Chapter 41 - Solar Prominence
Translated by: DMlations/Zryuu
Edited by: Amelea, Celtic and DarlingV
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Zhou Sheng, “You……go through the Golden Crow Wheel and go back to your own dream.”
Yu Hao, “I really won’t mess around anymore. What are we going to do next? Are we entering Kaikai’s dream?”
Zhou Sheng had a sullen expression, “I won’t answer any of your questions, and I don’t want to talk to you either.”
Yu Hao, “I won’t ask anymore.”
Zhou Sheng was furious. He jumped onto the railings and sat down, seeming just like a huge monkey brimming with discontent. Yu Hao had only just approached when “clanking” noises sounded out in an erratic sequence. Iron armour began to cover Zhou Sheng. As it wrapped around his body, his helmet fell and with a clang, his appearance had changed into that of the iron armour-clad General.
Yu Hao could only return to the railings and sit quietly on it as well.
“General.” Something suddenly occurred to Yu Hao.
“Shut up.” Zhou Sheng coldly said from within the iron armour.
Yu Hao said, “It’s a question from reality, it has nothing to do with this place. It suddenly came to mind.”
General ignored Yu Hao. Yu Hao continued, “What was written behind the cycling competition poster? You want to bring me to Australia?”
The huge iron man remained silent, so Yu Hao could only peer about. The clouds surged, and one drifted by just a short distance away. As soon as Yu Hao thought about it, that cloud drew closer to him and a fragment of it split away to form a snowball-shaped cloud.
Yu Hao, “……”
“Don’t disturb my clouds!” Zhou Sheng said irritably as he pushed up his helmet.
Yu Hao had no choice but to give it a feeble push, and the cloud slowly drifted away with discretion.
Within the Golden Crow Wheel, a brilliant lustre shone like the opalescence of pearls metamorphosed. It illuminated General’s silver armour, painting it with a symphony of colours and made him seem like an otherworldly being.
Yu Hao was momentarily speechless. He looked up at the Golden Crow Wheel, and it seemed as if the Golden Crow Wheel sensed his mood. The scenes it displayed began to fluctuate erratically — within it were scenes of mountain ranges, rivers, high-rise buildings and other similar structures. Yu Hao unconsciously descended from the railing and approached the Golden Crow Wheel.
The fierce prominence emitted by the Golden Crow Wheel flickered and scattered in all directions, and its brightness flared. Yu Hao’s figure appeared extremely insignificant before the Golden Crow Wheel. The closer he got to the Golden Crow Wheel, the stronger the sense of oppression he felt from this colossal object. Where did you come from? What’s your mission? This great prehistoric existence — that was like a sacred totem which concealed innumerable secrets — was illuminating his soul.
The clanking sounds of an armour could be heard as Zhou Sheng followed Yu Hao.
“Don’t pass through it.” Zhou Sheng said solemnly, “Otherwise, if you were to enter the wrong dream, I might not be able to find you.”
Yu Hao said, “What’s this?”
The ring of light surrounding the Golden Crow Wheel diffused, then converged and suddenly transformed into a torrent of flame that shot towards Yu Hao!
“Don’t move.” Zhou Sheng stopped Yu Hao from reacting, and looked up nervously at the Golden Crow Wheel. The scene was exceptionally beautiful and magnificent; all the flames on the Golden Crow Wheel shot towards Yu Hao as if they were alive and converged in his hands!
Yu Hao raised his right hand, and a flare of flame gathered in his palm.
“It’s getting to know you.” Zhou Sheng said nervously, “Don’t resist it; it was the same when I was getting acquainted with it as well!”
Just as the blaze completely engulfed Yu Hao’s body, Yu Hao experienced the feeling of what Zhou Sheng had mentioned before — how the ‘Golden Crow Wheel will talk to you’! Countless information flooded his mind: the fragments of the conscious world, the power of the Golden Crow Wheel, the weapons and totem formed by the convergence of mental energies……
With a loud boom, the flames vanished. A lot of information had been forcefully injected into Yu Hao’s mind, but when he tried to recall them, he felt empty and couldn’t actually remember them in detail.
“What did it tell you?” Zhou Sheng asked nervously.
