Fear of food

Chapter 133: Finding a Safe House

According to official data compiled by Chen Qi, the "safe house" of dream thieves is generally related to their past experiences.

Most safe houses are places that provide a sense of security for dream thieves.

This sense of security sometimes comes from childhood experiences, and sometimes from one's own personality.

For example, the mirror's safe haven is the toilet. Perhaps subconsciously, he has always felt that squatting in a clean and bright toilet is a very safe thing.

A large portion of dream thieves' safe havens are dark, cramped spaces like wardrobes, drawers, and under beds. These people are generally introverted, and these small spaces provide them with a unique sense of security.

Moreover, safe houses are generally derived from familiar scenes in the first layer of the dream.

The "toilet" safe house in the mirror is very likely an evolution of his own toilet.

The dream world is a complete replica of Chang Le City, which allows for greater resonance with the memories of the dream thieves living there, and also makes it easier for them to find a safe house.

But for Chen Qi, everything in Chang Le City was unfamiliar.

Finding a safe house that could give him a sense of security in such a strange and dangerous city was not an easy task.

“Menglong is right. I should build a dream based on my memories. That way, it will be easier to find a safe house.”

As Chen Qi was pondering, he saw a car on fire rushing towards him on the road!
The car appeared without warning and headed straight for Chen Qichong, while passersby along the way ignored it.

The car drove right through the crowd without hitting a single pedestrian!
Based on these unusual phenomena, Chen Qi instantly determined that this was not a real car, but a dream pollution!

Meanwhile, on a huge projection screen on the wall of the nearby shopping mall, an advertisement for a restaurant was playing, showing a pot of incredibly delicious-looking soup.

Suddenly, the pot of soup in the scene tilted over, and the scalding soup poured down like a waterfall, drenching Chen Qi's head.

It's still dream pollution!

Dream pollution ignores those who have already been polluted and only affects those who have not been polluted.

Seeing the burning car and the waterfall of soup coming from both sides, Chen Qi did not choose to run away, but instead fell asleep on the street.

Right there in the bustling shopping mall and on the busy main road, Chen Qi, without any regard for his image, lay down on the ground, closed his eyes, and went to sleep!
Why do you need to find a quiet place to sleep?
Isn't sleeping on the street the same thing?
For dream pollution to truly affect someone, it must follow their consciousness.

Strictly speaking, the dream world is illusory, and dream pollution is a pure form of idealistic pollution.

When he falls asleep in his dream and his consciousness enters the second dream, the pollution of the first dream can no longer threaten him.

However, entering this second layer of the dream is not something that can be done at will.

Ordinary dream thieves might need to spend a lot of time and effort to have any chance of succeeding.

But Chen Qi is now a true nightmare parasite; entering a dream within a dream is just his innate ability.

Therefore, when Chen Qi fell down, his head hadn't even touched the ground yet, and he was already asleep.

Consciousness also entered the second layer of the dream.

The burning car that was charging towards him, and the waterfall of soup, instantly lost their target and vanished.

Entering a dream within a dream on this main street, the only thing to worry about is the crowds coming and going around him. He might be trampled by the crowds, or someone might do something to him.

After all, these are people in a deeply polluted dream world, and it's not easy to predict their behavior based on common sense.

But Chen Qi wasn't afraid, because he had bodyguards...

Sure enough, just as Chen Qi fell asleep on the spot, a purple domain appeared, clearing away the crowd around him.

Marilyn Monroe appeared beside Chen Qi.

Behind her followed two middle-aged male parasites.

One of them gritted his teeth and said, "This kid is really using us as bodyguards!"

Chen Qi knew they were secretly following him, which is why he felt so at ease and entered the dream within a dream right on the street.

Snapped!
Marilyn Monroe turned and slapped the middle-aged man who had spoken across the face. Her expression was frosty as she warned him:
"Now that he has merged with Lord Menglong, seeing him is the same as seeing Lord Menglong. Anyone who dares to be disrespectful..."

She didn't continue speaking, but the murderous intent in her eyes said it all.
-
Chen Qi moved from the first dream to the second dream.

The first layer of the dream world is a proportional replica of Chang Le City. As long as you are in the polluted area of ​​Chang Le City, everyone's first layer of the dream world will be the same.

This second layer of dream varies from person to person and from situation to situation.

For example, the second dream that Chen Qi is currently entering is a dream world generated entirely based on his memories.

