Dream Ghost

As Lin Ye stepped out of the association headquarters, a night breeze swept over him. It wasn't a biting cold, but the coolness unique to late autumn, carrying the scent of fallen leaves and dust, seeping into his collar and clinging to his skin like an invisible hand groping. He zipped his tracksuit all the way up, put his hands in his pockets, and walked eastward along the sidewalk. He didn't drive, he didn't run, he just walked. His extended perception had already locked onto the rapidly approaching wave of consciousness thirty kilometers away—at least a late-stage Dream Domain Master. The frequency was steady, each step shortening the distance, like a precise metronome, neither too fast nor too slow, but never stopping.

The city's nightscape flowed past him. Streetlights, GG signs, the white glow of 24-hour convenience stores—occasionally, a taxi would drive by, the sound of tires rubbing against the pavement echoing in the empty streets. He crossed an intersection; the light was red, but there were no cars on the road, so he stopped and waited. Not to obey traffic rules, but to maintain his "rhythm." His consciousness needed to remain stable; he couldn't let running disrupt his rhythm. The Dream Weavers were approaching, and so was he. The two walked towards each other under the same city's night sky, like two shooting stars destined to collide.

The boundaries of perception detected the first anomaly. Not a person, but "rules." About three kilometers ahead, the rules of a street had been artificially altered—the road surface friction had been reduced to a minimum, like ice. If someone were to drive across, they would skid, lose control, and crash into the guardrail. Not an attack, but "clearing out." Dreamweaver would eliminate unnecessary interference, ensuring that no ordinary people would be involved in the battle.

Lin Ye quickened his pace. Not running, but "walking fast." His rules unfolded beneath his feet, and with each step, the friction on the pavement was restored. It wasn't repairing the entire street, but a "point-to-point" repair. Wherever he passed, the rules returned to normal. Like a lit candle passing through a dark room, the light illuminated only the path he had walked, but that was enough.

He walked three kilometers in fifteen minutes. He stopped on an abandoned industrial street. On both sides were dilapidated factory buildings, windows bricked up, walls spray-painted with the word "Demolish." Half the streetlights were broken, the remaining few swaying in the night wind, their light flickering. A person stood in the middle of the street. Not three, but one. The other two were in the shadows; Lin Ye's senses extended to pinpoint their locations—a second-floor window of a factory building on the left, and the back of an abandoned bus on the right. Three people, three directions, a triangle.

The man standing in the middle of the street spoke first. "You came alone." His voice wasn't loud, but it echoed in the empty street, like a shout in a valley. He was in his forties, bald, wearing a long black coat, his hands in his pockets. His face was round, his eyes small but bright, like two polished black pebbles. Fang Yuan. Deputy head of the headquarters investigation team, a radical, advocating for the study of fragments, the utilization of fragments, and the artificial creation of fragments. Lin Ye had seen him in the conference room.

"You're not here to investigate," Lin Ye said.

Fang Yuan's lips curled into a slight smile. "I'm here to investigate. To investigate the limits of your abilities." He pulled his hand out of his pocket, his left hand, palm up. There were no marks on his palm, but a scar ran from the base of his index finger to his wrist, like a centipede crawling on his skin. The scar was glowing—silver-white, like the light emanating from the Association's anchor point.

"You're experimenting with fragments." Lin Ye looked at the scar.

"It's not an experiment. It's a 'transplant.' Since we couldn't find the seventh fragment, we created it ourselves. We didn't extract it from our bloodline; we copied it from the existing fragments. The third fragment is in your palm, the sixth is in your consciousness, and the first, second, fourth, and fifth are in the headquarters vault. We copied the structure of the first fragment and implanted it into my body. It's not a complete fragment; it's a 'replica.' But that's enough. Enough."

Lin Ye's fingers tightened slightly. Headquarters was replicating the fragments. Not research, but "production." They used the fragments as weapons, creating artificial Dreamers. Fang Yuan wasn't a descendant of the Night Watchers, lacking the talent for fragment awakening, but he possessed a replica of the fragment in his hand—a silvery-white light, identical to the anchor point, identical to the Association's insignia. They used the Association's technology to create the Association's weapons. But weapons don't ask for whom they fight, only who they attack.

"You can't beat me," Lin Ye said.

Fang Yuan laughed. It wasn't an arrogant laugh, but a calm one, like the laugh of an adult hearing a child say, "I'm taller than you." "I know. I can't beat you alone. But what about three of us?"

