Eternal Night

Chapter 826 The Boundary of Reality
Unlike the others, Wu Pifu was certain that he was dreaming.

No matter how real the dream was, even if he couldn't see any flaws, the sense of unreality was so obvious that he knew he was dreaming immediately.

This is actually due to his own gradual approach to perfection.

For ordinary people, limited by the boundaries of their senses, they often cannot distinguish between reality and illusion. They can only find loopholes in illusion to perceive the difference between the two. Therefore, a famous logical argument is about this: a person cannot tell whether he is in a brain in a vat.

However, the sublimated body cannot be deceived by such reality and illusion. It has a perfect cycle and is self-contained. Even the infinite cycle of the root cannot contain or reduce it. Ordinary reality and illusion can be seen through at a glance. This is not a flaw of reality and illusion, but its essence.

At this moment, although Wu Pifu is not yet an ascended being, whether it is due to the perfect closed loop of time and space during his time reversal or because his own strength is too great and his essence has begun to gradually become perfect, he has actually begun to be unlike an ordinary person. This level of reality and illusion cannot deceive him at all.

but……

"...This Hell Bell is really something, it can actually put me in a dream?"

Wu Pifu muttered to himself.

You should know that with his current strength and spiritual cultivation, he will never dream if he doesn't want to. Moreover, he only needs to think about what kind of dream he wants and how long he wants to dream.

How about learning about the spiritual cultivation of martial arts, which can reach the pinnacle of invulnerability and even temporarily transcend to the next level?

But at this moment, he was actually pulled into a dream, and it was a collective dream. He saw all the Nen users and ordinary people in front of him. They were all in a dream, but they were separated and in their own different dream worlds.

Wu Pifu moved his body slightly, and the countless scenes in front of him began to shake violently. Outwardly, the buildings in the dream scene collapsed, the earth cracked, and even holes began to appear in the sky.

A scene reminiscent of the apocalypse.

Wu Pifu immediately stopped what he was doing, because he had a gut feeling that if he destroyed the dream at this moment, everyone in the dream would die.

Although he had said that once they set off, they would be responsible for their own lives, that meant they would be killed by monsters along the way, not by him. The difference between the two was still very clear. Moreover, he did not feel any danger at the moment. This dream could not contain his spiritual essence. It was just a reflection. Therefore, he was not in danger. He could not bring himself to kill all these people just because he had been pulled into a reflection of a dream.

Therefore, Wu Pifu sat upright and motionless.

Everyone in the dream was utterly shocked as they stared at Wu Pifu, who sat motionless like a true god. The slightest movement of his body seemed to cause the world around them to collapse.

"Is this his true nature? It's terrifying..."

Someone muttered.

Regardless, they had all entered the Nian Space, and with Wu Pifu "present," it was a good opportunity for exploration.

Ordinary people were terrified, but the Nen users acted swiftly, exploring their surroundings, buildings, information carriers, texts, or any other locations and objects that might provide clues.

All of this was presented to Wu Pifu. The countless scenes he saw were changing at an extremely fast speed, but the people in it did not know it. They thought they were seeing a city, a vast space, but in fact only a small area that they could perceive existed. The other areas were nothingness, blank. Only when they walked past would the other areas emerge from the nothingness, and their emergence speed was exactly the same as their movement speed. After they passed by, the area where they were originally located became nothingness.

"...Not enough memory?"

Upon seeing this scene, Wu Pifu inexplicably thought of the word "memory".

In the 21st century, he played many games, and many games had this setting: the map seemed vast, but in reality, only the area where the character you controlled was displayed was shown, and the other areas were blank, in order to save computer resources. This is also the origin of the so-called "dungeon" or "instance".

This dream is so similar to this situation.

If there isn't enough memory... then whose memory is it?
Moreover, this ability to evolve the dream world in real time is unlikely to be due to insufficient memory...

Wu Pifu's head was throbbing from thinking, so he decided... to stop thinking about it!

Anyway, once he wakes up from the dream, he can tell them all this information. These shrewd people might be able to figure out what's going on.
(Zhihe and Mi, Dad misses you so much!)
Wu Pifu sighed, then suddenly paused and looked closely at the two scenes from his dream.

One scene features a man, the other a woman, and their speeds are off...

