Chapter 149: Unconscious

Morey had no idea when he ended up here.
This place felt strangely familiar to him, yet he couldn’t quite recall where it was. He had even only remembered his own name the night before.
“My lord, you are finally awake. Shall we prepare a meal?”
In the bed, Mori gazed curiously at the people in the luxurious room, who were solemnly gathered around the bed, waiting for him to wake up.
Beside the old man in an elegant robe stood a man fully clad in solemn armor, even holding a dark red fine-iron helmet in his hand.
A few steps away from them, a middle-aged man of noble temperament, whose hair was meticulously combed, immediately lowered his head politely when he met Mori’s gaze. The pendant on his chest emitted a faint glow, clearly no ordinary item.
On the other side, there were several monks who had wrapped their entire bodies in robes, as if immersed in some form of cultivation.
“Who… are you? And why do you call me lord?”
Their attire was completely different from any ethnic group he remembered, resembling a fusion of highland minority clothing and medieval garments. Yet they all shared a common trait: excitement glimmering in their eyes.
At the front of the crowd, a white-haired elder with a dignified demeanor stepped forward energetically twice, then knelt on one knee, placed his hand on his chest, and said in very non-standard Chinese:
“You do not remember? It is said that over four thousand years ago, you walked the land alongside the Undying King, bestowing upon us the power of the gods.”
“The Undying King.”
Mo Li’s eyes darkened slightly, then suddenly burst into a pure, sharp flash of light.
“Yang Zicang? No… the Jiazi Interval? Here, could it be… that primitive world of the Ur-Man?”
Mo Li thought in confusion: Am I in a dream constructed by the psi-field?
“You… you mean ‘that… primitive world of the Ur-Man’?”
The old man, as if he had uncovered a tremendous secret, said in shock:
“So… so you people walk through countless worlds?!”
Everyone in the room trembled in awe. The circle of people behind the old man all knelt on one knee, placing a hand over their chest.
“Is this really the world that Zicang entered?” Muri murmured, wondering how he could possibly have gotten in.
Suddenly, a voice echoed in his mind.
[Yes, this is the spiritual world constructed by the psychic field.]
Muri, about to respond to the others, immediately fell silent. Who was inside his head?
[Make them all leave.]
Frowning slightly, Muri then said:
“You all may go out now. I need some quiet time alone.”
“We obey your command.”
Everyone withdrew, sealing tight the two-meter-high bedroom door engraved with relief sculptures.
[Getting in here was hard. It took me several days to finally achieve synchronization.]
The room exuded a faint fragrance, while the window framed lush green mountains and clear waters, dotted with rock-built houses. The sound of hymns drifted faintly from a massive Gothic structure nearby.
Morri stood up and cast a glance outside, only to find troops stationed nearby. Judging by the formation and towering architecture, they had apparently existed there for many years.
He turned and walked over to the full-length mirror to examine himself. The mirror reflected a figure clad in an ornate robe, but then the image twisted and shifted, transforming into a handsome young Asian boy with fair skin and short hair.
“Who are you?”
The figure stepped out of the mirror. Morri, startled, took a step back.
“I am a spiritual imprint left by Hong Haocheng. Hmm, the energy comes from your sea of consciousness, so I am both you and him.”
“You’re that…”
“Yes, yes!”
Hong Haocheng turned to glance outside, grinning, “Curious about those soldiers, aren’t you? Know why they’re here?”
Morri also glanced out the window again: “Uh… why?”
“Because, heh heh, they are the imperial guard that has been watching over the sleeping king for eighteen hundred years, right here.”
“Wha… what?!”
Hong Haocheng looked at Morri’s stunned expression and teased:
“Do you know how many ways they’ve tried to wake you up over these eighteen hundred years? My Sleeping Beauty King.”
Morri swept a glance over his own body and suddenly realized something, but before he could speak, the spirited boy before him raised his hand and snapped his fingers, instantly shifting everything around them.
Immediately, they seemed to be suspended in outer space, surrounded by a circular floor tile with a round table placed at the center.
They appeared as if floating in the cosmos.
“Alright, enough chit-chat for now.”
Whistling a tune, Hong Haocheng walked over to the round table and hummed, “Don’t worry, this is just the purest ‘Sub-Ether Field’; they won’t be able to detect it.”
“They? Who?”
“Those people who were just talking to you.”
Morrie faltered, “Aren’t they fake?”
“Who told you that?”
“Uh…”
Hong Haocheng turned to him with a grin on his face: “Is the you in your dreams real or fake?”
“Fake, of course.”
“If it’s fake, how do you know what happens in your dream?”
“This… hey, don’t try to confuse me. Start by explaining what all this is about. I remember you just called me not too long ago.”
“That was a very long time ago.”
Hong Haocheng raised his hands innocently, “After all, I’ve been waiting dutifully right here for eighteen hundred years. I’m sick of it, boredom is eating me alive.”
Morrie looked around, then cautiously took a seat at one of the chairs by the round table.
“What exactly is this place? And you were just asking if those people are real or fake—could they actually be real?”
“Of course they are!” Hong Haocheng put on an expression of exaggerated surprise, speaking with a tone like a teacher correcting basic knowledge for a student,”
“Hey, don’t you know? They’re all pitiful energy forms. They can conserve their power only here, you know. Heh heh, alright, don’t give me that look. I know you had no idea.”
With a random swirl of his finger, the shadows of everyone Morrie had just seen appeared, then dissolved into thin air.
