Chapter 177: A Little Application

The dream was illuminated by a soft white light, and the sense of being watched grew stronger; he realized this dream was progressing incrementally.

There was no longer any need to seek comparisons; as the dream's brightness increased, so did the duration of its stay and the increasingly delayed awakening time, along with an irresistible descent into sleep. Since the appearance of "Bai Guang," the author had not eaten breakfast once.

All known knowledge was applied to explain the current situation, but yielded nothing. From Humoral Theory to the new treatise nearing completion, after multiple self-examinations and peer reviews, he was forced to admit that there truly existed diseases beyond their understanding.

According to the trend in the records, within no more than two months—possibly even shorter—the moments of awakening and falling asleep would merge, trapping him in a dream from which he would never wake. Losing dominion over consciousness, even with meticulous bodily care, he would eventually develop complications and succumb to death.

This struck a heavy blow to his will, causing the records to skip several dates.

Yet he eventually returned, determined to document this rare illness from the perspective of a firsthand witness during his final days, and to complete, before it was too late, the book that might profoundly impact the entire system.

When mentioning that book, Kraft felt his pride surpassing even his reflections on death.

More humiliatingly, faced with the threat of death, a man will try anything—even the church, which he had always scorned. After a church-connected friend summoned a priest to exorcise the affliction with no effect, the final resort was arranged: he was to stay in a church for several days.

If the Heavenly Father does not save the faithless, at least His own grounds won't be desecrated by demons, right?

But because his work had long been at odds with the church, the author could never bring himself to move in, nor endure the constant encounters with those "dogmatic," "filled with holy water" priests, bishops, and Shenxue Academy colleagues. A truly "all-powerful" friend somehow arranged for the author a spot atop the church's Zhong Lou.

Aside from the hunchbacked bell-ringer who brought meals daily, no one would disturb this final sanctuary—and it was convenient for timing.

Under "unbearable kindness," he yielded to his friend's insistence, moved his belongings to the top of the Zhong Lou, and reluctantly yet meticulously recorded this environmental shift. From this height of dozens of meters, he seized every remaining half-day to complete the final volume of his manuscript; what followed were merely proofreading tasks.

The dream's development deepened into its next stage: its contents grew increasingly vivid and detailed; he discovered he could now exert some control over his body within the dream, moving his fingers to touch the damp bedside. He even wondered whether, if he could never awaken again, his spirit might live on within the dream.

It was clear the author had swiftly passed through fear, denial, anger, and despair.

The turning point came after he gained true dream-body agency. When he awoke chilled from the water-dampened bed, holding his favorite scalpel, and instinctively opened the window, he did not see the sun hanging high above, nor the moon he had not seen in ages.

Instead, he saw an alien celestial body. Nearly half a page of descriptive text was written, then entirely crossed out and blacked over, leaving only the words: "impossible to look away," "an extraordinary experience."

He gazed at it, lost in awe, for what felt like an eternity—or perhaps only an instant—then awoke again to the long-missed sunrise, his body dangling from the windowsill. Fortunately, the kind bell-ringer heard the noise and rushed to save his life; otherwise, this great discovery might never have been recorded.

At last, the author had found the key to the dream.

【So familiar a trope】

Reading this, Kraft had already grasped what had befallen the manuscript's author—though his own experience differed slightly. He continued reading.

After temporarily finding an "exit" from the dream, he began to wonder what had drawn him here, and what the recurring bright white light truly meant.

Before he could understand, new symptoms emerged. He occasionally experienced a strange shift in perspective: while writing at his desk, he saw papers inside his drawer; in severe cases, he even saw his own internal organs, often accompanied by indescribable discomfort.

The manuscript described this as a suffocating, narrow constriction, like birth, as if the world had become too low to contain his soul.

Unlike Kraft's experience of being knocked on at night, the author eventually discovered the source of the white light during one instance of looking down from the window. A soft, luminous creature with countless tentacles and appendages drifted in the reversed flow of the Tem River flooding into the city, attempting to climb the towering outer wall of the Zhong Lou.

When it saw him, it emitted a shriek like "a thousand pipe organs and ten thousand engorged vocal cords." In a single glance, he understood: the force pulling him into the dream originated from this creature; the great height difference prevented it from feeding.

He owed gratitude to his friend: though blessed by no Heavenly Father, the high tower built by His followers had granted the author a chance to escape by gazing upon that celestial body.

