On the morning of September 25, I woke up from my sleep. Despite getting enough sleep, I felt much more tired than usual, and I couldn't help but speculate that maybe it would take a lot of energy to go into the dream world for a long time. In this way, I need to take a day off and avoid staying in that world for too long. Another thing that is certain is that the food in the dream will not fill the stomach in reality.

On the night of the 26th, I re-entered the dream world. I left Neil City and booked a hotel in the town of Usa for three days, then went to the temple of the old gods to continue reading the Seven Chapters of the Secret Sutra of Xuanjun. For the next three days of the 27th, 29th, and 30th (I went to the institute on the morning of the 28th to assist in scientific research, in the afternoon Saki Nishio talked to me for more than two hours, and in the evening he dragged me out to play, so I had no intention of spending my energy in the dreamland at night), and every night I would linger in my dreams among the old bookshelves, meditate quietly on the high-backed chair, and write and draw on the round stone table.

The results of my work are kept in my personal space. I think that if something unexpected happens to me, this imperishable space will be faithfully preserved for those friendly and almost all-powerful outsiders to study and analyze. Therefore, I will not reproduce my work here, but simply briefly describe the information that has been obtained in the past few days.

Chapter 6 of the Seven Chapters of the Secret Book of Xuanjun mentions the "Cold Plains" in Central Asia, which is said to be a cold, desolate, lifeless and eerie plateau inhabited by strange humanoids and a hugely swollen purple spider, yet in the dream world map provided to me by Evans, a large area near Inkanok in the north is marked with the same name. I can't help but think of the forest where the Zugs lived—there were two places bordering the waking world, and it was from there that the little ones entered the human life and returned home with many interesting stories.

"Your guess is likely to be correct. ”

Listening to my statement, Evans looked serious, and then fell into thought.

"I myself have never been to the Cold Plains, nor is the Grand Elder of Attar or anyone else in the temple. However, the conventional wisdom is that the cold plain should be surrounded by majestic mountains with no road to go, and people must have to sail through strange and dangerous seas to reach that continent. Perhaps you can inquire about it somewhere else, say, along the River Skye all the way to Dilas Lynn on the south coast. I don't think you lack the ability to protect yourself. ”

Evans graciously allowed me to copy a few of the precious ancient books in the temple. So on the first Friday of October, I left Usa and headed for Hatig, which is located at the foot of Mount Lerien, taking the Seven Chapters of the Secret Sutra and the ancient Codex Nachut, with me not knowing if I would ever return to this area, and I had no regrets before I went south along the river.

Special mention goes to Usa's cat. Folk legend has it that cats would jump at night from the tops of tall houses to some mysterious country on the other side of the realm - supposedly on the dark side of the moon, but I don't know if this is a metaphor or if it really refers to the back side of the planet.

During my time in Usa, a small silver tabby Maine cat used to sneak into my room from the balcony. When we met, it always jumped on my knees and made a pleasant whirring sound as I played, and when I fell asleep in the dream world and returned to consciousness, it curled up at the head of the bed.

As we were leaving, Evans and I talked again about Randolph Carter's city. He said that this place might exist in Carter's unique dream world, not in the ordinary dream world that me, him, and most other people are familiar with. If that's the case, it's a bit of a no-brainer to find that beautiful city, and even the dream gods may be powerless about it.

On the evening of October 19th, I mean the evening of the dream world, I arrived in the town of Hatig. The town is located to the north of Usa, which is much more ordinary and rustic than the slightly bustling Neil City and the quiet and laid-back town of Usa. The farmhouses on both sides of the road were dilapidated and rough, and the fences that enclosed the fields were not as neat and clean as they were near Ussa. Naturally, the hostel in Hatig is not so comfortable, but not too bad.

I wasn't going to stay in Hatig for too long. The next morning, after hearing from the waiter at the inn about the strange land of the place, a wasteland known as the "Devil's Field" nestled among the rocky hills, I set out for it. Since the yeoman farmers of the past were able to come back unscathed from that wasteland, I, as a cultivator of the realm of refining gods and returning to the void, would not be in danger, right?

At about half past eight, I left the town of Hatig and walked into the strange-looking hills and mountains. The sword box in the carry-on space has been taken out by me and carried on my back, and there is a three-foot-three-inch spirit sword inside, as well as forty-nine seven-inch-long flying swords, ready to turn into a metal storm at any time.

For the next hour, everything around the journey seemed mundane. Grasses and shrubs are of the usual type, and the strange rocks that overlap are not of any scenic beauty. Later, I blessed myself with the art of resisting the wind, and the distance between my toes was more than ten meters, and before I knew it, I walked out of more than ten kilometers.

