The fierce and violent wind drummed their ears, and the roar of artillery fire and the boom of thunder painfully pierced their eardrums. But the unexpected fall gave them no time to worry about what was going on at all.
A giant bird swooped in from a distance. It streaked across the sky in an arc, made a few muffled screeches, and everyone fell onto its thick feathers one after another. The big bird let out a loud cry, flapped its wings, and flew toward the spaceship in the distance. It was created by Victor and looked like Ziz from Dusk Island.
“What’s going on?” Everyone was stunned by the dream scene in front of them. Although the ground was a mess, Dong Linhai still recognized that Dong Zheng lived in this community. A magical beam of light shot down. Ziz veered over 90° to avoid it, but the light still sliced across his stomach. Everyone screamed and grabbed onto the knotted feathers, not daring to relax at all.
“Someone invaded their dreamland!” Wang Que shouted loudly. God knew where the problem was. Could it be that when she tried to enter Cui Zuojing’s dream with the power of dream, the resisting power of time had caused this? She didn’t know.
“Let’s find Brother Cui and Brother Dong first. I can still pull them out!”
Ziz couldn’t keep up with the spaceship. The giant dragon in the magma saw the divine bird in the sky, and thinking that it was an enemy occupying its land, it roared and shot toward it.
From time to time, mechas and zerg fell down from the sky. Meanwhile, the battle between the cultivators and the magicians entered a white-hot stage. Dong Linhai even saw the figure of the rune mage Ryze in it. The purple-skinned, bald headed mage was fighting on the front line, summoning with runes. He immediately shouted, “Fuck, that’s Ryze! Cui Zuojing must have created him. The only person in our team who’d played LOL was just me and him!”
Lin Hangzhi looked into the distance and suddenly pointed at the woods, shouting, “Wait, doesn’t that look like Top-of-the-Giant-Tree?!”
In the twisted woods, a huge banyan tree stood straight up from the ground. Every one of its roots was a complete tree, shrouding the entire forest like a canopy. It was so huge that it wouldn’t be difficult at all to build a city on top of it.
This was exactly what they saw through the window of the endless train when they left Top-of-the-Giant-Tree.
Now, they were certain that the things in this chaotic dream were products of Cui Zuojing and Dong Zheng’s imagination, but they still didn’t know how it suddenly became like this. The spaceship in front of them shuttled between the Zergs and mechas. Dark clouds loomed heavily in the sky, moving with the strong winds. Suddenly, a massive eye opened up the sky that was roiling with continuous lightning.
The yellow eyes turned, and the black hole pupil looked down indifferently on the world. The dragon became enraged and spewed flames at the sky. The Zergs, mechas, cultivators, and magicians stopped fighting. Together, they turned toward the eye and began to attack it.
The spaceship was finally able to land at a safe place on top of a crumbling building. Cui Zuojing and Dong Zheng jumped off the spaceship and looked up at the huge eye that was under attack, only to find that the eye had turned to stare at them. There was nothing at all reflected in its dark pupils.
A terrifying chill climbed up Cui Zuojing’s back. A black Tang sword appeared in Cui Zuojing’s hand. He glanced at Dong Zheng, took a deep breath, and stabbed the sword into his heart.
There was no pain.
There wasn’t even any blood. Cui Zuojing pulled the sword out and the place where he’d just stabbed himself had no wounds at all.
They could not die.
The eye that was being attacked finally had a slight reaction. Under the attack of the mechas’ heavy artillery, a spot of blood appeared in the yellow eyeball. The eye closed in pain and retracted into the thick cloud. In the next instant, a gigantic black worm emerged from the clouds, and under the electric lights, it rushed toward the two people on top of the building!
The worm was hundreds of meters long. Its soft body had innumerable sections, it had no eyes, and its entire head was taken up by its massive mouth densely crowded with sharp, circular rows of teeth. Slender tentacles protruded from its mouth, stretching out as if to catch Cui Zuojing and Dong Zheng and deliver them to its mouth.
As they stared death in the face, a large artillery gun shot up from the Huangpu River, gathered energy from the immortal vine, and blasted artillery fire, directly hitting the worm!
“Fuck!” Cui Zuojing raised his arm to protect his face against the fierce gale and shouted to Dong Zheng, “Shanghai Fortress!” (1)
“I couldn’t think of anything else!” Dong Zheng said. “Let’s quickly leave!”
Once the light of the artillery fire dissipated, the worm rushed out. There was no sign of damage on it at all. Cui Zuojing stomped his feet and the entire building under him sprouted legs. It pulled itself up from its foundation and ran in the opposite direction!
The cob cannon was completed(2), the SCP-682 Immortal Lizard let out a low roar, and an angel holding a long, double-edged sword descended. Steel bars protruded from the building and, like the bones of some ancient creatures, formed an intertwined cage to trap the worm!
“Your imagination is too scarce, right?!” Cui Zuojing slowly raised his hand and a long sword materialized in his grip. As gazed attentively at the worm, a strong wind spiraled out around his feet, making his clothes flutter. At this moment, he was the sword, and the sword was him.
“Want to kill me? You can try.” After speaking these limes that he’d heard countless times in the game, Cui Zuojing roared and swung the sword the moment the worm was about to break through the steel bars. “Face Hayate!”(2)
A wall of wind rose up to block him and Dong Zheng. The worm slammed into it and could not immediately break through the transparent barrier. Within these few breaths of efforts, the long-legged building had already reached the Huangpu River. The building looked around. In the north was the volcano covered in rolling magma. In the east was the lush forest. Behind it was the worm. Without hesitation, it immediately jumped down.
“Take them!” Cui Zuojing stuffed two items into Dong Zheng’s hand. Dong Zheng saw that there were two octagonal stones with rabbit and chicken patterns carved on them. “What are these?”
