BXBX NOVEL Chapter 114.1: Dreamchaser
Chapter 114.1: Dreamchaser
Here was where the miasma was the thickest in the Sorensen Mountains.
Even though Yang Qiu wore headphones and listened to "Chasing Dreams with a Childlike Heart" playing on his phone, the shrill buzzing noises that frayed one\'s nerves still penetrated his ears.
"I never choose to give up my dream even in my darkest days"
Without showing any expression, Yang Qiu endured the formless pressure smothering him from all directions. Even when passing through the mountains and forests where the mist appeared like thin smoke, or other times, like rolling clouds distorting into various terrifying shapes, he didn\'t look back.
Sorensen, "The Tomb of the Fallen." Two months ago, the miasma here would affect Yang Qiu, but now it really didn\'t seem to matter.
"Perhaps I don\'t have talent, but I have a pure dream that I will spend my life proving"
The undead lizard climbed into the depths of the dense forest and stopped before a pool of water.
Yang Qiu turned off the phone\'s music player, removed his headphones, and got off the lizard\'s back. He stared at the pond surrounded by tangled bushes and scattered rocks, glanced around him, then waddled into the water.
The calm surface of the water swayed and disappeared.
A hideous monster, lying silently in the scattered rocks, lunged at Yang Qiu with mouth wide open and swiftly bit toward Yang Qiu\'s legs.
Yang Qiu remained unflinching. He didn\'t even blink and just watched this ugly monster in silence.
The grotesque mouth of the monster, larger than its head and body combined, couldn\'t close. Before its teeth could touch Yang Qiu, its body, the size of a pony sprawled out flat on the ground, was deconstructed into black dust and dissipated with the wind.
When the souls collided or tried to devour each other, the essence of a soul was greater than the difference in combat strength between different species. These low-level monsters formed by a fallen soul with a mental power of at most six or seven hundred, attacking Yang Qiu, whose power outclassed it by more than tenfold, naturally met a disastrous end.
Spellcasters of this world weren\'t glass cannons.
Yang Qiu sat down where the hideous monster had lurked.
Souls that fell and turned into monsters would unconsciously gather in areas where they felt comfortable. After wandering for half a day in the miasma zone, Yang Qiu found this relatively powerful low-level monster. The place it lay seemed ordinary at first glance, but it wasn\'tonce Yang Qiu sat down, he felt a strong dizziness, and the buzzing lingering in his ears became increasingly piercing.
Yang Qiu was very satisfied, adjusted his breathing, and started meditating.
With his perception opened up, frenzied auras accumulated over the long years rushed toward Yang Qiu like a school of piranhas in a feeding frenzy.
If the external magical energy could be likened to nutrient-laden poisonous syrup that one could absorb, then the dense mist and miasma in the Sorensen Mountains, which had become so thick that one could visually perceive its form, was like a deadly poison.
Yang Qiu shut his eyes, keeping his senses wide open, and used his mental perspective to calmly observe these frenzied auras surging toward him.
What he "saw" wasn\'t toxicity or madness, but shattered and chaotic fragments of souls.
The Sorensen Mountains hadn\'t always been shrouded in miasma. Four hundred years ago, this mountain range was the largest trade route in the southern part of the Navalon continent.
When the shadow of the resurgence of elder gods loomed over the entire continent, when void demons began to emerge from unstable temporal rifts, the Sorensen Mountains, as if stricken by a curse, gradually turned into a forbidden zone of life.
Over two hundred years ago, when Yang Qiu was still enduring days in the old man\'s mage tower, the Sorensen Mountains gained another alias"Tomb of the Fallen." No one knew exactly how many beings that lost control made this their burial ground.
What could be confirmed was that this vast "tomb" was far from a peaceful resting place. Yang Qiu "saw\'\' many fragments that could no longer be called souls, only remnants of instinct for devouring and killing.
He "heard" their voices, a chaotic and murky wail that cut through the nerves like steel blades.
Yang Qiu calmly "watched" them.
Just as he observed Camore, Weisshem, and the places he had traveled to where people suffered or were lost and numb.
These things were sentient too.
