“We’ll bait it!” Yu Han said as Fei Rui jumped from one tree to another like a flying squirrel. “Take this pearl. The moment the worm charges at you, project it—”
A line of green fire tunnelled through the canopy, the heat searing off the green leaves to ashes.
“Fuck!” The fire had almost touched his coverall helmet, but Fei Rui had pulled them down quickly enough.
“Forget I ever said that,” Yu Han shouted back. “We’ll wait until the worm does its charge. Then you’ll—”
The worm charged. Fei Rui struck down with one claw and shielded Yu Han with the other. The worm dodged as usual, but Yu Han swiftly rolled aside.
The worm dug into the mountain.
One chance. Once chance is all we need!
He had memorycast a large amount of seawater. As an object echo rather than a scene of the ocean. Unlike with memorycasting event echoes, it hadn’t taken much time. But after channelling Echoing Dreamscape as hard as he could, Yu Han realised he couldn’t echo anymore. A sudden lightness had washed over him, a hollow sensation strikingly similar to spiritual energy depletion! If not for Fei Rui carrying him, he would have collapsed then and there.
“Next time the worm charges, project this right onto its face. This amount of seawater has to put it down!”
“Douse the fire, kill the worm,” Yu Han explained. The ground under them quaked. “It’s coming!”
Fei Rui grabbed his coverall and leapt into a tree right as the Parasitic Fireworm burst out from the ground.
Fei Rui said.
“Go ahead.” Yu Han ignored the stabbing headache and memorycast the second seawater pearl. He quickly echoed two giant sacks of salt in two more pearls, sacks he’d seen in the Verdant Blade Sect’s ship kitchen. It was do or die now. Spiritual energy depletion would just have to wait!
The worm aimed at them like a firehose. The green coat of flames dimmed, concentrating on its mouth.
The worm blasted its flamethrower. Fei Rui jumped left, and the line of fire followed, boring through three tree trunks. Fei Rui pinched the pearl, and the lime-green light flared.
But the glow stuttered! A heartbeat passed, and the echo didn’t appear. Green light flashed again. This time more intense.
Fei Rui chucked the pearl at the worm. The orb hit the monster right below its mouth, and the worm’s upper body staggered slightly back, but continued spewing fire.
Fei Rui cried.
“It’s fine, we have more—” Yu Han tried to comfort the crab.
He didn’t have to.
A pool’s worth of water suddenly appeared underneath the worm in a sphere. For a split second, the worm was drowned in the salty solution.
But then the sphere broke, the water falling away.
A screech like teeth scratching glass howled out into the night sky. Yu Han covered his ears, but realised the coverall helmet blocked his palms. His brain rattled.
T-this is worse than the ghouls’ sound attack. He felt dizzy. He used Thousand Petals Awareness to mute his hearing. It didn’t help, and the headache from spiritual energy depletion got worse.
Yu Han got a better view of the monster. It was shaking left and right, the section of the body outside of the hole convulsing. A large amount of water must have flowed down the hole too, so it squirmed like a rope tying itself up and wiggled out of the hole.
The fire was gone. Its translucent skin looked muddier; other than that, there was no physical change. But by its howling and mad thrashing, it was definitely feeling it.
Yu Han handed Fei Rui the two pearls with salt sacks. The crab projected them.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
As the duo approached the writhing worm, Yu Han noticed another change. Parts of its body swelled, especially near the mouth. But the parts that had been in the hole had contracted.
He ripped open a salt sack and poured the contents on the Parasitic Fireworm. Fei Rui did the same.
A second later, the crab grabbed Yu Han and hurriedly jumped back. A giant green flame engulfed the creature, followed by a scream.
The salt visibly liquefied from the intense heat, and a pungent smell wafted out. The concentrated saline coated the worm’s body with a glass-like glaze that swiftly turned muddy.
“You goofed up,” Yu Han said.
The worm thrashed. Crusts of salt flew out, stuck to pieces of the worm’s own body. Cooked. Charred. Over-seasoned. The salt would run down its length, and spread inside through its wounds. The osmosis damage would cause intense dehydration and tissue damage too.
Yu Han had gambled on this. Would memorycast saltwater work on this supernatural worm? If its fire could burn his echoed halberd, then the echoed salt should have no trouble murdering it!
The minutes passed. The thrashing slowly grew quieter. Suddenly, the worm’s body ignited again.
“Is it that stupid?” Yu Han commented.
