[3] Yun Chengyu

(Forbidden World, Thursday, September 12, 2013, early morning; School City, School District 14, dormitory)

In the dim dense woods, countless low, huge oak trees twisted and coiled, weaving thick branches that groped outward. The phosphorescent light emitted by the exotic mushrooms slightly gives this seemingly isolated place a brightness that barely supports vision. The boy in his gray pajamas stood barefoot in a small gap in the woods.

"Again...... This weird dream?"

The natural yin and yang eyes made Yun Chengyu not become blind due to the dark and complex environment. However, this inexplicable sense of disobedience and fear of the unknown brought about by coming to another world made him very unhappy.

"No, this mood is not something I want to maintain before I go to sleep. ”

I don't know how long it has been—time has no meaning in this strange dream with no reference object, and he suddenly realizes his abnormal state of mind, and reason quickly takes over. This was a situation that had been expected for a long time, he thought to himself, according to the senior's notes, this was a forest that had been enchanted.

It is said that there are small, secretive and sneaky sapient beings called Zug, who live in these passages made of tangled and twisted trees. These domestic cat-sized objects are covered in brownish-black fur and have a terrifying number of eyeballs, usually around 6 to 9, glowing a miserable green glow in the dark.

It is rumored that there will always be some unexplained strange things and missing people in the places where Zug haunts, but the senior who left the note specifically noted that they could not be too far away from the dream world, but for Yun Chengyu, who was in the dream world, the information implied by this passage made him shudder a little.

"Which way should I go?"

Knowing that standing still would not bring any of the information he wanted, in the dim phosphorescent light, Yun Chengyu cautiously walked through the complex passages made of huge tree trunks, making a lapping sound in a way he had memorized beforehand, and pausing from time to time to listen for a possible response. Zug's language uses tapping to convey meaning, and although they also have vocal organs in their throats, the strange sound is not something that humans can imitate, but fortunately it is more of an aid.

The grotesque mushrooms that grow in the woodlands provide him with a guide to an unknown destination. In some sparsely wooded areas, this exotic fungus grows exceptionally luxuriantly. In the darkness, the fluorescent light formed an intermittent river, which eventually converged into a vast gray-green lake, faintly ominous and sinister.

At this time, Yun Chengyu felt that many eyes were watching him. This is Zug. After seeing their strange green eyes, it took him a moment to discern their small, smooth brown outlines. The Zugs swarmed out of hidden burrows and beehive-like tree trunks, crowding the area until the entire glimmer-lit area was filled with their active presence.

Some of the wilder Zug approached Yun Chengyu's side, rubbing his trouser legs, and even one seemed to be quite bold enough to jump from a branch onto his shoulder, gently biting his ear. His body tensed for a moment, almost instinctively, but the active members were soon restrained by the older-looking Zug.

It was very difficult for him to communicate with the Zug, and even though he had achieved success in his cultivation and strengthened his spirit during this time, the Zug's way of communicating in a language that was very different from the one he was familiar with still put a great burden on his mind. He remembers very well the translation between Zug, which is purely "colloquial", and Chinese, and that the difficulty was to notice the movements and rhythms of the beats in time and to grasp the meaning quickly, so as not to lose the sentence due to the lack of important information.

"Council of the Sages", is the word, mentioned in the notes, the leading organization in the Zug. A very old Zug patiently said twice. Yun Chengyu noticed that the older Zuges seemed to be friendly to him as an outsider, and couldn't help but speculate that this might have something to do with the ancestor of the Yun family.

After jerkily asking the other party in Zug, he received an affirmative answer: a Taoist named Xuan Yang, presumably written as "Xuanyang", was quite a legendary figure even among the Dream Travelers, adventurers who wandered through Wonderland through their dreams. The elderly Zug hesitated as he said this, and then told him that despite the Xuanyang Dao people's insistence on not calling themselves gods, in the eyes of the inhabitants of the dream world, their rank was equivalent to that of the dream gods.

