Chapter 26 – Eileen’s Abilities

Eileen possessed the ability to dive into other people’s Dreams — and according to her, she could not only enter a person’s Dream, but also influence its course to some degree, such as summoning a dump truck by pressing the exam bell in the middle of a dream.

Honestly, if used well it seemed like quite a formidable skill — perhaps capable of performing high-level operations like psychological suggestion, mental parasitism, or memory reshaping.

But Yu Sheng was deeply skeptical of how reliable this Puppet in the Painting’s boasting about her own abilities actually was — from what he could see so far, she was utterly useless even inside a Dream, and couldn’t even hide properly in the grass.

And on top of that, she was still stuck inside that Oil Painting even in the Dream.

Eileen’s Oil Painting floated before Yu Sheng, the Puppet Girl inside the frame looking somewhat awkward. Yu Sheng found her current state more and more uncomfortable the longer he looked — the way she was just hovering in midair was worse than if she were simply hanging on a wall.

“You can only stay inside the painting even in the Dream?” Yu Sheng tugged the corner of his mouth and finally voiced the question that had been on his mind. “I thought that since we’re in the mental realm, you’d at least be able to come out and move around…”

“Why else would they call it a curse?” Eileen said with a helpless expression. “Trapped in the painting in reality, and the same in the mental world. No matter where I go, I can’t leave this painting — not unless I find a suitable vessel. Freedom? Not even in dreams.”

“That really is quite miserable for you.” Yu Sheng sighed sincerely from the bottom of his heart.

“Hey, but being in a Dream is still a bit different from the real world!” Apparently feeling a little embarrassed, Eileen quickly tried to recover some face when she saw Yu Sheng’s sympathetic reaction. “I’m at least a little freer here than in reality — look, I can even float around… Stop laughing. There’s, there’s more to it than that!”

Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow at her words, genuinely a little curious: “More than that?”

Eileen thought for a moment, then struck a pose reminiscent of a fighter powering up in a ’98 fighting game, and began making a great effort inside the Oil Painting as though she were about to activate some ability. Even Yu Sheng was momentarily startled by her performance and instinctively watched the Puppet in the Painting seriously for any change — and in the very next second, a layer of dazzling, shifting light truly began to ripple across the surface of the Oil Painting!

As Yu Sheng’s eyes gradually widened, the Oil Painting finally went — “pop” — and transformed into a poster in the style of the 1980s.

Eileen had switched to the color palette of an old film and stood inside the poster, staring at Yu Sheng.

Eileen: “I can change art styles.”

Yu Sheng: “…”

“You laughed out loud!!”

Yu Sheng forced his face to remain straight: “I did not.”

“Inner voice!”

Yu Sheng had no desire to keep humoring this Puppet anymore. The foxgirl was still lying nearby, and he hadn’t figured out her situation yet.

Eileen was immediately a little hurt. Seeing that Yu Sheng was ignoring her, she drifted to one side and began muttering to herself: “I can change into other things too, you know — woodblock prints, scrolls, whatever… I’m even researching how to turn into a relief carving. Once I manage that, I’ll have depth, and then you won’t be able to say my character is shallow anymore…”

Yu Sheng could no longer stand her muttering and suddenly turned his head: “First of all, when did I ever say your character was shallow? And second, that’s not how you use the phrase ‘shallow character’ — by the same logic, even if you turned into marble, you still wouldn’t have a deeper character.”

Eileen opened her mouth as if to say something, but before she could utter a word, she went “pop” and reverted back to the Oil Painting — her transformation time had run out. The whole thing had lasted less than three minutes in total.

Yu Sheng was dumbfounded. He knew this Puppet was useless even inside a Dream, but he truly hadn’t expected she could be useless to this degree…

But this time, Eileen didn’t look the least bit downcast. She had finally noticed the white fox lying in the grass nearby — or rather, she had finally sensed that something about this foxgirl seemed oddly out of place with the surrounding Dream environment, and her curiosity pulled her attention away. “By the way, what’s the deal with this fox? Why does she look different in color from everything else?”

Noticing the puzzled expression on Yu Sheng’s face, she added an explanation: “The things inside a normal person’s Dream tend toward a unified color palette. Even if the dreamer themselves can’t perceive it, I can see it as an outside observer. Like in your Dream — the sky and the grass are all a hazy grey. That’s the ‘base palette’ of this Dream. But this fox… she looks like she wandered onto the wrong set.”

She paused at that, looking at Yu Sheng with a hint of suspicion: “How could such a strange phenomenon appear in your Dream?”

Yu Sheng was silent for a moment. He turned to look at the sleeping white fox and slowly spoke: “Her name is Hu Li.”

“I know, she’s obviously a fox…”

“I mean that’s her name — Hu Li,” Yu Sheng corrected wearily, then reminded her, “Remember when I was trapped in that Otherworld before, and I mentioned to you that I had encountered a fox — white fur, red eyes, lots of tails?”

