Soon after swallowing the pills given by the masked gunmen, both Yu Zhesen and Yu Qingxue fell into a coma.
After an unknown amount of time passed unconsciously, Yu Zhesen slowly opened his eyes, and the trembling bar music echoed in his ears.
"Well... um..." Shen Yunqiu, who was lying drunk on the side, made a slight hum.
Yu Zhesen raised his body while holding his aching head, and turned his head to his left side with difficulty.
Yu Qingxue sat on the left side of the sofa, lying on the table motionless.
Two empty glasses were placed in front of each of them, with traces of water remaining in the glasses.
"Is this reality or a dream..." Yu Zhesen pinched his face hard. The pain was very real, but it cannot be used as a criterion for judgment.
He pushed Shen Yunqiu on the side, and Shen Yunqiu hummed twice more, without any further response.
Yu Zhesen shook his head and reached out to hold Yu Qingxue's shoulders: "Wake up, Miss Yu..."
Yu Qingxue slowly woke up half a minute later. She fumbled and picked up the glasses on the table, put them on, and pinched the bridge of her nose.
"How long have you been awake?" she asked.
"I just woke up not long ago." Yu Zhesen looked around, "Do you still have your coins?"
Yu Qingxue nodded and took out the commemorative silver coin from his pocket.
Yu Zhesen looked at the palm of her hand nervously. The coin slowly turned over, with roses on both sides.
"Huh..." He breathed a sigh of relief.
Back.
Yu Qingxue silently put the coin back into his pocket.
"So the gunmen we saw in the dream made us eat poison?" Yu Zhesen tried hard to recall the last dream, "We were poisoned in the last dream, so our consciousness returned to the real body?"
"Maybe."
"That's weird, why would you do that?"
Yu Qingxue shook her head and said she didn't know.
"By the way...the woman in the red skirt..." Yu Zhesen stood up suddenly, but found that Yu Qingxue was looking at him with strange eyes.
"We met that woman when we left the bar." Yu Qingxue reminded him, "That was a dream."
"Yes... indeed..." Yu Zhesen sat down again and suddenly remembered something: "How did you fall asleep again?"
"There's something wrong with the water in the glass." Yu Qingxue said, staring at the two glasses on the table.
The water was laced with hypnotic drugs, and both he and Yu Qingxue had drunk it before.
Did the nightmare do it himself, or did he manipulate a certain chess piece?
Yu Zhesen thought that judging from the caution that Xiang had shown so far, it was unlikely that he would show up at the bar in person to tamper with their water.
"We should go." Yu Qingxue stood up and urged, "It's too unsafe for people to mix in this place. You have been targeted."
Yu Zhesen agreed with her statement and helped Shen Yunqiu leave the sofa seat.
Yu Qingxue took the initiative to step forward and help him.
"Get out of the way."
Yu Zhesen heard Yu Qingxue yell, but the source of the sound did not look like the person next to him.
Then there was a gunshot, and sticky blood spattered on him.
Yu Qingxue, who helped him support Shen Yunqiu, fell to the ground with a bloody bullet hole on his forehead.
On the other side, the second Yu Qingxue holding an automatic pistol appeared in Yu Zhesen's field of vision.
"This is still a dream." Yu Qingxue came to Yu Zhesen holding a pistol.
Yu Zhesen had recovered from his surprise. This time he did not ask to see Yu Qingxue's coins because it was no longer necessary.
If it wasn't a dream, how could two Yu Qingxue appear?
"This layer of dreams is very deep. We were deliberately separated by the dreamer." Yu Qingxue motioned to him to put Shen Yunqiu down. Since this is a dream, there is no need to care about other people.
Yu Zhesen gradually understood their situation, and the nightmare set up a maze of dreams within dreams for them, allowing them to travel through layers of dreams, and finally lost themselves in the depths of the sea of consciousness.
He heard Yu Qingxue continue: "We have fallen into at least two dreams, one is a bar with a gunman, and the other is here now."
"Then where did your gun come from?"
"Obtained it from another you." Yu Qingxue turned the pistol over and showed it to him, "The security bureau's police gun was obviously installed on the 'dream you' based on common sense."
"You know I don't deserve a gun."
"Yes, so the moment he took out the gun, I knew he was a projection of consciousness."
Yu Zhesen was a little unbelievable: "You grabbed the gun and killed the other me?"
