Chapter 160
Chapter 160
“When the hell are we getting out of here…?”
Qin Lan spoke listlessly as he twisted aside in an extravagant pose, dodging another attack from a grotesquely shaped dream monster.
At first, he had been a little clumsy against these things that disguised themselves as all manner of objects before launching sneak attacks.
By now, however, he knew the routine by heart. Sometimes he could even judge when they would attack from experience, without waiting for Yin Manqing’s warning.
But…
Qin Lan had lost count of how many memory scenes he had crossed through in this layer between reality and dreams, yet he had never managed to break into the layer above.
According to Yin Manqing, she had been trying to track down the “dream’s owner” all this time.
But the target kept changing locations, leaving her one step behind every time.
“So he’s running up front while I chase him from behind?”
“He wants me to save him but refuses to show his face… What a goddamn tsundere.”
Qin Lan muttered, full of resentment.
[Soon.]
[I can feel us getting closer and closer to him.]
Yin Manqing’s voice had grown even weaker. Now she sounded as though she were speaking from an immense distance, barely audible.
It seemed her power had been severely depleted as well.
Once again, the scene around him twisted, collapsed, and reassembled.
It had been novel at first, but after seeing it so many times, Qin Lan found the spectacle rather dull.
Then his surroundings came into focus, and his expression finally changed.
It was a crude little room.
How crude? One bed and one small table–not even a stool–somehow provided the full functionality of both living room and bedroom.
Simply standing inside made Qin Lan feel cramped.
Yet he felt no discomfort. Instead, a strange sense of intimacy washed over him.
This was his home.
More precisely, it was his home before the fire burned it down.
Qin Lan had lived here for so long that he could tell at a glance which objects had been renovated and which were the originals.
His expression became complicated.
Looking at the familiar scene, he found it difficult to calm himself. Something seemed lodged in his throat, impossible to swallow or spit out.
What unsettled him even more was the slightly choking smell of cooking drifting in from outside.
The house was too small for a kitchen, so meals had to be cooked over a makeshift outdoor stove by the front door.
During the blurriest period of Qin Lan’s memory–back when his parents had not yet left–that old-fashioned stove had provided every meal for their tiny family.
After his parents disappeared and Qin Lan was left alone, no one ever used it again.
Yet now he could distinctly hear a spatula scraping against a wok. Beneath it came the faint conversation of a man and a woman.
The doors and windows muffled their words, but Qin Lan knew exactly who the two speakers were.
He could not make out a single sentence, yet he was utterly certain.
They were his parents.
Qin Lan stood motionless.
His eyes remained locked on the doorway, as though he could see straight through the flimsy door.
All he had to do was step forward and push it open. Then he would see the family he had remembered countless times.
It had been too long.
Qin Lan had even forgotten their faces, but now he had a chance to see them again.
When he remained motionless, Yin Manqing could not help urging him on.
[What are you waiting for?]
[We don’t have much time. This is our best chance to catch him!]
[This place is the nexus of the layer between reality and dreams. As long as we find the–]
Qin Lan did not look away from the door.
His face darkened, and he spoke coldly.
“How much longer do you plan to keep spinning that lie about multiple layers of dreams?”
“Honestly, I’m starting to find this boring.”
The surroundings seemed to fall silent in an instant.
The stir-frying, the faint conversation, the crackle of firewood in the stove–everything seemed to freeze.
[What are you talking about?]
[Why are you acting crazy at a critical moment like this?]
Yin Manqing sounded anxious.
Qin Lan dug a finger into his ear, his expression turning colder still.
“I called you Sister Yin once, and now you’re really getting into the act?”
“You’re not Yin Manqing. This place isn’t an instance, either, and those so-called rules are all complete bullshit. Right?”
This time, the “Yin Manqing” who had been speaking inside his mind fell silent.
Qin Lan finally looked away. His eyes swept across the familiar household objects, but his tone grew increasingly grim.
“At first, I only had one small doubt.”
“The skill I copied, [Call the Parents], identified that uniform as a ‘living being.’ So why did you claim you were already dead, and that was why you could enter the instance without being restricted?”
“At first, I assumed the skill’s criteria were unusual because it came from an anomaly, so I didn’t think much of it.”
“Then that whole story about a memory prison genuinely fooled me… With the instance rules and information backing it up, everything sounded fairly reasonable.”
Qin Lan sneered and dropped onto the little bed.
“Later, when all those random memory scenes started appearing, things felt more and more wrong.”
“Do you know what your biggest mistake was?”
Faced with Qin Lan’s question, “Yin Manqing” remained silent for a long time before finally asking, “What?”
Qin Lan gave a mocking grin.
“You made the difficulty of this instance contradict itself.”
“A six-star instance, lady–or should I say sir? Whatever. It doesn’t matter…”
“Do you have any idea what a six-star instance is like? A peak four-star Anomaly Hunter has been carrying me through it at record speed without either of us taking a scratch. Does that not sound insane to you?”
Qin Lan raised his middle finger at empty air, making no attempt to hide his contempt.
“Of course you don’t know. You can only extract memories and build dreams on top of reality. You can’t create something you’ve never seen yourself.”
“But I’ve entered a five-star instance before. I died so many damn times in there that I know exactly how hopeless an unsolvable instance is… Monsters disguised as people and objects from memories? Monsters that only attack once?”
“Honestly, that brat back in Dead Silence Academy was more intimidating than these things.”
Qin Lan clicked his tongue.
“A four-star Anomaly Hunter with nothing but a fragment of her soul left can stroll through a six-star instance? Give me a break. Even Sister Yin at her peak couldn’t do that.”
“If she entered a six-star instance, she’d be lucky if the anomalies didn’t screw her senseless.”
[Anything else?]
Yin Manqing’s voice changed, becoming perfectly calm.
So calm that it was unsettling.
“Let me guess why I can’t check my status panel or the instance information in here. You’re afraid you’d give yourself away.”
Qin Lan chuckled. “All you had to do at the start was create an instance briefing from a template and implant it into my consciousness…”
“But letting me pull it up whenever I want would be troublesome, because you can’t capture my thoughts with zero delay.”
“So you left the function out altogether and made it seem like the instance itself was suppressing me.”
“That part was fairly clever.”
[You decided this instance was fake based on nothing but that?]
“There’s one more thing.”
“I’m guessing this is another limitation of your ability. You can see people’s memories, including mine, but you can’t see the descriptions of their Talents–their most private information.”
“You can only watch everything as an outside observer. At most, you can analyze what their abilities might be from the scenes in their memories.”
Qin Lan calmly pointed out the flaw.
This time, “Yin Manqing” could no longer maintain that detached composure. Shock entered its voice.
[You… You even know that?!]
Qin Lan bared his teeth.
“Of course I do…”
“Because if you could see the details of my Talent, you never would have deliberately lowered the difficulty and guided me through at record speed.”
“It was completely unnecessary.”