The fire lasted ten minutes. Green, like an emerald LED. It spread from the worm to the surrounding foliage, covering an area of about ten feet in diameter.
“It’s not going to start a forest fire, is it?” Yu Han doubted it. The forest was damp, as if it had just rained. And the green fire from the worm’s previous attacks hadn’t spread.
As expected, the flames died down. It left a circular area where the ground had become almost completely flat, albeit slanted since it was on a mountain.
“Is this… clay? Chalk?”
It was white.
The same colour as his dreamscape wall.
In the middle of the white circle, there were smaller inner circles, like growth rings on a clam. Towards the very centre, the surface reflected the moonlight like a mirror. The hole where the Parasitic Fireworm had emerged from was missing, replaced by it. From this innermost mirror circle, ripples undulated out to the whiter outer circles, and then the mountain ground. As if they were on water, not land.
By the mirror, there were some small objects. White triangles with veins of green, as if ceramics had been glued together by green resin. But the memorycast pearls were nowhere to be seen.
“Are those teeth?” Yu Han’s breath rose and fell, as did the tension from his shoulders. The headache stung, but he would not faint. He let go of the halberd and removed the helmet from his face. He could feel sweat dripping down his forehead, and each of his muscles ached. The fire must’ve destroyed the pearls.
It all felt real. Too real. He had never known his dream body could give him such accurate feedback.
Why the hell doesn’t practising in the dream transfer to real life, then?
“I don’t know,” Yu Han said. “I might know.” He checked his body. It was definitely that of Yu Han, not Johan. Fat, but far fitter than five months ago.
“Let’s take a look that way.” Yu Han pointed in the direction of the skyglow. If it really was a skyglow, that had to be a city.
“We can easily find our way back here,” Yu Han pressed. It would be a lie if he said he didn’t care about going back. But if this really was Earth, then there was no choice to even consider.
He would stay here.
“Maybe there are treasures in this place,” Yu Han said, trying to convince the crab. “Food we’ve never had before. Places of infinite knowledge. Enough money to buy anything in the world!”
“I’ll open a bank account for you,” Yu Han said. “A savings account? How about a high-yield investment account? Heck, if you want to store some artwork in Switzerland, I can even—”
“It’s—”
Ripples spread from the circular mirror, swaying beneath their feet. Yu Han felt as if he had been transferred to a ship sailing the high seas. He lost his balance and fell. His body sank in the ripples. Like quicksand.
There was no escape.
“No—!”
The world of Earth vanished. He reached out, trying to grab the edges. Above the mirror, characters of shimmering green light ignited, hanging in the void like spectral signboards. He clawed at them. A handhold. An anchor. Anything!
He grasped nothing.
With a plop, he was flung back to his dreamscape, followed by Fei Rui, the worm’s teeth, and his halberd.
Yu Han flung himself to his feet and started tapping the white-shelled ground. The taps evolved to thuds and finally punches.
“No! Fuck!” No ripples. Nothing. It was as if the other side of the white wall didn’t exist at all. “Where is it—”
“…Oh, right.” Yu Han jumped up. He was glad that Huang Niuniu wasn’t here to see his shameful display. He neared the location where Fei Rui was tapping with his feet.
There was a circular mirror embedded into the white-shelled wall. It was about a metre wide, the same size as it had been on the other side.
His face reflected back. The sweat was drying. There were no bruises. Hair stuck to his forehead. The headache remained. But it was fainter.
He touched the mirror. A small ripple waved outwards accompanied by a green shimmer. Between each peak of the ripple, the scene in the mirror changed from Yu Han and this side of the dreamscape to the green foliage of that side.
And as each second passed, Yu Han felt something drain from his body. Spiritual energy depletion be damned.
Otherworldly Taint Purified.
Pure Qi Acquired: +150
Trial Overcome: [Investigate the Outerplanar Threat—Completed. Vanquished Ghost Dreams Parasitic Fireworm (Outerplanar): 1]
The ripples erupted into violent swells.
“Not enough—” It was as if Yu Han’s very being was being drained to break whatever barrier existed between the realities.
Fei Rui said something, but Yu Han could not hear. He did not care. All he wanted was to go back.
See his dad one last time.
Tell his siblings he was sorry.
+1 True Qi.
You Have Levelled Up.
Pain. His head burned. His vision shattered, the dreamscape falling apart like reflections on a broken mirror. What replaced it wasn’t Earth, but the dark void of sleep.