It wasn't that the two individuals' speed was the problem, but rather that the flow of time they were in was distorted. Their movements became incredibly fast, accelerating and accelerating until, in the end, even Wu Pifu couldn't see them clearly. What was a second for others might have become a year, a decade, or a century for these two…

Then their bodies began to change under this super-acceleration: aging, wrinkles, sagging skin, then shrinking, growing increasingly old, yet they themselves were completely unaware. Under this aging, their flesh seemed to turn into fluid, then their bones began to weaken, eventually shattering completely, their blood, flesh, and internal organs mixing into a mess. But until this point, they remained oblivious, still moving within the super-accelerated dream world, faster and faster, until the men's bodies began to turn into strips of flesh, and the women's bodies into a sheet of stretched-out muscle membranes...

Other dream world scenes were one thing, but this one truly terrified Wu Pifu.

This scene of gradual change without their own awareness is too bizarre. Moreover, it is not a distortion, but a natural formation of the body over an extremely long period of time. If it were an ordinary person, they would have died of old age long ago. However, these two people will not die of old age, and they will not die even if their bodies turn into fluid. Therefore, this super change of the body over time can occur.

But this is even weirder, okay?!
Just then, Wu Pifu noticed that the third accelerated dream scene was starting to appear. At first, it was only slightly accelerated, but then the acceleration became faster and faster, followed by the fourth accelerated scene, the fifth accelerated scene... If this continued, all of them would be wiped out.

Wu Pifu had this idea.

But he couldn't destroy the dream world to wake them up unless they woke up on their own...

Uh, you woke up on your own?
Wu Pifu's heart stirred, and then he closed his eyes to meditate. A brilliant light burst forth from between his eyebrows, illuminating the entire dream world, just like the first ray of sunlight rising from below the horizon in the darkest dawn.

As the light illuminated the entire dream world, Wu Pifu's heart stirred. He reached down and grabbed a relatively intact tall building.

In the next instant, all the dream worlds shattered...

Wu Pifu opened his eyes and looked around. He was still hovering in mid-air above the campsite he had chosen.

Meanwhile, below, the entire camp exploded simultaneously, and a large number of people rushed out of their tents or sleeping bags, calling out to those around them and asking them about the situation.

"...I didn't hear any sound, and there was nothing unusual!"

The patrol team members, their faces pale, said, "We didn't slack off; we patrolled the entire perimeter of the island. But at some point, we were all trapped in the Nen space."

All the patrol team members nodded; clearly, this was not a lie.

The top twenty Nen users nodded in approval, and Peter Young immediately looked up at Wu Pifu and said, "Sir, is that... you?"

Wu Pifu nodded in agreement: "Yes, that was me. I was also pulled into the dream, or what you call the space of thought. I saw all of you, the scenes in which each of you was, and I was the one who finally woke you up."

Many Nen users had slightly strange expressions, but they were also relieved.

Kido immediately said to the Hunter's Guild members, "Begin counting the dead!"

Hunters from the surrounding area immediately rushed to the camp where the ordinary people were. A few minutes later, several hunters ran over: "Four people have mutated, and there's more..."

The group hesitated for a moment, but Paris immediately stepped past Qido and asked, "Speak, we're all listening."

One of the hunters said, "There are two others who haven't mutated, but... they've aged, they've aged a lot, and they've started to lose their minds, like they've developed Alzheimer's."

Everyone wore strange expressions, while Wu Pifu sighed and said, "Perhaps it's not just that he seems to have Alzheimer's, but that he really does have Alzheimer's..."

Wu Pifu immediately described the super-accelerated scene he had witnessed, and everyone's expressions were extremely strange.

If the theory of super acceleration is true, then all their previous speculations about Hellbell will be invalid.

It is not the accumulation of the sound of the hell bell that causes the change in thought, but rather the acceleration of time in the thought space.

"...Is the rule of the Mind Space that time perception is accelerated?" someone guessed.

"Then where does damage transfer come from?"

"Or multiple rules?"

"...Do you know what it means that a Nen space with such a huge coverage area, capable of affecting so many people, also covers multiple rules?"

Everyone started arguing.

Wu Pifu then descended from mid-air and walked up to Peter Yang and Jin, while waving to Kura, Qiduo, and the others in the distance.

A thought struck them, and they quickly went to Wu Pifu's side, clearly knowing that Wu Pifu must have made an important discovery.

They saw Wu Pifu spread out his hands, and in his hands was a model of a building, carved from rock, which looked incredibly lifelike, even the glass windows on the building looked vivid.

"Before the dream collapsed, I grabbed something from inside and happened to grab this building. The scene I grabbed belonged to Peter Young's dream scene, a dream scene that was clearly only affecting the mind. I was just entering it with my mind. But what I grabbed returned to reality with me and became a physical entity."

Wu Pifu examined the building closely, then said earnestly, "So, the question I have for you is..."

"what does that mean?"

(End of this chapter)