The Second Layer of Dreams

  "It's all over?" I thought it might really be all over, this master doesn't seem reliable at all.

  "Right, only 300 yuan, it seems that you don't understand the rules." Xiao Qian led me forward and respectfully said to Qin Shou: "Master Qin is good, do you still remember Xiao Qian?"

  "Recognizable, recognizable, foolish girl still has feelings, how can it be two or three? Little Qian, who is this?" Qin Shou looked at me with not a hint of beastliness.

  I said, "My name is Hao Shuang, I'm Xiao Qian's friend." In fact, I was still in shock, how could this beast communicate directly with Xiao Qian? She's the same kind of person as Li Jie.

  "What brings you here?" Qin Shou smiled and said: "Speak quickly, if it wasn't urgent, you wouldn't have looked for me."

  Xiao Qian didn't waste any words and got straight to the point: "Master Qin, I want to know about the 'Ghost Spider'. Can you tell us?"

  Qin Shou pinched his fingers, furrowed his brow, and said with difficulty: "'Ghost Spider' is of the same vein as my family, although I have no great relationship with him now. However, it's not proper to sell out his information, and the price is a bit high. Considering our friendship, I'll give you a 50% discount."

  I asked speechlessly: "Fifty percent off, how much is it?"

  Qin Shou gazed deeply at the sky and said: "This is not important. What's important is how much are you willing to pay?"

  I was about to say "ten thousand", but Xiao Qian jumped in and said: "The young lady bids eight hundred thousand, does the master think this price is suitable?"

  Qin Shou stroked his beard and nodded, seemingly thinking it was... great? But why did I think he was so cheap?

  To be honest, I'm not very comfortable with it in my heart, but since Xiao Qian has already spoken out, I don't want to say anything either, lest I appear petty.

  Qin Shou said: "As I just said, at a 50% discount, let's settle for 40,000 yuan."

  "I said: 'Teacher, can it be cheaper? We only brought 10,000 cash.'"

  Qin Shou finally revealed a beast-like smile and said it was no big deal, then surprisingly pulled out from under the stage... a credit card machine.

  "Not enough cash? No problem! You can use your card, and I won't charge you any handling fees!" Qin Shou said with a smile.

  Seeing this scene, I'm not only twitching in the mouth and face, but my whole body is about to go crazy! This verifies a common saying: If one doesn't care about losing face, they will be invincible.

  Honestly swiped the bank card, entered the password, and finally made a successful payment. Qin Shou revealed a satisfied smile, picked up his pen and wrote a few words on a yellow paper, folded it neatly and put it in my hand. I was about to open it and take a look when Qin Shou stopped me: "Wait, don't open it until an hour later, otherwise it will be invalid."

  "What's the difference?" I really can't understand why it makes a difference whether it's opened now or after a while.

  Qin Shou said: "The heavenly secret must not be revealed."

  Having received the news, Xiaoyan and I bid farewell to Qin Shou and walked on the road back home.

  I just think of Qin Shou and I get annoyed, complaining: "Xiao Qian, how do I feel like we've been cheated? What if the information written on this broken paper isn't what we want?"

  Xiao Qian said: "Don't doubt Qin Shou, as long as the money is enough, he won't cheat us. Do you still remember that uncle who asked him to tell his fortune before?"

  I nodded, "Remember, didn't Qin Shou already calculate it for him?"

  Xiao Qian shook her head and sighed, "This uncle is finished. He was involved in something big to begin with, and... he has so many mistresses. Obviously, he's either rich or noble. Calculating his fate would cost at least 300 yuan. Qin Shou will swindle him to death."

  I was not very convinced at the time, but unexpectedly, half a month later, a news report appeared in the city newspaper: Liu Daxiang, vice secretary of the municipal party committee, is under investigation due to problems with his personal lifestyle and may be suspected of corruption and bribery.

  But that's a story for later. On the way home, I asked Xiaoyan what "Ghost Spider" was, and she said: This is an organization, members of which are proficient in Gu techniques, named after the black spider tattoo on their backs, and it took great effort to infiltrate Chen Fei's dream to get this information.

  I said: "By the way, what happened after you sneaked into Chen Fei's dream? It's boring on the road, tell me about it."

  Xiao Qian didn't mind, her thoughts returning to those painful moments. "After entering Chen Fei's dream, I was almost scared silly. In his dream, I saw a person holding a knife chasing him down, he desperately ran away, trying to shake you off, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't shake you off."

  I imagined it, thinking that my brother was so bad. "It's so terrifying, no wonder Chen Fei couldn't persist for ten minutes and was scared awake every time. But this time he didn't wake up at all, what's going on?"

  Xiao Qian speechlessly said: "He was knocked unconscious by you, can he wake up so quickly? However, being unconscious is good, no need for me to use extra yang energy to restrain. The name of the curse Chen Fei used is called Nightmare Loop, the effect is that it will make him endlessly have this dream, once he is killed by you, only then will he wake up with a start."

