Chapter 154 What the Hell is with this Change in Setting?

“What the hell is with this change in setting?” The first to shout at Hao Ren’s words was Lily, who couldn't hold back her temper. “Could it be that this world still has a script? And the guy writing the script is tearing up pages on the fly!”

“There isn’t anyone tearing up pages behind this world, but a ‘script’… there might actually be one,” Hao Ren said, tossing the old book onto the table. At the same time, the words on the book were still refreshing, with new paragraphs covering the old text. It was all happening right before their eyes, as if there was no longer any pretense of concealment. “Vivian, let’s begin.”

Vivian nodded and gently opened her hands. Lily still didn’t understand what was going on, blinking her eyes and looking back and forth between Hao Ren and Vivian. “Hey, what’s with you two playing charades—why so mysterious when your affair is already public…”

Honestly, Hao Ren sometimes really wanted to shut this guy’s mouth, as nothing good ever came out of it.

Lia was even more clueless about what Hao Ren and Vivian were planning. The magician lady nervously clutched her iron staff, her eyes darting between everyone. “I suddenly feel like you guys…”

She didn’t finish her sentence, because a distant and mysterious chime suddenly came from an unknown location. The chime seemed to strike directly into everyone’s soul. When it sounded, it was as if the entire world’s operation was disrupted, and everyone involuntarily stopped what they were doing.

Accompanying the chime was a ray of crimson moonlight, tinged with blood.

The crimson moonlight seemed to penetrate the walls and roof of the library, quickly and evenly filling the entire space. Outside the mage tower, the entire White Maple Leaf City, and even the entire Lahrrian continent, was shrouded in the red moon’s glow.

Whether it was the flame monsters attacking the city, the guards organizing the defense, or the birds and beasts fleeing in terror, they all displayed a strange state of stagnation and slowness at the instant the red moon descended. Then, as if they were summoned by something, they unanimously raised their heads, looking at the mysterious celestial body that had just appeared in the sky—a round, crimson full moon illuminating all things.

Vivian’s hair fluttered as powerful energy waves emanated from her body, outlining countless hazy phantoms in the crimson moonlight. She looked down at her hands, a hint of a smile on her lips. “I must say, ever since I cured my mental illness, I feel like summoning the red moon is becoming increasingly effortless.”

Lily was stunned, and then she howled in alarm. “Waaah!! Bat, are you crazy? Why suddenly summon the red moon and scare me half to death! Don’t you know I was left with psychological trauma after being killed by you with this thing in my past life!”

Hao Ren soothingly pressed down on Lily’s head, while looking at Lia, who hadn’t said a word, with a smile that wasn’t quite a smile. “Without summoning a powerful enough ‘alarm clock,’ how can we awaken a sleeping god?”

Lia had been in a strange state of silence since earlier. At this moment, she was raising her head, staring blankly at the ceiling filled with moonlight, as if her gaze could directly penetrate the thick stone and concrete and see the red moon in the sky. Hearing Hao Ren’s words, a confused expression appeared on her face, which was quickly replaced by contemplation and realization—her eyes were rapidly changing, as if countless personalities were reviving within her. In the end, all her expressions coalesced into a faint smile. The “magician lady” looked at Hao Ren. “How did you find out?”

“There were too many clues, but each one was so subtle that it took me a long time to connect everything,” Hao Ren replied with a smile. “But if I had to say the most direct one… it would probably be that I haven’t had a single dream in all these days.”

Lia shook her head with a smile. The next second, her figure dissipated like sand in the wind.

Along with her, the entire world vanished.

The mage tower, White Maple Leaf City, the Great Plains, Longwind Ridge… all of “Lahrrian” was enveloped in light at the same time, then transformed into countless scattering light particles. After a brief few seconds of dissipation, the true face of this world was finally presented to Hao Ren and his party.

Darkness, coldness, desolation. Countless fragmented celestial shards floated in a chaotic space, with energy arcs spanning hundreds of kilometers dancing between the shattered continents. Space fortresses already dead drifted and rotated at the edges of larger land fragments, while indescribable shadows leaped incessantly between those fortresses.

A murky cloud of residual gas, resembling dust, enveloped these broken lands. It should have been part of the atmosphere, and for some mysterious reason, it hadn’t completely dissipated after the planet shattered.

Hao Ren and his friends stood on one of the floating continental remnants. This continental remnant was connected to the surrounding celestial fragments by only a few energy streams, and on the scorched land, there were almost no identifiable remains.

