Chapter 68

Later, when family fell ill, it was hoping they'd be healthy and safe.

Over time, Liu Zhiyi herself no longer knew what a dream even was.

But the boy shook his head and said, with great precocity —

"How sad."

Liu Zhiyi was tickled into a laugh.

"You keep asking about mine — what's your dream, then?"

"My dream." The boy said without a thought. "For humanity to win this war!"

Liu Zhiyi startled again, taken aback by his dream.

She realized the war the boy spoke of must be this false-god invasion.

Liu Zhiyi: "…That's quite a grand dream."

"You don't believe it?" The yarn on the boy's head lifted, as if he were a little angry.

"Mm-hmm, mm-hmm." Not wanting to provoke him — she still hadn't figured out the situation — Liu Zhiyi nodded along, a bit perfunctory.

"Fine." The boy shoved the cat up onto his shoulder and crossed his arms. "Let me show you something."

Were they finally getting to the point?

Liu Zhiyi focused at once.

The boy turned and walked deeper into the flowers; Liu Zhiyi followed at a middling distance, and before they'd gone far a building suddenly appeared not far off.

Liu Zhiyi's expression changed at the sight of it.

A hospital — and the very one her grandmother had been admitted to.

The boy: "Don't be afraid, this isn't a real hospital, only a projection of your memory."

At the sight of the hospital, Liu Zhiyi felt uncomfortable; seeing it stirred up a great many bad memories.

"What do you mean?"

The boy: "People are creatures of emotion."

Liu Zhiyi frowned and said nothing.

"Anything tied to a painful memory can stir a change in a person's feelings." The boy's voice was steady, without any rise or fall.

Reasonable as it sounded, Liu Zhiyi was still displeased — she was the one tied to the painful memory, after all.

The boy: "And feelings scatter your attention."

As his words fell —

—Whoosh.

A sound of something splitting the air came from behind.

Liu Zhiyi paused, her body instinctively moving to counter it, but she was still a step slow; her vision blurred, and a small black shape stopped before her eyes.

It was a petal.

Liu Zhiyi realized the boy had manipulated the petal to prove his point.

"…Could you not use me as a test subject?"

The boy: "Not a test — I hope to argue by fact, so you'll agree with my view."

"People are indeed creatures of emotion." Liu Zhiyi looked at the boy.

This she could actually feel — some people's illnesses, cancer even, are tied to bad moods and constant anger.

"But what does this have to do with the dream we were talking about?"

Liu Zhiyi asked.

"Of course it does." The boy turned around. "If people had no emotions, then naturally the dungeons wouldn't arise."

Liu Zhiyi had heard a similar idea from Shen Songyue's and the cat's mouths.

Before, she'd been at her wits' end over her mother and grandmother, with no heart to think of anything else.

Now, with her attention on how to rescue the cat, it was the first time she'd taken an interest in how their ideas would actually be carried out.

Liu Zhiyi: "In theory there's nothing wrong with that, but it's hardly workable. How could people have no emotions? Even if you could soothe some people's feelings by talking heart to heart, the city I live in alone has over ten million people…"

"Gentle means aren't easy," the boy said calmly. "So coercive measures are needed."

Liu Zhiyi went still.

"Coercive measures?"

"That's right." The cat in the boy's arms gave a cry, and he cocked his head too. "With so many people, you can't expect everyone to agree with your view."

The boy's tone was very flat, as if he didn't think what he'd said was in the least frightening.

Liu Zhiyi: "How would you force it?"

The boy: "You know about the false-god invasion — you must have seen the business of the insect-mother invading Blue Star?"

Liu Zhiyi had some impression of it.

Though she'd found that transmigrated woman's methods somewhat extreme — controlling the minds of everyone on the whole planet — because it hadn't happened on Earth, Liu Zhiyi could understand her a little.

But the boy had brought it up.

Liu Zhiyi: "You want to copy her method?"

"That's right." The boy nodded. "You've been through a group dungeon; you must know the deadly power of human feeling, and how fast a dungeon develops."

Liu Zhiyi knew, of course — in that Ankang Hospital dungeon, in a single night, several people had been pulled in.

And birth, age, illness, death were a point no one could ever get past.

It was precisely because she'd lived through her mother's and grandmother's deaths that she knew all too well how deadly such a dungeon was to her.

The boy: "You know it too, don't you? Dungeons develop fast, and at this stage there's simply no solution to be found."

Liu Zhiyi: "Hasn't the government set up the relevant departments — sending people into dungeons or sealing them as fast as they can?"

The boy gave a laugh.

"Do you think that counts as solving the problem?"

It didn't.

Rationally, Liu Zhiyi understood what the root of the problem was.

But emotionally she couldn't admit it, couldn't say it that way.

The boy: "Because you have a conscience."

He rubbed the head of the cat in his arms, the yarn-knit face without expression.

The boy: "That's the fruit of upbringing. Useful in some situations, but on the dungeon problem, I think it's next to useless."

Liu Zhiyi thought about how to refute him.

Only, rationally she knew too that there was a certain sense in his thinking.

Liu Zhiyi: "That transmigrated woman on Blue Star — she could carry out control over everyone only because she'd gotten hold of a part of the insect-mother."