Eileen was stunned for a moment. Her not-very-reliable memory finally slowly kicked into gear, and she recalled what Yu Sheng had mentioned to her before. Her expression became quite animated; she stared wide-eyed at the massive fox demon and opened her mouth several times before she finally managed to get any words out: “What?! How did you get her into your own Dream… wait, no — how do you have the nerve to lock someone up inside your…”

“I didn’t capture her, and besides, I don’t think she’s truly ‘locked in’ here. This is probably just something like a shadow of her? I’m not entirely sure,” Yu Sheng had to explain. “I’d barely fallen asleep before I saw her, but no matter what I do, I can’t wake her up.”

Eileen looked at Yu Sheng, then turned to look at the fox demon. Her gaze went back and forth between the two of them several times, as if she were trying to piece together the logic of how all this had come about — which was clearly no easy task.

“I’ve never heard of anything like this…” she muttered in astonishment, then suddenly spun the painting frame around and fixed her gaze intently on Yu Sheng’s eyes. “Are you actually a person?”

Yu Sheng immediately frowned: “What kind of question is that! If I’m not a person, what does that make you?”

But Eileen continued to stare at him, her expression more serious than he had ever seen it: “Alright. A human being, an ordinary person, who lived in the Otherworld for a long time without even knowing it. Then wandered into another Otherworld and encountered a malignant entity. Surviving that and escaping was already something — but then you also cut off a ‘local specialty’ from that entity, brought it back, stir-fried and ate it, and came out perfectly fine. And now, on top of all that, you can keep another mind stored inside your own Dream — a mind whose original body is even trapped somewhere else.

“All of these outrageous things have happened to you, and then you’re telling me — you’re a person? An ordinary person?”

The intensity of Eileen’s crimson eyes staring at him gradually made Yu Sheng uncomfortable. He instinctively looked away and thought to himself — she didn’t even mention ‘dying and coming back to life.’ Compared to that last thing, everything else she’d listed was nothing…

“It’s true that… a lot of strange things have happened. I’m a bit confused myself. But if I had to say — even you count as one of the ‘strange things’ in my life recently,” Yu Sheng said helplessly. “Stop staring at me. I don’t know what’s going on either. I can’t even wake this Hu Li up. If I could, maybe I could just ask her what’s happening.”

Eileen stared at Yu Sheng for a while longer, as if confirming that he wasn’t joking, before slowly withdrawing her gaze and redirecting her attention to the Silvery Foxgirl.

She thought for a long time.

“I have an idea.”

Eileen said suddenly.

“An idea?” Yu Sheng asked curiously. “Let’s hear it.”

“I’ll try diving into this fox’s Dream. If she happens to also be dreaming right now,” Eileen said, raising a hand to point at the fox demon. “Her current state looks a lot like a mind-lock, but no matter how well a mind is locked, it’s very hard to keep your guard up in dreams. I might be able to ‘see’ something, and if I can take the opportunity to wake her up on this side, all the better.”

Yu Sheng was genuinely surprised. Just moments ago he had been marveling at how unreliable this Puppet was, yet here she was throwing out such an advanced plan. He couldn’t hide his astonishment: “Something like that is actually possible?”

“It’s not difficult, as long as she’s also dreaming… Even if she isn’t dreaming, your two minds are clearly linked right now, so I have ways to ‘squeeze’ through and take a look. The only thing is… there’s some risk involved, and I’ll need your help.”

Yu Sheng’s expression immediately became serious: “No problem. Tell me what to do.”

“Because jumping between minds is like ‘deep diving’ in unstable waters, if there’s any problem with the ‘connection’ in between, I could end up stranded on the ‘other side,'” Eileen said, looking at Yu Sheng with full seriousness. “So I need a ‘rope,’ and you’ll be that rope.

“You need to ‘dive’ with me — descending from your own Dream, sinking deeper into the depths of this foxgirl’s mind. You’ll share some of the pressure with me, making it easier for me to concentrate on finding the right direction. And if something truly does go wrong in the process… I’ll use a somewhat forceful method to ‘wake you up.’

“Your awakening has the highest priority in this linked dream sequence, and it will drag my mind back along with it. That way we’ll both be able to return to the real world safely. I should warn you in advance though — my method of ‘waking you up’ may not be very pleasant.”

“How unpleasant, roughly?”

“…Something like dreaming you’re in the middle of taking your university entrance exam, you haven’t written your name yet, and then the collection bell rings. You haven’t had time to figure out what’s happening when a dump truck crashes into the exam hall and flattens you and the person you had the biggest crush on in high school into paper cutouts — the kind with an especially shallow character…”

Yu Sheng had absolutely no idea what Eileen was trying to say with her bizarre analogy.

But he figured it couldn’t be that big a deal. A single rude awakening — no matter how unpleasant, could it really be worse than dying?

More than that brief hesitation, he wanted to understand what on earth Hu Li’s current situation was, and what was going on with his own Dream.

“No problem. Let’s begin,” Yu Sheng took a quiet breath and gave Eileen a solemn nod. “What’s the first step?”

“Go over there. Get close to the big fox — as close as you can… Just lie down on her tails.

“Then, hold on to my painting frame, close your eyes, and we’ll leap from within the Dream.”