Chapter 59: Meng Lan1

historical

As the laugh rang out, Su Chen suddenly felt his vision blur. His surroundings quickly changed.

He had just been standing on the street when in the blink of an eye, he was suddenly standing within a large room of the castle.

Looking out from a nearby window, he could see that he was still in the Dreamcastle. However, at some unknown time, he had been relocated to the central, tallest tower within the Dreamcastle.

Even so, Su Chen did not panic.

He was within the Dreamrealm. No matter what happened, nothing could surprise him at this point.

He turned around and found that at the head of the hall, a young woman was sitting on top of a wooden, square chair with green flowers wrapping around it. The young woman was wearing a long, snow-white dress trailing to the ground, and a pair of white crystal high-heels poked out from under her dress. She wore a bright, radiant crown inlaid with countless precious stones atop her waist-length faintly-purple hair. Her face was slender and delicate, and an inscription of a transparent water droplet pulsated gently in between her eyebrows. Her eyes were very large, and her pupils were slightly purple. She also wore a pair of purplish-gold earrings on her sharp ears. The impression she gave others was that of a fantasy girl in her prime.

The fantasy-like maiden also had a pair of wings on her back, but they were transparent. Apart from that, she was no different in size from a regular human.

The maiden with the transparent wings said, “Hello. My name is Meng Lan, and I am a daughter of the Lord of the Dreamrealm. I am also the owner of this Dreamcastle.”

Su Chen glanced at Meng Lan. “A daughter of the Lord of the Dreamrealm? I’m lucky enough to immediately run into a princess?”

“That’s right, but there’s no need to feel so surprised. Every Dreamcastle is owned by a daughter of the Lord of the Dreamrealm.”

“Every one? If I remember correctly, this Dreamcastle’s number is 124?” Su Chen said in shock.

“That’s right. I am the Lord of the Dreamrealm’s 124th daughter. I have 426 more siblings below me.”

“......” Su Chen was speechless. “The Lord of the Dreamrealm really knows how to have kids.”

Meng Lan laughed, “That’s because you don’t understand the practices of Dreamrealm lifeforms. Dreamrealm lifeforms don’t reproduce like you humans, who rely on two members of opposite genders to bear children. We have our own method of doing it. The Lord of the Dreamrealm will form a Dreamrealm Seed from time to time. This Dreamrealm Seed is the precursor to our current form. Dreamrealm Seeds absorb consciousness energy, allowing us to be nurtured by Dream Droplets. Afterwards, we officially become a Dreamrealm lifeform. To Dreamrealm lifeforms, the affection between a father and his offspring is irrelevant. The relationship is more like a tree and and the seeds it produces. We all live within the Dreamrealm created by the Lord of Dreams, together forming the Dreamnet.

“So that’s how it is.” Su Chen understood. “The Lord of the Dreamrealm is like an ancient tree, and you are like the tree seedlings sown from him. Together, you form a large forest.”

“That’s right!” Meng Lan clapped her hands and laughed. “You really are quite smart; you understood it at once.”

Su Chen nodded his head. “I was curious as to why someone like the Lord of the Dreamrealm would involve me, a no-name Origin Qi Scholar, in his schemes. Now that you’ve appeared, I think I get it. The one trying to use me wasn’t the Lord of the Dreamrealm, but you, the owner of this Dreamcastle.”

“You can’t say it like that,” Meng Lan immediately said. “The Lord of the Dreamrealm created this place and the rules that govern it, so no one is allowed to break those rules. I never tried to use you; all I am doing is operating within the limits defined by these rules.”

“So what you’re saying is that you never instigated someone to conceal my notice in the first place?”

“Of course I didn’t,” Meng Lan said straightforwardly. “You might think that I am trying to take advantage of your conflict, but do you think that I don’t understand the impact this skill will have on the entire human race? Think about if. If this kind of technique is made public, how many people would buy it? Even if you sell it for only 100 Dream Droplets, you would make a million Dream Droplets if only ten thousand people buy it! What reason would there be for me to try and entice someone to cover up your status just to obtain a meager concealment fee? Isn’t that too narrow-viewed? In addition, for this kind of technique, it wouldn’t be surprising for millions of people to buy it. And since you are sending out the notice from my Dreamcastle, I am responsible for handling all of those transactions, and those count towards my quota!”

Su Chen was quite shocked. “The Dreamrealm has a quota it needs to meet?”

“Of course!” The Dreamrealm supports all of the existences within the Dreamrealm. It’s the source of our existence. Every master of a Dreamcastle needs to do as much as they can to accumulate Dream Droplets in order to foster their own community! Every single tree should have the desire and dream to become a forest!”

Upon hearing those words, Su Chen sighed. “So what you’re saying is that you support my desire to publicly release this skill?”

“That’s right!” Meng Lan said. “Thus, I incited Lulu to try and convince you to raise your privilege tier. That way you can protect yourself and increase the pressure on that high-tier privilege individual at the same time. If you can become a high-tier individual yourself, then they will have no way of suppressing your notice. At that time, your Kaihuang’s Heaven skill will be able to spread without anyone restricting its dissemination.”

“It seems that I misunderstood your good intentions,” Su Chen said.

“No worries,” Meng Lan giggled.

“But I’m afraid that I still want to cancel my notice.” Su Chen’s tone suddenly changed.

“What did you say?” Meng Lan was speechless.

She had brought Su Chen over and talked to him for so long just to try and get him to give up on the idea of canceling his notice; However, Su Chen seemingly remained unmoved.

“Why is that?” Meng Lan was becoming a bit angry.

“Because I’m scared,” Su Chen smiled as he replied. “Since the other party is investigating my background, one day they will discover my real identity. Since that’s the case, I still want to cancel my notice so that they won’t try and come after me. Isn’t that better? At the very least, it’s much simpler than expending so much energy to increase my privilege tier, right?”

Meng Lan fell into silence.

She stared at Su Chen.

A smile hung on Su Chen’s lips.

After a long time, Meng Lan asked, “You don’t want to spread Kaihuang’s Heaven anymore?”

Su Chen spread his hands helplessly. “So what if I want to? If I can’t sell it here, then I can only go to the real world to sell it. At most I’ll just have to disguise myself and sit by the road, hawking it as a peerless secret manual for ten copper coins per book. If I can’t convince adults, I’ll convince kids. ‘Hey young man, you look like you have a unique bone structure – you might be a one-in-a-million martial arts talent. I have a secret book here called the “Kaihuang’s Heaven Origin Skill” that I believe you are fated to learn. I’ll only charge you ten copper coins for it.’...... As long as I am persistent, I will definitely be able to sell it.”

“......”

Even though she knew that Su Chen was just making things up, Meng Lan couldn’t help but feel depressed.

Upon seeing the devious smile on Su Chen’s face, Meng Lan finally began to realize what was happening.

She said, “What do you want? Tell me.”

“Privilege,” Su Chen replied. “I want a level of privilege where either those bastards cannot conceal my notices or that doing so will cost them a heart-rending sum of money.”

“That’s not possible.” Meng Lan shook her head. “The Dreamrealm has its own rules that even a Dreamrealm lifeform cannot disobey. If I could do this, I would’ve done it a long time ago. Why else would we be having this conversation?”

“But you can give me an opportunity, right?”

“What kind of opportunity do you want?”

“An opportunity that exists outside of the rules, an opportunity that I can put in the least and get the most out of.”

1. This is a person’s name. Translated it would be Dream Blue, but that sounds kind of weird so I kept it in its Chinese phonetic form.