Dream Ghost

Chen Xuan was driving very fast.

At two in the morning, there were almost no other vehicles on the suburban highway. A black SUV drove under the streetlights, and the three people inside remained silent.

Lin Ye sat in the back seat, looking down at the palm of his right hand. The crescent-shaped eye imprint glowed faintly in the dim light inside the car, as if it were alive.

[Fragment Evolution: Fragment → Book Page (37%)]

[Current Capabilities List:]

【Perception Extension (100 meters) – Capable of sensing biological emotions, dream fluctuations, and hidden objects】

[Fear Perception (100 meters) - The intensity of fear felt by creatures within the perceptible radius]

[Rule Flaws - Rule Weaknesses Identifiable to the Naked Eye for Dream Creatures]

[Warning: 0.3% of the artificial aggregate's residual consciousness fragments have been consumed. Consciousness cleansing is recommended.]

"What is consciousness cleansing?" Lin Ye asked.

Chen Xuan, who was driving, glanced at him in the rearview mirror: "What did you sense?"

"The system notified me that there are 0.3% residual fragments of consciousness, and suggested cleaning them up."

Su Wanning, sitting in the passenger seat, turned around and said, "0.3%? You managed to suppress it this low on your first attempt at absorbing page-level data?"

"What do you mean?"

"If an ordinary dreamer were to eliminate a page-level creature without taking any conscious precautions, they would be contaminated by 5% to 10%," Chen Xuan said calmly. "Your 0.3% indicates that your rule analysis is highly accurate, filtering out most of the residue."

"What about the remaining 0.3%?"

"It will remain in your consciousness," Chen Xuan said. "It could be fragmented memories, emotions, or some kind of obsession. 0.3% won't have a significant impact on you, but if it accumulates to more than 10%, you will start to dream—not ordinary dreams, but dreams of the creatures you have devoured. Their fears, their memories, their pain will all flood into your consciousness."

"How do I remove it?"

"There are two ways," Su Wanning said. "One is to find a consciousness cleansing specialist from the association. They have specialized techniques to help you remove the residue. But it's very expensive, and the cleansing process is very painful. The other way is—"

She paused for a moment.

"What is it?"

"Digest it yourself," Chen Xuan continued. "Use your rule-analysis ability to thoroughly understand, dissect, and absorb those fragments. This will not only have no side effects but will also raise your potential. However, this process is slow and requires extremely strong self-awareness. Many people cannot do it and ultimately have to choose to cleanse themselves."

Lin Ye remained silent for a few seconds.

"I'll try to digest it myself."

Chen Xuan didn't speak, but the corners of his mouth turned up slightly.

The car drove for about twenty minutes before stopping at the entrance of an industrial park.

The bespectacled man—Lin Ye later learned his name was Zhou Zhou, and he was a technical analyst for the association—was already waiting there. He stood next to a white van, holding a tablet computer, and quickly walked over when he saw Chen Xuan's car.

"Captain Chen, the signal source is located in that building." Zhou Zhou pointed to a gray building deep in the park. "Three floors. It used to be a textile warehouse, abandoned for two years. But according to the thermal imaging, there are at least five people inside."

"Five people?" Chen Xuan frowned. "Dream creature manufacturing dens are usually operated by only one or two people. Five people, that's quite a large operation."

"There's another anomaly." Zhou Zhou handed the tablet to Chen Xuan. "The signal isn't coming from inside the building; it's coming from underground. I scanned it, and there's a basement beneath this building, about fifty square meters in size and about six meters deep. But this basement can't be found on any architectural drawings."

"Illegal excavation," Su Wanning said.

"Or it might have been intentional," Lin Ye suddenly said.

All three of them looked at him.

"If you can't find the blueprints, it means they don't want to be discovered," Lin Ye said. "But we've detected their signal. Either they were careless, or—"

"Either it was intentional," Chen Xuan interjected, his face darkening, "to lure us here."

"Should we still go in?" Zhou Zhou asked.

Chen Xuan didn't answer immediately. He looked at the gray building and remained silent for a few seconds.

"Su Wanning, you and Lin Ye approach from the side and use your sensory extensions to probe the interior," he said. "Zhou Zhou, you stay in the car and monitor the signal. If there's anything unusual, notify us immediately. I'll go in from the front."

"What if it's a trap?" Su Wanning asked.

"Then we should definitely go and see." Chen Xuan put his hands in his pockets. "The fact that they set a trap means they're afraid we'll find out something. The more afraid they are, the more we need to investigate."

Lin Ye followed Su Wanning around to the side of the building.

The night was deep, and there were no streetlights in the park, only the faint glow of the lights from the distant highway. Lin Ye's senses were fully extended; everything within a hundred meters was within his perception—the stray cat in the corner, the underground pipes, the heat source inside the building…

"Five people," he said in a low voice. "All on the first floor. Two near the main entrance, three in the central area. No one in the basement."

