Clang—
As the first dull sound of the bell rang out, everyone present—even someone as strong as the Envoy of Nihility, Acheron—felt an inexplicable fear well up in their hearts upon hearing it. It was as if some kind of natural predator were rapidly approaching. The muscles all over their bodies tensed up directly without needing any command from the brain.
Clang—
After the second ring, the crowd's minds no longer had any spare capacity to think about the Dream of the Great One. Their gazes and thoughts focused entirely on their surroundings, remaining vigilant for the slightest movement nearby.
Clang—
When the third ring sounded, the surrounding space seemed to shatter like glass. Accompanied by a crack, crack, crack sound, everyone felt a trance, and in the next second, they returned to the place where they had originally entered the Dream of the Great One.
Fu Zhu sighed in relief as he watched the crowd suddenly vanish en masse before him, and the smile on the corners of his mouth rose once again.
Sure enough, his and Chadwick's conjecture was correct: the [Bell] from MC could indeed startle the people in the Dream of the Great One awake and send them back to reality.
It was just a pity that the effective range of the bell sound was limited, and the Dream of the Great One was a 1:1 restoration of the sweet dream world. There were at least hundreds of thousands of tourists inside; Fu Zhu couldn't possibly run around everywhere ringing a bell to send everyone back to reality.
When it came to waking people up over a large area, the bell was far less fast and convenient than the [World Devourer].
After sending Xing and the others off, Fu Zhu didn't return to the real world with them. He still needed to stay by the [World Devourer]'s side to escort it, preventing Sunday from sneaking over to destroy it after he left. At the very least, he had to wait until the [World Devourer] had thoroughly destroyed the entire Dream of the Great One and sent all the tourists trapped inside back to reality before he could leave this place.
"I'll leave reality to Xing and the girls for now. I'll go meet up with them later tonight."
---o---
"Hah!"
Xing woke up from the Dreampool with a fierce start, half-sprawled over the edge of the pod, gasping for big mouthfuls of air. It took quite a while before she had the energy to observe her surroundings. Only when she saw that the surrounding environment was her room in The Reverie Hotel did she let out a long sigh of relief.
Climbing out of the Dreampool, Xing sat weakly on the sofa to the side and took out her phone for a look. The signal had recovered, which obviously meant she had returned to reality.
Although the result of successfully returning to reality made her very happy, the moment she recalled that brass bell her Old Bro had rung, the inexplicable fear in her heart made her palpitate. She couldn't help but mutter a small complaint.
"Old Bro really is too much. If he had said that bell was so terrifying earlier, he could have at least given us some mental preparation!"
After sitting on the sofa and resting for a moment, her phone rang.
Xing picked it up and saw the caller was Himeko. Obviously, everyone had returned to reality just like her, and it had just taken some time to adjust their condition. Now it was time to regroup.
"Hello, Himeko?"
Xing walked out of the room while answering the phone.
"Xing, since you're awake, let's meet up in the lobby of The Reverie Hotel. We'll wait for you there."
"Received."
After hanging up, Xing rushed toward the lobby with lightning speed. However, when she planned to take the elevator, she discovered that the elevator entrance was already packed with people. Everyone's face carried a look of lingering panic, and some impatient people waiting for the elevator had even started banging on the doors desperately, clamoring to leave this place.
Xing waited for a short while. Seeing that the number of people waiting for the elevator wasn't decreasing but increasing, she had no choice but to turn around and obediently take the stairs. But the situation in the stairwell wasn't much better. Many clever people had realized they wouldn't be able to wait for the elevator anytime soon and had chosen the stairs instead.
Helpless, Xing could only follow the crowd, shuffling down bit by bit. It was clearly only a height of eleven floors, yet she walked for nearly twenty minutes.
When Xing finally squeezed out of the stairwell and arrived at the lobby, the scene before her made her feel even more suffocated. The originally spacious lobby was now a sea of people. A group of tourists was surrounding the unmanned reception desk, complaining loudly.
"Holy crap... these people couldn't have all been blown to death by Old Bro using the [World Devourer] in the Dream of the Great One..."
Xing muttered quietly, afraid that if she spoke a bit louder and someone heard, she would be the one to suffer.
Xing weaved through the crowd for quite a while before finally spotting Himeko and the others in an empty space carved out by a human wall of IPC employees. She immediately quickened her pace and walked over.
"Himeko!"
Hearing the voice, Himeko turned her head. Seeing it was Xing, she immediately had the employees open a path for Xing to walk in. Once inside the wall, Xing finally let out a long sigh of relief.
While searching for people outside earlier, she had almost been squeezed into a meat sandwich!
Xing took a moment to recover, then looked up at the people present. She unexpectedly found that there were exceptionally many familiar faces.
Besides Himeko and the others who were sent back to reality by Fu Zhu's bell, Topaz, Aventurine, and Gallagher were all here. This surprised Xing a bit.
"Aventurine and Gallagher being here makes sense... but how come you're here too, Topaz?"
"Hi~ Did you miss me?"
Topaz greeted Xing with a grin before explaining, "Actually, I arrived a while ago. It's just that I didn't have an invitation, so I couldn't enter the sweet dream world. I could only assist with my colleagues' work from the outside. Everything was going smoothly, until... suddenly the entire Reverie Hotel was bombed into powder. I wasn't spared either; who knew that in the next second, I'd wake up directly in the lobby."
As soon as Topaz recalled the event she encountered earlier, she still felt lingering fear.
Hearing this, Xing exchanged a glance with the rest of the Astral Express crew, then silently looked away, not daring to make eye contact with Topaz.
Topaz didn't notice the group's anomaly. Instead, she turned her head directly to her colleague Aventurine and asked, "Aventurine, did you discover any anomalies in the sweet dream world? I dare say that what I encountered wasn't an illusion. There is definitely someone playing tricks inside Penacony. Maybe it's even people from The Family!"
Aventurine shook his head with some regret. "I already told you, Topaz, my encounter wasn't much different from yours. I was just walking nicely on the street when I was bombed for no reason."
"And at that time, I even activated the [Cornerstone]. But even the power of [Preservation] couldn't survive that disaster. I'm afraid that wasn't something an ordinary person could do."
Whenever Aventurine recalled standing in the sweet dream world and witnessing that long, eerie mechanical creation, he felt a lingering fear in his heart. Initially, when he witnessed that machine destroying the world, he had prepared to use the power of the [Cornerstone] to investigate.
But when he got close, for the first time, he discovered that even with the absolute power of [Preservation] in front of him, he couldn't protect anything.
Aventurine clutched his chest and panted lightly a few times before looking toward the Astral Express crew. They were pursuing the Watchmaker's legacy, so they should know more than he did.
If he could get some clues about that machine from them, Aventurine dared to guarantee that its value would absolutely be higher than conquering Penacony!
"I wonder if the members of the Express have any leads?"