A light shone from a window on the second floor of the factory building on the left. It wasn't a lamp; it was the "rules" illuminating the scene—a person stood at the window, hands pressed against the frame, and the entire building began to deform. Bricks, cement, and steel bars rearranged under the influence of these rules, like Lego bricks being disassembled and reassembled. The factory building transformed into a tower, not tall, three stories high, but each story was rotating. Not a physical rotation, but the rotation of the "rules." Each story of the tower had different rules—gravity doubled on the first story, zero on the second, and time slowed down on the third.

A second person emerged from behind the abandoned bus on the right. A woman, in her thirties, with short hair and frameless glasses. She carried no weapon, but her shadow was odd. The streetlight shone from behind her; her shadow should have been cast in front, but it was behind. This wasn't a physical phenomenon, but a phenomenon of "rules." Her ability was "shadow manipulation"—not controlling shadows, but controlling "blocked light." The area where the light was blocked was her domain. Her shadow wasn't a shadow; it was a door. Behind the door was another space, a space without light, without sound, and without any rules.

Lin Ye stood in the middle of the street, three people, three directions, forming a triangle. Fang Yuan was in front, the tower was on the left, and the shadow was on the right. Three Dream Domain Sovereigns. Not early stage, but late stage. Although Fang Yuan's replica was not as good as the real fragment, his consciousness level was a genuine late stage Dream Domain Sovereign, accumulated over fifteen years of training, not something built up from fragments.

Lin Ye did not retreat. His consciousness simultaneously locked onto three targets, not for control, but for "perception." Each strand of consciousness acted like a probe, providing real-time feedback on the target's rule changes. Fang Yuan was preparing to attack, the rule structure condensing in his palm like a compressed ball of light. The tower was rotating, each level having a different rule frequency, but sharing a common "axis"—the top. The top was the source of the rules; destroying the top would cause the entire tower to collapse. The shadow was moving—not the woman, but her shadow. The shadow spread from her feet like a pool of ink, extending along the ground towards Lin Ye. Where the shadow covered, the streetlights disappeared. Not blocked, but "swallowed."

Lin Ye's rules exploded in his consciousness. Not one, but five.

The first rule—"A vacuum exists within three meters of Lin Ye." Just like during training, he isolated himself from the environment. Shadows cannot engulf a vacuum because there is no light to block it. The tower's rules cannot affect a vacuum because there is no gravity, time, or space within it. Fang Yuan's attacks cannot penetrate a vacuum because there is no target within it.

Fang Yuan looked at the transparent, slightly distorted barrier surrounding Lin Ye, the smile on his lips unchanged. He reached out and placed his hand on the barrier. His hand trembled, not from fear, but from "deconstruction." He was dismantling Lin Ye's rule vacuum. Not just one rule, but the entire "structure." The rule vacuum wasn't a single rule, but a network woven from five rules. Each rule supported the other four; dismantling one would cause the other four to fill the gap. Fang Yuan dismantled the first rule, and the four filled the gap. He dismantled the second rule, and the four filled the gap again. His fingers moved rapidly across the barrier, like a pianist playing a very fast piece. By the fifth time, one rule hadn't been filled. Not because he was too late, but because he was "tired." Lin Ye's consciousness energy was rapidly depleting.

The tower's attack arrived. Not a physical attack, but a "rule-based attack." The first layer of the tower doubled the gravity, covering the area around Lin Ye, compressing the rule-based vacuum to two meters. The second layer reduced gravity to zero, causing Lin Ye's body to float upwards, his feet leaving the ground. On the third layer, time slowed, and his movements became choppy, like a projector with an insufficient frame rate.

The shadow's attack arrived. The pool of ink spilled to Lin Ye's feet, compressing the vacuum of rules to a meter. The shadow was devouring the edge of the vacuum—not the rules, but "space." The space occupied by the vacuum of rules was shrinking, like a piece of ice melting in the sunlight.

Lin Ye didn't panic. He still had thirteen thousand rules in his consciousness, lent to him by Qiu Ye, and each one he used reduced the remaining ones. He quickly searched through those thirteen thousand rules and found three.

The first rule—"Under the spatial lockdown, the caster cannot move." The tower was locking Lin Ye in, but the tower itself was also locked down. The person at the top of the tower couldn't move; if they did, the tower would collapse. Lin Ye's consciousness entangled and bound the top of the tower, not as an attack, but as a "fixation." It fixed him there, preventing him from moving. The tower's rotation began to slow down, and its regular frequency began to become disordered.

