Dreaming for 10,000 years

Chapter 422 Story
A night breeze swirled up a few fallen leaves as Shi Fei watched the taxi's taillights disappear around the street corner. He suddenly turned and said to the shadows under the streetlight, "You've been here for a while, haven't you?"

A gaunt man emerged from the shadows. His eyes, behind his glasses, were cloudy, and his gray hair was disheveled. He looked at Shi Fei and said, "Who are you? Are you the Cat God?"

"Don't you know whether I'm the Cat God or not?" Shi Fei retorted, taking a few steps forward. "Didn't your people say I was the Cat God?"

The man followed closely behind: "The doctrine does indeed record that only the Cat God can awaken from the endless dream." He paused, "But the Cat God I've seen is not like you."

"What is he like?" Shi Fei asked.

The man shut his mouth and stopped talking.

The two walked one after the other in silence. When they arrived at Shi Fei's door, the man suddenly asked, "What are you planning to do?"

“Do what I want to do,” Shi Fei said, glancing at him.

The man paused for a moment and then said, "The City of Dreams is everyone's home; you can't do this."

"But this is ultimately just a dream." Shi Fei opened the door to his home.

The man followed Shi Fei into his house and said, "But reality is even more despairing. In dreams, one can live a peaceful life, but in reality..."

He continued, "It's better to be in a dream. The reason people dream is because there are places in dreams that can never be reached in reality."

"Heh..." Shi Fei sneered, "It's nothing but self-deception. Do you even know what a dream is?"

The man said, "It is hope, it is a dream, it is the end of all good things."

“No!” Shi Fei said, sitting on the sofa. “Dreams are simple; they are a physiological reaction.”

"..." The person fell silent.

Shi Fei continued, "When a person sleeps, the cholinergic neurons in the brainstem secrete a large amount of acetylcholine, which allows the person to enter deep sleep, the REM sleep stage."

"All neurons in the brainstem randomly send some neuronal signals to the cerebral cortex, and these are the prototypes of dreams."

"Afterwards, the hippocampus, thalamus, occipital lobe, fusiform gyrus, Wernicke's area, amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex and other brain organs mix together to form a dream."

"Dreams are like this, nothing special."

Shi Fei explained dreams from an objective perspective.

The man said bitterly, "The hippocampus is responsible for temporarily storing memories, the thalamus is the filter for information, and the occipital lobe is the center for processing vision."

He explained them one by one: "The fusiform gyrus is responsible for adding physical features to the characters in the dream, while Wernicke's area is responsible for adding voices. The amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex are responsible for emotions."

“You know all this?” Shi Fei said.

The man didn't speak; he was a priest of the god of dreams, so of course he knew what dreams were all about.

"What is your reality like? Why did you come here?" Shi Fei suddenly asked.

The man sat down opposite Shi Fei and said, "If you, Cat God, are willing to listen, I am also willing to speak."

“I am not a god. If you are willing to speak, I am all ears,” Shi Fei said.

“My name in the Cat God Cult is Whale, but my original name was Lan Jing. In reality, I have an older brother named Lan Meng.” Whale spoke of his real-life experiences with a bitter tone. “My brother is mentally ill, as is my father.”

"Why do you say that?" Shi Fei asked curiously.

Few people would say that their family members are mentally ill. This is because it's rare for someone with a mental illness to not have a family member who is also mentally ill, especially if the father or brothers are both mentally ill.

Mental illness is generally not considered a mental illness.

The whale said, "My father's name was Lan Daotianwu. He was a madman who wanted to control the world through power. Later, he was killed by my other older brother, who was also a bit of a troublemaker."

"The older brother beat his own father to death, that doesn't sound like a mother-in-law at all." Shi Fei thought it was a bit of a joke.

The whale seemed not to hear Shi Fei's complaints and said, "As for my brother Lan Meng, he is also a madman. He established Lan Meng Company from my father and deeply hates the behavior of humans on Earth that pollutes the environment and destroys nature. He tries to destroy other humans and the entire Earth's ecosystem with overwhelming power."

"Then, the employees of Blue Dream Company build a new world on the ruins, allowing the world to be 'reborn.' This is the Blue Dream creation process!"

"Hmm?" Shi Fei noticed the blind spot and said, "Is your brother some kind of environmental fanatic? And this procedure has a lot of problems, doesn't it?"

"Most environmental pollution is caused by the pursuit of profit and industrial products. In the name of environmental protection, people are killed. Doesn't that mean the Earth has been polluted for nothing?"

"How can we guarantee that such a situation won't occur in the new world?" Shi Fei asked several questions in a row, saying, "From this perspective, your brother is indeed not very bright."

“That’s right!” the whale said. “I’ve always felt the same way since I was a child. We should do environmental protection, but not at the expense of harming others.”

"Environmental protection is because human survival harms the environment. If humans harm other humans in order to protect the environment, wouldn't that be...throwing the baby out with the bathwater?"

“He can be called a traitor,” Shi Fei commented. “Killing everyone for the sake of cats, dogs, flowers, and trees is simply treachery and sainthood.”

“Yes! You’re absolutely right!” The whale nodded and said, “I once talked to Lan Meng about this issue, but he beat me up.”

"He hit me lightly, but he still almost killed me. Because there was a huge difference in our strength."

“I’m just an ordinary person, but he… was born with a powerful magnetic field. That force made him arrogant, conceited, and self-centered.”

Shi Fei nodded and said, "Later, you came into the dream world, gained great power, and defeated him?"

"To my shame," the whale said, "when I was gaining power in the dream and preparing to defeat him, he had already been defeated by another powerful being."

"And then?" Shi Fei felt that the story was not over.

The whale said, "Then, that powerful being and others wanted to use their own value to rise above the world. The power I obtained from the dream was indeed great, but it was still no match for them."

At this point, the whale's tone was filled with boundless fear: "It's hard to imagine that they could destroy the moon so easily."

“That’s really a bit outrageous,” Shi Fei said. “It’s not your fault.”

It's not that I didn't try hard enough, but that the enemy was too powerful. For an ordinary person, even if they obtained the power of dreams in the City of Dreams, it would be difficult to reach the point of destroying the moon in reality.

"So, Cat God made his move!" The whale's eyes lit up as he said this.

(End of this chapter)