Chapter 240 - 207: Strange Dream

Chapter 240: Chapter 207: Strange Dream

Tonight was truly a joyful night.

Zhou Qian’s friends were rough around the edges, but their hearts were warm and straightforward. Even though everyone had fought fiercely over the braised pork, after slowly picking their way through the bony carp, they became much more refined with the rest of the meal. By the end, when they genuinely couldn’t eat another bite, they even found a few plastic bags to pack up the leftover steamed sweet potatoes and salted peanuts to take back.

Seeing this, Zhou Qian couldn’t help but feel helpless. "Alright, alright! Pack whatever you want! Do you want the leftover dishes and the tomatoes too?"

Potatoes and the like were just too filling, so the stewed eggplant with cowpeas and the meat-stuffed green peppers were barely touched! At his words, everyone instantly beamed with delight.

"Of course we want them! Why don’t we go for a midnight march, and eat this stuff as a late-night snack when we get back?"

It wouldn’t spoil if left until tomorrow morning, but whether they’d actually get a turn to eat it by then was another story. Everyone patted their bulging stomachs and nodded in unison. Best to secure it in their stomachs while they could!

The tomatoes were originally meant to be eaten as fruit before or after the meal. But since everyone had eaten until they practically needed to support themselves against the wall to walk, where would they find the room to fit them? Thus, someone else happily stepped forward and deftly stuffed the tomatoes into a bag.

They were men of their word, though. After eating their fill, drinking, and resting to let their food digest, they briskly washed all the pots and pans. They even wiped the door panels spotless and reinstalled them. Any peanut shells or food scraps scattered around the yard were also completely cleaned up.

Huai Yu grew even happier at the sight of this. As they left, she saw them off reluctantly. "When you’re not on a mission, you absolutely must come hang out with Brother Zhou Qian! I’ll cook for you again."

"Yes, yes, yes!" everyone replied without an ounce of polite restraint.

Before coming over, they had simply viewed the legendary Huai Yu as a little sister. Now, they revered her as a master chef. Their response in this moment was incredibly earnest. "Next time, once we find some good offerings, we’ll bring over some more vegetables along the way. Little Yu, is there anything else you want?"

***

Lying in bed, Huai Yu couldn’t help but smile as she recalled the joy of the evening. This happiness felt so real and lasting that she felt even if she dreamed of that jinx Wu Yue again tonight, it wouldn’t be a big deal at all.

Outside the window, the moonlight was hazy. The rose swayed on its branches, spreading a faint fragrance.

However, in her dream, her surroundings were completely desolate.

She didn’t know what kind of wild grass had died on the dry, withered yellow earth, but stepping on it felt like treading on a layer of soft soil. The surroundings were freezing, as if buried under layers of ice and snow. The faint warmth she felt beneath her feet seemed to be gradually fading away. At the center of this withered yellow land stood a sturdy, brown trunk steeped in heavy, deathly stillness. Like a monster, it stretched its hideous branches toward the sky. Stray fragments of clothing could faintly be seen hanging from it, along with pale, long-decayed bones scattered across the ground.

In front of this tree, a familiar silhouette seemed to be standing there.

Where was she?

Huai Yu felt completely lost. Her heart pounded—THUMP, THUMP—as if tugged by some unseen force. Looking around, she could clearly see a patch of lush greenery in the distance. Yet, the vast expanse beneath her own feet was an endless, withered yellow, like a winter pasture ravaged by howling blizzards without a single tender sprout in sight.

Where was she? Her heart grew anxious. She sensed that this was a very important place, but the scene before her only grew increasingly unfamiliar. From all directions, faint whispers seemed to echo:

"Cold..."

"So cold..."

Subconsciously, she ran toward the vague silhouette ahead. But at that very moment, the withered yellow earth seemed to split open into a massive maw. Her foot caught nothing but empty air. Plunging into an intense sensation of falling, her entire body violently spasmed, and she jolted awake from the dream.

The loneliness, fear, and freezing cold from the dream still seemed to linger in her body, making her subconsciously pull the blanket a little higher and clutch it tightly.

The surroundings were pitch black. Huai Yu lay in bed in a daze, faintly catching the familiar scent of flowers. She wondered what scene had appeared in her dream. It had felt so familiar...

But soon, a heavy drowsiness washed over her once more. Huai Yu couldn’t help but close her eyes again.

In a half-asleep, half-awake state, the scene before her abruptly shifted again, changing into another pitch-black place. No, not entirely pitch-black. It seemed to be a room. Faint moonlight spilled in through the cracks in the architecture, just like the moonlight scattering across her own room.

After staying in the dreamscape a little longer, she seemed to grow accustomed to the dark environment. She could vaguely make out the outline of a table in the room. It looked slightly familiar.

Huai Yu silently committed this detail to memory, and then it suddenly hit her—wait, wasn’t this Zhou Qian’s room?! They lived so close to each other, so what was there to dream about? It wasn’t as if she had to run ten kilometers just to see him in a dream, right?

Eek! Huai Yu let out a sneeze in the dead of night. Too terrifying.

***

The next day, she recounted her dream to Zhou Qian. "Do you think I might have another superpower? Like precognition or something?"

Zhou Qian thought about it before finally coming to a conclusion. "I feel like it was probably just an ordinary dream."

After all, the two of them had pondered it for quite a while and still hadn’t figured out what clues the dream was supposed to offer. Besides...

"What is there to foresee about my room?

"Besides, if you want to see it, you can just go look at it during the day. There’s absolutely no need to go through the whole process of dreaming about it... You know what it’s like—it’s just like millions of other living rooms in the world.

"You’re probably just too tired."

Huai Yu thought about it and still felt a bit dejected. "But... when I first entered the dream, I felt so lonely. So much pain."

Zhou Qian sighed, simply setting down his hoe to sit beside her on the edge of the field.

"Little Yu, it’s probably just a case of dreaming about what you think of during the day.

"You’ve never liked being lonely. And in dreams, all sorts of bizarre scenes can pop up. As for dreaming about my living room... that’s even simpler. You probably just glanced at it a few extra times during the day, and it left a subconscious impression."

Huai Yu rested her chin on her hands and looked at him. "Really?"

"Really," Zhou Qian vowed confidently. "Otherwise, what could you possibly foresee in my living room?"

Huai Yu thought about it. That actually made a lot of sense. She sighed. "I really wish I had a special precognition ability, though."

If she did, perhaps she would have a chance to discover Lin Xuefeng’s current whereabouts. Or maybe she would be able to find Uncle Zaozi’s son and daughter.

She casually picked up a branch and scribbled on the ground, attempting to recreate the bizarre scene from her dream. However, she truly had zero drawing ability. No matter how vivid the image was in her head, when she put the branch to the dirt, it just became a circle. The chaotic tree in the middle of that circle was reduced to a messy smudge on the ground...

No matter who looked at it, they wouldn’t be able to tell what kind of abstract monstrosity this was. Yet, Huai Yu stared at it for a long time. Then, with a light tap of the branch, she pointed to the exact center of the circle.