Under the gentle breeze and rising sun, among the young leaves of the new forest, two figures disappeared one after another.
As an old student of Yuanzheng, Chen Mu knows Baoyan Road far better than Li Luo. But except for the class activities in his freshman year, he never entered it again.
With a seemingly ordinary step, the scene before their eyes has changed drastically. The deep forest road disappeared and was replaced by nine paths of different light and dark under their feet. The entrance to each path was written with special road signs, such as courage, perseverance, determination, knowledge. Reserves, diligence can make up for weakness, etc.
At a glance, you can still see the appearance of the examination venue at the end of the path, including mountains, forests, deserts, oceans, isolated islands, etc.
The two of them were very moved. These were the efforts of the first principal of Yuanzheng and the testimony of a great mother. Sacrifice herself to achieve the success of countless successors, it can be seen that she is not only trying to make up for the debt she owes to her daughter, but also regards all students as her own children and tries every means to help and protect them.
"Go to the stress field."
Li Luo reminded him softly, and Chen Mu readily agreed that anti-stress training was just right for him now.
Walking into the anti-stress path, the scene before my eyes changed again, and nine more paths appeared exactly the same. This time, without Li Luo's guidance, Chen Mu made his own choice: fear and resistance, a path leading to darkness.
"I'm afraid the situation inside will make you feel uncomfortable. How about you outside?"
Li Luozheng had this intention. What she planned was to stand outside and guide with her voice, and entering with two people together would make the trial twice as difficult. But after hearing Chen Mu's words, she knew she needed to prove it.
"I am a dream interpreter and can stay awake in any dream world. What you should consider is your own endurance. Doubling the difficulty may be very scary."
"It doesn't matter. I'm worried that the scene is too simple and won't make me feel anything."
"Are you sure? Although the rules of this dream world are incomplete, you are entering it physically now. If you suffer trauma, you will still feel pain when you return to reality. If something happens accidentally, you may remain comatose for a few days."
Chen Mu didn't answer. Of course he knew this. He walked into the darkness without looking back to express his decision. Li Luo hesitated a little, then thought about it and followed.
————
Boom——
A heavy downpour fell from the dark night sky, and there was a thunderous sound in the deep sky.
In the dilapidated thatched house, Chen Mu woke up from the cold and wet bed.
He looked around. It was dark and sticky, and intermittent drops of water dripped from the roof, soaking less than half of the thin and cold quilt.
Suddenly he felt someone beside him. He reached out and touched it. He was shocked by the softness: it was a child's little foot.
"It's me, Li Luo, do you remember?"
"I know."
In the darkness, Li Luo, who looked like a girl at this time, had a surprised expression on his little face, and soon he was relieved: it seemed that the other party's dream interpretation talent had not completely disappeared, and he could stay awake temporarily.
"If I guess correctly, this should be the home of the first principal when she was a child. We also have her identity as a child."
Chen Mu nodded and had some memories in his mind: It was embarrassing that the whole class came out of the river together. It was nothing at all. After all, everyone's memory at that time was that they were brothers and sisters with the same father and mother. But he was awake throughout the whole process, and others only realized it afterwards, making everyone embarrassed to invite him to follow the path of Baoyan again.
Without the companionship and motivation to take the postgraduate entrance examination, Chen Mu never took the postgraduate entrance examination again.
"Muzi, Luoluo, get up quickly, you're going to be late!"
As soon as Li Luo finished speaking, the rotten wooden door was opened, and a young woman brought a kerosene lamp.
"I'm almost late for work. The food is on the table. Remember to eat before leaving. Luoluo, help me buy a pack of salt. I'll give you an extra copper plate today. Keep it safe and supervise your brother not to buy anything else unrelated. At noon One bun per person.”
The woman put the money in an embroidered linen satchel, left the kerosene lamp on the bedside table, and went to work in a hurry.
The two of them dressed and got up in embarrassment. There were many small puddles on the dirt floor under their feet. When I walked out of the room, I found that this thatched cottage was not small. There were five or six halls in total. In addition to the ancestral hall, there were three rooms for people, one for livestock, and one for storing sundries.
There were two small bowls of hot fried rice on the table in the living room, and a plate of dark leftovers next to them. In this day and age, this is no longer simple.
"You can pass this level as long as you arrive at school before eight o'clock. It hasn't stopped raining outside yet, so why don't you wait any longer."
Li Luo seemed to be very curious about the layout of this thatched house and kept looking around. Ordinarily, a dream world with incomplete rules shouldn't be so real, but she couldn't see the flaw.
The house was too dilapidated and there was nothing worth paying attention to. Chen Mu felt that the only thing to look at was the person in front of her. The teenage Luo Luo was a delight to look at, fully explaining what it means to be a beautiful woman, and her coarse patchwork did not affect her cuteness at all.
"We don't have extra time. We have to walk on a five-kilometer mountain road, and it's raining. I don't know what other obstacles the principal has set. The earlier we start, the safer it will be."
"Huh? Do you know the way to school?"
Li Luo was a little surprised. Dream masters usually give predetermined settings for the characters in their dream world, but those who enter must exchange their memories of reality. Among them, dream interpreters are special because they have sober talents and can not be exchanged. Instead, they can obtain memories by analyzing the characters' dream power, as long as the dream power of the dream characters does not exceed their mental power.
However, Chen Mu obviously still has real-life memories, so how can he remember his route to school? Could it be that what he dreamed about was fake?
"I also find it strange. Let's not talk nonsense. Let's prepare the torch first. There is no flashlight at this time, so we can only light the torch."
