“I need to know Wu Yi’s location, so please take us to the Master as soon as possible.”
“Alright, alright, since you’re all so insistent.”
The little nightmare couldn’t win against Kefulu and had no choice but to leave the house, clearly lacking enthusiasm.
Nightmares still kept their nocturnal habits—working at night and sleeping during the day. It was dusk now, which for her was basically the crack of dawn.
She had been planning to get a bit more sleep.
……
The reasoning master, however, was already up.
She sat upright at her desk, lightly pushing up her half-rimmed pink-violet glasses, accidentally revealing a mesmerizing beauty mark by her eye.
Her generously proportioned chest was supported by the edge of the desk as she carefully studied a shard of a dream, jotting something down in a book.
Upon hearing footsteps at the door, she didn’t even look up before calling out prices with practiced ease:
“‘Want to eat xx today’ shards, 1 stone. ‘Want to go somewhere’ shards, 3 stones. Other dream fragments—price negotiable… The cashbox is on the desk, take it yourself.”
Wu Yi’s dream shards were a hard currency around here.
Trendy nightmares would sometimes decorate their homes with rare falling thoughts, like “bash that dumbass Wuma’s dog head in.” Since they were relatively uncommon—only a few hundred left in existence—they were treated like antiques and proudly displayed.
The Master was undoubtedly a passionate collector.
The display cabinet behind her was filled with all kinds of bizarre and rare dream fragments.
It felt more like a museum than a residence.
The little nightmare traded a freshly picked fragment for a small stone coin and raised her voice:
“Luoye-jie, these two newcomers are here for information about Wu Yi.”
“Newcomers?!”
Luoye suddenly looked up.
She stood up excitedly. “It’s been a hundred and forty years since we had any newcomers. Quick, tell me—what’s it like out there now? Did the Divine King win?”
“The Divine King? The grass on his grave is probably two meters high by now,” Kefulu raised an eyebrow.
“Impossible!”
“You collect dreams all day—don’t you know anything about the outside world?”
“Of course I do.”
Luoye gave a bitter smile and shook her head. “Anything related to the Divine King—Wu Yi wouldn’t easily discard it. What’s stored here is mostly her emotions and private desires. In other words, trivial stuff.”
“So you don’t actually know much?” Kefulu sounded a bit disappointed.
“That depends on what you’re asking.” Luoye proudly glanced at her collection cabinet. “If it’s about the world’s structure or current affairs, I’m clueless. But when it comes to Wu Yi herself—her personality, her circumstances… I know her better than she knows herself.”
“Then where is she?”
“Oh my, you’re quite the domineering big sister, aren’t you?” Luoye gracefully perched on the edge of the desk and sipped her tea. “Is this how you usually ask for favors?”
“I don’t ask for favors,” Kefulu smiled slightly and used her tail to lift Wu Yi’s chin. “They tell me everything they know on their own… Would you like to try?”
“Whoever you are, I don’t do business without profit.”
Luoye set down her teacup. “I can give you the intel you want, but in return, you’ll have to tell me what the world outside is like.”
“Deal.”
A fair exchange—exactly Kefulu’s style.
“Ah, fish!”
On the side, a dazed Wu Yi pressed her face against the fish tank, staring at the swimming fish with rapt attention.
“Is this your daughter?” Luoye asked curiously. “She doesn’t look very smart.”
“Don’t mind her. Let’s get started.”
“Oh! Uh… alright.”
Luoye gave Wu Yi a few more glances.
For some reason, she looked vaguely familiar.
But the relevant memories seemed distant, buried so deep she couldn’t quite remember where she’d seen her before.
“Follow me.”
With a gentle wave of her hand, the display shelf full of colorful dream fragments swung open with invisible force, revealing a dreamy and mysterious passageway behind it.
She led Kefulu and Wu Yi straight down the corridor, all the way to the end.
“Wah~” Wu Yi gazed at the scene before her, her mouth forming an ‘O’.
It was a vast museum stretching beyond the eye’s reach.
Countless dream fragments were displayed on the shelves, organized by year and further divided into nine vertical sections.
Each of the nine vertical sections bore a label:
[Wu Yi] [Wu Ye] [The Prophet] [The Ballad-Singer] [Bringer of Thunder] [Star-Pointing One] [Unknown] [Unknown] [Unknown]
“This place stores information on Wu Yi and her eight subordinates,” Luoye proudly patted her chest. “Over the years, I’ve archived all the data I collected here. No one in the world knows more about Wu Yi and her eight subordinates than I do.”
Had she ever made it out back then, these records would have earned her immense prestige in the divine realm.
But she didn’t feel regret. Years of research and peace had made her lose interest in the outside world.
There was only one thing she still cared about: Wu Yi herself.
“I don’t care about the others. I just want to know Wu Yi’s location, weaknesses, and preferences,” Kefulu said bluntly.
“Location? One moment.”
Luoye pulled a book off the shelf.
She flipped through it, thoughts gradually coming together.
She spoke confidently and wisely:
“According to my research, over the past 140 years, Wu Yi has been dreaming about ‘wanting to eat xx’ more and more frequently… This suggests that for some reason, she hasn’t been able to eat decent food.”
“In Dream Calendar Year 137, there was an entry: ‘Damn it, the roof’s blown off again. Might as well zap the whole storm.’ In 138, 139… and so on—records like this are countless over the past 140 years.”
“So?”
“This leads to one conclusion: her current living environment is extremely harsh. It’s a storm-prone area.”
Storm-prone.
Kefulu quietly took note.
“Frequent storms and scarce food… it’s very likely far from any civilized cities,” Luoye snapped the book shut. “So I’d guess there’s a 99% chance that she’s hiding on…a remote island in the open sea!”