Yang Qiu\'s upbringing on Earth was far from ideal. His original family was a mess, with an irresponsible father who abandoned his wife and children, a mother who wasn\'t very wise when it came to important matters, and unreliable relatives
Before Yang Qiu entered middle school, the most vivid memory he had was his mom dressing up in the most tattered clothes during festivals and taking him to the neighborhood committee to complain. All of this was just to get a bit more aid for their family, like securing an extra half-bucket of cooking oil and a few kilograms of rice.
Yes, due to his father\'s irresponsible actions of abandoning the family, part of their family\'s income came from welfare assistance before Yang Qiu and his sister, Yang Ying, came of age.
When his sister finished high school and chose to work instead of attending college, thus making their family income exceed the local welfare standards, Yang Qiu finally escaped the awkward situation of always having to pretend to be pitiful.
He never thought his life was particularly happy, and after entering high school, he often complained about the extravagance of his peers who seemed to have more money.
It wasn\'t until he inexplicably arrived in this world that he realized that life could be much more bitter.
What his mother did for a bit of cooking oil and rice was nothing compared to the plight of others. Some people here, despite working hard and breaking a sweat, had to kneel down and lick the housekeeper\'s shoes just to get a few pieces of stale bread they rightfully deserved.
His envy and resentment toward affluent classmates seemed trivial when faced with those born into privilege, enjoying a life of luxury. Others were born with the label of inferiority, not knowing what it meant to change their lives, not understanding the concept of hope, with their biggest wish being to not starve to death.
Sayings in textbooks like "Behind the vermilion gates meat and wine go to waste, while out on the road lie the bones of the frozen" turned out to carry profound weight.
The Buddhist concept of "all living beings suffer" was not just a casual saying.
Yang Qiu was unwilling to accept a world that could send shivers down one\'s spine with just a casual glance. He struggled desperately to survive, to become powerful. He wanted to go home, or at least find a way to shake this messed-up world and not let himself suffer for no reason.
But the reality was bleak. The stronger Yang Qiu got, the more he realized there was very little he could actually achieve. A post-gun era could revolutionize, but in this world where gods walked among mortals while the extraordinary were treated worse than dogs, he couldn\'t see a glimmer of hope for success no matter how he calculated or strategized.
He couldn\'t even achieve a second-rate capitalist revolution, let alone lead the people to overthrow their oppressors.
This world had undergone an industrial revolution more than a century ago before Yang Qiu came. When he transmigrated, Yang Qiu could see airships flying across the sky in big cities. Giant ships weighing more than 100,000 tons crossed the outer sea, and magic steam train tracks paved the capital of a landlocked country like the Rhine Kingdom.
Along with the development of the magic industry, there were tens of millions of industrial workers across the continent. Factories bloomed everywhere, and a large number of capitalist elites emerged.
These new capitalist elites had indeed challenged the authority of the feudal nobles to a certain extent, but they were still quite a distance away from massive social change, like the American Civil War that unified America.
The reason was simple. The threat of elder gods loomed over everyone\'s heads, and the invasion of void demons stopped the swelling of capital power.
When the all-devouring nature of capital was curbed, people would turn to conservatism. Developed countries on Earth that had divided up the high-end manufacturing industry and sat down to enjoy their forebears\' money for decades had already proven the inertia of capital in this aspect.
If the capital that was most likely to trigger social change was preserved, what could the people do?
And what could Yang Qiu do?
He couldn\'t do anything.
He could only let himself witness the suffering of all living beings and hear their cries of pain.
He was powerless against the current status quo, so, at the very least, he needed to know the pain of all living beings.
He opened his mind and accepted the poisonous magic mixed with countless painful, fragmented souls. Many voices wailed in his mental domain, and painful moans echoed throughout his soul.
His soul felt like it was being torn apart.
Yang Qiu was unmoved, allowing these chaotic and crazy consciousnesses to shuttle through his mind.
A crying voice lamented regret for its mother.
A voice expressed remorse for squandering its life.
Yet another voice vented dissatisfaction with someone.
A voice was subconsciously screaming.
A voice was complaining about the injustices of fate.
And one voice cursed all life in the world, wishing everyone would descend into damnation like itself