“Rabbit charm and chicken amulet, they each can increase our flying speed!” Cui Zuojing calmly imagined up a bamboo dragonfly. He grabbed Dong Zheng’s hand and they both jumped down onto the platform floating in the sky. They watched helplessly as the large building rolled and tumbled and crashed into the Huangpu River.
The worm circumvented the wall of wind. It twisted and wiggled as it continued to give chase. Cui Zuojing and Dong Zheng were just about to continue fleeing when a huge bird suddenly passed by overhead, carrying a few people on its back. Dong Zheng saw Dong Linhai at a glance. The young man waved down at them and shouted, “Brother! Come up here!”
“It’s Linhai!” Dong Zheng was shocked. As he threw the rabbit charm and chicken amulet down, he and Cui Zuojing almost instantaneously jumped onto Ziz’s back.
“Let’s leave first!” Before Cui Zuojing could saything, Wang Que immediately crawled over and grabbed Cui Zuojing’s hand. As all seven people touched each other, the power of dream wrapped around them. The sound of artillery fire, the Zergs, the breath of the fire dragon, the silhouette of the giant tree, the stench of the worm…all of them blurred.
The world returned to a dark, dead silence.
Cui Zuojing’s eyes snapped open.
He gasped violently. The thrill of the dream was still in his mind, but the vividness of it was gradually fading. He turned around in time to see Dong Zheng open his eyes. They looked at each other for a second, and then hugged each other tightly.
Dong Zheng could clearly feel how fierce Cui Zuojing’s heart was beating. From the confirmation in their dreams to deciding to die together, to the chaotic dream, the eye in the sky, the worm chasing after them, to finally meeting and leaving with the others. In just ten minutes, so many thrilling things happened.
“Your imagination is too lacking,” Cui Zuojing still didn’t forget to complain in a low voice. “If it weren’t for me, we would have been eaten long ago.
“Of course, it’s not as good as yours.” Dong Zheng laughed. Indeed, if he followed the trajectory of life in his dream, if it weren’t for the Pure White Realm, which forced him to realize another possibility, he would probably always be an exceptionally boring adult.
They released each other. Now that everyone had woken up, the power of dream Luo Yan left Wang Que gradually disappeared. All of their faces were more or less shockd. The scene in that dream was more exciting than the boxes they had cleared before.
The huge black worm was engraved in their minds, reminding them of a certain possibility. Xia Qiongyun asked, “Is it Worm of Mystery?”
“I think so.” Cui Zuojing stood up. “The intruder must still be on the train. We might be able to find out who invaded Dong Zheng and my dreamland.”
They walked quickly across each carriages. There weren’t many people on the train. When they got on the train, each team very tacitly occupied their own car. Except for them, everyone else was still in a deep sleep. Typically, only less than half of them could wake up from the illusory dream and enter the next area alive, while those who were lost in their dreams would be recovered by Kether.
They walked from the last carriage to the first but found nothing abnormal. Cui Zuojing frowned. He stared at the closed door between the cab and the carriage for several seconds, then took out a piece of toilet paper from his pocket and cut open the door lock.
He pushed the door open. In the cab, the conductor was sitting in the driver’s seat. He was very quiet. Bright red blood slowly flowed out of his ears and noses. His eyes were wide opened, the white bloodshot. His palms were pressed flat on his legs, as if he was holding an invisible object.
For example, a book.
“It’s Worm of Mystery,” Cui Zuojing said immediately. “It was brought up by the conductor, and now it’s probably disguised as a pilgrim. Go, let’s go look for it! If it’s alone, it wouldn’t have enough power to deal with all of us!”
Everyone immediately turned back. When they passed the seventh carriage, they discovered one missing person.
The middle-aged woman sitting by the window in the middle of the carriage had disappeared. In the place where she was originally sitting was a faint spatial power.
“Fu Zhe’s power.”
Cui Zuojing and Victor looked at each other, each seeing the gravity in the other’s eyes.
“Cerberus,” Victor said the only possibility out loud. “At that time, I also sensed the power of space on him. But I thought that it was due to his close relationship with Morality. It seemed that Morality had given a part of the power of space.”
Cui Zuojing said, “If Cerberus and the Queen are in collusion, it will be troublesome. Up to now, we have a certain degree of certainty that can defeat the Queen with the five major powers. Now that we have less of an advantage, it’ll be more troublesome.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Dong Zheng said. “Cerberus may have questionable ethics, but he desperately wanted to find Fu Zhe. As long as Fu Zhe is on our side, we won’t have to worry about him.”
“I’m afraid he will go to Fu Zhe and use the power of space as a bargaining chip.” Cui Zuojing sighed and said, “It’s okay. For the time being, it’s not a big problem if it’s just a little space power.”
Wang Que was a little worried, “Now that the conductor is dead, can we still reach our destination?”
“The endless train will run itself. The conductor is here more as a symbol,” Cui Zuojing said. “Let’s go back and wait. Once we pass the Corridor of Memory and formally enter the center of the Pure White Realm, we’ll be facing greater dangers. Let’s discuss our next plan.”
—Volume 12: Memory Corridor [Ends]—
————–
Translation Notes:
Hayate Swordsman — A character from League of Legends
(1) Shanghai Fortress — a Chinese science fiction movie
(2) Cob Cannon — from Plants vs. Zombies
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I can’t wait to see the evolution of the relationship between cerb and fu (ﾉ ≧ ∇ ≦) ﾉ ﾐ ┻━┻
is hayate swordsman supposed to be Yasuo? HAHAH
It’s very satisifying to me that the arc ends on chapter 300. I hope they can deal with worm of mystery soon!
Congratulations and thank you for 300 chapters!