"Don’t go wandering off. The city is dangerous right now. This is the safest place."

"Alright, you’ve had enough to eat. Hurry back now."

Li Wei sent Lilia back.

He returned to his own room.

He performed his daily cultivation of the Rock Breathing Method.

Li Wei was consciously grinding his proficiency in the Rock Breathing Method, so his progress wasn’t slow.

「August 28th.」

Late at night, Li Wei was in the Dream World, practicing his magic.

Suddenly, he felt the surrounding dreamscape change.

He instinctively became vigilant.

Stopping his cultivation, he walked to the door and opened it.

He found the world outside shrouded in fog.

Normally, he could see for twenty meters beyond his door.

But tonight, something seemed off.

The gray fog was laced with black gas.

A few wisps of black gas drifted toward Li Wei, trying to seep into the room.

The Power of the safe house resisted it, preventing the black gas from entering.

Li Wei stared at the black gas floating before him.

’What the hell is this stuff?’

’How could something like this suddenly appear in a dream?’

’What’s happening outside?’

His instincts told him this black gas was bad news.

Otherwise, it wouldn’t be drifting around like a parasite, trying to burrow into his Dream Bubble.

To be safe, Li Wei didn’t leave his Dream Bubble.

He chose to exit the dream to avoid being corrupted by the black gas.

In the middle of the night, Li Wei awoke from his sleep.

Opening his eyes, he saw fog shrouding the world outside his window.

’This isn’t right... I’m still in a dream!’

Li Wei turned his head to look around, then walked to the window.

The fog outside surged, a darkness writhing within it as if trying to draw closer.

Li Wei closed the window.

’I’ve been dragged into the first layer of the dream.’

’Who is the enemy? What kind of technique is this?’

Li Wei had no idea.

He continued to try and use the Great Dream Traveling Skill, attempting to escape the dream.

But every time he woke up, he found himself still trapped in the dream.

The path back to reality was blocked.

’Yubis Cultists?’

This power to manipulate dreams subconsciously reminded Li Wei of the Black Cultists.

Though they didn’t walk in dreams themselves, they had the ability to control them.

Dreams were a forbidden domain to the Black Cultists, yet they were exceptionally skilled at using this very domain against their enemies.

A sudden chill ran down Li Wei’s spine.

He turned his head and saw a thick tendril of black gas seeping through the wall, already halfway inside.

’Dammit, how did it get in?’

Li Wei instinctively cast Fireball Skill at it.

BOOM!

The Fireball exploded, but the black wisp, as if it didn’t belong to this dimension, was completely unaffected.

Li Wei stared intently.

He thought for a moment.

BOOM!

Li Wei blew up his dream-form on the spot, his consciousness expanding to fill the entire dreamscape.

The dream was him, and he was the dream.

In that instant, Li Wei possessed absolute control over the dream.

He saw the black gas that had bored into his Dream Bubble.

The black gas was like a parasite, corroding the Dream Bubble’s protective layer. It was trying to burrow inside to parasitize the Dream Bubble and influence its owner’s consciousness.

With a mere thought, Li Wei made the Power of the entire dreamscape fiercely repel the black gas.

After a moment of stalemate, the black gas was squeezed out of the Dream Bubble.

The corroded protective layer healed just as quickly.

A wave of malice washed over him.

Li Wei saw several Nightmares pouncing toward him.

The Nightmares had no black gas on them.

With a thought, Li Wei opened a rift in his dreamscape, and the Nightmares plunged headfirst into it.

The Nightmares were just about to wreak havoc in the dream.

Li Wei’s form slowly coalesced.

The Shadow Attendant appeared and pounced towards a Nightmare.

Shadow Claw!

RIP!

In an instant, it tore a Nightmare to shreds.

A mere Tier One Nightmare was nothing to speak of.

Li Wei raised his hand, channeling the Power of Dreams. The dreamscape transformed into a furnace, trapping the Nightmares and incinerating them.

In a flash, he killed two Tier One Nightmares and one Tier Two Nightmare.

But Li Wei didn’t feel particularly happy about it.

The Shadow Attendant, however, happily devoured the three Nightmare Cores.

’Looks like I have no choice but to go out and find the source of this black gas.’

’They’re already knocking on my door. I can’t just keep cowering in my shell.’

By becoming the dreamscape itself, Li Wei had come to understand one thing.

The black gas could only corrupt the dreamscape, not the Sleepwalker within it.

Knowing this, Li Wei felt he could venture out without worry.

After he left, the Dream Bubble would become even safer.

A Dream Bubble only exists when it is observed.

Unobserved, a Dream Bubble is pure void.

Li Wei was the sole observer of his own Dream Bubble.

Opening the door, Li Wei walked out of the safe house.

Looking back, the door was still there.

Turning his head to look forward, the door behind him had vanished.

Li Wei walked through the fog, exploring the strange transformation of the dreamscape.

This fog was different from the usual Dream Fog.

The Dream Fog represented the true unknown.

Beyond the boundaries of one’s Spiritual Power lay endless darkness and void.

Places that are not observed are places that do not exist.

It gave off a rather solipsistic, illusory feeling, a sense of ’the only real world is the one I see.’

The current fog was simply a fog that obstructed vision.

Just like fog in the real world.

The two were fundamentally different.

’Hm? Over here.’

Spotting the black gas, Li Wei hurried toward it.

He saw several wisps of black gas corrupting a Dream Bubble.

A quarter of the Dream Bubble was already stained black.

’What in the world is this?’

Li Wei cautiously entered the blackened Dream Bubble.

Inside, he discovered many bizarre scenes.

Some things that looked normal one second...

...would, in the next, twist into a pile of bizarre shapes indescribable by words.

The orderly dream was descending into chaos.

A chaotic dream would inevitably collapse.

But under the influence of the black gas, this chaotic dream didn’t shatter. Instead, it evolved in an even more chaotic direction.

If a dream is seen as a projection of a person’s mind...

...then this violently changing dreamscape meant its owner’s mind was undergoing an unprecedented transformation.

Their mind was becoming twisted.

Li Wei suddenly realized what the black gas did.

The black gas corrupted the mind, altering a person’s consciousness.

It was like brainwashing.

Through dreams, it imperceptibly changed a person’s mind and perception.

’This is bad! If this keeps up, everyone in the Mage Tower will become Evil God Cultists!’

’Teacher Gu Ze!’

Li Wei tried to leave the dream at once. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

But unexpectedly, the mutated dreamscape around him wouldn’t let him leave.

The twisted, changing dreamscape had become a monster.

Li Wei was inside the monster’s body.

The monster attacked him.

All kinds of twisted limbs lashed out at Li Wei.

One moment they were tentacles, the next they were vine whips.

As they struck Li Wei, they morphed again into a venomous snake that opened its cavernous maw and bared its fangs at him.

It viciously sank its fangs into his body, intending to poison him to death.

SNAP!

The fangs snapped.

Li Wei cast the Illusion Technique.

His body ballooned, and in the blink of an eye, he transformed into a Giant over twenty meters tall.

The venomous snake was snapped apart by his expanding body.

The true Power of the Illusion Technique could only be unleashed in a dreamscape.

Li Wei’s guess had been correct.

Torresta had created the Illusion Technique based on the Rules of Dream Creation.

Freed from the constraints of reality’s Rules...

...the Illusion Technique’s might in the Dream World was amplified severalfold, even tens of times over.