Chapter 194: The Dream of Mortals

Chapter 194: Mortal Dreams

In the rumors circulating outside, Wen De suffered from depression and anxiety, compelling him to rely on sleeping pills to fall asleep.

But through the account of the plump woman, Meng Siyou gradually realized that the rumors contained a critical error—

The sequence was wrong.

The same series of minor events, when connected in different orders, could create a significant distortion in the overall picture.

The true sequence of events was actually:

1. Wen De, in his dreams, seemed to be enticed by an occult force, making him afraid to sleep normally;

2. In this prolonged state of sleep deprivation, Wen De’s mind gradually deteriorated, and coupled with the taint of the occult force, the emergence of mental illness was almost inevitable;

3. Wen De sought help from a psychiatrist, who misdiagnosed him with insomnia and prescribed him sedatives.

—It wasn’t insomnia caused by mental illness, but illness caused by the terror of slumber!

Only with the aid of medication could Wen De temporarily forget…

The call from the deep sea, the scuttling noises in his dreams that dragged fragile human souls into the depths of madness…

Forgetting it all, in exchange for a night of peaceful sleep.

Meng Siyou couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for the forgotten corpse in the top-floor office.

In the face of primordial mysteries, humans were inherently ephemeral, fragile, and defenseless.

Moreover, Wen De was just an ordinary person with no understanding of the occult…

That he was the first to receive the call of the divine beings likely meant he possessed notable latent sensitivity. But when such talent could neither be utilized nor controlled, it was no different from a curse.

Gathering his thoughts, Meng Siyou asked, “When did Mr. Wen De’s auditory hallucinations begin?”

The plump woman, her rough fingers smoothing the edges of her apron, drifted into memory. “It seems it was the summer two years ago…”

It was a night of pouring rain.

The moon and stars were hidden behind storm clouds, and even in the ever-rainy coastal town, the weather was unusually terrifying—as if the entire world was bellowing in fury, the thunderous impact of towering waves against the reefs like its ragged, heaving breaths, leaving a deep impression on all who witnessed it.

It was as if an instinct buried deep within their genes was warning them:

Some extraordinary calamity was slowly descending.

“At the time, Wen De happened to be back from school for a break. Since his house had been neglected for too long, he arranged with me to stay at my place for the first night.”

“Around ten in the evening, we bid each other goodnight and were about to retire to our rooms. But just then, Wen De suddenly froze, his eyes fixed on the window as if he had seen something unbelievable…”

The plump woman still remembered how dark it had been.

Following Wen De’s gaze, she peered out the window but could only see a thick, flowing darkness, everything washed away by the rain, with only a few feeble, far-off glimmers of light—perhaps from houses or lighthouses—seeming on the verge of being swallowed by the dark.

Beyond that, she saw nothing else.

But Wen De insisted he had seen a pale shape descending from the sky…

Too far away to discern its exact shape, but he was certain it was enormous, sinking into the sea like a mountain.

At the time, the plump woman dismissed Wen De’s words, murmuring sleepily. “Could you have been mistaken?”

“We all know something that big couldn’t just fall from the sky, and in the dark, through the storm, you could still see it?”

“No, it was real.”

Wen De’s face grew pale, his eyes distant, his lips trembling like a small animal sensing an impending disaster.

In a daze, he spoke, his voice seeming to come from some far-off realm, distant and inaudible to mortal ears, mingling with the howling wind outside, faltering and thin:

“Because—it saw me too.”

“I could feel it… the moment I saw it, it saw me as well.”

A pale shape…

Meng Siyou murmured inwardly, his mind swarming with conjectures.

He suspected Wen De had accidentally witnessed the first arrival of some divine being to Earth, thus forming a connection with it.

And that colossal pale shape—could it be the source of the fish eggs, or perhaps their “mother”?

At this point, the plump woman let out a heavy sigh.

“At the time, I was terrified by Wen De’s uncharacteristic behavior. I quickly wrapped him in a blanket, made him a cup of hot milk, and urged him to go to bed and not overthink it.”

“The next morning, the storm had passed, and I thought it was all over. But the moment Wen De woke up, he began screaming hysterically…”

“He was so frightened he couldn’t speak coherently. It took me a long time to understand that he had dreamed of that pale shape—seeing it rise and fall with the turbulent waves, like an uncanny white leviathan or a massive ship, drifting along the boundary between sky and sea.”

“Wen De said it was approaching him, calling to him, luring him to the sea to become its agent and subject…”

Clenching his fists, Meng Siyou could already hear the ominous foreshadowing.

Wen De’s fear was the fear of countless sentient beings who had encountered divine beings.

