Chapter 33: Master Lu, I desire...

Chapter 33: Young Master Lu, This Concubine Wishes...

The world shattered like glass, and the group of four, along with the mirror, appeared in the middle of a soccer field.

The field was brightly illuminated, while a torrential downpour fell beneath the dim night sky. Lu Li and his three companions stood in the center of the pitch. Beside them sat the table from Lu Li’s home, with the mirror resting upon it. Lu Li held an umbrella, while Pan Shuai and the others stood exposed to the rain.

Pan Shuai opened his hand, watching the raindrops burst against his palm. He wiped his face. "It's actually real."

"It’s fake," Lu Li interjected. He offered a brief explanation: "It’s just an illusion; it’s merely deceiving your five senses."

In reality, it was authentic. He had pulled the table, the mirror, and the three men into his own dream world.

Indeed, over the past week, Lu Li had been researching his condition. When the world collapsed and reset, Miss Luo had buried a portion of the withered core—left over after Miss Bai had been burned to ashes—into his heart. Lu Li guessed that Miss Luo’s intention might have been to allow him to escape the fate of being reset along with the world.

And that proved to be the case; Lu Li still retained his memories of those three days.

The question then arose: if a fragment of Miss Bai’s withered core had been placed inside him, could he acquire her abilities? After several days of experimentation, he discovered that he could. It was triggered simply by "thinking it so."

However, whether because the core was merely a charred remnant or because Lu Li, being human, was an incompatible vessel, his execution of the ability was nowhere near as powerful as Miss Bai’s. Miss Luo had made Miss Bai’s ability quite clear: "The ability to manipulate the degree of dreams."

In terms of a card game, her ability did not require a target. It could be herself or others. It encompassed the blurring of dreams and reality, the intersection of truth and falsehood, and various perverse abilities like the parasitic proliferation of dream seeds.

Lu Li, however, lacked all that. He could only pull others into his own dream world, and the limitations were significant. His dream world was roughly the size of this soccer field. Anything beyond that was merely a facade. In reality, outside the field was nothingness; anyone pulled into the dream could return to reality simply by walking beyond its boundaries.

Within the dream world, Lu Li could fully exert his "power of thought." Everything he imagined would become reality, but with two caveats. First, he could not directly imagine someone dying; he still had to do the dirty work himself, though he could imagine the opponent becoming weaker and himself becoming stronger. Second, he could not imagine things beyond his own scope of knowledge or cognition.

This restriction was quite severe. However, any injury sustained or death experienced within his dream world would manifest as the same injury or death upon exiting—with the exception of himself. Yes, Lu Li could be injured in his own dream world if he failed to identify the nature of an attack.

If he identified it, he would remain unharmed. Moreover, once he left the dream world, any injuries he sustained within it would vanish entirely. This included death; if he died, the dream world would simply dissolve, and he would not truly perish. Therefore, as long as the young lady in the mirror, Miss Huaixu, didn't unleash a massive ultimate attack, he might be able to trade a few blows.

But "the ability to manipulate the degree of death"... that was far too vague! Still, it served as an insurance policy. Even if he died, he would be alive once the dream world dissolved. It was effectively an extra life.

Currently, his capacity allowed him to open the dream world two or three times a day, with an interval of several hours in between. The exact duration depended on his mental and physical state at the time.

Lu Li waved his hand, signaling Pan Shuai and the others to lower their guard. He sat down before the mirror and looked at the space beside his own reflection. The young lady in the mirror was still standing there. Lu Li smiled faintly and sat down. He patted his own thigh and spoke to the mirror: "If you don't mind, you may sit on my lap."

Lu Li wanted to clarify that he was not lecherous. He had never once thought about feeling her weight or the shape of her hips! Although entering the dream world had put him at ease, his desire for beauty—well, it did temporarily outweigh his cowardice.

The girl in the mirror hesitated, then sat on Lu Li’s lap—at least, that was how it appeared in the reflection. Her cheeks flushed, and her light pink eyes were so shy they seemed as if they might brim with tears. Seeing Lu Li staring intently at her, she raised her wide sleeve to hide her face.

But as a twenty-eight-year-old seasoned man, he could still keep himself under control. Think of Miss Bai and Miss Luo! Images flashed through his mind: Miss Bai in her various outfits, the comfort of her lap pillow, and Miss Luo lying beside him, whispering into his ear with breath as sweet as orchids.

Damn it!

"Old Lu."

Fortunately, Pan Shuai rescued him. Lu Li turned back to see Pan Shuai wiping his face. "Could you at least get us three an umbrella?"

This hallucination was way too realistic! Who would have thought Old Lu was an "Extraordinary," and such a powerful one at that? Deceiving the five senses... Looking at Old Lu’s confident demeanor, it seemed even urban legends could be fooled. If that were true, Old Lu was terrifyingly strong! But why did he lack the arrogance that should come with being an Extraordinary? Pan Shuai fell into deep thought.

Lu Li didn't care what he was thinking; he only wanted to communicate with the young lady. He snapped his fingers. A rain canopy appeared above the heads of Pan Shuai and his friends, just like the kind found at roadside breakfast stalls. Then, three folding chairs appeared. Having done this, he lost interest in them.

The three men looked at each other and tried to sit down. They realized that they truly felt the sensation of sitting on chairs! They reached out to touch them. The cold surface, the hardness—was Old Lu’s interference with tactile senses this powerful? If so, why didn't they fall to the ground when they relaxed? Was this really just an illusion? The three were completely bewildered.

Lu Li smiled slightly and conjured paper and two pens on the table—mostly because he saw the lady's ancient attire and feared she wouldn't know how to use a keyboard. Picking up a pen, Lu Li wrote a question on the paper:

[Are you Miss Huaixu?]

He looked up at the mirror. The young lady in the reflection nodded, then dutifully picked up the pen and wrote in a meticulous, formal manner. Lu Li saw one of the pens on the table vanish. A row of neat, vertical characters gradually appeared on the paper. But he couldn't understand them. This script...

Lu Li took a photo with his phone and used a translator. It turned out to be Small Seal Script. The content read:

*Seeing... Correct... This... Concubine... Young Master...*

Indeed, it was written vertically, and from right to left at that. Lu Li grimaced and wrote another line:

[Miss Huaixu, could you write something I can understand? Also, please write horizontally from left to right.]

The Huaixu in the mirror gave a slight nod. Lu Li seized the opportunity and struck while the iron was hot:

[Miss Huaixu, you came here to go on a blind date with me, right? In that case, can you cancel this urban legend?]

The Huaixu in the mirror hesitated. She held the pen in her right hand, tugged at her wide sleeve with her left, and wrote a row of Clerical Script at an even pace:

[Young Master Lu, this concubine has only one purpose in coming here.]

She mimicked Lu Li and included punctuation. Lu Li raised an eyebrow. Only one purpose?

[What purpose?]

The next moment, his eyes widened. Huaixu gave him the answer almost immediately:

[To escort you, Young Master, into the Netherworld.]