Chapter 831: Dream Creatures, Fool's Dreams, Nightmares...
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 831: Dream Creatures, Fool's Dreams, Nightmares...
The dream creature seemed to grasp my provocation in that instant. Its shifting, unstable form twisted violently, morphing into a hideous demon.
It opened a massive maw, revealing jagged fangs that looked nothing like the product of natural evolution. Instead, it resembled a fantasy construct born of negative emotions, designed to trigger the deepest, most primal fears of a living soul.
But in the next moment, its maw met only searing pain. The "Pseudo-Book in the Box," a convergence of information, spun like a cannonball and tore through its body.
The solid frame of the book burst out from the creature's back, forcibly gouging a hole through its form.
In my haste, this was the only method I had discovered that could actually wound the enemy: direct informational interference through contact.
To put it simply, when dream creatures "materialize" in the Primitive Dream Realm, the bodies they assemble are themselves composed of information. Therefore, one can disrupt their structural integrity through physical contact with other information constructs.
My method of forming the Pseudo-Book in the Box involved using mental power to aggregate that information.
Mental power is essentially a force that touches the level of transcendent energy, and this force can also serve as an indirect channel for perception. Thus, mental power is a perfect "transcendent means" to utilize within a dream.
However, attempting to use mental power to sketch runes, structure rituals, or cast spells was impossible.
Reality and dreams are incompatible.
So, I had to pivot. Using mental power in conjunction with the Five Senses to command information was, in essence, not much different from commanding spells. It was just that, at my current stage, my mental power was still too strained to construct complex dream creations.
My most powerful tool in the dream should be... a Holy Relic!
Or a Great Spellbook, or [Transcendent Knowledge]—whatever one chooses to call it; the name didn't matter.
The reason ordinary spellbooks couldn't be used in the dream was the lack of a foundation for spellcasting. This included, but was not limited to, the absence of runes, rituals, and transcendent energy, along with many other indirect factors.
The reason a Great Spellbook could be used was that it contained [Transcendent Knowledge] that did not rely on external foundations.
Many functions of such a Great Spellbook remained unusable—specifically the spell-related parts, the runes, and the spell frameworks. What remained was the purest core: [Transcendent Knowledge].
In other words... what the Fool's Dream spirits called a Holy Relic.
Having taken a hit from my Book in the Box, the dream creature fell into a frenzy.
Yet, its strength seemed... much weaker than I had anticipated.
Of course, "weak" was relative. They were simply incredibly difficult to kill, especially here in the Primitive Dream Realm. Slaying a dream creature was an arduous task.
Thus, I wasn't thinking about how to defeat it, but how to "subdue" it.
The reason I was going to such trouble was that, after that last strike, I felt a sudden impulse to study it.
This was a rare experimental subject!
I couldn't exactly start performing experiments on the Fool's Dream spirits in the middle of Fool's Village, could I?
I began attempting to use my mental power to condense information constructs, boxing the dream creature in. Though I wanted to try other methods, I stuck to the plan I was most familiar with for the sake of stability.
Ultimately, after a significant amount of time and a massive drain on my mental power, I managed to completely seal the dream creature inside a massive informational black box.
While this battle was plain and unadorned compared to my previous fights, to the Fool's Dream spirits, it was undoubtedly a thrilling, soul-stirring spectacle!
Once the dream creature was sealed within the black box with no hope of escape, the area erupted with the celebratory cheers of countless spirits.
Far off atop the Starlight Tower, the Dream Scroll silently recorded this battle...
"We are truly grateful to you, Sage Xiao Han," the Village Chief said, stepping forward on behalf of all the spirits to express her thanks.
During the battle just now, the Village Chief had been the first to rush forward, but I had stopped her.
I didn't know what means she had to deal with a dream creature that ordinary spirits couldn't handle, and frankly, I didn't want to know. What if her plan was to grab the creature and drag it out of Fool's Village into the external Primitive Dream Realm for a mutual suicide?
It wasn't an impossible scenario, right?