"No one has a basement?" Su Wanning frowned. "Then how did the signal come from underground?"

Lin Ye extended his senses underground. Six meters deep, there was indeed a space—about fifty square meters in size, with cement walls and a dirt floor. But there were no living people inside. Only…

"What's there?" Lin Ye said. "There's something in the basement. It's not a person, but it's moving."

"Alive?"

"Unsure." Lin Ye tried hard to make out the vague sensory signal. "Its temperature is the same as the surrounding environment, but it's moving slowly. It's like... like something is crawling in the soil."

Su Wanning's expression changed.

"Notify Captain Chen," she said. "This is not right."

But it was too late.

A muffled thud came from inside the building, like the sound of a heavy object hitting the ground. Then came a scream—not a terrified scream, but a painful, tearing howl.

Lin Ye and Su Wanning exchanged a glance and rushed toward the building's entrance at the same time.

The door was locked. Su Wanning kicked it open, sending splinters flying.

The scene inside made both of them stop in their tracks.

The first floor is an open space that was originally a warehouse storage area, but it has now been transformed into an... altar.

A massive rune array, at least ten meters in diameter, was drawn on the ground. The lines of the runes weren't drawn with paint, but with some kind of deep red liquid—Lin Ye knew what it was without even guessing. In the center of the rune array, five people lay on the ground, their postures contorted, as if they had died in extreme agony.

No, he didn't die.

Lin Ye's extended senses told him that all five people were still alive. But their consciousness was abnormal—as if something had been drained from them, leaving only empty shells breathing.

"Their brains..." Lin Ye said, "like He Xiaohe's, have been hacked. But much more severely than He Xiaohe's."

Su Wanning crouched down to examine one of the people's pupils: "They've been controlled by dream creatures. Or rather, they've been used as a vessel."

"Where's Captain Chen?" Lin Ye asked.

No sooner had he finished speaking than a loud bang came from the direction of the basement.

The floorboards are cracked.

It wasn't a crack that came from above, but from below—something burst through the concrete floor from underground, the immense force lifting the entire floorboards. Debris and dust flew everywhere, and Lin Ye instinctively tackled Su Wanning, the two tumbling to a corner.

The dust settled.

What crawled out of the hole in the basement was a creature that Lin Ye had never seen before.

It was enormous. At least two meters tall, but its height wasn't standing; rather, it "spread"—its body resembled a twisted vine, entwined with countless black, finger-thick tentacles. These tentacles constantly wriggled, coiled, and separated, as if endlessly rearranging themselves. Its "head"—if the densest cluster of tentacles could be called a head—had a dozen or so tiny points of light, like eyes, but not quite.

What unsettled Lin Ye the most was not its appearance.

It was the mark on his palm.

The mark was trembling. Not trembling with fear, but trembling with warning—as if instinctively telling him: You can't swallow this.

[Unknown Creature - Level Undetermined]

[Warning: The complexity of this biological structure exceeds the current analytical capabilities]

[Recommendation: Evacuate immediately]

"Su Wanning," Lin Ye's voice was calm, "Run."

Su Wanning had already stood up, her silver threads unfurling between her hands, weaving a net in front of her. But her hands were trembling.

"Team Leader Chen is still down there," she said.

Lin Ye looked at the hole.

Deep behind the monster, in the basement, he sensed Chen Xuan's heat source. He was still moving, still conscious, but entangled by something.

"I'll go save him," Lin Ye said. "You hold off this thing."

"Are you crazy?! Even the system says you can't handle it—"

"I didn't say I wanted to swallow it," Lin Ye interrupted her. "I said I wanted to hold it back. Don't you have the silver threads? Tether it for thirty seconds."

Su Wanning gritted his teeth and stared at the writhing tentacle monster.

"Thirty seconds," she said. "This time it really is thirty seconds."

Before she could finish speaking, Lin Ye rushed towards the hole.

His senses extended to their fullest extent, and he found a path through the rubble and dust. He bypassed the monster's tentacles—those tentacles were slowly, seemingly casually, waving in the air, each wave accompanied by a chilling "whoosh" sound.

Lin Ye slid past the monster two meters away and jumped into the basement.

The basement was pitch black. Lin Ye's senses extended to his eyes—Chen Xuan was in the northeast corner of the basement, his lower body pinned down by a pile of collapsed concrete blocks. Blood was flowing from his forehead, but he was conscious.

"Lin Ye?" Chen Xuan's voice was hoarse. "Why did you come down?"

"I'll save you." Lin Ye squatted down and moved the cement block that was pressing on Chen Xuan's legs. It was heavy, but he could still move it.

