Chapter 207: Forced Dream Entry

The world around him began to invert, flickering like a giant unstable screen.

Lu Xin felt the hand gripping his leg pulling him down, creating a sensation of the world turning upside down.

As the scenes around him shifted constantly, one moment he felt he was still in the hotel room, the next he felt transported to another world. It was like someone on the verge of sleep, unknowingly drifting into a dream only to jolt awake again.

“Is a Dream Weaver-type ability user influencing me?”

Lu Xin’s expression was calm, almost methodically considering the question.

He first observed his surroundings, confirming there were no other sufficiently powerful pollution sources or ability users nearby affecting him.

Only then did he determine that the problem indeed stemmed from the hand reaching out from within Xiao Yuan.

…

…

“This must be the power left within Xiao Yuan by that Dream Weaver-type ability. It seems to have sensed that Xiao Yuan was at a critical point in completing the dream suggestion but was interrupted by an external force. So, this power automatically manifested, trying to pull me into the dream too?”

Lu Xin’s thoughts were clear, his analysis unhurried and highly efficient.

Having logically deduced the reason, he bent down, reaching for the hand gripping his leg.

Although he wasn’t as adept at tearing things apart as his sister, he figured he could handle this hand.

“Ohm!”

Just as Lu Xin was about to grab the hand, it suddenly vanished completely.

The flickering surroundings also disappeared. Lu Xin felt himself abruptly return to the real world.

He was still in the hotel room. Xiao Yuan lay collapsed on the floor while the female secretary sobbed, clutching her leg.

The bodyguards outside the room door had rushed to the doorway by now. Only after the female secretary fell did they see Lu Xin holding a gun. This shocked them, and they hastily pulled out submachine guns from behind their clothes, aiming to spray him.

“Bang bang bang…”

A barrage of bullets flew towards Lu Xin.

Lu Xin frowned slightly. He had the chance to dodge or return fire.

But he didn’t move, allowing the bullets to strike his body.

The bullets passed through him, creating countless bloody holes. Unimaginable pain washed over him.

Lu Xin felt his life force rapidly draining away with the blood; his body didn’t even have the strength to stand.

But just as he was about to fall, he lowered his head slightly and looked at his body.

Looking closely at his body, he found there were no bullet holes, and the pain suddenly vanished.

He was dreaming right now…

…

…

When he went to grab that pale hand, its sudden disappearance wasn’t real.

Instead, at that moment, it had finally pulled him into the dream.

A dream based on the real environment.

So, how was one supposed to break this kind of dream…

…Before the thought even fully formed, Lu Xin suddenly saw Xiao Yuan, whom he was stepping on, contort hideously. Despite being pinned face down, his body flipped over. His facial muscles twisted, revealing a mouth full of fangs as he bit down hard on Lu Xin’s leg, his eyes staring straight at him, gleaming with a cold light.

This sudden turn of events almost made Lu Xin want to shoot him.

But Lu Xin restrained himself. He just frowned, looking at Xiao Yuan biting his calf, neither speaking nor smiling.

As if embarrassed by his gaze, Xiao Yuan slowly released his bite and returned to his original position.

…

…

“Is this the Dream Weaver-type’s Forced Dream Entry?”

Lu Xin thought silently, observing his surroundings.

He didn’t rush to act because he knew that when facing a Dream Weaver-type ability user, moving rashly often leads to a disadvantage.

The first principle when dealing with Dream Weaver-types is not to believe anything readily.

Any reality one accepts could potentially be an attack crafted by the dream weaver.

Conversely, when one disbelieves, the attack’s intensity weakens significantly.

…

…

Maintaining his composure, Lu Xin observed quietly.

At first glance, the surroundings seemed real, but upon closer inspection, hazy lights and shadows were everywhere.

These unreal lights and shadows were only noticeable when he deliberately looked for them.

Otherwise, they were completely imperceptible.

Moreover, the more carefully he looked, the clearer his consciousness became.

Having spent a night cramming information on Dream Weaver-type ability users, Lu Xin naturally knew they possessed an ability called “Forced Dream Entry.”

The core ability of Dream Weaver-types is altering people’s dreams.

However, there are two types of dream alteration.

One is to silently infiltrate the sleeper’s dream while they are asleep.

In this scenario, the sleeper is completely unaware of the dream’s unreality.

The other is Forced Dream Entry, and its specific effect depends on the wills of the Dream Weaver-type user and the affected individual.

Those with weaker wills still cannot distinguish the dream from reality.

Those with stronger wills, however, might retain a degree of conscious awareness, quickly spot the flaws, and wake up.

This was Lu Xin’s current situation. Although forced into a dream, he maintained his own will and quickly recognized the dream’s unreality. At this point, a dream known to be unreal could hardly hold him captive.