“I don’t know.” Yu Hao frowned, “It feels as if I know a lot, but I can’t remember anything right now. Like……it has……a lot of functions related to the conscious world, I think it seems a bit like a precision machine?”
Zhou Sheng said, “It’s the same as me, then. It’s okay; you’ll naturally understand it when the time comes.”
Yu Hao vaguely understood that what the Golden Crow Wheel had conveyed to him should be some kind of knowledge and memories regarding the rules that govern the conscious world. It was like linguistics; if you asked him to recall it instantly, he wouldn’t be able to remember much, but when the time comes when he had to talk about it, he would blurt it all out naturally.
“For example……how I can use my ability to activate it.”
Yu Hao raised his hand and pointed at the Golden Crow Wheel; within an instant, the flame turned into a meteor-like missile that shot towards the centre of the ring-shaped Golden Crow Wheel! This action seemed to have activated a certain mechanism; the screen circulating in the midst of the Golden Crow Wheel emitted a loud noise and a silver ray of light began diffusing throughout the entire wheel!
A new scene emerged on the screen along with this change; Yu Hao was stunned.
“Yes, this means that someone is dreaming of you.” Zhou Sheng said.
Both of them looked up at the large circular screen in the middle of the Golden Crow Wheel.
A scene of someone driving appeared on the screen; it was in the perspective of a driver, and the car was driving along an expressway. There was a bottle of perfume at the front — it was Chen Yekai’s car, and it was the BMW that Lin Xun and Liang Jinmin were in when they got into a car accident!
“The first person to dream of you is him.” Zhou Sheng glanced at Yu Hao.
“Will a scene only appear in the Golden Crow Wheel when someone dreams of you?” Yu Hao asked.
“Theoretically speaking, yes.” Zhou Sheng said, “But I’m not clear on the exact principles behind it.”
Based on this point, inferential pictures surfaced in his mind. The day he went to burn charcoal, when Zhou Sheng fell asleep, he must have seen Yu Hao pacing back and forth on the Great Wall through the Golden Crow Wheel, so he crossed through the Golden Crow Wheel and grabbed his hand.
But when he was entering Shi Ni’s dream, Zhou Sheng had seen a sea monster that had bared its fangs and brandished its claws instead.
“I see.” Yu Hao said, “So now, we can enter Chen Laoshi’s dream.”
Zhou Sheng said, “That’s right, do you want to try entering? For now it seems like he hasn’t dreamt of me, but he has definitely dreamt of you, so only you can bring me in.”
Yu Hao asked, “What’s our goal?”
Zhou Sheng said, “To call him back, if possible……”
Immediately afterwards, another scene appeared in the Golden Crow Wheel: the sky was overcast and resounding claps of thunder could be heard — it looked just like a dark, apocalyptic world. Within the dense forest, a conflagration was currently blazing brightly.
Zhou Sheng, “……”
Yu Hao, “……”
Zhou Sheng, “Looks like the situation is worse than expected, it’s all burning up.”
Yu Hao, “What does burning represent?”
Zhou Sheng, “Suffering ba? I’m just guessing……let’s go in and take a look? Do you think you’ll have a protective halo in his dream?”
Yu Hao, “I don’t know. Will I appear in his safe haven?”
Zhou Sheng, “It’s possible. In his dream, you were originally an NPC. Now that you’re personally entering, you will replace the NPC and stand in its original position. Hopefully it’ll be the safe haven; I’ll need to thank you for that.”
Zhou Sheng’s armour receded with a swish like a transformer’s. He reached out and held Yu Hao’s hand. Yu Hao was extremely nervous. He stretched his hand out to test the portal, and his finger had just touched it when the light screen instantly changed and began to ripple.
Without any further explanation, Zhou Sheng pressed down on Yu Hao’s shoulder with his other hand before rushing in directly.
“Ah——!”
This wasn’t the first time Yu Hao entered a dream that didn’t belong to Zhou Sheng, but the entire process was too distinct, and he instantly let out a huge cry. However, the grip on his hand loosened, and Zhou Sheng disappeared!
Yu Hao rushed forward a few steps, only to feel like the world was being turned upside down. He subconsciously turned back and shouted, “Zhou Sheng!”