The Council of Sages provided Yun Chengyu with a scoop of fermented sap - the sap was extracted by the Zugs from a different kind of tree, and it is said that a certain moon being in the past threw a seed into the dream world, and this seed later grew into the tree they used to brew the sap, which was recorded in detail in the notes left by the Xuanyang Daoists, including how to refine the divine soul to better absorb the essence of it. After he drank the sap ceremoniously and ceremoniously, a very strange conversation began.

"Why did you come here in a dream? There is no doubt that although you are far less powerful than your ancestors, you are indeed a natural dreamer. As far as I know, it's not uncommon for a dream traveler talent to be passed down from a family like this. ”

These little things know a lot about the secrets of the dream world, and they know a little bit about the waking world—according to the note, because there are two places in the woodland that border the human world. However, the Xuanyang Daoist specially warned future generations that they should never go to the Yin God of the condensed mind in the dream to snoop, and even those who have not cultivated to the perfection of the Yang God have the possibility of losing their souls and re-entering reincarnation.

Yun Chengyu expressed his gratitude to these Zugs, and they responded with a friendly pat, and once again gave him a scoop of elixir fermented from the sap of the moon tree for him to carry with him. As for how he should begin his quest as a Dream Traveler, the elder Zug suggested that he travel through the phosphorescent fungus-infested woods to the other three towns of Hatig, Neer, and Usa, at the foot of Mount Lerien.

When Yun Chengyu came to the edge of the woodland, the morning glow on the horizon was shining with a glimmer. The water of the River Skye rushes down the hillside, and smoke from the chimneys of farmhouses rises slowly from the fertile plains on both sides of the river. He looked ahead at the hedges, the fields that had been cultivated, and the thatched roofs that were common in the countryside.

"Unexpectedly...... It gives you a sense of peace and tranquility. ”

He couldn't help but close his eyes gently, immersed in the smell of the various plants in the forest. When I opened my eyes again, I was greeted by the ceiling in my bedroom.

"It's back...... Whew, next time, it's probably half a month away. ”

Yun Chengyu subconsciously lifted the quilt and looked at his waist, the bag of Haoyue elixir given by Zuge did not come to reality with his awakening. Also, his dream journey is, in the final analysis, nothing more than a journey through the secret realm as a yin god, and only the yang god can directly interfere with the material world.

In the past, the Southern Song Dynasty Ziyang Zhenren traveled to Yangzhou to fold flowers, hundreds of miles in an instant, and when he returned, he pulled out Qionghua from his sleeve, which was the realm of Yangshen of "where he went, and the true god saw the form".

"The consummation realm of refining the gods and returning to the void, ah......"

Without waking up his sleeping roommate, Yun Seungyu came to the bathroom lightly. The boy in the mirror has a delicate appearance, a pair of dark pupils as black as ink, and he is full of energy, without the dizziness and tiredness that ordinary people often accompany their dreams. This does not fit the description of the Dream Traveler in the notebook: the observation report of the Xuanyang True Sense is that the Dream Traveler's exploration is very draining.

"However, in my current situation, I have taken another path, and I don't know if there is still a chance to achieve the Yang God. ”

In this vein, the cultivation stage can be divided into 100 days to build the foundation, 10 months to conceive, three years to breastfeed, and nine years to face the wall. Ever since he fused with the [Void Primordial], he had crossed the 100-day foundation building in a short period of time and entered the stage of the so-called "October Pregnancy". However, despite the yang fire and yin talismans, he had already comprehended it freely, the jade rabbit and the golden crow, the turtle and snake were entangled, and he had also practiced and proven, but when he condensed the holy fetus in the last step, something went wrong - the soul was hidden and destroyed, and the essence was condensed, and the appearance was the amethyst-like [Void Primordial].

"Anyway, my mind is to seek the Tao, and I don't care about the difference in the method. Since it is a gift from an extraterritorial creator, and it also clearly points to the Void Dao, why bother with the cultivation realm of the Dan Dao. ”

Having strengthened his Dao heart, Yun Chengyu washed as quietly as he could, and then quietly left the room and went to the rooftop to practice the boxing that he had to do every morning.

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"Dream of the Secret Realm of Cardas", began to dig a pit.