This fear had existed since the first second of life’s inception, yet it had never been dispelled, never truly waned.

—The gods are eternal. They are eternal.

Meng Siyou asked, “How did he cope with the call in his dreams afterward?”

The plump woman lowered her head, sighing despondently. “The auditory hallucinations and panic attacks lasted over half a year, tormenting Wen De to the brink of collapse. I watched helplessly as he rapidly withered away, his eyes sunken, his face gaunt.”

“He began staying up night after night, turning to alcohol, which he had never touched before. Often, when I woke in the early hours, I’d see the light in his room still burning, lasting until dawn…”

“A few times, I challenged him, asking why he wouldn’t sleep. Wen De would clutch a bottle, his eyes bloodshot but stubbornly open, his words repetitive—whether drunken ramblings or not, I couldn’t tell… He kept saying he couldn’t yield, couldn’t obey its call.”

“At first, I thought he was possessed, a once-promising doctoral student reduced to a raving drunkard spouting nonsense. But some younger people told me Wen De might be ill, trapped by hallucinations of that pale shape.”

“He wasn’t a drunk,” Meng Siyou whispered low. “…He was a brave, great man.”

Using the dreams of a mortal as a rampart, Wen De endured night after night alone, keeping the siren call of the abyss at bay from the human world.

But humans have limits—he had limits.

A mortal’s spirit is like an overburdened thread, stretched tighter and thinner under corruption, destined to fray eventually—the only question was when.

Meng Siyou felt that even if Wen De had ultimately succumbed, becoming an agent spreading the fish eggs for the “pale shape,” he couldn’t judge him too severely.

He had already fought as hard as any ordinary person could against a divine being.

The plump woman assumed Meng Siyou’s praise referred to Wen De overcoming the torment of mental illness and successfully founding the now highly successful Wan Neng Chao Xi Pharmaceuticals, so she didn’t find it strange.

She continued, “After realizing Wen De was suffering from auditory and visual hallucinations, I thought he needed treatment, so I dragged him along to the nearest city to see a doctor. The doctor diagnosed him, prescribed medication—everything went smoothly. But then… disaster struck.”

“After leaving the hospital, we were waiting at a crosswalk when Wen De seemed to be zoning out across the street. Before the light even turned green, he suddenly asked me, ‘When will this life ever end? Will it only end when he dies? Will it only stay deep in the ocean then?’”

“I was stunned, too slow to react—and then, without warning, Wen De rushed into the middle of the road like a madman… He actually wanted to kill himself. Thankfully, luck was on his side. He survived, but lost the lower half of his left leg from then on.”

“After surviving that ordeal, Wen De’s life took a turn for the better. He discovered that new substance by the sea, invented the Universal Capsule, and rose all the way into the public eye, soaring beyond anything I could’ve imagined.”

The plump woman’s voice carried a mix of relief and sorrow. “But after his success, Wen De rarely returned here. He seemed to have become a brilliant but distant legend, someone I could no longer recognize… But that’s fine too. He deserved such a beautiful ending.”

No.

Meng Siyou knew Wen De did not have the happy ending the plump woman imagined.

It was very likely that after “Wen De” was discharged from the hospital with a prosthetic leg, he wasn’t quite the same Wen De anymore… at least, not entirely.

Every time he heard the call, even if he didn’t answer, Wen De was drawing closer to that divine being—his once purely human soul was tainted by something foreign, like drops of pigment contaminating clear water. The alien hues and corruption spread further until it was utterly unrecognizable.

His suicide attempt was, in truth, the final, desperate rebellion from that fading human soul.

From the moment he laid eyes on the divine being, the “best possible ending” most ordinary people could hope for… was death.

A black, dreamless death.

And after his suicide failed, he became a servant of the divine being, hunting for more hosts for its brood.

Meng Siyou couldn’t help but recall the hallucinogenic fish scales in the top-floor office.

Between pain and illusion, at the border of delirium and clarity—had Wen De ever clawed back moments of clarity?

Did he even realize what he was doing?

While elevating the Universal Capsule to great heights, did he ever feel a pang of despair—despair that the doom he’d unleashed with his own hands?

“Thank you, ma’am, for sharing so much about Mr. Wen De’s experiences.”

Though he had repeated empty compliments many times before, this time Meng Siyou’s tone was solemn. “He really was an extraordinary man once.”

The plump woman smiled. “So you idolize him? Are you planning to follow in his footsteps to success?”

“Something like that?”

Meng Siyou stood up, brushing off the dust, then adjusted the grimy fabric cap on his head. Beneath the shadow of the brim, his eyes were sharp and bright as they gazed at the shimmering sea in the distance.

“Next, I’ll do my best to finish what he left undone.”