Chapter 73: Could This Blessing Possibly Be Shallow?

Kraft’s first reaction was that he’d misheard, but that was clearly impossible. He examined the sentence word by word and found no ambiguity or puns.

Then Kup saw him step back, shifting his focus away from his own anger, creating a subtle distance between them.

“Think carefully—when did it start? What do you remember?”

“Huh? Isn’t being able to dream again a sign things are getting better?” Kup was confused, wondering why the other man cared so much—did he expect him to interpret dreams like a priest?

“Quickly. I need everything you can recall—from how the dream began, through what happened, to how it ended. Even a little more detail would help.”

A long inhalation rose from behind the mask, like a deliberate act to calm the mind, or perhaps a prelude to explosion. Without needing to read his expression, Kup knew the man had grown serious.

Behind his lenses, his eyes vanished in the midday sun’s glare; a crimson patch of light fell on Kup. The hand gripping the sword hilt beneath his robe tightened, pulling taut black wrinkles across the fabric.

Kraft faced him—but not him. His attention passed through the physical body, fixed instead on the empty void behind him, as if gazing at someone—or something—else.

Kup instinctively turned to look—there was nothing there. A faint, strange dread flickered through him.

“Sorry, I’ll think.”

…

“It’s like this—I’ve felt for a few days now that falling asleep isn’t as ‘empty’ anymore. It sounds strange, but it’s that feeling—you wake up knowing you dreamed, but can’t remember anything.”

“I thought it was because I stopped drinking from that well, and finally improved, so I didn’t pay attention.” He glanced at the bird-beak mask, now breathing steadily, certain Kraft wouldn’t react violently, and continued.

“The last two days were different. At first I thought it was memory from waking in the night, because it looked just like home. But if I couldn’t wake up during the day, how could I have woken up at night?” In recalling, Kup tried to untangle the sequence.

“Then I realized I was dreaming—but I remembered only fragments, unclear, just like before: I couldn’t move. And some things floated up to the ceiling—like that one.” He turned back, scanning the clutter.

The object he pointed to was a wooden handle. Kraft stepped inside, picked it up, weighed it, then tossed it back to Kup. “What’s this?”

【Very light】

“I don’t know. I picked it up on a whim, thought it might be useful. Other things floated too, but I can’t remember them.” Kup caught the handle and tossed it carelessly back into the pile of junk.

“Do you feel a heaviness? Difficulty breathing, like you’re underwater?”

“It… seems like it.”

“But the dream was gentle—more comfortable than ordinary sleep, wasn’t it? So comforting you didn’t want to leave, and thus didn’t see it as bad.”

“Ah, yes, exactly!” Kup slapped his forehead, fully agreeing—no wonder he was from the Academy; even his own incoherent dream was understood.

Now he thought about it, it really was like sinking softly into drowsy comfort, lying in water—soft, soothing. If it hadn’t felt that way, he wouldn’t have thought anything was wrong. Too bad it only lasted a moment each time.

“Have you ever had dreams like that?” Curiosity prompted Kup to ask.

Kraft stared at him, silent for a long while. He recalled a grim joke from his internal medicine days, when memorizing lung cancer classifications.

A patient had cheered upon hearing the diagnosis “small-cell carcinoma,” thinking it was a “small” cancer, while the grim-faced doctor held the report, unsure how to explain.

The unnerving silence snapped Kup back to reality—he was once again the one being interrogated. “Sorry, forget I asked.”

“Ah, it’s fine.” Kraft drew his right hand into his sleeve and asked the question he least wanted to ask: “Did you see… light? In the dream—a white, soft light, coming through the window?”

His tone was gentle, as if mimicking the light’s form, immersing himself in it—transported to a summer full-moon night in Wenden Harbor, where soft rays and a breeze slipped through the window, drawing the listener back into fragmented dream memories.

A hidden danger, wrapped in softness—the same emotion, half-concealed beneath a gentle surface. Like that warmth, the more you pondered, the more you feared, reverent before the silence behind which lay an unspeakable truth.

“Have you seen that white light?”

Unconsciously, speaking of those things, the words on his tongue detached from physical vibration, carrying complex experiences within them.

“It… maybe… yes, there was some light, but I really can’t remember.” Kup shrank back, hugging himself—even as the weather warmed, he felt a chill, startled by just a few simple words.

In that fleeting dream, junk floated midair; he lay on a blanket, his foggy mind still believing he was in his familiar home. Now, he began to doubt.

