Zhu Zhengwei was startled, goosebumps rising at the corners of his eyes.
"Have I... changed the past in the genes of this body??"
In that deep subconscious, when he was young, he got stabbed by a pencil, and in reality, as he grew up, the wound turned into a mole...
Absurd.
Eerie.
According to this logic, if I get killed in my dream, wouldn't I die in reality too?
Zhu Zhengwei's heart tightened, secretly thinking it was fortunate he hadn't messed around recklessly but tested the impact of the dream on his physical body instead.
Phew!
"What the hell is this."
Feeling anxious, Zhu Zhengwei turned on the tap, splashed his face to wake up.
He stared at the mole at the corner of his eye for a long time, slapped both cheeks hard, and used his vain roommate Li Xiang's concealer to cover the mole before returning to bed to reflect and summarize.
"This is beyond belief, completely absurd!"
He cautiously glanced at his two roommates, still unsettled as if afraid they would find out about the shameful deeds he'd done.
However, the two had already started gaming together, diamonds rank, and they even asked Zhu Zhengwei to join, righteously proclaiming, "A trio is sure to reach Star Glory."
"Not this time, I'm tired from leveling new accounts, I need to go back to sleep." Zhu Zhengwei returned to bed to rest, experiencing this terrifying realization for the first time: hidden deep within the human soul is an ancient and shocking mystery.
The dreams of ordinary people are superficial, false.
I've shattered a certain doorway; my dreams, are real.
It might not be as simple as entering the spiritual consciousness space; it could be delving deeper into the genes?
It seems bizarre.
But this isn't altering the past of reality, it's the past of this body. That dream, essentially, is a way to deeply touch the soul's roots, altering genetic structure, bodily structure.
Suddenly, he carefully wrote down his ideas and hypotheses. A bold plan gradually emerged in his mind.
"Perhaps this world should be called the Root Dream."
"My dream is fixed, recording my past life. If I change the past... am I not also leveling new accounts?"
His heart pounded with fear as he began to experiment again, entering the dream, "I have to see it again!"
Waa waa waa!
A baby was born in the countryside.
"The baby is born!"
"It's a boy!"
....
Another dream of my own!
My own Root Dream!
This dream records my entire life.
Incredibly real.
"It's starting over, my past life."
And as Zhu Zhengwei delved deeper into the dream, attempting to break through that membrane, finally on the seventh time he was no longer just a ghostly observer of the dream, but fully entered the Origin Dream World, entering the genetic memory, becoming that baby, becoming himself in the dream.
But Zhu Zhengwei discovered something even more bizarre.
Tap tap tap.
As a baby lying on a bamboo mat, a shadowy figure, blurry and indistinct, sneaks in, picks him up, saying "You must strive when you grow up," accidentally knocks over a bookshelf, and a pencil falls and pierces a hole in the corner of his eye, then fearfully flees out the window!
"..."
Zhu Zhengwei was dumbfounded, had he become the baby, stabbed by his first-week self?
"The previous me is still here? It must be a dream paradox, two of me overlapping, stabbing myself!"
Every time Zhu Zhengwei returned, he got stabbed by himself, blood spurting from the corner of his eye, bitterly painful.
Luckily, he was a mild case, and as he grew, the blood coagulation ability gradually decreased.
But even so, the puncture-sized wound was still enough to be a huge bother for his current self.
Did I give myself a hellish start?
"This is unbearable."
As that baby, lying on the bed looking at the simple rural mud house, he felt despair.
He had no choice but to explore his Root Dream and the environment of his birth while in a bleeding state.
On the third attempt, the baby tried to sneak away, but hadn't even reached the door before being picked up by his parents.
He made various attempts, finally succeeding in crawling, sneaking quietly to the door.
"We've given birth to another child like this."
"It's a sin, truly a sin."
"The eldest is already seven, we really can't afford to raise a sick child, should we just give him away?"
He discovered his parents arguing outside the door, with sobbing in the background; from their conversation, he learned of his own life experience during infancy:
His parents were superstitious.
His hemophilia was the porcelain doll disease, any injury or collision led to unstoppable bleeding.
But in this era, to rural people, it was a case of being jinxed, a strange illness, a curse, and most crucially, being looked down upon by neighbors.
Maybe soon, his parents would abandon him in the county.
Before long, he tried to sustain the "life dream" for the longest time possible, discovering he could only last in it for a week at most, then he would awaken, his whole body aching, his spiritual power drained!
But even a week-long dream was just a nap's worth of time; sunlight had only just begun streaming through the window, truly amazing.
"The Dream of Life."
Sitting up in bed, taking a sip of water to soothe his throat, Zhu Zhengwei suddenly recalled a certain proverb:
A Dream of Millet.
This story comes from the Tang Dynasty's "Record of the Pillow," where a scholar named Lu Sheng went to the capital for examinations but failed, leaving him despondent and frustrated. On his way home, he stayed at an inn in Handan. The inn's owner, who was an immortal reclusive from the world, upon hearing this, let Lu Sheng sleep and have an eighty-year-long beautiful dream filled with wealth and honor. When Lu Sheng awoke, he found that the millet rice cooked by the innkeeper was not yet done, leading him to a great enlightenment.