This kind of private dream world may be large or small, but it is destined to be inferior to the first-level dream world in terms of detail.

Because memories have fuzzy parts, it's impossible to recreate every detail. Some missing parts will be filled in by imagination and generated.

The first layer of the dream, Chang Le City, is a world that gathers the memories of all the residents of Chang Le City to fill in the details and perfect every corner. It is a world pieced together from the dreams of millions of people!
Chen Qi's dream alone cannot compare to the collective dream of millions of people.

"The characteristics of private dreams are that the larger the dream, the rougher the details and the less logical it is."

"I hope my dream isn't too big, so that it will be easier to explore and save more time..."

Chen Qi looked around at the dream he was in; it seemed to be in an old house.

A dark brown wooden door with peeling paint, a cement-colored ceiling, crumbling walls, and faintly visible red bricks...

A unique smell of the old house, a mixture of old furniture, dust, a faint musty smell, and the lingering aroma of leftover food, wafted over.

The indoor lighting was somewhat dim. The south-facing window wasn't large, and the thin glass with carved patterns on the wooden frame was cloudy, with tiny dust particles floating in the filtered sunlight.

"This place... looks familiar!"

Chen Qi frowned in thought, searching for a distant past in the corner of his memory.

"This seems to be... an old house from my rural hometown! It's been demolished long ago."

Before starting elementary school, Chen Qi vaguely remembered living in his rural hometown for a year or two, but he was too young then and many of his memories are now blurred.

With his grandfather's passing and the demolition of their old house, he hasn't been back to his rural hometown for over a decade.

Chen Qi was somewhat surprised. He had thought his dream would be about his home or school in the city, since these were the places that held his clearest and deepest memories.

Unexpectedly... it was actually by digging out this vague memory of his that the dream was constructed.

"How blurry must the details be?"

However, upon returning to this place that no longer exists in reality after so long, Chen Qi felt an extraordinary sense of familiarity, and some forgotten memories were awakened and became clear again.

"I think I lived here on and off for more than a year at that time."

"In this room, on this bed, Grandpa would always fan me and keep the mosquitoes away in the summer."

Chen Qi vaguely remembered that his parents' work had just started at that time, and they were often too busy to take care of him, so they could only send him to his grandfather's place.

Especially during summer vacation, he often spends the entire summer in the countryside.

During that time, he was like a wild child, running around the mountains and fields with the village children, catching cicadas, dragonflies, fishing for crayfish, taking pictures... It was probably the happiest time of his childhood.

His parents would come to see him whenever they had free time, and sometimes they would even stay with him in the village for two days.

"This black and white television..."

Looking at the "Panda" brand black and white television on the table, it was as bulky as a microwave oven, with one of its two antennas broken.

Back then, Chen Qi would play outside all day, but every evening he would sit in front of the TV, waiting for the cartoons to start.

At that time, many families already had color TVs, but he preferred his own black and white TV and never went to other people's houses to watch TV.

Chen Qi felt a pang of emotion as those faded but still beautiful memories kept resurfacing.

But just then, Nightmare Eater warned, "Watch out!"

Chen Qi was slightly startled and quickly looked around, soon discovering the source of the danger.

A cluster of shadows was surging on the concrete ceiling, slowly approaching his head.

As a child, Chen Qi would lie in bed every night before going to sleep, looking at the mottled cement ceiling with its varying shades of cement stains, and imagining them as all sorts of things…

Some look like dragons, some like insects, some like humans, some like monsters...

Sometimes he gets scared by his own imagination and closes his eyes, afraid to open them.

At this moment, his childhood fantasy seemed to come true. The various dark cement marks on the cement ceiling came to life. Some became dragons, some became insects, and some transformed into a group of human figures, dancing wildly and baring their fangs and claws.

The second layer of the dream will also be subject to dream pollution!
They even occur more frequently!
Chen Qi took a few steps and stepped out of the room to the front hall. He wanted to push open the door and run out, but found that the door was locked by something.

These old-fashioned double wooden doors can only open inwards and can only be locked from the back with a bolt, but now they are locked tight, not even a crack can be opened.

Unable to open the front door, Chen Qi crossed the hall and headed straight for the back door.

It turned out that the back door was also locked tightly and could not be opened at all.

"Is the scope of my dream really that small?"

The inability to open the door could also be because the dream's scope ends there, with the door as the boundary, and outside is nothingness.

Tweet!