In that gentle, watery environment, something moved through—so faint a ripple brushed his skin, and just as described, a white, soft light flashed outside. Only after being reminded upon waking did he realize he’d truly experienced it.

“What was it?”

“Definitely not something good.” After weighing the risks, Kraft decided to use a special method to inspect the surroundings—this development left him with a bad feeling.

Based solely on Kup’s account, drinking contaminated well water for a few more days was nowhere near enough to reach the first layer’s threshold. At most, he’d sink a little deeper, sleep a bit longer.

Even if he was lying, and assuming he’d cut off contact for at least five days, according to current statistics on others, he’d show slight improvement—not plummet uncontrollably like an oiled sled.

Worse, his answers suggested he might already be marked by that writhing thing—perhaps even noticed. It was only a matter of time before he sank.

A rare case, but not a good one.

He could only try using spiritual senses to see if he could detect anything. As they say, first time painful, second time no better, then gradually you adapt.

After using the dull prism medium, Kraft had found himself gradually resisting the aftereffects of short-term spiritual sensing.

Though the experience was still awful.

He cautiously connected his spiritual senses, bypassing the dull hexagonal prism hidden in his sleeve to avoid accidental activation.

His scattered senses swept the surroundings—the entire small shed, from top to bottom, was scanned: the wood-boring insects, the two black silver coins hidden in the cracks—all revealed.

Nothing unusual. A real, ordinary, mundane environment. The truth was certainly not this simple.

Kraft activated the dull hexagonal prism in his sleeve, “sinking” slightly. The spiritual realm began to fade; a mysterious atmosphere rose.

Past practice had made him adept at this movement—he could appear behind Lu Xiusi, who had just finished searching the entire house, without warning.

It was a dual change of spirit and matter. Now that he understood its essence, he grew even more repulsed by it. Clearly, this was the Crawlers’ method of dragging people deeper.

First, spiritual contact establishes a link. If you can’t control the depth of descent—the sensation of falling—you’ll cross the threshold and be pulled down, dragging matter along with you.

What he was doing now was sinking just a little—close enough to observe, but not enough to be dragged under entirely.

Water not of this world submerged him. Kraft knew it was an illusion—the spiritual senses perceiving the scene from the deeper layer.

As expected, once inside the Salt Tide Zone, given the terrain, not a single roof would rise above the water—everything was submerged. Low-density objects in the room, like the wooden handle, floated upward.

A mild pressure of breathlessness pressed upon him. His spirit told him he was underwater—yet he wasn’t. His sense of smell worked normally, emphasizing the Salt Tide Zone’s harm to it; his alveoli still filtered air infused with herbs and spices.

His senses disliked sinking. His reason analyzed his growing mastery of this skill—enhanced consciousness learned everything faster.

This depth was still insufficient. The spiritual senses delivered too vague information. Kraft frowned and sank further. The pressure from the water grew clearer—dense, moving currents flowed around him.

If the previous depth was halfway, he had now passed three-quarters of the way to the first layer. Sinking further meant nearing the critical threshold soon.

Twenty seconds had passed. If he didn’t want unbearable pain later, he had little time left to hesitate—either sink deeper, or prepare to rise.

In his indecision, an abnormal current brushed past the edge of his spirit.

The intrusion from the material world had been detected by native inhabitants. The current churned, changed direction, and the moving entity surged closer.

Several misshapen limbs cut through the water, charging straight toward Kraft. As the spatial distance closed, so did the depth—the thing was ascending toward the surface, aligning with Kraft’s current level.

As it neared, its form sharpened: a grotesque body propelled by tentacles entered his spiritual senses. White light flared—then a roar was about to follow.

“Damn it!”

Kraft surged upward with all his strength, pulling himself back to the material world before it could collide with him. In his vivid spiritual vision, the faint silhouette writhed in resentment, its roar scraping against an invisible barrier, thick with unmasked malice.

A gaping, inverted wound cutting through its central body revealed why it acted so recklessly—it was an old acquaintance. Oh no, familiar, yes—but not human.

Good. Now things were clear. The thing that had attacked through the window hadn’t died—it had fled back into the Salt Tide Zone.

Just as everyone was reducing contact with the deeper layers, here was one fool who kept drinking contaminated well water for days—making him the perfect target.

Something that might have ravaged half the region now focused solely on you, Kup. Could this blessing be shallow? It would only grow deeper by the day.