Dream Ghost

Training began that morning.

Chen Xuan's training plan was simple to the point of being brutal—twelve hours a day: four hours of sparring in the morning, four hours of rules analysis in the afternoon, and four hours of mental processing in the evening. Meals, water breaks, and even bathroom breaks were counted as rest time. Lin Ye looked at the plan, said nothing, simply folded it up, and stuffed it into his pocket.

"Don't you think that's too harsh?" Su Wanning asked from the side.

"Only the ruthless survive." Chen Xuan laid out the mats in the training room. "In three months, he'll be entering the interior of the World Tree. The things inside surpass the Codex level. If the training isn't ruthless, he'll die as soon as he goes in. If the training is ruthless, he might be half-dead. Half-dead is better than dead."

Su Wanning didn't refute. She walked to the corner of the training room, let the silver thread out from her fingertips, and checked each strand for knots. This was her habit; she checked the thread before every training session, like a sniper checking his weapon.

Lin Ye stood in the center of the training room and stretched his wrists. The deep purple mark glowed softly under the fluorescent lights, a little brighter than yesterday—the residual consciousness had dropped to five percent, and the digestion speed was faster than expected.

"First, sparring." Chen Xuan took off his jacket, revealing a gray, tight-fitting tracksuit. "You won't use your abilities. Just your body. I'm going to hit you."

"Why not use your abilities?"

"Because your abilities are already strong enough. But your body is too weak. Inside the World Tree, your abilities might be suppressed, and the rules might become ineffective. At that time, you can only rely on your own body." Chen Xuan cracked his neck, his cervical spine making a popping sound. "So from now on, you'll be beaten by me every day. I'll beat you until you're no longer afraid of pain."

Lin Ye looked at him.

"Have you hit it many times?"

"I've been fighting for fifteen years," Chen Xuan said. "Now, no one can knock me down with one punch."

Lin Ye assumed a defensive stance.

Chen Xuan's first punch landed on his forearm. The force wasn't great, but the angle was tricky, hitting the unprotected inner forearm. Lin Ye winced in pain but didn't back down. The second punch landed on his shoulder, the third on his ribs. Each punch was slow, but each landed precisely on the most painful spot. Lin Ye blocked three punches and took seven. Ten minutes later, he squatted on the ground, clutching his forearm, which was now a large bruise.

"You did it on purpose," he said, panting.

"Of course I did it on purpose." Chen Xuan said without changing his expression. "If I didn't intentionally hurt you, how would you remember what pain felt like? If you didn't remember, you wouldn't dodge next time."

Su Wanning stood in the corner, looking at the bruises on Lin Ye's arm, her fingers clenching the silk thread, but she didn't speak. She knew Chen Xuan was right. Three months was too short; the most efficient method had to be used. Feeling sorry for him was useless; it couldn't save a life.

Lin Ye stood up and resumed his defensive stance.

"Again."

Chen Xuan fought for another ten minutes. This time, Lin Ye dodged five punches and only took five. He had improved. Chen Xuan nodded without saying anything, but the corner of his mouth twitched slightly.

During the lunch break, Su Wanning applied medicine to Lin Ye's arm. The bruise had spread from his wrist to his elbow, a bluish-purple color, like an abstract painting. She used a cotton swab to apply the ointment little by little, her movements very gentle, but Lin Ye still gasped in pain.

"He punched you thirty-seven times today," Su Wanning said. "You dodged thirteen of them."

"Did you count them?"

"I have nothing to do. The silk threads are laid out there; I can see where every punch will land." She threw away the cotton swab and put on a band-aid. "You'll be hiding even more tomorrow."

How did you know?

"Because you're afraid of pain." Su Wanning looked at him. "People who are afraid of pain learn the fastest."

Gu Yan was in charge of the rules explanation in the afternoon. His consciousness projection sat on the bench in the training room, holding an old notebook in his hand—not a real notebook, but a simulation created by his consciousness projection, yet it looked exactly like the real one.

"The essence of rule parsing is not 'finding loopholes'," Gu Yan said, flipping through his notebook, which was filled with dense writing. "It's 'understanding the rules.' The deeper your understanding, the more you can do. For example, you can currently use rules to interfere and create loopholes. But if your understanding is deep enough, you don't need to create loopholes—you can directly 'write' a new rule to override the old one."

"Rules writing," Lin Ye said. It was one of the abilities he inherited from Lin Yuan, but he hadn't used it yet.

"Yes. Try it out."

Lin Ye stretched out his hand, palm up. He tried to "write" a rule in his mind—something simple, like "The temperature in this training room should increase by five degrees." His mind was like a pen, drawing invisible words in the air. The rule was written, but the temperature in the training room did not change.

"It failed," Gu Yan said. "Do you know why?"

"Because I don't believe it."

"Right. If you yourself don't believe this rule can work, of course it won't. The core of rule writing isn't 'writing,' it's 'believing.' You have to believe that the rules you write are the truth of this world. Believe more than you believe the sun rises in the east." Gu Yan closed his notebook. "You practice this first. When you can raise the temperature in this training room by one degree, then we'll move on to the next topic."

Lin Ye sat in the center of the training room, his eyes closed, writing the rule in his mind over and over again. "Temperature rises five degrees. Temperature rises five degrees. Temperature rises five degrees." His consciousness was like a pen, repeatedly tracing those words in the void, until his fingers went numb and his temples throbbed.

The temperature in the training room remained unchanged.

But he didn't stop.