Chen Mu casually changed the topic, found a small iron can in the corner, spread a layer of hay on the bottom, put the remaining charcoal from the woman's fried rice in it, and then stuffed the hay again.
"What are you doing?"
"Just in case, if the torch goes out halfway, we don't have a lighter."
Li Luo seemed to understand but felt that this person could pass the level without his own guidance.
Following Chen Mu's example, Li Luo found a few corn stalks, crushed them, and tied them tightly with straw. After lighting it, the two of them carried their heavy schoolbags and entered the darkness.
It was already the beginning of winter, and bursts of thunder made the world look weird. The rugged mountain road becomes even more difficult to walk after the rain. From time to time, mud from the mountains washed away by running water can be seen blocking the road.
Chen Mu walked in front, carrying a small cupping pot in the style of a schoolboy in a mountainous area, imagining that he was the messenger of light in this world.
This wild, dead darkness is so gloomy that it makes people feel frightened. Anyone who enters it will feel a sense of loneliness and helplessness: he is the only living person in the entire dark world. It is unimaginable how a teenage girl persisted for many years.
Li Luo was left far behind. She underestimated the dream world that a sixth-level dream master had worked hard to create. Even if it was incomplete, it was not something she could easily crack now.
The darkness and silence around her were as solid as a solid body, and she always felt that there were countless beasts dormant around her, ready to move. Even though she was conscious, she gradually became a little panicked. She lowered her head and stared at the bumpy path without daring to look around. She staggered and quickened her pace in an attempt to catch up.
"oops!"
Finally, Li Luo, who was going to school for the first time in her life, slipped. Fortunately, she did not fall: someone helped her in time.
"Thanks"
"It's only me who thanks you for being so kind as to accompany me to a place like this to suffer. Give me your schoolbag and you go ahead."
Li Luo didn't refuse. She really felt it was very difficult. Chen Mu's calm and calm look made her feel a little unhappy: Is this here to wake up? It’s obviously a vacation!
"That person just called you Muzi?"
Li Luo took the initiative to stir up the topic, hoping to distract himself from his fear of the darkness by chatting.
"I'm so confused that I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Chen Mu, from Zhengjing, and a senior student from Yuanzheng."
"Are you from Zhengjing too?"
"Huh? Listening to this tone, you are old..."
Before he finished speaking, Chen Mu stopped abruptly and made a silent gesture with a serious look on his face.
"Don't make any noise and leave quickly!"
"What's wrong?"
Li Luo was puzzled and subconsciously followed the other person's gaze, and immediately regretted it: under the slope not far ahead, a white fire light illuminated the scene near it, but still only the outline of a new tomb could be seen. The new tomb was built on a small irregular terrace. At this moment, a woman wearing sackcloth and mourning was kneeling in front of the grave and burning paper.
"Hey, what are you doing?"
To Chen Mu's surprise, after his reminder, Li Luo actually left the main road and walked straight to the new tomb.
"As expected of a completely sober person, he is so courageous."
Chen Mu secretly admired him. The mysterious bride visiting the grave in this dark and cold night made him feel creepy unconsciously. He didn't expect that a weak woman was not afraid at all.
In order to alleviate his fear, Chen Mu planned to cheat. He closed his eyes and released his mental power - everything in the dream world was woven by dream power, and only the dream interpreter's mental power could decompose it. If you use your mental power as your vision, you can see through all the illusions in front of you.
Unfortunately, he was disappointed!
He released all the tens of billions of spiritual power in disbelief, but not a single dream power could penetrate into the gap, and what he saw was still a gloomy and dark scene.
"I forgot that this is a level six dream world."
Chen Mu shook his head and smiled bitterly. With the ability of the sixth-level dream interpreter and the selfless mind of the first-time principal, there are at least hundreds of billions of dream powers here, and the complexity is even more outrageous. He is not just a second-level dream interpreter. It can be broken.
Suddenly, he thought of a question. Since the second-level dream interpreter was powerless, what about Li Luo? Could it be that she has the ability to crack it?
Thinking of this, Chen Mu's heart skipped a beat and had a bad premonition. When he looked again, he saw that Li Luo was already approaching the woman.
"etc!"
Chen Mu was anxious, so he dropped his schoolbag and hurriedly ran, taking three steps at a time and two steps at a time. He almost fell down several times on the wet and slippery grass.
Just as Li Luo put his little hand on the woman's shoulder, Chen Mu arrived in time and hugged her.
Unfortunately, under the inertia, the two of them hit the tombstone without losing speed.
The brazier was kicked into the air by Chen Mu, and the burning paper money fell all over the sky. In the light of the fire, Chen Mu saw the woman's raised face: pale and colorless, with seven holes of blood, and she gave him a scary smile.
The imagined impact did not happen, it was just a trance, and Chen Mu found himself falling into the ground: the tombstone was clearly an illusory stone gate.
"You can get up!"
Chen Mu jumped up when he heard the sound: No wonder he didn't feel any pain, it turned out to be someone underneath him.
Li Luo didn't blame him. He knew that Chen Mu had good intentions. He was a little scared and said: "The dream power of the first principal is too high. I tried to break it down with hundreds of billions of spiritual power, but I got involved instead."
Chen Mu's eyes twitched: One hundred billion spiritual powers? At least ten steps higher than him, a big level!
"It seems that we have to change our thinking to deal with it. It is impossible to break through according to our mental level. Instead, we may sink deeper and deeper. And the principal's setting is originally for ordinary people, why don't we look at it from an ordinary person's perspective?"
Li Luo nodded. Although this statement is reasonable, it also poses a new difficulty: How do ordinary people deal with ghosts and gods?
