Chapter 837: Creation Method
"Do you know who built the city...?"
"That's right." Qi Xia nodded. "This person used the 'Crafty Artifact' and constructed this city in an instant."
Chen Junnan also looked at the street before him, feeling that the situation seemed somewhat outrageous. "Lao Qi... I'm not trying to discourage you, but have you ever worked in construction? If you want to design a city... just having 'conviction' definitely won't cut it. There are too many things to consider—like water and electricity systems, the different layouts of various shops. Even if someone really believes they can build a city, they must be familiar with the structure of every building. Otherwise, everything they build would be pure imagination. What's the difference between that and a child playing with building blocks?"
"No..." Qi Xia's eyes kept flickering. "It doesn't have to be that complicated... We're overthinking..."
"What?"
"To build an entire 'city', there is no need to know the structure of buildings, nor is there any need to have done anything related to construction..." Qi Xia murmured. "It's because each of us is 'isolated and helpless' that we fall into this misconception. We think that to successfully activate an 'Echo', besides the ability of the 'Echo' itself being powerful, we must also possess the theoretical knowledge to support it. But those people are different. They can have many 'Echoes' simultaneously, and by combining them, they can achieve unexpected effects."
After hearing this, Qiao Jiajin still felt he didn't quite understand. He scratched his head and asked, "But Liar, if it's really like you say... what ability would 'Crafty Artifact' need to be paired with to build a city? Among all the abilities we know of, none of them seem to fit..."
"'Dreamwalk' would work." Qi Xia boldly guessed.
"'Dreamwalk'...?" This answer clearly caught the three off guard, leaving them momentarily baffled.
"This person entered everyone's 'dream' and directly replicated the scenes from those 'dreams'." Qi Xia said. "Some people were in prison before coming here, so there's a prison here. Some were at work, so there are tall buildings. Others were in school, so there are schools. And because each person's dream was just a small area, it took combining many people's dreams to assemble this city, making its scale appear so vast."
"Ah...?"
The three beside him widened their eyes, speechless.
Qi Xia nodded and continued, "In that case, he didn't need to conceive or design the buildings himself. Since everyone came from different eras, the buildings here are all kinds of bizarre, and the contents within them are also varied. So this city doesn't come from a specific city in a certain era, but is an empty city assembled from countless fragments of memory."
"L-Lao Qi..." Chen Junnan said. "The Young Master can barely keep up with a madman's train of thought. If what you say is true... doesn't that mean each of us can find our own 'hometown' here?"
"Yes." Qi Xia nodded. "There are five cities here, each with about ten thousand people, totaling fifty thousand people and fifty thousand small scenes, covering almost every type of building. Finding your own 'home' accurately wouldn't be easy. Besides, even if you're lucky enough to see a building from your dream, these buildings are already completely dilapidated, making it hard to connect them with the image in your memory."
"W-Wait a minute..." Chen Junnan touched his forehead and thought for a long time before speaking. "If that's the case... with both 'Dreamwalk' and being crazy enough, that only leaves 'Celestial Dragon', right? Are you saying he built this city?"
"Yes, it's very likely." Qi Xia said.
"But that doesn't seem right either?" Qin Dingdong interjected. "The main condition for activating an 'Echo' is still believing that something is true. If 'Celestial Dragon' really did this, how could he believe that this city would actually appear here? If he didn't believe it himself... even if he saw these scenes, he still wouldn't be able to replicate them."
"That's another misconception." Qi Xia said. "For 'Celestial Dragon', who has both 'Dreamwalk' and 'Crafty Artifact', there's a more direct way to make himself believe all this. Once he uses that method, the city would rise from the ground in an instant."
"What method?"
Qi Xia paused and replied in a low voice, "That is to make himself unable to distinguish between 'dream' and 'reality'."
Upon hearing Qi Xia's words, everyone slowly widened their eyes and remained silent for a long time.
"Shit..." Chen Junnan slowly spoke. "Damn... Now I get it. That's just too ridiculous. As long as 'Celestial Dragon' thinks this place is a 'dream', then it naturally makes sense for things from the 'dream' to appear here... And these 'dreams' come from us... What the hell... Is that some kind of smooth combo move?"
"Pretty much." Qi Xia nodded. "We think 'Celestial Dragon' moved the buildings from dreams into reality. But 'Celestial Dragon' has long been crazy. To him, he's merely moving scenes from one dream to another. That is to say... he believes these buildings should be here, so they appear here."
"Holy shit..." Qiao Jiajin was dumbfounded. "That's really no different from a 'god'. The church back home says, 'God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.' Does 'god' also not distinguish between reality and dreams?"
Chen Junnan gasped. "Is 'Celestial Dragon' that insanely crazy?"
"But there are drawbacks too." Qi Xia said. "‘Celestial Dragon’ often needs to sleep, so he interferes very little with the management of the entire 'Zhongyan Land'."
"Sleep..." Chen Junnan frowned. "Lao Qi... Don't you think things are a bit tricky?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean 'Celestial Dragon's' use of 'Dreamwalk'." Chen Junnan said. "It's bad enough that this old guy has dreamwalk... but now the problem is that he thinks both opening and closing his eyes are 'dreams'. How the hell do we break that?"
"The only way is to make him truly awake." Qi Xia replied.
After hearing this, Qiao Jiajin walked over to a nearby telephone pole and reached out to touch it.
The pole had mottled cement and even had missing person notices and small ads pasted on it, their words barely legible. Every detail was unusually perfect. Could this really be from an 'Echo'?
No, rather than an 'Echo', it was more like these things were the remnants of everyone's memories, everyone's 'past'.