"What's that thing up there?" he asked as he moved it.

"I don't know." Chen Xuan gritted his teeth. "When I came down, it was still hatching. Those rune arrays—they weren't for creating dream creatures, they were for summoning. Someone was summoning this thing."

"From where to summon?"

"I don't know." Chen Xuan's legs were freed and he could move them, but he staggered when he stood up. "But it's definitely not something from this dimension. Its rules... are different from our dreams."

Lin Ye recalled the system's notification: The complexity of the structure exceeds the current parsing capability limit.

"Can you walk?"

"able."

The two headed towards the basement exit. But just as they reached the stairwell, Lin Ye's senses detected a change—the monster above had moved.

It's not moving. It's "splitting".

The tentacles separated. Not scattered, but each tentacle transformed into an independent, small tentacle creature, densely covering the entire floor and walls of the first floor. Su Wanning's silver threads trapped a dozen or so, but hundreds more were spreading in all directions.

"It's reproducing," Lin Ye said. "No, it's 'releasing.' Those tentacles were originally independent entities, only brought together by some force."

Chen Xuan's expression changed.

"An aggregate," he said. "The same one you devoured in He Xiaohe's dream, but hundreds of times larger."

"And its core—"

"It should be in the center of the aggregate," Chen Xuan said. "Find the core, destroy it, and you can disintegrate the entire aggregate. But the core is surrounded by hundreds of tentacles, making it unreachable."

Lin Ye closed his eyes.

Regular cracks.

Before his eyes appeared the "structural diagram" of those tentacle creatures—each small tentacle was an independent entity, but there was an invisible "connection" between them, linking all the individuals into a whole. The place where those connections converged was the core.

The core location...

On the monster's "head," right in the center of the densest cluster of tentacles.

"Su Wanning!" Lin Ye shouted, "Shoot it on the head!"

Su Wanning didn't ask why. Her silver threads instantly changed direction, shifting from trapping the enemy to attacking—dozens of threads pierced the cluster of tentacles on the monster's head like needles.

The tentacle group exploded.

But it wasn't destroyed by Su Wanning—it dispersed on its own. All the tentacles scattered at the same instant, like a flower suddenly blooming. And at the heart of the flower, the "core" was exposed—

It is not a black crystal.

is a person.

A naked, curled-up boy covered in runes. Fifteen or sixteen years old, short hair, eyes closed, face expressionless. His skin was deathly pale, the runes black, like centipedes crawling all over his body.

A transparent tube was inserted into his chest. The tube was connected to a device deep in the basement, through which some kind of liquid was flowing.

The liquid is red.

"That's...human blood?" Su Wanning's voice trembled.

Lin Ye recognized the boy.

It wasn't because he knew the person, but because he "sensed" the boy's consciousness—no, not consciousness. It was a remnant of consciousness. The boy's true consciousness had been extracted, leaving only a shell controlled by runes. His body became the "core" of this aggregate—using his life force as fuel to power the tentacle creatures.

"He's not the core," Lin Ye said. "He's the fuel. The real core is in that device."

He jumped down into the basement and rushed toward the device.

The tentacle-like creatures surged towards him frantically. Lin Ye didn't dodge; his senses extended precisely, capturing the movement of each tentacle as he weaved through the gaps. Three meters. Two meters. One meter.

His hand touched the device.

The transparent container was filled with a red liquid. In the center of the liquid, a black crystal floated—exactly the same as the one in He Xiaohe's dream, but three times larger, with more complex runes.

Lin Ye did not hesitate.

His rule crack instantly locked onto the largest crack in the rune—the seventeenth rune, located in the lower right corner of the crystal.

He reached out and grabbed the crystal.

[Rule analysis in progress—]

[Target Level: Chapter Level (Artificial Aggregate - Core)]

[Warning: The target level exceeds the current fragment level (page). Forcibly absorbing it carries the risk of backlash.]

[Recommendation: Only destroy the core, do not devour it]

Lin Ye did not heed the system's advice.

He shattered the rune with the cracks in the rules.

The crystal cracked.

Then he began to devour.

It didn't devour the entire crystal, but rather the "fragments of rules" leaking from the cracks. It wasn't greedy; it only took what it could digest.

[Devouring—]

[Rule parsing successful]

[Gained Ability: Tentacle Perception (can perceive the trajectory of all moving objects within a 50-meter radius)]

[Fragment Evolution: Page (37%) → Page (52%)]

The crystal shattered.

The tentacle creatures stopped moving the instant the crystal shattered, like puppets with broken strings, falling off the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, turning into puddles of black liquid, which then evaporated into smoke.

The boy's body fell from mid-air, and Lin Ye caught him.

It's very light. Unnaturally light.