I glanced toward the distant Starlight Tower. From here, I couldn't see the Dream Scroll, but I knew it was inscribed with countless moments from the past—scenes of the Fool's Dream spirits fending off dream creature invasions.
Standing here in the village, one couldn't see the night sky above the tower. Only then did I realize that the white sky above Fool's Village... was also a fake.
The light that illuminated everything here was merely an illusion cast by the Starlight Tower. No... perhaps it was a manifestation of their yearning for beauty?
After accepting the gratitude of the Village Chief and the crowd, we had to face the immediate aftermath.
The evacuation of the spirits.
The sealing of the village entrance.
And... the spirits who had been injured in the attack!
These injured spirits weren't bleeding; rather, they had been "cursed" by the dream creature's Nightmare.
In a matter of days, they would gradually lose their sanity, becoming dream creatures themselves, their consciousnesses consumed by the symbiotic Nightmare!
"Village Chief... in the past, what did you do with spirits injured like this?" I asked after she explained what happened to those taken by the Nightmare.
"It's alright... Lord Sage... before we lose our minds, we just... have one last good meal... then drink a big cup of Fool's Dream Drink, and finally... leave the village..."
The injured spirit I was holding spoke up excitedly, as if it were a great honor to explain something to the Sage.
"Go... outside the village? To do what?" I felt my chest tighten.
I didn't want to hear the words "wait for death" from her mouth.
"To go outside the village..."
"To seek salvation from the Sage, right?" I interjected, cutting her off. "It's fine now. Your Sage has arrived. You don't need to leave the village anymore, because... your hope has come to Fool's Village."
"Lord Sage... you..." The Village Chief stepped forward. As the chief, she possessed a maturity the others lacked—a facade granted to her by her memories.
She knew perfectly well that the spirits volunteered to leave so that others wouldn't suffer their fate. They didn't want to become dream creatures and spread the Nightmare within the village.
It was precisely because every spirit in the village was so pure that Fool's Village had managed to survive one "accident" after another in the Primitive Dream Realm until now.
"It's fine. Haven't I already begun to master my power? But power isn't my trump card—knowledge and wisdom are. I will try to solve the problem of the Nightmare. Just give me time... even in the worst-case scenario, I won't let them become dream creatures and harm the others," I said, looking at the Village Chief.
"Since this is the Sage's promise, we will naturally follow your arrangements."
"Thank you for understanding... Could you prepare a residence for me first? Bring them there as well. I need a quiet place to break the curse of the Nightmare. You all go ahead; I'll finish processing this dream creature first."
"Of course! I will see to it that everything is handled with the others!"
"We'll help too," the three little ones, Yulan and her friends, chimed in.
"Really? Thank you so much..."
"You're the Braves who brought the Sage back, right?" The injured spirit, propped up by others, looked at Yulan and the others with equal excitement.
"Mhm." Yulan and the others were only focused on being helpful and didn't pay much mind to the gratitude.
Once the spirits were busy, I began my own work. In Fool's Village, I was the only one who could interact with a dream creature.
Looking at the creature sealed in the black box, I began testing other methods.
While mental power was useful, I felt it wasn't a long-term solution. Dealing with a single dream creature was already taxing and inefficient. Even though creating things in a dream felt like a "miracle," I was still unsatisfied.
If mental power could interfere with information, what about the Five Senses derived from Body Cultivation?
These weren't specific transcendent powers, but channels of perception. Therefore, the Five Senses, the Sixth Sense, and the Seventh Sense remained valid in the dream.
For instance, in the brief battle just now, the Five Senses helped me clearly perceive the dream's informational data, assisting my mental power in shaping that information.
Then there was the Sixth Sense, Heart Sense. it allowed me to feel the form the creature took in the Primitive Dream Realm—a cognition dominated entirely by negative emotions, as if the creature were a literal manifestation of them.
But that was only what Heart Sense perceived. The dream creature wasn't just a collection of negative emotions; other concepts converged to form its complex existence.
As for the Seventh Sense, Time Sense... this ability to subjectively influence the flow of time was "infinitely" magnified within the dream.
