Chapter 35: Dreamland Gardens

Chapter 35: Dreamland Gardens

What is rain like?

Light rain, drizzling down like fine threads or cattle hair, barely makes one feel anything when it lands on the skin, bringing only a slight coolness and dampness. In the dry autumn, such light rain can be somewhat poetic and pleasing.

Moderate rain becomes a bit troublesome, pattering against windows and umbrellas, feeling somewhat impatient. Splashes wet trouser legs and hit motorcycle helmets, making it very inconvenient for those in the rain.

Heavy rain is like an urgent march of countless raindrops, accelerating from the sky to the ground, the speed so fast it blurs the sky and earth into one. It renders visibility almost nil within the rain mist, making it difficult to move, and with the accumulating water, danger follows.

When light rain started falling on those dozen exiles who hadn’t finished building their houses, they didn’t yet realize how bad things could get.

Some of them used their clothes to cover their heads and faces, huddling in the corners of their houses, hoping the fine rain would soon stop. Others held up wooden and plastic boards over their heads, waiting for the rain to cease.

But then, the light rain turned into moderate rain.

Their already thin clothes quickly became thoroughly soaked, clinging coldly to their skin. Those holding up boards began to tremble in their arms, unable to maintain their hold indefinitely. Moreover, their hands and arms holding the boards were exposed and got wet, with rainwater trickling down to their upper bodies.

"Damn! This won't do; the rain looks like it won't stop tonight. If it keeps up, won't we all turn into confused, soaked messes by tomorrow?"

"Forget about tomorrow. My life energy is dropping! It's gone from 200 to 189 in less than half an hour. That's 11 points down. If it keeps raining all night, I'll be dead!"

"But we can't just go to someone else's house to avoid the rain, can we? Damn this weather, the rain's getting heavier! It hurts when it hits my face! No, I need to find a solution."

A dozen people shouted and discussed methods to avoid the rain. Then, someone decided to risk building a small shelter.

The foundation and walls were already up; they just needed to lean two boards against the wall to create a rudimentary shelter.

However, when this exile decided to do so, he realized building a house at night was too difficult—

By now, the rain was so dense it created a mist between heaven and earth, making it nearly impossible to see anything, even on their own plots.

Fortunately, this exile had learned how to convert energy into light before. He shakily extended his index finger, gathering a small light on it.

In the darkness, this tiny white light was strikingly visible.

"Lu Wen! Is that you? What are you trying to do?"

Jiang Hong's voice came from diagonally ahead.

Lu Wen, shivering from the cold, replied, "I, I'm trying to find a couple of boards to make a rain shelter. It's too cold, and unbearable otherwise."

"Stay active within your own house! Don't go to the construction site! It's only safe inside the house at night!"

Lu Wen instinctively nodded, "I know, I know. I've been in the Exile Lands for so long, of course, I know not to go out. I didn't leave; I remember I left some boards outside the walls of the house."

Lighting his way with that small light, he searched around the outside wall of his house and then saw the boards he was looking for in the far west corner.

"These are the boards!"

His eyes lit up as he reached for the two wooden boards, but his body stiffened just as his hand was about to touch the boards.

Then, Jiang Hong, who had been keeping an eye on him, heard a scream, and the light in the rainy night extinguished completely.

"Lu Wen?! Lu Wen?!"

Jiang Hong's voice grew louder and more anxious.

He stood up abruptly inside his plastic rain shelter, and for a moment, considered stepping out of the half-built wall to check on Lu Wen.

Suddenly, a voice from diagonally behind said, "Don't leave the house. Outside the wall is still outside."

Despite the deluge nearly drowning out all other sounds, Jiang Hong distinctly heard Chen Jia's voice amid the rain, as though he were speaking right behind him.

He spun around, his house's outline barely visible behind him, along with a swath of darkness.

But Jiang Hong's anxious attempt to climb over the wall halted abruptly.

He pursed his lips, slowly lowering the leg he had already lifted, and then, as he stood firm within the walls of the house. Standing next to a half-wall only as tall as his waist, in the black night filled with torrential rain, he saw a massive creature with eyes suddenly wide open, facing him, only a step away.