Furthermore, the time he experienced within the dream was much longer than in the outside world.

Dreams and reality do not share the same flow of time.

Typically, the type of attack a Dream Weaver-type user employs against someone under Forced Dream Entry dictates the time flow.

For instance, creating the scene of bodyguards rushing in and shooting at Lu Xin—the time required for that action represents the time within the dream.

In reality, likely less than a second had passed.

Normally, a First Stage Dream Weaver-type ability user can only stretch time within a dream, not accelerate it.

…

…

Just as the hazy lights and shadows began to fade and the dream was about to break,

Lu Xin heard a faint, indistinct laughter, and his head felt slightly dizzy.

This laughter seemed to possess some kind of ability.

Following the sound, Lu Xin saw a deathly pale hand slowly emerge from the nearby wall, followed by a head with disheveled hair hanging down, then a body clad in white, slowly phasing out of the wall.

Its head was lowered, hair obscuring its face, only its echoing laughter could be heard.

“Is this the manifestation of the residual mental power left by the Dream Weaver-type?”

Lu Xin thought back to the hand that initially pulled him into the dream; clearly, it belonged to this entity.

So, if he killed it, would that eliminate this power?

As he pondered, Lu Xin loaded a black bullet into the cylinder of his revolver.

This was the special bullet he specifically requested to deal with this Dream Weaver-type ability user.

Closing the cylinder, Lu Xin slowly raised the gun.

“Hehe…”

But just then, more laughter erupted.

Lu Xin saw another pale hand emerge from the adjacent wall, and then a figure “grew” out of it.

It looked identical to the previous one, with disheveled hair and a white dress.

Immediately after, from the television, the ceiling, the bathroom’s glass partition, even the headboard, white shadows “sprouted” one after another, like mushrooms popping up. They filled the entire room, laughing simultaneously.

…

…

The chaotic, interwoven laughter assaulted Lu Xin’s mind from all directions.

With only one special bullet, Lu Xin had no idea which of them to shoot.

But their laughter continued, echoing throughout the room.

Caught in the midst of this laughter, scenes—uncertain whether real or fake—suddenly flashed through Lu Xin’s mind.

These images flickered erratically, occasionally consuming all the space in his thoughts.

Some looked like a window, some like a lamp, others like a long corridor stretching endlessly.

It was like fragments of countless worlds constantly appearing in his mind, dominating his vision.

“Subconscious Dream Entry?”

Lu Xin recalled the description from the materials.

Subconscious Dream Entry was already a relatively advanced manifestation for a Dream Weaver-type, though still within the scope of Forced Dream Entry.

But it worked by stimulating the opponent’s subconscious, causing them to create their own dreamscape.

Such dreams were the most difficult to break.

Moreover, they often contained the opponent’s deepest past events, darkest secrets, and were most likely to cause a mental breakdown…

…Before Lu Xin’s time, it was said the Special Cleaning Department used this method to assess whether ability users could be recruited.

By directly viewing a mentally altered person’s subconscious, they could gauge the risk of them losing control.

…

…

“Where is this…”

When those images, seemingly not his own, surfaced from the depths of his mind, Lu Xin felt slightly disoriented.

At this moment, his personal consciousness was still strong; he still had a chance to break free.

However, the images inexplicably drew him in.

Seeing those scenes made his heart race, even causing a strange sense of excitement, a craving welling up from within.

Therefore, instead of resisting the appearance of these images, he subconsciously wanted to chase after them.

Under these circumstances, the residual shadow of the Dream Weaver-type ability user instantly felt an unusual smoothness. Originally, Subconscious Dream Entry was the most difficult feat because the affected person would instinctively resist when their subconscious was breached.

But now, it sensed Lu Xin’s exceptional cooperation, constructing the dreamscape successfully at an unimaginable speed.

“Ohm…”

In Lu Xin’s vision, the images grew increasingly real and larger. Fragments pieced together, and finally, all the pieces merged. His mind felt slightly dizzy, and then he saw a completely different world.

As if just waking up, Lu Xin’s eyes snapped open.

He then found himself in a strange place—a corridor.

The corridor was about two meters high and just over a meter wide, feeling somewhat cramped. Above, white light from concealed sources illuminated the passage. Strange instruments and various surgical tools lay scattered on the floor around him.

The walls were white ceramic tiles, devoid of any pattern or color.

The entire corridor had an unsettling pallor.

“Ding ding ding…”

From deep within the corridor came the sound of a hammer striking an iron chisel.

“Zzzzzz…”

That was the faint sound of electric shocks.

“Chh chh chh…”

That sounded like a sharp knife cutting through flesh.

There were also faint, weak groans, and screams that seemed to exist in an extremely distant place…