  "I'm scared." I thought about it and felt even more terrified, "What did you do next?"

  "Next, I used my own yang energy to perform a technique and traveled through time. Starting from the moment we scared Chen Fei together, I carefully observed him, but by the next morning, Chen Fei woke up from his sleep and became like this."

  "Huh? So you've gone time traveling again and found it once more?"

  "Yes, because I think that waking up early and becoming like this means a very simple problem: the situation occurred last night, and it was in Chen Fei's dream. But the dream realm I infiltrated is Chen Fei's first layer of dreams, which is constructed from his memories and can only reflect past events he experienced. So, in this dream realm, I must once again infiltrate his dreams, that is, the second layer of dreams."

  When I heard this, I felt like my brain was going to explode. Multiple layers of dreams? Isn't that what happened in the movie Inception? What a rip-off by the author! However, using memories as the framework seems to be somewhat different.

  Xiao Qian continued, "Entering the second layer of human dreams requires even more yang energy to be consumed, but I had no choice and could only force my way in. After infiltrating Chen Fei's second layer dream, I finally discovered an astonishing secret!"

  Xiao Qian's face turned gloomy as she said this, and it seemed like something terrifying was about to happen! I stuttered and asked: "What secret?"

  Xiao Qian mysteriously asked: "Do you really want to know? But I advise you not to listen."

  "Do you think brother will be afraid?" I said with a smirk: "Come on, tell me, the more you say that, the more curious I am. And by the way, my title of being bold is not for nothing."

  "Good, don't regret it." Xiao Qian said heavily: "In Chen Fei's second layer of dreams, your sister was stabbed to death."

  "Ah?" Hearing this, I felt a chill run down my spine. "Xiao Qian, what are you saying? Are you saying... Xiao Jing was stabbed to death?"

  Xiao Qian nodded, "He was stabbed to death and died a terrible death, being stabbed eighteen times. So in Chen Fei's first layer of dreams, you will chase after Chen Fei, holding a knife, also wanting to stab him to death!"

  "This is also too strange! But I still can't figure out why I want to stab Chen Fei instead of someone else? Is it because his dream, Xiao Jing's death, was caused by him?" I suddenly found it difficult to understand this world in the dream, everything felt unreasonable.

  "It wasn't him who did it. In his dream, your sister was killed by someone else, and that 'someone else' framed Chen Fei for the crime."

  "I see! I finally understand," I exclaimed. "The 'other person' you were talking about is the Ghost Spider, isn't it?"

  "That's right."

  "But I didn't figure out how he framed Chen Fei."

  "It's very simple, as long as you grasp the basic theory of Gu technique, it can be done. This theory is quite complicated, so I'll just put it this way: they only need to tamper with Chen Fei's first layer dream memory, making him think he's the murderer who killed your sister in his dream, and then use that as a starting point for memory diffusion!"

  Memory diffusion? I don't quite understand when listening to it, and Xiaoxian also said it's hard to explain to me. So I thought forget it, I roughly get the idea anyway.

  Xiao Qian said: "I found the murderer who tampered with Chen Fei's memory in the second layer of dreams, and I planned to catch him. Unfortunately, my yang energy was not enough, so I only tore off the murderer's clothes and saw a black spider tattoo on his back. At that time, I immediately understood that this was the work of the ghost spider. Specifically, why they wanted to do this, we don't know. At that time, my yang energy had been exhausted, and I fainted, but fortunately, Thirteen Lang saved me."

  I think this is really unexpected, fortunately there are Lijie and Thirteen Lang, another day must be thanked them. I was lost in thought, feeling like being drawn into a big conspiracy.

  After chatting for a while, I finally returned home. After waiting at home for a moment, an hour had passed. I opened the yellow paper and found only a few words written on it: North City Gym.

  I furrowed my brow and thought for a moment, "North City Gym? What does that mean? Are they trying to tell us that the Ghost Spider's person is in North City Gym?"

  Xiao Qian also covered her chin and sank into thought, thinking for a while before saying: "It should be like this, Qin Shou's clue is indeed obscure, but it won't be ambiguous."

  "Then I'll check with Baidu Maps." I opened the map client, limited to the north of the city, and started searching for "gym".

  Whenever I think of the gym, a very interesting story comes to mind:

  A female classmate once asked me: "Will doing large-scale exercises in the gym cause hymen rupture?"

  I thought for a moment and replied seriously: "That depends on the coach."

  According to Xia Qian's words, the targets that beasts refer to are very obvious. In the gym, it is obviously the coach, which should be correct.

  Baidu search results show that there are seven gyms in the north of the city, I'm speechless. This Qin guy is really a scammer. We had no choice but to go find each gym one by one.