Lin Ye looked down at the boy's face. He was fifteen or sixteen years old, with delicate features. If it weren't for the runes, he would have been an ordinary boy.

His breathing was weak. His heartbeat was slow. But he was still alive.

"Call an ambulance," Lin Ye said.

No one answered.

He raised his head.

Su Wanning stood on the first floor, his face pale, his eyes fixed on the direction of the basement—not on Lin Ye, but on something behind him.

Chen Xuan stood on the stairs, one hand supporting himself against the wall, the other hand already reaching for a metal plate.

Lin Ye turned around.

Deep inside the basement, a crack appeared in the wall that was originally made of mud.

It wasn't a physical crack. It was a glowing fissure, like a tear in space itself. On the other side of the crack was endless darkness, and in that darkness something was writhing, breathing, waiting...

A sound came from the crack.

It wasn't a sound heard with the ears, but a deep laugh that resonated directly in the mind.

"Found it."

"finally found you."

"Sleeper."

The laughter disappeared. The cracks disappeared too. The walls returned to normal, as if nothing had ever happened.

Lin Ye stood there, holding the unconscious boy in his arms, the mark on his palm burning wildly.

The voice was still echoing in his mind.

It's not the system. It's not Chen Xuan.

It was that ancient, inhuman voice coming from the crack.

"I've found you."

Su Wanning walked over and looked at him.

"Lin Ye, your hand."

Lin Ye lowered his head.

The crescent-shaped eye mark on his right palm was bleeding.

It's not a wound. It's the mark itself that's bleeding.

The blood is black.

Chen Xuan walked to his side, glanced at his palm, and remained silent for a long time.

"We have to go," he finally said. "This place isn't safe. Although the rift has disappeared, it has locked onto your consciousness's coordinates."

"What do you mean?" Lin Ye asked.

"It means that the person—or thing—that created all of this has remembered you," Chen Xuan said. "Next time, it won't send a chapter-level aggregate to test you again."

Lin Ye looked at his bleeding palm.

The black blood evaporated in the air, turning into a wisp of smoke that dissipated into the night.

Suddenly, the boy in her arms moved.

His lips moved slightly, uttering a barely audible murmur:

"……elder brother……"

Lin Ye looked down at him.

The boy opened his eyes. His cloudy, unfocused pupils looked as if he hadn't truly "seen" anything in a long time.

He stared at Lin Ye, a strained smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"You... are not what I expected..."

"What?"

"The Sleeper they were talking about... I thought... it was a monster..."

The boy's eyes closed again. His breathing became even weaker.

But in the last instant before he closed his eyes, his lips moved silently, uttering two words:

"……Thanks……"

The sound of an ambulance could be heard from afar.

Lin Ye held the boy in his arms, standing in the ruins, the marks on his palms still bleeding.

He didn't know who the boy was.

But he knew one thing—

From today onwards, he is no longer just a "hunter".

He was the one being targeted by his prey.

Outside the warehouse in the west of the city, a black sedan was parked on the side of the road.

The person inside the car looked through the window at the lights of the ambulance in the distance, and a slight smile appeared on their lips.

He picked up his phone and dialed a number.

"Phase Two is complete," he said. "The Sleeper's data has been collected. His potential is 30% higher than expected, and his rule analysis accuracy is 47% higher than the association's average."

There was a few seconds of silence on the other end of the phone.

"Initiate the third phase," an aged voice said. "Lead him to the Dream Continent."

"Yes."

The phone hangs up.

The man threw his phone onto the passenger seat and started the car.

"Lin Ye," he muttered to himself, "when you arrive in the Dream Continent, you'll find that your understanding of 'fear' is still too shallow."

The black sedan disappeared into the night.

In the distance, Lin Ye stood beside the ambulance, watching the medical staff lift the boy onto a stretcher.

He looked down at his palm.

The black bleeding has stopped. The mark has regained its normal faint glow, but the color is a little darker than before.

A new message popped up:

[Warning: Residual consciousness has risen to 0.7%]

[Source: Chapter-level Aggregate - Core Crystal Leak]

[Recommendation: Perform a mental cleansing or deep digestion as soon as possible]

[Special Note: The remaining information contains a fragment of memory. Do you wish to view it?]

Lin Ye hesitated for a moment, then clicked "Yes".

A scene flashed through his mind—

A room. Very dark. The walls are covered with photos, densely packed, like a photo wall. Each photo shows a different person: a man, a woman, an old man, a child.

In the center of the photo wall is an even larger photo.

The person in the photo is Lin Ye himself.

Below the photo was a line of text:

"Third Sacrifice - The Sleeper - Status: Awakening - Estimated Harvest Time: Thirty Days Later"

The screen disappeared.

Lin Ye stood still, his fingers slightly clenched.

Thirty days.

He only has thirty days.