In the darkness, two eerie green lights illuminated.

——！

Jiang Hong swiftly bent down, dodging the gaping maw of the giant snake.

As he prepared to use his innate ability to blind the serpent's green eyes, he suddenly realized that the snake's 180-degree wide mouth didn't follow?

He slowly lifted his head and, through the transparent plastic sheet, saw the giant snake twisting and threatening outside the house wall but not coming in.

So, one must stay inside the house at night.

While Jiang Hong crouched in the corner, clutching his racing heart, he saw those green, oily “lights” lighting up one after another in the darkness, along with several curses and screams.

“Damn it, there are monsters outside!”

“It's a water snake! No, it's a python!!”

“Under no circumstances should you leave the confines of your own house's walls! Do you hear? Do not step outside the bounds of your own house!!”

“Damn it, I can't see! I can't see at all!”

The exiles kept shouting until Chen Shijin heard the last one, paused briefly, and then took out that super bright hernia lamp from his personal space, the one that once dazzled everyone in the gourmet capital.

He opened the window and placed the lamp on the roof of the temporary little wooden box house.

And then...

In an instant, it was almost as bright as day.

Both the python and the exiles were momentarily blinded.

"No need to thank me," Chen Shijin's voice carried through the rain. "Aren't you going to run?"

The few exiles who wanted to find materials at the construction site or outside their own house walls instantly got a burst of energy, biting the bullet and running back while the pythons' eyes were still blinded, without a second thought.

Some were visibly injured but had, to some extent, saved their lives. Yet, some could never return.

Then, things became somewhat hard to describe—

Inside the house, under the pouring rain and bright light, there was a tender gaze between the people and the giant snake outside.

What should have been a somewhat horrifying scene became somewhat, well, bizarre, as the snake couldn't enter but only moved with the movements of the people inside.

Chen Shijin also saw the snake outside his house wall, but after staring at Chen Shijin for a minute, it simply closed its eyes and gave up moving around.

This place is just too damn bright. Can't eat and got blinded, let whoever wants to watch, watch!

Pfft!

Chen Shijin, with a silver-grey blue-eyed groundhog perched on his shoulder, mused, "So, the world needs light."

The groundhog waved its paw: "Chirp—"

The little creature could fix its gaze accurately on someone even without light.

Afterwards, all the exiles building houses dared not make any rash moves, only waiting for dawn amidst the torrential rain. By the wee hours, Chen Shijin grimly discovered that water had seeped into his wooden hut, soaking the wooden planks beneath and flooding his feet.

Fortunately, he had a lounge chair in his personal space to lie on, or else standing or sitting in water all night would have drastically reduced his vitality.

He slept through the night in a daze.

Until he heard the world announcement: [Night has ended, entering day.]

At the moment this sound echoed, the torrential rain abruptly ceased, and the sky transitioned from darkness to daylight.

There was even an ironically beautiful rainbow after the rain.

Chen Shijin stepped out of his temporary wooden hut, now with a waterlogged bottom, to see the water receding quickly and the moist soil rapidly drying and hardening.

In just a few minutes, it seemed as though last night's torrential rain and the giant snakes were nothing but an illusory dream.

By this time, Jiang Hong had already rushed out to search for his team members.

Then Chen Shijin saw him standing silently at the corner of the half-built house.

That was probably where Lu Wen had died.

Apart from Jiang Hong, the leaders of two other teams also had grim expressions: "Five people died overnight! Four were injured."

"Those of you whose houses weren't fully built, who recklessly went outside, might not have died, but how could someone die in our steel alloy house? Although he hadn't cut out the door yet, a steel house is the best at keeping out the rain!"

Chen Shijin heard the incredulous voices of those with strength abilities. Pretending to be moving bricks, he walked over to see what was happening, unaware that someone curious was following him.

"Wow. His whole body is swollen. Looks like he was soaked in water all night."

A bystander made a face of disgust while watching the commotion.

