Chapter 8: Dreamscape: Accepting the Descent

Du Qiu didn’t go into detail about how he observed it but went out to buy a new type of combination lock and replaced Qin Yun’s with it.

He also reminded her to lock the bathroom window at night, so now they didn’t have to worry about burglars climbing in.

After finishing everything, Du Qiu said his goodbyes.

Zhang Mingliu, though still somewhat worried, could only watch as Du Qiu left; she would definitely have to move in to stay with her sister-in-law and niece soon.

After leaving, Du Qiu didn’t immediately go home but took a taxi to the nearest police station and then drove from the police station back to Qin Yun’s apartment building.

Du Qiu realized it took him eight minutes.

Considering the traffic conditions on the way over, he was somewhat unable to confirm.

After all, it was rush hour at this time.

Du Qiu took a taxi to the place where he had lunch at noon, switched to his own car, and drove home.

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At night, before sleep.

Du Qiu thought about it and took out the crystal pillow from the pillowcase, placing it on top of the pillowcase, ready to try sleeping directly on it to see if the effects in the dream would be any different.

Last night’s dreamscape was too miraculous, especially since he knew he was in a dream, yet everything felt so real.

It’s known that most times, when people have those longer dreams, they can only remember the last few fragmented images upon waking up.

For Du Qiu to remember the entire dream sequence clearly, like last night, was almost impossible.

Du Qiu knew his dreamscape should be related to the crystal pillow in front of him.

After all, his father, Du Guozhong, had put a note in the packaging of the crystal pillow saying that it was a relic of the Mayan civilization and a divine object of their gods.

There are many legends about the Mayan civilization, but unfortunately, they either lack evidence or the evidence is fabricated.

For example, that famous crystal skull turned out to be a modern creation.

His father was meticulous and had listed all the hearsay he heard: some said it was a divine tool used by the great Mayan priests to communicate with the gods, some said it was a symbol of the Mayan civilization, and others said it was a device used to treat certain diseases…

Du Qiu viewed these notes as just wild stories to read for fun.

He also searched the internet and found no information about the crystal pillow aside from that fake crystal skull.

The crystal pillow was sent to him by his father just before this year’s Spring Festival, packed very tightly, with the helper not even knowing what it was.

As for why his father went to great lengths to acquire it.

That’s because Du Qiu had an accident at the age of 12 and had suffered from headaches ever since, with his father taking him to various major hospitals in the country for countless examinations.

But to no avail…

Afterward, Du Guozhong became obsessed with various folk remedies and ancestral medicine recipes, even though Du Qiu had a falling out with him and moved out to live on his own, his father still spent time on his business trips looking for ways to treat the inexplicable headaches.

Sometimes having people bring remedies to him or sending them directly to him.

Because of this, when Du Qiu received the crystal pillow, he didn’t even bother to open the package.

Until his father suddenly passed away…

After taking care of his father’s posthumous affairs, Du Qiu finally opened the package and saw the crystal pillow.

Originally, he just wanted to appreciate his father’s care and tried to sleep with it out of a sense of trial.

From then on, he began a series of dreamscapes.

This aroused Du Qiu’s curiosity, and he once used some testing equipment in his company to carefully inspect the crystal pillow when no one was around.

However, he found nothing unusual.

Upon direct visual observation, the crystal pillow is a standard cube, but its edges are very smooth.

It’s unclear if this is because it has been used by too many people over a long history or if it was polished this way from the beginning.

The entire crystal pillow is crystal clear, with almost no impurities visible inside.

The reason he says “almost” is that in the central part of the crystal pillow, there are some pure white dots.

Looking through any side of the cube, the dots form a hexagon.

Apart from this, there seems to be nothing else special about the crystal pillow.

The information Du Qiu had looked up about the Mayan civilization had one thing in common with the crystal pillow – they were both made of crystal.

In his opinion, this crystal pillow was probably like the crystal skull, made by modern people and then weakly associated with the Mayan civilization.

In short, a gimmick for making money.

Yet his father immediately bought it upon hearing it could relieve headaches and had someone bring it back especially for him.

Perhaps with the blessing of his father’s spirit in heaven, this item indeed eased his headaches.

Before, his headaches used to occur every few days, but now, within a month, the intervals between his headaches have extended to more than ten days.

In other words, since using the crystal pillow, Du Qiu has only experienced two headache attacks.

Since it has therapeutic effects, Du Qiu could still tolerate the side effect of dreaming, but he didn’t expect the dreamscape to change.

Du Qiu stared at the crystal pillow for a long while but still decided to continue using it to see what dreams he would have tonight.

Du Qiu positioned the crystal pillow and then went to sleep on it.

After Du Qiu fell asleep, the crystal pillow seemed to undergo no change.

Du Qiu had previously recorded himself sleeping with the crystal pillow, thinking that it might change after he fell asleep, but after filming several nights with no abnormalities, he stopped recording.

Tonight, about two hours after Du Qiu fell asleep, the crystal pillow suddenly emitted a faint glow, flashing momentarily in the dark bedroom before disappearing.

Du Qiu was unaware of this; at this moment, he was in a dreamscape, once again hearing the phrase “Upload successful!”

Just like last night, he couldn’t make out the words before these four.

It was still starting from Blue Star, rapidly traversing the universe, after a long darkness, going through a white vortex, and then he saw that expanse of stars.

This time, Du Qiu felt he could “see” more clearly than last night; it was a complete sensory experience.

Therefore, he noticed that the central white sphere among those stars was visibly larger than the surrounding ones.

To put it in perspective, if the majority of the stars were the size of quail eggs, then those in the center were about the size of chicken eggs.

When Du Qiu had been “watching” these stars for some time, a stream of information was instantly received.

“Seed 1008600363 has accepted the descent, current task list…”

The first sentence of the information stream shocked Du Qiu; the rest were like a checklist of tasks.

These pieces of information were the same as the ones he saw last night, displayed in Chinese characters, which seemed to be because it was in his own dream.

Du Qiu looked at the task list and suddenly understood; he seemed to be inhabiting a gigantic machine capable of resource gathering and purification.

Could it be that the “accepting the descent” in the first sentence meant accepting his own possession?