A prolonged struggle ensued between the man and the creature: each night, the author had to quickly realize he was dreaming and fix his gaze upon the celestial body, while the creature relentlessly climbed the tower.

He faithfully recorded this process, which any ordinary person would dismiss as a bizarre tale, dedicating most of the pages to detailing on which day he grasped the true nature of "xianshi," and from which day onward his spirit could directly perceive and resist the force pulling him into the dream.

"I feel I am transforming; my soul is becoming tangible, yet my human body cannot match it," the author wrote. "And I cannot tell whether this transformation stems from 'training' or from repeatedly gazing upon that beautiful celestial body."

【"Beautiful" celestial body?】

"I should kill that creature. I've thought of many ways to deal with a being that hardly possesses wisdom—but is it truly worth it? I would lose the only path into that world."

"It is a key, a key that walks on its own, capable of guiding me there… and also…"

A brilliant idea took shape in the author's writing: he should not kill the creature, but maintain this dangerous equilibrium. If he could find a way for others to be perceived by it, it would become a "magic" capable of making anyone who established contact with it vanish into thin air.

Yet this "magic" had two problems to solve: first, the user and the target must occupy equal status, requiring prolonged conscious resistance; second, he needed a medium through which the target could be perceived, just as a naturally sensitive person was.

He solved the second problem.

……

……

【I understand part of it now】

Kraft set the pages aside; the record ended here. The remaining portion must have been the page corroded by mold alongside the Holy Scripture—now irrecoverable.

This sufficiently explains part of the truth: the original perpetrator, a man of great scientific spirit, had understood the deep-layered creature's predatory mechanism and developed a simple little application. Then, this manuscript fell into the wild, passed through many hands, until it reached the possession of a believer who was likely also ensnared.

All fits together.

The white-haloed guide, another world, the circular object hanging in the sky—the many-armed, many-limbed, delicately fingered angelic figures in the hall now had their counterpart.

But the current situation cannot be explained solely by this: the rampant fungi, the parasitized shells—how do these connect to the creeping creature? It only helped him trace the possible origin of the heresy.

Yet at least the identity of the "angels" is now clear. Since he couldn't figure it out now, Kraft decided to deal with it first, then consider further.

"Kup, light a fire."

He opened the oil container, lined it by the window, poured one can onto the floor. A tried-and-true trap, replicated in the study.

As expected, at the center of the red glow indicating the enemy's location, a white light slowly flared.

But this white light differed from his experience: it was veiled by an uneven mist, yet its overall brightness far surpassed any previous instance—exceeding even the peak intensity observed in Wenden Port.

"Mr. Kraft, shall I throw the torch?" Kup lit the torch he carried. Seeing Kraft staring at the white light rising like a full moon before him, he seemed lost in an untimely thought.

The brightness grew endlessly, reaching blinding intensity, yet retained an unnatural softness and serenity—even the attendant, whom he had met only once in memory, sensed something was wrong.

"Kup, you and Ma Ding go down the corridor first, to the highest point you can reach. Then look upward." Kraft took the torch, speaking quickly and clearly. "Remember: ensure it isn't chasing you before you look."

"Look upward?"

"Yes. Go high, look up, find the moon in the sky—and then you can return. Now, go."

"But—" Ma Ding started to ask, but Kup dragged him back without hesitation into the corridor choked with fungal growth.

He pushed aside the desk, drew his sword. The white light surged and rose; the fungal caps in the room glowed crimson, then quickly drowned beneath the stronger radiance.

Kraft heard the sound of the courtyard wall collapsing. A "pillar" of fungal growth, thick as a forest tree centuries old, rose before the window, segmented and twisting in contradiction, forming a motion toward the window.

Then came a second, a third—countless luminous nodules and appendages sprouting magnificent, flourishing fungal bodies, like soft scales and velvet lips, or silk folds and brocade drapes, adorning mouthparts that spat teeth and spores—resembling a colossal, brilliantly colored serpent coiled in a writhing mass, tongues flickering.

"Now it all makes sense…" Amid the low hum of a thousand fungal throats, his whispered mutter was meaningless. If fungi controlled human shells in this world, what did they infect in the deep layer?

A vast entity, shaped from a long list of names, its body nourished by the entire forest's nutrients.

"Edward, why didn't the church burn you for three days and nights back then!" Now, this thing wouldn't be finished in three days and nights.