Suddenly, a series of rapid bird calls came from inside the house. They were sharp and piercing, one after another, and even though Chen Qi didn't understand bird language, he could tell that they were urgent.

Chen Qi looked in the direction of the sound and saw a swallow's nest on the light bulb in front of the hall. The bird calls were coming from the baby swallows in the nest.

Before he could take a closer look, he saw a small, flesh-colored baby swallow, its feathers not yet fully grown, fluttering its wings and flying out. Its mouth was open wider than its head, and it was making loud cries, expressing its hunger.

Suddenly, the baby swallow's head swelled up rapidly, its mouth so big it could swallow a watermelon whole, and it lunged straight at Chen Qi's head.

"Is it so hungry it wants to eat me?"

Chen Qi knew this was just a form of dream pollution, but with both the front and back doors locked and dream pollution emanating from the ceiling, his only remaining escape route was to go up the stairs to the second floor!
Chen Qi quickly went up to the second floor, where the layout was even simpler, with only two rooms: one used as a bedroom and the other as a storage room.

Besides that, there's a front balcony and a back balcony.

As soon as you go up the stairs, you are greeted by the door leading to the back balcony.

Chen Qi opened the door, ran inside, and then closed it behind him.

"They actually sealed off the windows."

Chen Qi recalled that when he was a child, the front and back balconies of his old house were not enclosed, but now the back balcony is enclosed with a glass window.

Chen Qi looked out the window and found that all he could see was a thick white fog, and he couldn't see anything at all.

"Sure enough... it has already broken out of the dream realm. This dream of mine is only the size of this one house."

He pushed open the bedroom door that was right next to the back balcony. The upstairs bedroom was empty and felt like a bare house, with only a bed standing alone in the center of the large bedroom.

As far as I can remember, this bedroom was always empty. Chen Qi's grandfather was old and had difficulty moving around, so he lived in the downstairs bedroom. The upstairs bedroom was only used by Chen Qi's parents for a day or two when they came to visit.

Chen Qi's eyelids twitched, and he vaguely saw something crawling out from under the bed.

"All the pollution in this dream is a complete collection of my childhood traumas!"

When he was a child, his biggest fear was that monsters would crawl out from under his bed.

Chen Qi cursed inwardly, not daring to linger, and could only continue his escape.

That's how it is in dreams; without your own safe haven, you can only be constantly chased and run away from everywhere.

The problem is, his dream this time was too small!

Chen Qi was somewhat worried. His old house was so small, and he was being chased and running away. Soon he would have nowhere to run.

He'll have to run around the second floor once, then he'll have to go to the rooftop.

However, when Chen Qi escaped from the second-floor bedroom and arrived at the front balcony, he was slightly taken aback.

The front balcony was also enclosed, but he could still see his own small yard downstairs through the glass!

"So the courtyard is also part of the dream world!"

However, the area outside the courtyard was once again shrouded in fog.

"Since the courtyard is also part of the dream, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to go there, but the front gate is blocked. How am I supposed to get over?"

"Could it be... jumping off a building?"

The only thing Chen Qi could think of was to jump directly from the building into the yard.

However, when he tried, he found that none of the balcony windows could be opened.

There was no time for Chen Qi to think further. At that moment, the sound of fingernails scratching at the wooden door came from behind the bedroom door next door.

Chen Qi immediately turned around, passed through the storage room, returned to the stairwell, and rushed to the rooftop!
If I want to jump off a building, it looks like the only option is from the rooftop.

"This dream world is too small, and there are dangers at every turn. If my safe house is hidden there, it's either on the rooftop or in the yard!"

As Chen Qigang entered the stairwell, the mutated fledgling swallow and the clusters of shadows on the ceiling followed him.

However, they didn't seem very clever. The fledglings had heads that were too big, causing them to lose their balance and fly unsteadily. The shadows on the ceiling, lacking the concrete ceiling as a backdrop, also moved slowly.

The stairwell was cluttered with miscellaneous items. Chen Qi dodged and weaved, searching for a place to step, all the while keeping a close eye on the situation, fearing that some of the clutter might be contaminated.

Fortunately, none of these things triggered his childhood trauma, and Chen Qi finally managed to climb onto the rooftop.

On the rooftop of the old rural house, with almost no obstructions, Chen Qi climbed to the side and looked down at the courtyard below. He immediately spotted a colorful area below, and his eyes lit up.

"Could that be...my safe house?"

(End of this chapter)