'Is this Dawn City?'
Mo Ling recalled what Station Chief Liang had said when he first entered the monitoring station.
'Dawn City... that must be the city above the Abyss.'
'Did this black horn actually take me out of the Abyss?'
Following the road, Mo Ling walked into the Dawn City Library.
The library's interior was just as luxurious, with high ceilings and sunlight streaming in through the glass windows.
It was the same kind of glass as in the monitoring station—it looked like tile from the outside, but was transparent from the inside.
The first floor of the library was filled with many reading terminals. Mo Ling walked over to one of them.
After he sat down, the terminal began a user-friendly tutorial. Mo Ling quickly got the hang of how to use it.
Opening the search box, Mo Ling typed in the term "black horn."
The information that popped up was largely the same as what Li Luo had found before.
Mo Ling then tried searching for Li Luo's name, but the information field returned no results.
'As expected, I can't look up a citizen's personal information.'
After a moment of thought, Mo Ling typed "Hunter level" into the search bar.
This time, countless entries appeared:
"Hunters are people who explore the Abyss."
"Initially, Hunters had no level classification, and their ranks were a chaotic mix of all sorts."
"But as exploration of the Abyss deepened, someone discovered that the Abyss has multiple floors. They descended to the 2nd Floor of the Abyss and brought back a relic called the 'Scales of Judgment'."
"This relic can bestow a nameplate upon every Hunter, on which their Hunter level and a title granted by the Abyss automatically appear, written in the Abyssal language."
"Dawn City used this opportunity to regulate all Hunter activity. To enter the Abyss, one must carry a nameplate for administrative purposes."
"A Hunter's level on their nameplate increases according to the deepest floor of the Abyss they have reached."
"Starting from Second-level Hunter, the Abyss grants them a title."
...
'So that's how it is. No wonder everyone has a nameplate.'
Then, on a whim, Mo Ling bypassed the "black horn" and started searching for terms related to his own experience:
"Black hole/Dizziness/Memory loss."
A progress bar moved slowly. After a short while, an entry appeared before Mo Ling's eyes:
[Relic: Dream]
[Cost: 500 grams of Korean kimchi in a glass jar]
[Ability: Causes the user to enter a sleep from which they cannot awaken]
[Place of Discovery: Earth]
[Discoverer: Zhou Ming]
...
This was a relic that appeared right at the beginning of the Great Cataclysm.
Back then, the world was filled with the smoke of war, and panic was widespread.
On Jeju Island, a sect emerged.
—The Dream Realm Sect.
Of course, they didn't call themselves the Dream Realm Sect; that was just what later generations called them.
This sect proclaimed that the current world was a fabrication, a world inside a novel, artificially created.
They claimed a need to escape this world and flee to another one that the Creator couldn't be bothered to control.
A truly laughable declaration.
But in the environment of the time, with frequent strange phenomena and all sorts of bizarre Abyssal Creatures and relic events shattering people's worldviews, many foolish people came to believe them.
The Dream Realm Sect organized its followers to practice visualization, specifically visualizing a constantly descending black hole.
They even printed flyers of that black hole and distributed them everywhere.
They explained to their followers that as long as they visualized this black hole in their minds before bed, while placing 500 grams of Korean kimchi in a glass jar under their pillow, they could fall into a deep sleep and escape this world trifled with by the Creator, reaching a paradise—an uncontrolled world.
During the Great Cataclysm, sects like this were numerous. A sect that sounded so absurd on its face didn't attract any official attention at all.
The authorities were busy dealing with more pressing matters and couldn't be bothered with such a nonsensical group.
However, one day, the son of a Dream Realm Sect believer found that he couldn't contact his old father.
His father wasn't answering calls or replying to messages. Even when the son went to his house and knocked on the door, there was no response.
He hastily opened the door and rushed into the room, only to find his old father still at home.
Sleeping soundly.
Under the pillow was a glass jar.
A growing number of similar reports finally caught the attention of the authorities.
But it was too late. Nearly all the followers of the Dream Realm Sect had fallen into a deathlike sleep from which they could never awaken.
No method could rouse them.
When the military stormed the home of the Dream Realm Sect's Sect Leader, all they found on the bed was a smiling corpse, with another glass jar under the pillow.
The authorities urgently destroyed all the black hole flyers and encrypted the image of the black hole for secure storage.
They thought that would be the end of it, but the cleanup crew searching for the flyers apprehended a Madman.
The Madman kept repeating to the cleanup crew.
This world is a dream!
The crew immediately notified the research institute.
The Madman told the Researcher his story:
One day, a friend gave him a flyer.
The friend told him about the Dream Realm Sect's philosophy and the method for reaching another world.
He didn't believe in another world, but he thought it sounded fun, so he decided to give it a try.
At first, he didn't have a glass jar at home, so he put 500 grams of kimchi in a bag under his pillow.
He slept through the night, and nothing happened.
The next day, feeling skeptical, he went out and bought a glass jar.
Then, he followed the method his friend had taught him.
That night, with a wave of dizziness, he felt himself being pulled into another world by the black hole in his mind.
He, too, lost his memory. Believing this new world was real, he started living a normal life there.
One evening, he went to a bar with a friend, who told him about an interesting rumor.
"As long as you look at this flyer before bed and put 501 grams of Korean kimchi in a glass jar under your pillow, you can reach another world when you fall asleep!"
He looked at the flyer his friend gave him and thought it was hilarious!
On his way home that time, he stopped to buy a glass jar.
...
"As long as you look at this flyer before bed and put 1997 grams of Korean kimchi in a glass jar under your pillow, you can reach another world when you fall asleep!"
"Can a pillow even hold that? Isn't that too much? How could anyone sleep?" he asked his friend.
He started imagining himself getting a stiff neck.
In that instant, a sense of profound strangeness erupted within him, and countless memories flooded back.
When he realized he was dreaming, he found that he could wake up.
And so, he began to wake up, over and over...
After finishing his story, the Madman said to the Researcher, "There's no point in telling you this. I have to keep waking up."
Then, the Madman's face contorted. He strained to open his eyes wide, looking as if he were charging up some ultimate move.
When nothing happened, he asked the Researcher in confusion, "In your world, how many grams of kimchi do you have to put under the pillow?"
"500."
Upon hearing this, the Madman stared blankly at the Researcher, and tears streamed from his eyes.
This Madman, who had been lost in dreams for so long, was none other than the discoverer of the relic "Dream," Zhou Ming.
In the end, the Researcher defined the incident as a relic phenomenon.
This was because the cost—500 grams of Korean kimchi in a glass jar—was just so typical of a relic's MO.
Although the relic's physical form was never found, the incident was thus successfully resolved.