“Do you know who built the city…?”
“Exactly.” Qi Xia nodded. “This person used ‘Ingenuity’ to construct this city in an instant.”
Chen Junnan also glanced at the street before them, feeling the situation was somewhat absurd. “Old Qi… I don’t mean to dampen your enthusiasm, but have you ever worked in construction? Designing a city isn’t just about ‘belief.’ There are so many factors to consider—plumbing, electricity, the layout of different shops. Even if someone truly believed they could build a city, they’d need to understand the structure of every building. Otherwise, what they create would just be pure imagination, no different from a child stacking blocks.”
“No…” Qi Xia’s eyes flickered. “It doesn’t have to be that complicated… We’re overthinking it…”
“What?”
“To build an entire ‘city,’ you don’t need to know architectural structures or have any construction experience…” Qi Xia murmured. “Because we’re all ‘isolated and helpless,’ we fall into this misconception. We think that to successfully trigger an ‘Echo,’ besides the power of the ‘Echo’ itself, we must also possess the theoretical knowledge to support it. But those people are different. Their ‘Echoes’ can coexist in multiples, and when combined, they achieve unimaginable effects.”
Qiao Jiajin still didn’t quite understand and scratched his head. “But, Trickster, if it’s really as you say… what ability would ‘Ingenuity’ need to pair with to build a city? From what we know so far, none of the abilities seem capable of that…”
“‘Dreamwalking’ would do it,” Qi Xia ventured boldly.
“‘Dreamwalking’…?” The answer clearly took the three of them by surprise, leaving them momentarily bewildered.
“This person entered everyone’s ‘dreams’ and directly replicated the scenes from them,” Qi Xia explained. “Some people were in prison before coming here, so there are prisons. Others were at work, so there are skyscrapers. Some were in school, so there are schools. And because each person’s dream is just a small fragment, assembling this city required combining many dreams to make it appear so vast.”
“Huh…?”
The three beside him widened their eyes, speechless.
Qi Xia nodded and continued, “This way, he didn’t need to design the buildings himself. Since everyone comes from different eras, the structures here are wildly varied, and the contents within them are equally diverse. So this city isn’t modeled after any single city from any single time—it’s an empty shell pieced together from countless fragments of memory.”
“Old… Old Qi…” Chen Junnan said, “I’m struggling to keep up with the madman’s logic here. If what you’re saying is true… wouldn’t that mean each of us could find our ‘hometown’ here?”
“Yes,” Qi Xia nodded. “There are five cities here, each with about ten thousand people—fifty thousand in total. Fifty thousand tiny scenes, covering almost every type of building. Finding your own ‘home’ accurately isn’t easy. And even if you’re lucky enough to stumble upon a building from your dream, it’s already completely dilapidated, making it hard to connect with your memory of it.”
“Wait… hold on…” Chen Junnan pressed his forehead, thinking for a long moment before speaking. “If that’s the case… someone with ‘Dreamwalking’ who’s also batshit crazy… that’d have to be that ‘Dragon King’ guy, right? Are you saying he built this city?”
“Yes, it’s highly likely,” Qi Xia replied.
“But that doesn’t quite add up, does it?” Qin Dingdong chimed in. “The main condition for triggering an ‘Echo’ is still believing it’s real. If this really is the ‘Dragon King’s’ doing, how could he believe this city would actually appear here? If he didn’t believe it himself… even if he saw these scenes, he couldn’t replicate them.”
“That’s another misconception,” Qi Xia said. “For the ‘Dragon King,’ who possesses both ‘Dreamwalking’ and ‘Ingenuity,’ there’s a much simpler way to make him believe—one that would allow this city to rise from the ground in an instant.”
“What way?”
Qi Xia paused before answering gravely, “By making himself unable to distinguish between ‘dreams’ and ‘reality.'”
Everyone’s eyes widened at his words, and silence hung in the air for a long moment.
“Holy shit…” Chen Junnan finally exhaled. “Damn… now I get it. That’s just insane. If the ‘Dragon King’ believes this place is a ‘dream,’ then it’s only natural for things from ‘dreams’ to appear here… and those ‘dreams’ come from us… What the hell… it’s a smooth little combo?”
“Pretty much,” Qi Xia nodded. “We assumed the ‘Dragon King’ moved buildings from dreams into reality, but he’s already lost his mind. To him, it’s just shifting scenes from one dream to another. In other words… he believes these buildings were always meant to be here, so they appeared here.”
“Bloody hell…” Qiao Jiajin muttered, stunned. “Then he’s practically no different from a ‘god.’ The churches back home say, ‘God said, Let there be light, and there was light.’ Does ‘God’ also not distinguish between reality and dreams?”
Chen Junnan sucked in a sharp breath. “Has this ‘Dragon King’ gone too far off the deep end?”
“But there’s a downside,” Qi Xia said. “The ‘Dragon King’ often has to sleep, so his involvement in managing the ‘Land of Finality’ is minimal.”
“Sleep…” Chen Junnan frowned. “Hey, Old Qi… don’t you think things are getting a bit tricky?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m talking about the ‘Dragon King’s’ use of ‘Dreamwalking,'” Chen Junnan said. “The old bastard having ‘Dreamwalking’ is one thing… but now the problem is, he thinks both waking and sleeping are ‘dreams.’ How the hell do we deal with that?”
“The only way is to make him truly wake up,” Qi Xia answered.
Qiao Jiajin slowly walked over to a nearby lamppost and reached out to touch it.
The lamppost was chipped and weathered, even bearing faded missing-person notices and small ads—every detail crafted with eerie perfection. Could this really be the work of an ‘Echo’?
No, rather than an ‘Echo,’ it was more accurate to say these were the remnants of everyone’s memories—each person’s ‘past.’
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