This perception could even inversely affect the information itself. It allowed me to achieve an ability similar to the "Time Sense" held by Sister Bai!
Although I didn't have enough energy to manifest a Time-Sense Body Cultivation Domain, there was no transcendent energy in the dream—only information and the perceptual channels to interfere with it!
Thus, within the dream, I could achieve a degree of "Time Reversal"!
While this was essentially an inverse regression of information, its manifestation in the dream was "Local Time Reversal"!
As for the Eighth Sense, Space Sense, which was still "theoretical" for me... I seemed to have gained a brand-new understanding of it under the enhancement of the Primitive Dream Realm.
This further proved that my previous cognitions and guesses were correct!
Like Time Sense, Space Sense wasn't a crude "surface" ability to manipulate time or space. It was a brand-new dimensional understanding and mastery of "control" and "dominion" through Body Cultivation's perceptual channels!
As I gradually familiarized myself with these abilities, my confidence grew. The wealth of methods at my disposal gave me the foundation to handle various emergencies.
I officially began processing the black box. When I dismantled it, the dream creature inside immediately lunged at me again.
But it was destined to fail.
The only reason I had opened the box was that such a large object was inconvenient to carry. I needed a smaller, more portable container.
Soon, a sealed, transparent jar compressed and encapsulated the creature. I chose a transparent one, naturally, so I could see at a glance if it was trying to escape.
Once I returned to the place the spirits had arranged for me, I would need to "bind" it in another way to facilitate a detailed study of the creature and the "Nightmare" portion of its being.
After finishing my work there, I followed the Village Chief to my new residence.
The houses the spirits lived in were a bit small for me. Since they were so tiny, their homes were naturally scaled down; Fool's Village was very much like a "Little People's Kingdom."
However, the house the Village Chief had prepared for me was perfectly sized for my stature.
I stared at the house, lost in thought.
As my understanding of dreams deepened, I realized that the concepts of "large" and "small" were chaotic here. Just as the spirits didn't look like Yulan until I perceived the Primitive Dream Realm, once their sizes were anchored, everything else became "logical" to match—tools, housing, and so on.
A dream is both fragile and resilient. It is so fragile that time, space, concepts, and size cannot be fixed, yet it can integrate these concepts to the extreme for the sake of being "logical."
Setting aside these trivialities, I stepped into the small house.
Even though Fool's Village had just suffered such a tragedy, the spirits insisted on holding a banquet for me. This wasn't just to announce the Sage's arrival to everyone, but to tell them that the Sage had stopped a disaster from spreading.
They didn't like to dwell on pain; they only wished for beauty to endure.
I participated in the banquet from start to finish.
Though the size difference between me and the spirits was significant, in the Village Chief's words, as the Sage, I should be this tall—a great existence for the spirits to look up to!
I thoroughly enjoyed the spirits' food—various fruits and vegetables, and... Fool's Dream Drink.
As expected, Fool's Dream Drink was a special concept that existed alongside the spirits themselves. They could lose anything else, but they couldn't lose their drink. Even in a dream, the specific concept carried by the drink was what they truly needed.
Of course, my full participation in their activities was for another reason as well.
I was looking for the inadvertent... Revelations expressed by the spirits!
After witnessing the Dream Scroll, I felt even more strongly that the Fool's Dream spirits were inextricably linked to that [Transcendent Knowledge].
The banquet lasted a long time, but it eventually came to an end.
I returned to my little house, where several spirits injured by the dream creature were waiting. They had been eroded by the Nightmare and couldn't attend the banquet, lest the Nightmare spread to others.
Since they were here, I arranged a lavish feast for them. Fruits, dishes, and Fool's Dream Drink piled high on the table, like a miniature banquet of their own.
If I hadn't come to the village, they would have left after this meal. But now that I was here, they didn't have to go.
"It's Sage Xiao Han!"
"There's no need to be so formal. I'll need your cooperation later. Just call me Sister Xiao Han, like Yulan and the others do," I said gently to the spirits.
"Mhm... Um... Hello, Sister Xiao Han~"