In the next moment, a blusterous gale swept over and Yu Hao instinctively grabbed at whatever he could get ahold of nearby, and he ended up hugging a rope. His body — that was tens of thousands of feet above the ground — dangled from the rope and he ended up turning one huge round in the air. Smoke curled upwards all around him. Yu Hao tried to spread his wings, but his wings didn’t appear! He had lost almost all of his strength, so he could only hold firmly onto the thick rope in front of him as he was tossed about in the air.
“General——!” Yu Hao shouted, but he received no response in the hurricane. He finally managed to see the scene in front of him — the place he was at, was a suspension bridge that was floating in the air!
Mt. Tianqing’s suspension bridge……
Both ends of the suspension bridge led to an immensely dense fog; booming claps of thunder rang all around him, and lightning split through the mountaintop and ignited a fierce fire. Yu Hao began coughing harshly within the smoke. He tried to find a stable footing on the suspension bridge, but it began revolving 360 degrees in the air just like a swing, circling round and round.
Yu Hao, “This is a fucking skipping rope aaahhhhhh——!”
Both the heavens and the earth would not accede to his pleas, and he didn’t know where Zhou Sheng had gone either. Could he have been teleported away the moment they passed through the Golden Crow Wheel? Yu Hao was on the brink of vomiting from being turned round and round, but he couldn’t puke in a dreamscape. He needed to leave this place immediately, so he instantly grabbed both sides of the suspension bridge and began running forward like a madman during one swing of the suspension bridge.
Fear of heights? That doesn’t exist! In a life or death situation, Yu Hao was no longer afraid of this suspension bridge. With additional momentum from the centrifugal force, he sped all the way to the end of the suspension bridge while screaming.
The smoke completely dispersed. At the end of the suspension bridge was a bare stone pillar with no foothold in sight!
Yu Hao, “……”
Yu Hao subconsciously turned around abruptly, then dashed towards the other end of the suspension bridge. His head was spinning, and after he broke through a cloud of smoke, a bare, solitary mountain appeared in front of him. It seemed as if there had been a dilapidated building on the solitary mountain’s peak before, but lightning had already splintered it into pieces.
One lone mountain and one stone pillar just stood there in solitary starkness in the midst of a bottomless abyss. In the middle of which, a suspension bridge that was only wide enough for one person to walk through was spinning around like a jumping rope!
Yu Hao was dumbstruck. He shouted, “Chen Laoshi! Are you trying to kill me?!”
A bolt of lightning descended from the sky and suddenly struck the solitary mountain in the distance; the mountain began to collapse along with the ruins on it. Yu Hao let out another loud shout, there was nowhere else he could escape to. He turned around and ran towards the side with the intact stone pillar.
The stone pillars that were holding the suspension bridge together hundreds of meters high began to disintegrate within the blusterous gales, and the suspension bridge began collapsing at a very slow rate. Yu Hao ran like a madman on the broken wood, his mind completely blank. The collapse of the suspension bridge was speeding up and had already reached Yu Hao’s feet. Yu Hao suspected that he almost created a new record for sprinting; he could probably compete with Zhou Sheng now!
In the next moment, another unexpected event occurred. A mountain road suddenly appeared at the side with the stone pillar!
That’s great! Yu Hao leapt forward during the last 10-metre stretch before the suspension bridge collapsed entirely, and stepped onto a fractured plank mid air.
One step, two steps, three steps—— Yu Hao successfully caught the rope that was falling. A loud roar sounded behind him, and the entire suspension bridge fell into the bottomless abyss. Yu Hao grabbed onto the rope and gasped for breath, his eyes flooded with terror as he was suspended on the edge of the cliff.
In Chen Yekai’s heart, the original position he should have been at, was exactly where he would stand when he came in and replaced the NPC.
That is to say, in Chen Yekai’s heart, he had always been standing on Mt. Tianqing’s suspension bridge?! What kind of a joke was this?! Why is it that after he ran back and forth, the scene would undergo this sort of change, and such a passageway would appear?! Yu Hao was still in a panicked state as he climbed up the cliff. Before him was a path that led down the mountains. He suddenly remembered what Chen Yekai had told him after they passed through the suspension bridge that day.
