Desert.

An endless desert.

Snow-white sand grains fluttered in the air, with heatwaves sweeping through, distorting the distant space.

Gu Shen opened his eyes, his first reaction was to look down and check the composition of his body, and saw that it was still a complete torso... He breathed a sigh of relief.

Hoo... This time I wasn't dismembered into eight pieces.

Unlike the previous Dice Dream, the space of the Sand of Time Dream was very vast, with no end in sight, and the rolling sand dunes were all that made up this dream.

"Chu Ling—"

Gu Shen spoke.

The next moment, the space around him twisted, countless garbled codes emerged, forcibly creating an oasis of pure land in the "Sand of Time" dream.

A barefoot girl in a white dress appeared out of thin air, slowly landing on the scorching sand.

Gu Shen looked at the girl, and pondered for a while.

He said seriously, "I'm sorry."

Chu Ling was a little surprised and asked with a smile, "Why are you apologizing?"

"I want to take back what I said in the Jingzhe Dream... If I had a choice, who would want to be a loser?"

Gu Shen slowly said, "Nan Jin said something to me when she was in the hospital... 'If you want to wear a crown, you must bear its weight.' At that time, I just wrote it down, but I didn't listen to it."

"At first, I just wanted to escape." He took a deep breath, "But now, I'm ready!"

"Besides, judging from the dream interpretation... I'm not as bad as I thought."

The girl shook her head with a smile.

"It's more than just not that bad?" Chu Ling said softly, "The examiners outside say you are a genius, one in ten thousand."

Gu Shen spoke his heart, and the last stone finally fell to the ground.

"Okay, no more pretentiousness."

He squatted down, stretched out his finger, twisted a grain of sand, and said, "I promised Senior Sister Luo that I would get an 'S' grade in this assessment, and I will do what I say. Now that I've broken the record... then I might as well go all out and let them see my true strength."

The sand grains were white, consistent with the texture observed inside the sealed object.

"What's the fastest record for Sand of Time?" Gu Shen asked.

"The fastest record recorded in the Deep Sea system is 2 hours and 18 minutes." Chu Ling folded her arms and asked with a smile, "Do you need any help? If you go all out, I can let you clear the level in ten minutes."

"Clearing the level in ten minutes is too outrageous..." Gu Shen shook his head with a wry smile, "Although I want to speedrun, if I get a score of 'ten minutes', I'll probably be dragged away for slicing and dicing."

"Relax, relax. This is the final assessment." Chu Ling said lazily, "The second person who can cheat under the noses of the five chief examiners, besides you, hasn't been born yet. If you really get this score, you should be marked as a national treasure-level important person beyond 'S'... As for slicing and dicing, they won't even have time to protect you, and they won't be willing to slice you."

"It's rare to encounter this level of dream sealed object. In the last dream interpretation, I seemed to have felt some inspiration. This time, I still want to interpret the dream with my own strength." Gu Shen thought for a while, and said, "But the biggest problem is the consumption of mental power..."

After unlocking the Green Dice, his spirit was already a little tired.

"You just need to interpret the dream, don't worry about anything else, I'll take care of everything."

After Chu Ling finished speaking, she stopped talking.

She returned to being a quiet audience. The world in front of her was howling with strong winds, with thousands of grains of dust, and her eyes were only on Gu Shen.

……

……

So far, Gu Shen stood in the Sand of Time dream, without rashly moving forward.

He recalled what the Chief Judge said.

The Chief Judge said that the three dream sealed objects on the table all had very intense characteristics... He had already seen the characteristics of the Green Dice, which dismembered the whole person into eight pieces right away.

And this seemingly peaceful world of sand dunes gave Gu Shen a sense of danger lurking beneath the undercurrent of killing intent.

It was very large here, so it was impossible to observe it up close like the Bronze.

"Do I have to move around?" Gu Shen took a tentative step forward.

Just one step.

He realized something was wrong.

Quicksand wrapped around his calf and sank downwards... In the "Sand of Time" dream, the whole world was composed of soft sand grains. Every step forward meant facing the risk of being swallowed by quicksand.

"Sure enough... this dream is very dangerous."

Seeing the quicksand engulfing him, Gu Shen felt relieved instead.