The second rule—"The space devoured by the shadow will retain traces of the original owner's consciousness." The shadow devoured the space around Lin Ye, but traces of Lin Ye's consciousness remained within those spaces. These traces were like fingerprints, like scents, like footprints left by someone walking through snow. Lin Ye followed those traces, tracing the shadow's origin in reverse. Not chasing the woman, but chasing her "door." Behind the door was another space, without light, without sound, without any rules. But Lin Ye's traces of consciousness entered. The door wasn't closed, and it couldn't be closed.

Article 3 – “The rule structure of the counterfeit fragment has a fatal flaw. The ‘bloodline authentication’ module from the original rules was lost during the replication process. Without bloodline authentication, the counterfeit cannot distinguish between its owner and its enemy. It will attack everyone, including the user itself.”

Fang Yuan's hand suddenly bounced off the barrier. Not pushed away, but "out of control." The replica fragment in his palm began to backfire, the silvery-white light turning red, like red-hot iron. He tried to suppress it, but couldn't. The replica didn't recognize him; it only knew to attack anything with a fluctuation of consciousness. Fang Yuan's fluctuation of consciousness was the strongest, so it attacked him.

Fang Yuan knelt on the ground, his left hand gripping his right wrist, the red light in his palm flashing like a heart about to explode. His face was contorted, not in pain, but in fear. He wasn't afraid of the pain itself, but of disappearing. If the replica went out of control, it would devour his consciousness. Not death, but non-existence. As if he had never existed at all.

The person at the top of the tower moved. Not of his own volition, but pulled and swayed by Lin Ye's consciousness. His body was dragged out of the window, falling from the height of three stories, crashing to the ground with a dull thud. The tower collapsed; bricks, cement, and steel bars, having broken free of their original form, clattered to the ground, raising a cloud of dust.

The door to the shadow woman was forced open by Lin Ye's traces of consciousness. Not physically, but through the manipulation of "rules." Lin Ye's consciousness spread through the space behind the door, like a drop of ink in clear water, staining the entire space his color. The door no longer belonged to that woman; it belonged to Lin Ye. She couldn't reclaim her shadow, nor could she close the door. Her power had been taken away.

Lin Ye stood in the middle of the street, three people, three directions, a triangle. All three fell, not knocked down, but from the backlash of their own abilities. He didn't act; he merely "knew." He knew the tower's weakness, the shadow's flaw, the imitation's defect. Qiu Ye's three thousand rules told him this. He used one, one less. Today he used three, leaving twelve thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven.

Fang Yuan knelt on the ground, his left hand still gripping his right wrist, the red light in his palm slowly fading. The replica didn't remain out of control for long; it exhausted the energy Fang Yuan had injected and returned to dormancy. Fang Yuan raised his head, looking at Lin Ye, the smile gone from his lips.

"You used Qiuye's rule library."

"Borrowed."

"Every time you use it, Qiuye weakens a little. Once its rule base is exhausted, it will disappear."

Lin Ye looked at him.

"It won't run out."

How did you know?

"Because I won't run out of them. I'll learn. Learn one, use one. Use one, learn one. Qiuye's rule base isn't a consumable, it's a textbook. It taught me, and I remembered it. Once I remembered it, I won't forget it."

Fang Yuan stared at him for a long time. Then he smiled, not a wild smile, but a faint smile, as if he had finally understood something.

"You are better than your father."

Lin Ye didn't speak. He turned and walked away without looking back. Behind him, three people lay in the ruins and dust, watching his figure disappear into the darkness beyond the reach of the streetlights.

Lin Ye walked a long way to a crossroads where the light was red. There were no cars on the road, but he stopped and waited. A night breeze blew by, carrying the scent of fallen leaves and dust, cool and brushing against his face. He looked down at the autumn leaf on his wrist; its gray veins were almost invisible in the streetlight's glow.

"Akiba, are you awake?"

no answer.

"You heard that, didn't you?"

The gray veins flickered briefly. Very faintly, and then disappeared.

Lin Ye stared at the flash for a long time. The light turned green, and he crossed the road, heading towards the association headquarters. One by one, the streetlights behind him went out, not because they were broken, but because dawn was approaching. A pale white tinge appeared in the eastern sky, like a thin white line slowly unfolding on the horizon.