"How similar!"
"In the dream it was a long, long dream that one could not awaken from."
"Just like the joys and sorrows between people, the time in the dream and the present world are not connected."
Zhu Zhengwei muttered to himself.
A Dream of Millet, Zhuang Zhou Dreams of a Butterfly, these ancient fantastical stories are very familiar to modern people today, filled with humanity's eternal curiosity and fear of unknown mysteries in long dreams.
"But indeed, it's like this, the ability to change the circumstances of one's past birth!!"
Zhu Zhengwei grinned with excitement, his blood boiling, his heart pounding, suddenly recalling Wang Jun's words on a rainy night a few days ago while he was creating new game accounts:
"Alas, it's all predestined, our looks and appearances, family background, innate talents, determine the starting point of our lives like this...."
"If our life could be like your game, refreshing the 'initial account', picking a birth family, choosing martial arts talents, choosing abilities, molding hairstyles, molding physiques, and then being born again...."
Before his eyes, wasn't he reconstructing his own birth?
Molding a face?
Molding a body?
Molding a hairstyle?
Choosing talents?
...
Suddenly, he stood up from the bed, and laughed heartily:
"Life is but a dream! Perhaps the time is ripe before me?? I want to mold a face! I want to refresh talents!! Hahahaha!"
The two roommates beside him were dumbfounded.
"The kid's gone mad, refreshing accounts till he's insane." Wang Jun looked at him with pity.
"He's lost it, beyond saving, just cremate him directly." Li Xiang also showed sympathy.
"Hmph, can't be bothered with you two, I'm going to sleep." Zhu Zhengwei couldn't be bothered with these two fools, he directly pulled the sheet over his head and covered himself.
Puff!!
A perfect dive, plunging headfirst into the sea of consciousness, crossing over to the shallow sea area, pushing open that mysterious door below with the brain's patterns, entering the deep layer of consciousness.
Wah wah wah!
A baby was born in the countryside.
"The baby's born!"
"It's a boy!"
He was acutely aware of the situation now: [I am entering the "past" carried deep within the body.]
After countless preliminary tests, his tricks increased, and he tried to change the fact of his parents abandoning him.
The dream of life.
Wandering in the distant past of his childhood.
After countless tests and retries, on the fifth attempt, he tried to speak to his parents, attempting to communicate with human words, and found that no matter how he tried, he couldn't form proper sounds due to vocal cord issues, only babbling.
He felt helpless.
All those legends of speaking as a newborn were all lies.
"I need to refresh the initial account of the past! A more impressive birth! And change the fact of my abandonment... even if only in the dream."
He began trying to control muscles, to walk, and after the seventh attempt, he finally shocked his parents.
Wah wah wah!
The baby screamed.
The parents, who were busy burning wood at the stove, rushed into the house,
"Damn it!!! How did the baby get pricked by a pencil??" It was the same scream as always.
But this time, the baby intentionally screamed early, and they happened to catch a glimpse of a shadow, the previous Zhu Zhengwei who entered the dream let go of the baby, and escaped through the window.
"What ghostly creature! Stealing my baby!!!"
The parents' eyes showed fear, uttering words they'd never said before.
Wang Shenpo from the village head was right.
Bump swells with flesh,
Cut bleeds endlessly,
This is indeed a strange illness!
The feng shui of our ancestral grave has a problem, our own unfulfilial act caused the deceased father in the back mountain's tomb to become a zombie after death, cursed by the zombie father, possessed by evil.
But in the next moment,
On the bamboo mat bed, in the swaddling clothes, after being put down by the shadow, baby Zhu Zhengwei, with chubby white tender little hands, naturally and skillfully took out the pencil from the corner of his eye.
This pink baby lay on the bamboo mat on all fours.
Suddenly, slowly like a compassionate old Buddha in his twilight years, exuding an ancient aura, he sat up cross-legged.
The baby's eye corner was blossomed with a bright blood flower as he sat cross-legged, wrapped in a bright red swaddle as a robe, holding a pencil as a whisk.
One hand pointed to the sky, one hand pointed to the earth, and the hand pointing to the earth began writing a row of crooked large characters on the bamboo mat:
"The figure holding me is not a demon, but a heavenly god."
"This is a..."
"God-bestowed tear mole, I am born in heaven, descend to earth, sacred in the world."
"Above heaven and earth, only I am supreme!"
The heavily hemophilic brother, covered in mud, was sitting at the doorway playing, wiping his nose while picking it, looking at the baby on the bamboo mat who pointed to the sky and ground, utterly bewildered.
And standing inside the room, the rural parents from the 1980s and 90s, how could they have witnessed this?
"A god from heaven has descended."
The couple were completely stunned beside him, their pupils massively dilated, shocking them for ten thousand years.