the original tower was gone, replaced by a gas stove.
An Jing curiously twisted the knob on the gas stove.
Instantly, bright red flames rose from the burner, and then the computer screen also lit up.
It actually… turned on.
“The world of dreams, it’s truly… bizarre…”
An Jing twitched her mouth, relaxed her body, and slowly floated up.
The walls of the dream world couldn’t stop her.
She could pass through walls to anywhere.
With just a slight movement, she arrived in her sisters’ room next door.
The room was empty, with only two dream world bubbles.
An Jing stood outside the bubbles, carefully peering inside.
It was like footage from a surveillance camera, a bit distorted and blurry.
In the dream, Yu Mingfei seemed to be a leader, scolding a timid-looking middle-aged man.
—Was she venting her real-life frustrations in her dream?
As for Yu Minghui, the scene in her dream world was quite beautiful:
The sun was setting, golden maple leaves covered the ground, and she and Yu Mingfei sat on a clean long bench, heads touching, welcoming the arrival of night.
“The world of dreams…”
An Jing felt exceptionally fresh.
“Am I seeing their dreams, or am I still in my own dream, and what I see is merely a dream I’ve created within my dream?”
She tried to float further outside.
As she flew out the window, there was an inexplicable thrill, like a land animal that couldn’t fly suddenly gaining a bird’s wings.
The streetlights shone with a dim yellow light, but the street was deserted.
It was too late; almost all shops had closed, except for a single 24-hour convenience store that was still open.
An Jing curiously walked inside.
The products on the shelves were neatly arranged, as if the owner had just stepped out to use the restroom.
She tried to pick up a snack from the shelf and unwrapped it.
But it was empty inside, nothing at all.
So she squatted down again and picked up a pack of transparently packaged spicy strips.
She tore it open, but again, there was nothing inside.
Yet, she could clearly see something inside from the outside.
An Jing looked inside with surprise, then outside, and tried to touch it.
Yes, there was the outline of the spicy strips.
The spicy strips seemed to be stuck between the inside and the outside.
If this were reality, she would surely cry out in surprise and call others to see.
But in the world of dreams, anything that happened was normal.
She floated high up again, suspended in the air.
The clouds were still far from her.
She could choose to see the dream bubbles through buildings or choose not to.
—Just by thinking it.
“I wish I could fly in reality too,” An Jing said with a sigh, enjoying the feeling of flying in her dream.
“Haha—just like Superman!”
However, not all bubbles were inside buildings.
At this moment, she also saw a bubble on a park bench.
Perhaps someone was lying there, asleep.
Although winter in the south wasn’t particularly cold, it was still winter after all.
Would it really be okay to spend the night outside like that?
An Jing mumbled, slowly descending from the air, and stood before this dream bubble.
The bubble wasn’t big, and the image was a bit blurry, looking like just a bunch of chaotic intertwined lines and light spots.
“Ah… gone.”
An Jing looked at the somewhat dusty park bench, stroking her chin and muttering, “Did they wake up? Maybe just sleeping for a while…”
The sky in the dream world was pinkish-purple, giving off a fairytale picture book vibe.
An Jing lay back in mid-air, letting the wind carry her afar.
The feeling was so comfortable that she almost fell asleep even in the world of dreams.
Suddenly, she saw a gigantic bubble.
She recognized whose it was at a glance.
It was Zhu Ying’s dream.
She immediately became curious.
So she flew down.
It wasn’t far from the covered shopping street.
From where she was, it looked like it was still brightly lit, as if people were partying all night.
Like a ghost, she quickly drifted into Zhu Ying’s room.
But—Zhu Ying’s room was completely blank.
That dream bubble filled the entire room, so large it looked like it was about to burst through the walls.
“What a huge bubble…”
An Jing mumbled, walking up to the bubble.
She tentatively reached out and found that she could indeed enter.
Zhu Ying’s dreamscape wasn’t as vast as the outside.
Looking down from above, she’d find only a single street that seemed to have been cut from somewhere else.
Beyond the street was a darkness that seemed to swallow even light.
An Jing immediately found Zhu Ying’s location—she was in an alley off this street.
The street itself was lively, but all the passersby she saw had no faces, as if they were just props to fill the numbers.
In the narrow alley, several faceless hooligans blocked her path.