Chen Shijin felt the hair on his back stand up and immediately stepped aside with a look of disdain. The silver-grey groundhog on his shoulder also showed a similar expression of disdain, even waving its paw.

"Chirp!" Scram!

Chen Shijin smirked and stroked the groundhog.

The groundhog smiled smugly, while the hands of the bystander behind twitched.

"But he's right, Zhou looks exactly like he drowned," said Chen Qiang, the leader among the strength exiles, gravely. "But I can't figure out how Zhou drowned inside the house?"

Last night's downpour should have meant those building houses with steel plates were the most comfortable, so how did Zhou die?

Chen Shijin looked at the person swollen like a steamed bun and his steel plate house, "This house is small, and, it only had one window."

Chen Qiang frowned: "I told you Zhou hadn't cut out the door yet. Having a window for entry and exit shouldn't have been a problem."

Chen Shijin pointed at the window: "But what if the entire steel house was flipped over, filled with water, and then the window was blocked?"

The expressions on the faces of Chen Qiang and the others changed in that instant.

They had just felt something was off about the house, and now they realized it wasn't in its original position. There were dried drag marks on the ground.

Everyone showed an incredulous expression, and then Chen Qiang remembered their conversation from yesterday about the foundation.

Last night, it wasn't a storm that carried away the steel house.

Instead, one or possibly several giant snakes flipped over the lightest, smallest steel house of Old Zhou, treating it like a sealed box, and drowned Old Zhou inside his own home.

"...Damn it!"

Chen Qiang cursed fiercely, turning his head to look at his already constructed steel house, his expression fluctuating.

He had thought that in the following days, he could be relatively at ease, even carefree.

But now, looking at his steel house, he began to feel it wasn't "solid" enough.

"Brother Qiang, what do we do?"

After looking at his brothers, Chen Qiang finally clenched his teeth and said, "We need a foundation!"

The steel house was hard enough, but not stable enough.

Useless!

They had to rebuild their houses.

Because of last night's torrential rain and the overturning of Old Zhou's steel house, the remaining exiles gained a deeper understanding of the "sturdiness" required for their homes.

So, the next day, everyone was busily and strenuously moving bricks to build houses.

At this time, everyone opted for the most common and sturdy method of building with reinforced steel, concrete, and red bricks.

"It goes to show, the wisdom accumulated over thousands of years by our ancestors shouldn't be casually dismissed. Brick and tile houses are indeed the most solid."

As Chen Shijin moved bricks, he lamented, while also grimacing and holding his back.

This damned Dreamland!

What Dreamland? This is nothing but a brick-moving site!

To complete the world task, he had to busily move bricks here, even refraining from speaking carelessly—

He wasn't sure if constructing a house with just a sentence would be considered cheating!

In case a house spoken into existence doesn't count as one he built, who knows if it could still attract the master of this Dreamland?

So, this damned Dreamland!

I can only give myself a full linguistic recovery every once in a while.

But I haven't slacked off at all!

Now, I must mention the two troublesome neighbors on either side of me—both are far from what you'd call normal!

The madman on the left, as if injected with perpetual energy, had his house two-thirds built by the end of the first day. By the morning of the second day, he had completed the entire construction, only needing to plaster and install doors and windows.

On the right, Bystander B seemed ordinary and unremarkable at first glance, but he worked like a perpetual motion machine. With seemingly ordinary actions, he completed his house at a pace not even slightly slower than Feng Tianhuo.

My gaze towards Bystander B has become somewhat suspicious again.

Feng Tianhuo is a Level 4 hunter, to be precise, his physical condition is of the dominator strength of Level 5. Having such speed is completely normal for him.

But Bystander B's speed in building the house, being on par with him and even seeming more effortless, poses a big problem.

And there's the theory of "internal shackles" he proposed.

Last night, while resting, I circulated energy within my body to search for these "shackles." I only intended to try, but unexpectedly, I faintly discovered something.

It seems like I really felt some kind of obstruction at my lower abdomen and chest. If I break through these obstructions, I believe my physical and energy limits could achieve a qualitative leap.