When I saw the "devil's ploughing", I was flying from the overgrown valley to the ridge by the wind. The weeds at the bottom of the valley were tall and dense, all wet, and the air was filled with an unpleasant dampness. When I reached the ridge and looked out over the area, the eerie wasteland with an ominous aura suddenly appeared in my view.

As if there was a mocking light in the abyss of nightmares, a touch of evil and ugly blue-purple came into my eyes. This wild wasteland of strange "plants"—similar in appearance, but I'm not sure what their biological properties—stretches eastward, covering countless hills and valleys, while the grasses and shrubs that were everywhere else are completely gone.

Despite instinctively feeling the danger that was implied, I followed my curiosity and flew towards the wind. As I got closer, the blue-purple plants became clear to me. They look like dwarf shrubs, erect and hairless, with blue-purple flowers that exhibit an eerie fractal structure that disturbs the mind.

After making sure that there was no potentially poisonous mucus on the surface of the plants, I tried to touch a few of them, and found that the base of the stems was lignified, and the strength of the material was higher than that of the small shrubs in my impression, but not so much that it was beyond the scope of organisms. As I walked deeper into the heath, I began to notice a strange dead silence—there were no small animals such as larks or rabbits that were occasionally seen before, and even the almost ubiquitous insects seemed to have abandoned the land.

My initial suspicion is that these "plants" are not in the diet of herbivores and insects, and that carnivores are incapable of living there due to lack of food. Then I wondered how big this impossibly desolate land really was, and I rode the wind and tried to calculate its extent from a high place using the math I had learned—when I saw the lonely tree, or rather the creature that looked like a tree.

It stands on a hill slightly higher than the other hills, surrounded by bare and barren gravel land, which is quite noticeable. It was completely unexpected by me, and I had not seen any tall trees for several kilometers all the way here.

I harnessed the power of the wind and flew that way. The tree had a twisted, gigantic trunk nearly a meter in diameter, three thick branches stretched out in a way that defied geometric intuition, the broad and thick foliage trees overlapping each other like scales, and the foliage patterns were so unpredictable that they were maddening, like the wild shapes outlined by the heavy, rough brushstrokes of Van Gogh's oil paintings.

Even though I didn't have a watch or any other clock with me, I deduced from the position of the sun that it was about ten o'clock in the morning. Now the sun began to burn, and I had been walking in the wilderness for more than an hour, when I sat down in the shade of the only tree in the barren land, leaned comfortably against the thick trunk, and closed my eyes.

At this point, a strange sensation began to take over my mind—a vague and gray hallucination, like some kind of thought fluctuation that had no connection to something familiar. In a daydream-like psychedelic experience, I felt like I saw a majestic castle towering over a sea of blue-purple organisms—a temple, perhaps, an architectural style I've never seen before, three crimson suns shining brightly in the blue-gold sky.

There was something unusual about the majestic building—an indescribable shade of lilac. And when I turned around, following the direction of the three rays of light, I saw a huge black triangle that almost took up half of the sky—unbelievably large and dizzyingly high, and I thought it wasn't what Earth, or any other normal planet, should have.

Then I noticed—I hope I'll never see again—many massive monsters flying in the murky sky. Their rugged appearances varied, and no two were exactly the same, swirling and twisting blasphemous halos circulating through their surfaces.

I was wondering if it was time to leave, when a creature of unpredictable curves and surfaces noticed me, and pointed its shifting void-like core in my direction. Suddenly, the distance in space seemed to lose its meaning, and my gaze was rapidly drawn closer, and I even seemed to feel the foul and unclean abyss—three burning eyes staring straight at me.

So I screamed in utter fear, a mad urge that forced me to flee the place at all costs. I turned and ran, and the castle—or temple—was getting closer and closer to my eyes, and the huge main entrance came into view eerily. For a moment, I felt like a giant mouth, but I rushed in without hesitation. Then I was sucked into the darkness—a bottomless abyss of darkness, a void that could not be described in words.

I woke up from my bed in a cold sweat. I looked at the time, and it was 5 a.m. on October 20th. I rested for the day and fell asleep again on the 21st - at sunset, those strange plants bloomed, and the blue-purple sea that rose in the evening breeze exuded an eerie beauty. The strange tree remained there honestly, the wind stirring the unusual leaves, but their rustling no longer disturbed the mind, nor could it cause that terrible calm lethargy.

Was the other world I saw before just a pipe dream, or was it some unspeakable evil trying to eat away at me? I searched the neighborhood for a while, but I didn't get any valuable information. When I got back to Hartig, it was already completely dark, so I stayed at the town's inn for another night, ready to set off the next morning down the river.