Lin Yuanzhou was in charge of processing the old man's consciousness that evening. The old man had been moved from the medical room to a small room in the association's headquarters, right next to Lin Ye's. His body was recovering quickly; he could already walk, eat, and use the toilet on his own. However, his hands still trembled frequently, not from illness, but from habit—a habit of three thousand years of stillness, suddenly having to relearn to "move," requiring conscious control of every movement.

"Digesting the remnants of consciousness isn't about 'eating' them," Lin Yuanzhou said, sitting in a chair with a cup of hot tea in his hand. "It's about 'understanding' them. The wolf's loneliness, the snake's waiting, the bird's repression. You have to stand in their shoes and feel what they feel. It's not sympathy, it's empathy. Sympathy is 'I understand you're sad,' empathy is 'I'm sad with you.'"

Lin Ye sat opposite him, closing his eyes. He sank his consciousness into the remnants of the wolf—that lonely, gray, endless plain. The wolf stood in the center of the plain, its three tails hanging behind it, its amber eyes gazing into the distance. There was nothing in the distance, no trees, no grass, no other creatures, only a hazy gray sky and a hazy gray earth.

Lin Ye stood beside the wolf, gazing into the distance with it.

"What are you looking at?" he asked.

The wolf didn't answer. It couldn't speak. But its consciousness told Lin Ye—it was looking in the direction its master had left. For three thousand years, nothing had appeared in that direction, yet it kept looking. Because it had no other thing to do but look.

Lin Ye reached out and placed his hand on the wolf's head. The short black fur slipped through his fingers, carrying a warm temperature, like fabric that had been dried in the sun.

"He's back," Lin Ye said. "He's inside me. He didn't abandon you."

The wolf's ears twitched. Its tail slowly rose and gently patted the ground.

Lin Ye opened his eyes. Lin Yuanzhou looked at him; the tea in his hand had gone cold.

"How much has been digested?" the old man asked.

"Sixty percent of the wolf's population. Fifty percent each of the snake's and the bird's population."

Lin Yuanzhou nodded, stood up, and walked to the window. It was already dark outside, and the city lights twinkled in the distance, like an inverted starry sky reflected on the ground.

"Your father sat in this very chair and said the same thing." He didn't turn around. "'Sixty percent of the wolf, fifty percent of the snake and fifty percent of the bird.' Exactly the same."

Lin Ye remained silent for a few seconds.

"You remember it so clearly?"

"I remember every single frame of my three thousand years of memories." Lin Yuanzhou turned around and looked at Lin Ye. "It's not because I have a good memory. It's because I have nothing else but memories. No family, no friends, no job, no hobbies. Only memories. Three thousand years of memories are like a book that I've read countless times, every page is worn out, and every word is imprinted in my mind."

Lin Ye stood up, walked to his side, and stood next to him by the window.

"You have it now," he said. "Family. Friends. Job. Hobbies. You have it."

Lin Yuanzhou looked at him, a complex expression appearing on his aged face—not moved, not sad, but something deeper, more profound, as if he had finally waited for something.

"You are not like your father," he said.

"What's different?"

"Your father wouldn't say such a thing." Lin Yuanzhou's lips curled up slightly. "He only does. He does it and doesn't say anything. You did it, and you said it."

"Wouldn't it be better to say it?"

"Good, you should say it." Lin Yuanzhou turned around, looking at the myriad lights outside the window. "Only by saying it will others know what you're thinking. Your father suffered too much from not speaking up. You're smarter than him."

Lin Ye didn't speak. He looked out at the city, at the lit windows, each one like countless open eyes. Behind each window was a person, a family, a story. They didn't know of the World Tree's existence, the Dream Weavers' conspiracy, or that someone was training until their body was covered in bruises to protect their dreams. They didn't need to know.

Lin Ye put his hand in his pocket and touched the black anchor point. The metal plate was no longer hot, but its temperature was slightly higher than body temperature, like a tiny, continuously beating heart.

"Three months," he said softly.

Lin Yuanzhou glanced at him.

"That's enough," the old man said. "You're better than your father."

"Where is it strong?"

"You have one more thing than him."

"What?"

Lin Yuanzhou didn't answer. He carried the now-cold tea back to his room. The door closed. Lin Ye stood in the hallway, staring at the closed door, lost in thought for a long time.

He had one more thing than his father. What was it?

He went into his room, closed the door, lay down on the bed, and stared at the ceiling. The crack was still there, two and a half meters long, with eleven branches. He had stopped counting, but the shape of the crack was etched into his mind.

He rolled over, facing the wall. The water stains on the wall were still there, along with the image of the bird with its wings tucked in.

He closed his eyes. In his consciousness, the World Tree's perception was still functioning. The crack hadn't widened, but it hadn't shrunk either. The gray-green consciousness was still slowly "speaking" inside the trunk, its voice very soft, like someone murmuring in a dream.

Lin Ye didn't listen to it anymore. He was exhausted today. He had trained for twelve hours, taken thirty-seven punches from Chen Xuan, spent three hours writing rules, and digested three hours of lingering consciousness. His body felt like a wrung-out towel, every fiber of it aching.

He was asleep. He wasn't dreaming.

The next morning, when Su Wanning brought breakfast, Lin Ye was already in the training room. He sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed, palms facing up. The deep purple mark flickered in the morning light.

The training room was a degree warmer than yesterday.

Su Wanning stood at the door, holding a tray, feeling the faint, almost imperceptible warmth. She didn't speak, but simply placed the tray on the ground, then sat opposite Lin Ye and closed her eyes with him.

She couldn't heat up the training room.

But she could let Lin Ye know that she was here.

Sunlight streamed in through the window, falling on the two people and casting their shadows on the floor, close together but not overlapping.