Chapter 162
Chapter 162
“I forgot.”
Those two simple words stunned Qin Lan for the next year.
Hold on, brother. What do you mean, you forgot?
You were hiding inside my mind with an unsolvable cursed artifact in tow, and the moment you appeared, you put on such an imposing display that anyone could tell you were an absurdly powerful figure.
By all normal logic, shouldn’t this be the moment when you announced some unfamiliar but outrageously cool title?
Then you would smile faintly and say, “It is merely an empty name,” while accidentally leaking an aura of supreme dominance. Everyone would be awed without understanding why and speculate that your true identity was some ultimate boss destined to be mentioned by a random passerby in a future arc.
You weren’t supposed to say, “I forgot”!
“When you say you forgot… what exactly do you mean?”
Qin Lan doubted his own ears.
“Exactly what it sounds like. I forgot.”
The voice laughed helplessly. “All I know is that I remained here to keep watch over [Endless Nightmare]. Beyond that, I know nothing.”
“Who I am, where I came from, and where I am going–none of that has anything to do with me.”
What a goddamn philosophical statement.
But philosophy did not seem particularly useful right now.
“Brother, that’s not very responsible of you…” Qin Lan was dumbfounded. “If you don’t know anything, what am I supposed to do?”
“There’s a cursed artifact hiding in my brain right now!”
“And where even is this place? You’ve said all that without telling me anything useful!”
Qin Lan was about to collapse.
He could not understand how a momentary whim to cultivate his mental power had somehow dragged him into this entire mess.
“This is my consciousness. Everything here is under my control.”
“You need not worry. [Endless Nightmare] is a gift I left for you–or perhaps a surprise… You simply arrived too early. You have not yet reached the level required to accept it.”
“But if you ask who I am or why I left this gift for you, I truly have no idea.”
The voice sighed.
“I only know that this is my mission.”
“If you meet me in the future, you can ask me then.”
Unexpectedly, Qin Lan understood this tongue twister of an explanation.
“Oh! Oh!”
“I know this! I know what this is!”
Qin Lan grew excited, like a fan who had finally met his idol. “What was it called again? I’ve read about it in novels!”
“An external incarnation! No… A divine thought, right? A consciousness condensed from spiritual energy that exists independently of the original body?”
“Holy shit!”
“I knew this story was going to turn into a cultivation fantasy! Damn it, I should’ve realized the moment that Golden Core cultivator appeared!”
“Telekinetic control of objects… That was all foreshadowing for a complete overhaul of the power system, wasn’t it?!”
Qin Lan abruptly became annoyed.
“Damn it… This is how hack authors always deal with their power scaling collapsing! Take the number-one supernatural author, Black Tinder. His horror stories were perfectly good, then suddenly–”
The voice interrupted his rant.
“It isn’t anything like that…”
“Hmm. How should I explain it?”
The voice hesitated, seemingly unsure where to begin. “You are still too weak. Once your mental power grows stronger, you’ll gradually understand methods like this.”
“Imagine pressing your hand firmly into sand and leaving a clear handprint.”
“When mental power becomes sufficiently strong, it too can leave an influence upon the material world. I am that remaining ‘handprint.'”
The voice sighed wistfully.
“A handprint gradually blurs as the tide washes over it. How long it lasts depends on how much force was used to make it–in other words, how powerful the mental strength behind it was.”
Qin Lan fell silent for a moment before speaking timidly.
“Even when you put it that way, it still sounds like cultivation fantasy…”
“Ha ha… When people encounter power they cannot understand, they instinctively compare it to something familiar. That’s perfectly normal.”
The voice laughed heartily. “As I said, you are still too weak. Once you become strong enough, understanding will come naturally.”
Really?
More than a hundred points of mental power–a hundred times the value of an ordinary person–and he was still too weak?
Qin Lan seriously doubted that claim.
His mental power already surpassed that of some weaker four-star anomalies.
He could even shatter the consciousness of a Tier Four Core wielder with a single glance and one sentence.
If that still counted as weak, what did strong look like?
“All right. I’ve told you everything I know.”
“Once your mental power reaches the necessary threshold, I will contact you myself… Until then, do not wake me so casually again.”
“Do not ask questions about things you should not know. They will only bring you endless trouble.”
“Go.”
At that final word, Qin Lan felt as though he had been trapped beneath a giant bell.
The voice reverberated around him, leaving him dizzy and disoriented.
At the same time, the ever-expanding mental field seemed to be startled by that mild rebuke and contracted in an instant.
As the field withdrew, the students it had enveloped opened their bewildered eyes one after another.
Qin Lan’s eyes flew open.
He was still lying in his room in the Zone B dormitory at Clear Spring Academy.
The combat uniform possessed by Yin Manqing lay quietly on the table nearby. Everything he had just experienced seemed to have been nothing more than… Oh. Calling it a dream felt rather strange, considering that it actually had been one.
“Did I really get out, or am I still dreaming…?”
Qin Lan sat up and scanned his surroundings suspiciously, genuinely unable to tell.
If he had truly returned to reality, then testing it by committing suicide would be a little…
Fortunately, Qin Lan immediately thought of another method.
“Status panel!”
The moment the thought formed, the familiar data appeared before his eyes.
There was not the slightest delay. It responded directly to his thoughts rather than being an image forged by some external force.
The sight of the panel finally put Qin Lan at ease.
Now, someone might ask: what if the panel data could be forged too? What if the entity weaving the dream was actually extremely powerful, and all Qin Lan’s earlier deductions were nothing but wishful thinking?
Then what was there left to say, brother? Take his life.
If the enemy was powerful enough to create a dream this convincing, what was even the point of struggling?
Just cast the surrender vote and be done with it.
“Sister Yin? You there?”
Qin Lan cautiously extended a finger and poked the combat uniform beside him.
When it gave no response, he simply grabbed it and began kneading the fabric in his hands. “Still asleep? Seriously?”
[What are you doing?!]
[Where are you touching, you little bastard?!]
Yin Manqing’s shrill scream erupted as a mental pulse, stabbing into Qin Lan’s head hard enough to make him grimace.
“Why are you yelling so loud…?”
Qin Lan rubbed his temples. “I thought you were still trapped in that dream… I was clearly worried about you.”
“Talk about repaying kindness with hostility.”
[Worried?!]
[Your way of showing concern is to touch–forget it! There’s no reasoning with you!]
Yin Manqing was furious. She had just opened her mouth to curse him when she suddenly realized something was wrong.
“Hmm?”
“What happened just now? Wasn’t I still inside the instance?”
“I clearly–”
She seemed to realize something and instantly became wary. “Am I still inside that dream instance?”
“Are you a fake? A character the dream created from my memories?”
Clearly, the real Yin Manqing had also been dragged into the dream from the start. Under [Endless Nightmare’s] control, however, she had never managed to meet Qin Lan.
“A fake?”
Qin Lan smiled, grabbed the combat uniform, and kneaded it again. The smooth fabric whispered pleasantly beneath his fingers.
“Do I still feel fake now?”
[Stop!!]
[You can’t touch me there!!!]