“Walk back and forth again?”
Was this related to that? Yu Hao slowed down, and then shouted on the mountain path, “General!”
Right after they crossed through the Golden Crow gate, Zhou Sheng disappeared. This was the first time they encountered such a situation; what should he do? Zhou Sheng has the “power” to leave at will in other people’s dreams. As long as he said ‘good night’, he would wake up in reality. This time, Yu Hao couldn’t escape.
However, as long as they paid attention to their safety and waited for Chen Yekai to wake up naturally, they would be ejected from his dreamscape as well. Yu Hao gradually calmed down and went to the other edge of the cliff and looked down.
All he could see was a dense mass of forests below the mountains that looked just like a tropical rainforest. A part of Mt. Tianqing was located at the edge of this forest. As for the other end……there was a dark fog that was currently encroaching upon the mountain top as it crawled through Chen Yekai’s conscious world incessantly like an invader.
Lightning could be seen everywhere in the skies above the tropical rainforest. Within the dense rainforest, many places had already been set ablaze and was currently burning up. Black smoke rose into the sky and accumulated into dark clouds; they converged with the dark fog beyond the mountains and became part of the darkness that was invading this world.
Yu Hao first needed to determine where the center of this conscious world was. According to the direction that the dark fog was moving towards, there was a circle of mountain ranges near the depths of the rainforest — that must be where the center is located, and the totem should be there.
But where would Chen Yekai’s banished self be? There were two possibilities — one, he could be like his past self that had been banished to the end of the Great Wall which was at the border of the subconscious. But that was an extreme case, that is: the owner of the dreamscape must have a desire to commit suicide.
Shi Ni, however, existed in her safe haven. After a short period of consideration, Yu Hao determined that Chen Yekai should not be wandering around Mt. Tianqing, so he resolutely decided to descend the mountains and enter the rainforest.
At the same time, he needed to find a way to contact Zhou Sheng as well. But that wasn’t urgent. When Chen Yekai wakes up and they get ejected back to reality, they would still have the chance to communicate. Zhou Sheng was familiar with the rules of the conscious world; his familiarity far surpassed Yu Hao’s, and he wasn’t someone that Chen Yekai particularly cared about so he shouldn’t be in too much danger for now.
The direction of the mountain path was quite strange. Its walkways twisted and turned like a labyrinth and was entirely different from the Mt. Tianqing in reality. Its exit was completely engulfed in a thick layer of smoke.
Yu Hao looked all around him and tried to summon his weapon. He managed to summon his laundry fork, but he had no magic. Therefore, he could only keep his laundry fork and take off his shirt to cover his nose and mouth before rushing over.
This shirt was actually the white shirt that Chen Yekai had once lent him!
“It’s this shirt……” Yu Hao took off the shirt and became bare-chested. At this time, he began to examine his clothes; his fair upper body was bare and he was wearing a pair of black suit pants, as well as black leather shoes that came from somewhere. The first impression Yu Hao had of himself was——
Why do I look like a pimp?! Whatever, I’ll just rush over first!
Yu Hao covered his face with the shirt, observing the timing for when the winds changed direction, did a slight run-up, then rushed towards the mountain pass exit that was on fire. Thick smoke covered his vision, and ash choked the air around him. The moment Yu Hao passed through the thick smoke, a roar sounded next to him! An animal alight with flame pounced towards Yu Hao!
Caught off guard, Yu Hao was thrown to the ground. His bare shoulder and back instantly turned bloody because of its scratches.
Yu Hao shouted out in pain and before he could clearly see what monster he had encountered, he rolled on the ground and grabbed his shirt to hold his breath, then got up and ran again to rush out of the mountain pass.
The blazing animal behind him roared loudly and darted towards him. Yu Hao turned around, and saw that the animal was actually a fierce-looking, rotting panther! Just like the corpse wolves on the Great Wall, it was also emitting a black vapour. Its whole body looked like it was covered in a layer of tar and asphalt, and it was burning!
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Ame: Kaikai’s dream is crazy… his mental state ;w;…
Zryuu: Kaikai’s dreamscape, START!!! EXCITED!!!!!!!!!
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