“Thanks to your entry, these residual mental entities can continue to experience the preciousness of time through the identities they conjure up within the psychic field.”
“Wh—what…” Mori was utterly stunned.
Were the lives of those people and animals he had once experienced with Yang Zicang essentially also—even now—vibrant and real beings in their own right?
“For them, this is, well, another rare journey of life. Of course, if you think it’s fake, just take it as fake.”
A pen and a piece of paper appeared in Hong Haocheng’s hand, and he began writing swiftly.
After a moment of daze, Mori drew closer and saw that several lines of text had already appeared on the paper.
“Prologue…”
Each Chinese character emerged one by one, and Mori carefully identified these words.
– Opening the book to this page, a magnificent and weathered vast world unfolds before his eyes through elegant prose and fine copperplate illustrations.
Hong Haocheng’s writing speed was very fast, as if holding the pen was merely a symbolic gesture. As the tip touched the paper, it slid naturally, yet another line of text emerged.
– This seemed to be a fantasy story about a traveler who stumbled into an unknown world, exploring secret treasures on a strange and magical continent.
– Yet throughout, this book was placed on the bookshelf labeled “Ancient World History,” and he knew the old librarian would never have committed such a low-level error.
Mori stared fixedly at this inexplicably appeared youth, writing to himself. In just ten seconds or so, could another paragraph just reached its conclusion, a complete thought.
—Looking back at the history of human civilization, there had never indeed been any record of a kingdom or era similar to that in the book.
“What are you doing?”
“Huh, can’t you see? I’m writing a novel,” said Hong Haocheng, without raising his head.
Morri was a bit speechless: “I know you’re writing something. What I’m asking is, why are you writing this?”
“Just for someone to see, he’ll probably come in again, right. When he finds two of these left behind in his Mail Emblem World, that guy will be curious enough to read them, yeah? Heh, I know him best.”
“Knowing him?”
“Looks unbearably arrogant, but actually a quiet pervert who wants to know everything.”
Rustling through pages, he quickly flipped the page. Morley simply moved closer to look at his handwriting.
— “Found the map?”
—A somewhat anxious young voice came from the pitch-black doorway, followed by the scraping sound of a suitcase being dragged, along with a few coughs from an old man.
“Wait, you just said there were two books?”
Morih exclaimed in surprise, “You actually plan to write two books?”
“Because my beautiful wife gave me two memoirs. So it’s only natural that the adaptation becomes two stories. Well, actually, they’ll both end up unfinished, rest assured.”
Hong Haocheng bared his teeth, grinning, and made a funny face at Mori.
Within a minute, both sides of a sheet of paper were filled with text. When Mori casually turned his head and came back, another paragraph had been written. It was as if he were copying from somewhere, constantly tossing out the story of a certain character.
“What’s the story about?”
“Well, it’s about a guy named Lin Feng who, after being dead for many years on Earth, transmigrates to another world.”
“That’s pretty cliché.”
Hong Haocheng looked up and said with a grin, “Exactly, so it’s a dropped ending.”
He crossed his legs, curling up into a ball by the table, and added, “But that guy could still read it, right?”
“Alright, whatever you say. Oh, by the way, now that this dream is considered my ‘Zodiac World,’ do you need me to speed things up for you?”
“You’re trying to see if you can make time speed up even with the owner not here, aren’t you?”
Hong Haocheng saw through Mori’s little scheme in an instant, snorting as he said:
“That’s just you skipping this period of time. Haven’t you figured that out from your experiences with that guy before? Whether you speed it up or not, I’m going to write every word myself.”
“Al-right… then it should only take a few days.”
Mori let out a resigned sigh, slumping back in his chair with a look of boredom.
He didn’t really care much about these two inherited stories— although he knew there must be some deep significance to them.
Hong Haocheng glanced at the man who looked lost in thought and sneered:
“If I were you, I’d take this chance to practice more here. Oh, right, you’re probably going to die.”
Mori fell even more silent.
“……”
How could he possibly forget that call to the future?
Would he tell Yang Zicang about someone stealing all his model abilities? Staring at this mysterious figure who had appeared out of nowhere, had he already made the choice to change the future?
Would I really do that?
Am I really that noble?
Hong Haocheng simply put down his pen and said solemnly:
“I think you should have guessed by now. The future me spared no expense and paid a huge cost to send this information back, just to tell the ‘us’ of the present not to waste time on trial and error. The truth is, our timeline has no time to squander—not even a single minute, brother.”
He reached out and patted Mori on the shoulder:
“You’re not the only one changing the future. So am I.”
Mori felt a shiver run down his spine.
“What exactly is the future…”
“You haven’t stepped onto the new path of fate yet, so I can’t tell you. Because once I do, the place you’re in right now might read the content you accidentally let slip, which could cause it to evolve back into the world that once was. If that happens, the sacrifices countless people made back then will mean nothing.”
Mori looked at him, wanting to speak but stopping himself.
The boy spoke gently and earnestly:
“Don’t ask me what sacrifice means. The so-called New World was hard-won. On such a blank canvas, painting an entirely new world that no one knows about—do you realize how difficult that is?
“It’s like the people who signed the constitutional monarchy to end autocracy, like the revolutionaries who sent Louis XVI to the guillotine to bring down the feudal regime, like the new-era individuals who forced the emperor to abdicate… This is as hard as when, after overthrowing the feudal forces back then, they first had to build a new world never seen before in history.”