That may just be the necessary path for the transformation of a mortal body.

But my current energy is insufficient to precisely locate and break it.

With this realization, Chen Shijin no longer cared about the madness to his left or the pretense to his right; he needed to farm resources, he needed energy!

Suddenly, Chen Shijin looked at the house in front of him, wondering if he could consume these building materials.

"Chirp?"

The silver-grey groundhog seemed to sense something, peeking out and chirping.

Chen Shijin snapped back to reality.

Hold on, it's not yet time to resort to eating bricks and dirt.

At least wait for the emergence of the world core.

Then, Chen Shijin, looking at his newly completed roof, felt a sense of relief thinking that his speed was not too far behind those two workhorses.

Now, the house only needed plastering and the installation of doors and windows.

[The night is approaching, please enter your houses quickly to avoid the disasters of the night.]

Everyone's heart tightened, and they quickly entered their houses.

However, this time everyone had a certain confidence in safely getting through the night—the ones whose houses were basically finished, of course, but even those who had only built half had constructed temporary box houses with plastic and wooden boards on their homesteads, unafraid of even the fiercest downpours.

Almost in the blink of an eye, daylight turned to darkness. Chen Shijin was contemplating whether to bring out his blinding hernia lamp to illuminate the night when he suddenly felt the ground start to shake.

“？？？”

"You've got to be kidding me?! Who's house could withstand an earthquake?!"

An exile screamed out.

Although their houses were built on foundations, if the earth were to split open or they were at the epicenter of an earthquake, even the sturdiest of houses would collapse!

Chen Shijin's expression turned a shade of green, wondering if this Dreamland would really be so treacherous.

He took a deep breath and stroked the groundhog's fur twice.

"If it doesn't show martial virtue, then I won't hold back either."

The silver-grey groundhog shivered subtly.

Then, Chen Shijin realized that the vibration was unusual, not quite like an earthquake, but rather like…

He quickly stood in front of the window without glass, peering through to see a mass of dark shadows in the darkness.

What on earth?

Chen Shijin was filled with alarm and uncertainty when suddenly a familiar cow's moo echoed through the night sky.

"Moo—"

The exiles: ???

"Moo moo moo moo!"

Then, Chen Jia witnessed the utterly baffling sight of a herd of bulls charging at a wall.

"Moo!"

Bang—

The wall of the house targeted by the bulls collapsed thunderously on impact.

This was followed by an exile's anguished scream, akin to a chicken in pain: "All the bricks I moved for two days, ahh!"

The herd of bulls was notably friendly and fair; friendly in that they only demolished walls without charging at people.

Fairness was evident as they methodically proceeded from left to right, taking down the exiles' walls one by one.

Thus, every few minutes, Chen Jia could hear another exile's scream and curses.

Along with the roars of exiles utilizing their powers.

Yet, not a single exile's house remained unscathed after the bull herd's wall-ramming spree.

Soon, the herd approached Feng Tianhuo's house.

Feng Tianhuo leaped onto the roof, wielding a massive fireball: "Try and hit my wall, will you? Tonight, I feast on roasted whole bull!"

Thirty ferocious bulls: "......"

Never mind. Can't beat the bull.

Consequently, the bulls collectively turned around, their heavy breathing and sharp horns now aimed at Chen Jia's house.

This one looks weak, ripe for demolition!

Inside, Chen Jia stood expressionless.

As the charging bulls kicked up dirt, he opened his mouth:

"Bulls, lose, your, footing." N-999

"Moo?!"

Suddenly, the thirty charging bulls felt their front hooves slip, collapsing in unison, their bull eyes widening in shock as the front row's horns dug into the ground.

But there was more—

The horns of the second row of bulls precisely jabbed into the rear ends of the first row!

"Mooow—"

The third row of bulls' horns also pierced through the second row's rear ends.

"Mooowwww!"

Cursed, the bulls have been demolishing walls for years, but never have they encountered such a viciously stubborn obstacle!

Chen Jia sneered at the herd.

"No one can demolish my house!"

"Not even bulls!"