Alien Hotel.

Chapter 428 Reconstruction
"We are in a vast dream."

The moment Yu Sheng saw the line of words appear on the window, he felt as if a loud bang came from the depths of his mind. This bang was like a thunderclap in the darkness that shattered the night. Then, a kind of "veil" that supported everything around him began to crumble rapidly under this thunder at the cognitive level.

A sudden gust of cold wind blew into the room, carrying with it icy rain. The doors and windows were tightly shut, but the wind and rain outside still swept through the living room without any obstruction. They penetrated the windows, the walls, and all the furnishings in the room—and then everything seemed to melt and collapse, accompanied by twisting and violent shaking.

Not far away, a large hole was eroded into the wall, and the edges of the hole flowed down like grease, revealing the winding corridor outside. Half of the corridor's roof was blown off, and the gale-force winds and torrential rain poured in. A long bridge, which seemed to have come from nowhere, hung upside down in the air above the corridor. On the inverted bridge, there were pedestrians swaying and many car shadows that seemed to be blurred into a dark, indistinct mass.

A strange rumbling sound came from nearby. The window, pierced by countless storms, finally shattered amidst the roar, turning into a chaotic mass of colors and disappearing from Yu Sheng and the others' sight. The living room shook violently, then collapsed precariously, only to abruptly stop in mid-air, as if held up by an unseen hand. In the distance, buildings seemed to grow ever taller towards the sky in the gale, while simultaneously being sliced ​​by invisible blades as they "grew," becoming massive fragments that floated loosely in the air. The metal framework that had once supported the buildings spilled out from between the fragments, hanging down like hair, weaving into a forest-like structure that spread throughout the city, tangling, piling up, and multiplying...

The entire city of Mo became a bizarre and absurd nightmare, with cold winds and torrential rain howling in the dream, sweeping up the entire city and letting it grow unchecked in its out-of-control cognition and imagination.

"Holy crap, the ancestor of all puppets!" Eileen immediately jumped onto Yu Sheng's shoulder, hugging his head and exclaiming in surprise, "What the hell is this?!"

Hu Li was surrounded by layers of eerie blue flames. She hunched over slightly and growled threateningly at the wind and rain pouring in. Luna, on the other hand, instantly equipped herself with her fingertip blades and leaped lightly to Hu Li's side. At the same time, the radar system inside her body scanned the surrounding environment.

“No, it’s an illusion,” Luna said in a low voice while remaining highly vigilant. “The changes are real.”

A vast dream? Does it really exist?

A huge contradiction and confusion arose in Yu Sheng's mind, and then he thought of the situation that Xuan Che mentioned in his last message - the common cognitive anomaly.

Was all of this a result of cognitive anomalies? If this absurd scene defying common sense was caused by cognitive anomalies… then was he the one experiencing the anomaly? But when the wind and rain rushed in just now, he clearly felt a thunderclap shatter some kind of veil, as if he had instantly broken through some kind of illusion… so this was the reality? Was the “normal” Mo City before the anomaly the result?
Which layer is the anomaly, or are all of them "abnormal"?
A chilling sensation suddenly seemed to pierce through his flesh and entangle his mind, jolting him awake from his momentary daze. He quickly shook his head and subconsciously looked in the direction from which the chilling sensation came—Eileen was sitting on his shoulder, but the little doll seemed oblivious to everything, merely looking around nervously.

Strands of black "spider web" unconsciously spread through the air around her.

Seeing this, Yu Sheng quickly poked the little doll and reminded her, "Eileen, you've pulled the strings."

"Ah, oh?" Eileen only then noticed the spider silk escaping from around her and quickly raised her hand to pull it back. "I didn't notice, what happened... Ah, Yu Sheng, what do we do now? This place has become like this, where are we going to find my nephew and the others?"

“Perhaps this is how we can find them,” Yu Sheng thought, now at peace. Although he couldn’t understand the reason behind these changes, his reason told him that since those two reminders had appeared on the window, Yuan Hao Zhenren and the others had most likely fallen into this “Twisted Ink City.” “Hu Li, fire two missiles into the sky, the more conspicuous the better—then we’ll find a way down and see if there are any other marks left by Yuan Hao Zhenren in the vicinity.”

"it is good!"

Hu Li nodded quickly, and then fired two Fox Carrot missiles into the sky. With two booming sounds, the brilliant foxfire exploded in the rain, and the scattered flames illuminated the sky above the entire city.

Yu Sheng looked up at the firelight spreading across the sky, then without hesitation stepped across the rain curtain that pierced through the room and walked towards the crooked corridor outside the room that seemed to lead to the lower floors of the building.

They left, leaving behind only the pouring rain and howling wind in the room.