"Do you want to see your own body? I didn't shoot him in the head, but I shot him four times in the chest."
"I always thought you were a civilian, but I didn't expect you to be a civil servant." Yu Zhesen gave her a thumbs up.
Yu Qingxue smiled in response to his appreciation, and then got down to business: "We have to get out of the dream now."
Yu Zhesen agreed: "How to do it?"
Yu Qingxue pointed the gun at his head: "If you trust me, this is the easiest way, and then I will shoot myself."
"But you said before that there is a risk of death in dreams."
"Yes, but we have no choice. The nightmare is too powerful in the dream. He can mobilize all the resources in the dream to deal with us. If we don't break away, we will sink deeper and deeper."
"Okay, let's do it." Yu Zhesen closed his eyes and "shoot me."
The gunfire rang out, and his consciousness stung as if he had fallen into a sea of ice.
Opening his eyes, Yu Zhesen saw the bar occupied by armed and masked gangsters.
He and Yu Qingxue were still sitting in the corner on the left side of the bar, maintaining the same posture as before when they were forced to take drugs.
Yu Qingxue woke up half a minute later than him, and she began to gasp for air after opening her eyes.
"It took you half a minute to convince yourself to commit suicide in the dreamland on the upper level?" Yu Zhesen joked.
"It takes some courage to shoot yourself, even in a dream." Yu Qingxue did not refute, admitting that she did hesitate for half a minute before.
Yu Zhesen asked: "How will we escape this time? We don't have guns in this dream."
"I can only ask these people for help." Yu Qingxue pointed to the gunmen in the bar with her eyes.
"I have no doubt that they will be happy to help, but it is hard to say whether they can be more professional and reduce our pain." Yu Zhesen said and stood up first.
He whistled at the gangster behind the bar, picked up a bottle of red wine and hit the gangster on the head.
The wine bottle shattered, and red wine and blood were mixed and splashed around.
The gangster's companions rushed over, and Yu Zhesen received a shot from the butt of a gun and his body hit the bar.
At the same time, the gangster who was attacked by Yu Zhesen covered his head with one hand and raised his gun with the other hand and shot Yu Zhesen twice in the thigh.
The severe pain of his leg muscles torn by bullets made Yu Zhesen fall to the ground instantly. He cursed and picked up the glass fragments from the ground and held them in his hands.
"Be honest!" The gangster behind him raised his gun butt and hit him again, knocking him to the ground.
Yu Qingxue quietly walked around behind the gangster who hit Yu Zhesen with the butt of his gun, took away the pistol from his waist, and quickly shot down the two gangsters who attacked Yu Zhesen.
Bullets came like a rain, Yu Qingxue squatted down and relied on the bar to protect herself, and put the pistol on Yu Zhesen's head.
"You got a gun and just hit me. Why did you hit them? It's unnecessary." Yu Zhesen gritted his teeth and endured the pain to condemn her.
"I'm going to shoot."
"Stop talking nonsense!"
Bang!
His vision went dark, and he once again felt the tingling sensation in his mind, like falling into a sea of ice.
Opening his eyes, Yu Zhesen gasped for air and found himself in a speeding taxi.
The car speaker was playing a song he was familiar with - "The Dream Flower That Never Dies" by Soul Burning Band.
Yu Qingxue woke up in the seat next to him. The first thing she did after waking up was to check the driver's status.
There is no one in the driver's seat.
These two taxis are driven by AI, and the cruise route is displayed on the computer screen in the center console.
"Is this a dream or reality? Do we want to continue to die?"
"I don't know anymore. Let's stop the car first." Yu Qingxue unbuckled her seat belt and climbed into the front seat. She wanted to gain control of the taxi.
"Look at your coins after parking?"
"That method no longer works." Yu Qingxue shook his head.
"Why doesn't it work?"
"Nama has further read our memories by pulling us into two layers of dreams. Now he must know the secret of the coin, and he will fix this loophole when building the dream world."
Yu Zhesen felt distressed: "Then we have no way to judge whether it is reality or a dream?"
"This is the scary place."
An idea flashed in Yu Zhesen's mind, and he suddenly thought of a possibility.
He felt that this could explain the suicide behavior of Akira Jinggo and the "Seventeen-year-old Drifter" - the two were also trying to escape from the dream.
Nightmare leads people to commit suicide by confusing dreams and reality. Could this be the truth behind the two previous suicide cases?