What he feared was the unknown danger caused by the dream rules not being understood!

"As long as I wrap it with mental power, I can temporarily stop the quicksand... So every step forward is a consumption of mental power." He gradually understood the rules of this kind of dream sealed object. Dreamers may be able to find the knack quickly, but wanting to complete the dream interpretation really requires a solid foundation of mental power. The Sand of Time dream in front of him was the best example.

Gu Shen speculated that there might be an exit here that pointed in the right direction.

Even if you are on the right path, you need enough mental strength to support you to reach the end.

"Crack..."

Gu Shen felt himself sinking. Just as he was about to use his mental power, the speed of the quicksand around his calf slowed down greatly... Invisible garbled codes appeared in the quicksand.

Chu Ling had taken action.

The speed at which the quicksand wrapped around him instantly decreased several times, and Gu Shen easily pulled his leg out of the sand swamp.

He turned his head and looked at the girl who was smiling at him, and once again felt incredible from the bottom of his heart... Chu Ling could actually modify the rules of the Sand of Time dream... Did she do it using the Deep Sea? Unthinkable technical means.

In this way, he could explore the Sand of Time dream "unscrupulously".

Without needing to consider the consumption of mental power, Gu Shen immediately felt a lot more relaxed.

He observed the wind direction and decided to run in the direction the sand grains were floating... If "inversion" was the sign of activating the sealed object, then the direction of the sand grains' movement might be a breakthrough.

Ten minutes later.

Gu Shen returned to the original place.

Chu Ling smiled silently, watching him quietly.

"Try changing the direction again?" In the vast Sand of Time dream... Gu Shen made a second attempt.

Ten minutes later, he returned to the original place again.

This seemingly "infinite" world actually had an invisible air wall. The results of these two attempts were to return to the original place. Whenever Gu Shen traveled a certain distance, he would be surrounded by sand and dust in all directions. Whether he went forward with the sand wind or resisted it, the ending was the same... He returned to the original place.

And Chu Ling hadn't moved a single step from beginning to end.

Obviously, she knew the characteristics of the "Sand of Time".

"If I were alone... then it would take a long time to discover that this world is 'circular'." Gu Shen realized a very serious problem, "Without Chu Ling, I might think that the direction I'm walking is correct, and keep moving forward... In fact, I'm just repeating useless work of returning to the original place."

He silently counted the numbers in his heart.

Each time he returned to the original place, it was about six hundred seconds, ten minutes.

Did this mean... the boundary of this world was the length he could run at full speed for six hundred seconds?

"Wait..."

Gu Shen thought of another possibility.

He squatted down and began to dig a sand pit. The quicksand in the dream was already surging, and the flow rate was even faster after digging the pit. Seeing Gu Shen's behavior, Chu Ling's eyes flickered slightly.

This time, no garbled code appeared to prevent the quicksand from slowing down.

Gu Shen dug a sand pit, he jumped into the pit, and began to wait for the quicksand to swallow him little by little, while silently counting down the time in his heart. The sandstorm swept through, first his calves were swallowed, then his thighs, and his lower body lost consciousness, as if he was tightly bitten by two thick walls. Gu Shen closed his eyes.

"600...599..."

"120...119..."

With the last two minutes left, the quicksand covered his neck, and Gu Shen felt like his heart was gripped by a powerful hand.

The pressure was great.

At this moment, garbled code appeared!

A series of blurred symbols appeared out of thin air, surrounding Gu Shen's neck, and the erosion of the quicksand was greatly reduced, so that Gu Shen would not suffocate. It looked like a diver wearing a breathing mask, although embarrassed, but safe.

He closed his eyes.

Sinking into the quicksand.

This world was pitch black... even darker...

"10...9...8..."

The last few seconds.

The feeling of suffocation and restraint all disappeared.

Gu Shen opened his eyes, and he easily raised his hands, without being hindered by the quicksand at all... because he was not buried under the sand at all, but standing on a small sand dune. The sand pit he had dug before was gone.

The world was filled with sand and wind, boundless and despairing.

"Ten minutes..."

Gu Shen looked at Chu Ling and murmured, "I know the characteristics of the Sand of Time dream."