The barrier between reality and illusion has been breached. A cognitive interference that has shrouded the city of Mo for many years has fallen like a broken curtain, and the folded "curtain" has piled up in the city to form this bizarre and grotesque appearance.

After a while, a soft click sounded as the door lock opened in the empty room.

In a corner of the living room, the door leading to the master bedroom was pushed open from the inside.

A girl with blonde hair walked out casually, carrying half a jianbing guozi in one hand and a water bottle under her arm. Behind her was the scene of the living room at No. 66 Wutong Road.

The howling wind and rain lashed down on the other side of the door, and the blonde girl, who hadn't been looking where she was going, was immediately drenched in the rain, even the jianbing (Chinese crepe) in her hand got wet.

Rapunzel raised her head blankly, looking out at the howling wind and rain sweeping through the living room. Beyond the roof and walls, mostly eroded by the wind and rain, lay a chaotic and distorted alien landscape. A shattered awning boat glided crookedly across the sky and crashed into a pavilion less than a hundred meters away from her.

The next second, the blonde girl took off running back.

"Oh my god! I'm so scared! I'm so scared! ... Red Hat! Snow White! My brother moved to another weird place! Today's outing is canceled!"

... Yu Sheng and his group quickly walked through the crooked corridor, and then went down more than a dozen floors of a building that was already bent and deformed, and even seemed to have no end.

Large holes would appear in the nearby walls from time to time, revealing a completely different street scene of Mexico City. The wind and rain would pass through the holes or even through the walls without any pattern, swirling and dancing wildly in the stairwells and corridors. However, some areas remained abnormally dry despite the wind and rain. The rain seemed unable to interact with the surrounding "scene" as it swept over the walls and roofs, and even the chill in the wind seemed illusory and short-lived.

As Yu Sheng walked through those corridors, he couldn't help but think of the rain falling in the wilderness of the soul—the same rain that came from the desolate place, as if it were falling continuously in an illusion.

They arrived at the lobby on the first floor. In Yu Sheng's memory, their room was originally on the seventh floor, but this time he had to walk down more than ten floors to reach this lobby. This lobby was also battered by wind and rain, and compared to his memory, the lobby was significantly larger. Some interior spaces that did not seem to belong to this building had been "merged" into the lobby, abruptly blending into the distance.

There are people here!

Hu Li, with her sharp eyes, pointed to a corner of the rest area and shouted loudly as soon as she stepped out of the stairwell.

Yu Sheng immediately walked over and, sure enough, saw several figures in the direction Hu Li was pointing.

But upon closer inspection, he realized that they were indeed just a few "figures".

Several hazy, human-shaped silhouettes, seemingly pieced together from blurry blocks of color, lay in the rest area. Two lay on the sofa, two on the floor, and one even lay on a bed that shouldn't have been in the lobby at all. These blurry human-shaped silhouettes tossed and turned, as if they were trapped in a nightmare.

Yu Sheng reached out to them, only to find that his fingers easily passed through the outlines of those colored blocks.

Eileen blinked, grabbed Yu Sheng's hair with one hand, and tentatively stretched out the other, with several thin threads extending from her fingertips and connecting to the humanoid silhouettes.

“...They’re dreaming,” the little doll muttered, “but...it’s strange, their dream isn’t a dream. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Yu Sheng: "Nonsense, of course I don't understand."

Eileen pursed her lips, and then she saw several figures suddenly appear in the hall.

There were also several hazy outlines of color, which were not there a second ago, but suddenly appeared at the doorway. Several figures floated a few centimeters above the ground like a poorly projected image, flickering, maintaining a dazed standing or about to take a step forward posture, suspended in mid-air.

The black threads immediately spread to the newly emerged figures.

“They’re dreaming, and it’s a ‘lucid dream,’” Eileen said quickly. “I don’t quite understand their minds, but it’s like they’re walking into this hotel, about to check in… No fear, no confusion, the world seems normal to them.”

Yu Sheng frowned, a realization dawning on him. Just then, a slight vibration suddenly came from his pocket.

He immediately pulled out his phone and was shocked to see a notification flashing on the screen, which had previously had no signal—

"Abnormal fluctuations... Signal recovery in progress."

Immediately afterwards, several messages came in at once, and my phone kept vibrating.

The source of the information is the Secret Service, Bai Liqing.

Yu Sheng was stunned for a moment. Although he didn't know why the communication had suddenly been restored, he still subconsciously opened one of the messages.

"The database records that what you encountered was most likely the Dark Angel 'Star Derivative'..."

"Beware of the Level IV cognitive reshaping He creates—which could lead to a planetary-wide reconstruction of reality."

(End of this chapter)