This was normal. After all, the former Cradle Star was covered by an endless ocean, and there were few buildings on the planet's solid crust. As for those pavilions and towers built on the surface of the Origin Sea, once sustained by divine power… they were now floating in the void between continents, even more completely shattered than the planet itself.

Everything happened in a short period of time, so until the true face of this world was completely revealed, no one had realized what was happening. The first to come to his senses was Izhaks, who was usually very calm and had experienced great storms. The old demon stroked his chin, lost in thought. “So, we were trapped in something like an illusion all along? This is the true appearance of the Dark Territory?”

With Izhaks saying that, everyone finally reacted. Nangong Sanba looked around and chuckled. “Heh, this does look more like the Dark Territory…”

Hao Ren raised his head and saw the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace floating diagonally above them. The beautiful silver-white spaceship was adjusting its attitude while shining its headlights. Nolan’s voice sounded very excited. “Boss! We can fly! We can fly!”

“Alright, alright, I know you can fly. Now turn off the headlights and turn on the radar,” Hao Ren said helplessly, trying to calm down his racing ship girl. “Change the search mode to divine power detection. If I’m not mistaken, the Goddess of Creation is nearby.”

“Aye aye, don’t worry about it… uh, Nolan understands.”

Watching the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace switch to detection mode and begin to slowly patrol between the broken celestial fragments, Hao Ren turned his attention back to his friends. Although Izhaks had guessed some of the truth, the full story obviously needed to be explained by him.

“Do you guys remember the final battle in the X-Cluster?” He asked a question before explaining everything. “We took down a Dream Weaver, and that big brain said something before it died.”

“Oh, right, that brain living in a dream,” Lily immediately remembered. “It said something about the dream being destroyed, and then two people were going to wake up from the dream… Wait, Landlord, are you saying… that the dream that brain was talking about…”

“As you guessed, from the moment we arrived in the Dark Territory, we were living in a dream,” Hao Ren smiled, pointing to the celestial fragments stretching out into the darkness. “Lahrrian isn’t a real planet, but just a dream. That’s why that world seemed so strange, with all the species from the dream plane mixed together, a lot of seemingly real but not quite history, a lot of inexplicable historical sites, the Grand Caverns, and those things in the Grand Caverns… These logically inconsistent things are actually quite simple to explain, because they are all dream products. And the real world—well, what you see is the shattered Cradle Star.”

Nangong Wuyue hugged her arms and curled her tail. The thought that she had been living in a dream world for so many days gave her goosebumps (although elementals didn’t have that setting). “Damn… I was already creeped out when I watched Inception, and now I’ve actually experienced a VR version…”

“Dreams always have a source,” Izhaks frowned, his voice low. “The source of this dream world…”

“The Goddess of Creation, or the Goddess of Destruction, or perhaps both of them together,” Hao Ren said, putting away the smile on his face, his tone becoming serious. “The ability to create this kind of ‘dream,’ and especially in this Dark Territory, the possible answers are only those two. But based on the peaceful state exhibited by the Lahrrian world, perhaps the Goddess of Creation has the upper hand in this dream.”

Lily’s eyes darted around. “Then that Lia…”

She still remembered that Hao Ren said those words to Lia before the dream world dissipated.

“I guess she might be an ‘avatar’,” Hao Ren said. “But I can’t be sure of the specific situation yet. We need to find the main body of the Goddess of Creation before we can understand everything—including how I determined the truth about the dream world. We’ll have to wait until then to say.”

“Aww—” Lily said, drawing out the sound in regret, while casually looking at this fragmented world. She looked up at the dark, chaotic space and suddenly discovered something. “Hey, hey, Landlord, look over there!”

Hao Ren looked in the direction Lily was pointing, and couldn’t help but be stunned.

A floating fragment of a continent was slowly moving, and the patch of sky that had been blocked by it was exposed. In the depths of the chaotic darkness, a faintly shimmering place could be vaguely seen.

It was another planet, another torn planet. Judging from the distance, it was clear that it was not part of the Cradle Star. The fate of that planet seemed to be better than that of the Cradle Star, because it was only split in half, and did not completely turn into a belt of gravel scattered in space like the Cradle Star. But even so, for the natives on the planet’s surface, the catastrophe was probably still a catastrophe.

However…

Hao Ren narrowed his eyes, taking a closer look at that planet.

“Perhaps… Lahrrian isn’t entirely a dream.”