I’m Trapped in a Cube - Chapter 12

“Is this Dawn City?”

Mo Ling remembered what Station Head Liang had said when he first entered the monitoring station.

Dawn City, this should be the city above the Abyss.

“Could it be that this Black Horn brought me out of the Abyss?”

Following the road, Mo Ling walked into the Dawn City Library.

The library’s interior was still incredibly luxurious, with a high ceiling and sunlight streaming through the glass windows.

It was that same kind of glass as the monitoring station-tiles on the outside, glass on the inside.

On the first floor of the library, there were many reading machines. Mo Ling walked up to one.

Sitting at the desk, the machine helpfully explained how to operate it, and Mo Ling quickly learned the process.

He opened the search bar and typed in the entry “black horn.”

The information that popped up was basically the same as what Li Luo had found earlier.

Mo Ling tried searching for Li Luo’s name, but nothing came up.

“As expected, you can’t look up citizen information.”

Thinking for a bit, Mo Ling typed “Hunter levels” into the search bar.

This time, countless pieces of information appeared:

“Hunters are those who explore the Abyss.”

“At first, there was no ranking system for Hunters-it was a mixed bag.”

“But as exploration of the Abyss deepened, someone discovered that the Abyss had layers, and after reaching the second layer, brought back a relic called the ‘Scales of Judgment.’”

“This relic could grant every Hunter a nameplate, which would automatically display the Hunter’s level and the title bestowed by the Abyss, written in Abyssal language.”

“Dawn City took this opportunity to regulate all Hunters’ activities. To enter the Abyss, one must carry a nameplate, which is used for management.”

“The Hunter level on the nameplate increases as you reach deeper layers of the Abyss.”

“From Level 2 Hunter onward, the Abyss bestows a title.”

……

“So that’s why everyone has a nameplate.”

At this point, Mo Ling had a sudden idea. Skipping the black horn, he started searching for his own experiences:

“Black hole/dizziness/memory loss.”

The progress bar moved slowly, and soon a piece of information appeared before Mo Ling’s eyes:

[Relic: Dream]

[Cost: 500 grams of Korean kimchi in a glass jar]

[Ability: Causes the user to enter an unawakable sleep]

[Discovery Location: Earth]

[Discoverer: Zhou Ming]

……

This was a relic that appeared at the very start of the Cataclysm.

At that time, the world was in chaos, everyone was panicked.

On Jeju Island, a cult appeared.

-The Dream Cult.

Of course, they didn’t call themselves the Dream Cult; that was a name given by later generations.

This cult claimed that the current world was fake, a world inside a novel, artificially created.

They said people needed to escape this world and go to another world where the creator had no interest in controlling them.

Completely laughable rhetoric.

But in those days, with so many anomalies, all sorts of strange Abyss creatures and relic phenomena were shattering people’s worldviews.

So, many fools believed them.

The Dream Cult organized its followers to meditate, visualizing a constantly falling black hole.

They even printed leaflets of that black hole and distributed them everywhere.

They explained to their followers: as long as you visualize this black hole in bed and put 500 grams of Korean kimchi in a glass jar under your pillow, then fall into a deep sleep, you could escape this world manipulated by the creator and go to a paradise, a world free from control.

During the Cataclysm, there were many cults like this. Such absurd beliefs didn’t attract the authorities’ attention at all.

The authorities were busy with more urgent matters and had no time for such nonsense.

However, one day, the son of a Dream Cult follower discovered he couldn’t reach his father.

No answer to calls, no replies to messages, and even when he got to the door, no one answered.

He hurriedly opened the door and rushed into the room, only to find his father still at home.

Sleeping soundly.

With a glass jar under his pillow.

More and more reports finally caught the authorities’ attention.

But it was too late-the Dream Cult’s followers had almost all fallen into a deathly sleep and could never wake up.

No method could rouse them.

When the army stormed the Dream Cult leader’s home,

There was only a smiling corpse on the bed, and a glass jar under the pillow.

The authorities urgently destroyed all those black hole leaflets and encrypted the image of the black hole.

They thought that was the end, but one of the cleanup crew caught a madman.

The madman kept telling the cleanup crew,

“This world is a dream!”

The cleanup crew quickly notified the research institute.

The madman told the researchers his story:

One day, a friend gave him a leaflet.

And told him about the Dream Cult’s beliefs and the way to reach another world.

He didn’t believe in another world, but he thought it was funny, so he tried it.

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, but nothing happened.

The next day, still skeptical, he went out and bought a glass jar.

Then he followed his friend’s instructions.

That night, as he was falling asleep, he felt himself being pulled by the black hole in his mind into another world.

He also lost his memory, believing that world was real, and started living a normal life there.

One night, he and his friend went to a bar, and his friend told him an interesting rumor.

“As long as you look at this leaflet before bed, then put 501 grams of Korean kimchi in a glass jar under your pillow, you can go to another world after you fall asleep!”

He looked at the leaflet his friend gave him and thought it was hilarious!

This time, on his way home, he bought another glass jar.

……

“As long as you look at this leaflet before bed, then put 1997 grams of Korean kimchi in a glass jar under your pillow, you can go to another world after you fall asleep!”

“Can your pillow hold that much? Isn’t that too much? Can you even sleep like that?” he asked his friend.

He started imagining himself with a stiff neck.

At that moment, a strange feeling exploded in his heart, and countless memories flooded back.

When he realized he was dreaming, he found he could wake up.

So, he kept waking up…

After telling his story, the madman said to the researchers, “It’s pointless to tell you this. I’m going to keep waking up.”

Then the madman’s face twisted, and he strained to open his eyes wide, as if trying to unleash some great move.

When nothing happened, he asked the researcher in confusion, “In your world, how many grams of kimchi do you have to put under your pillow?”

“500.”

When he heard this, the madman stared blankly at the researcher, tears streaming down his face.

This madman, lost in dreams for so long, was the discoverer of the relic “Dream,” Zhou Ming.

In the end, the researchers classified this incident as a relic phenomenon.

Because the cost of 500 grams of Korean kimchi in a glass jar was just too in line with the style of a relic.

Although the relic itself was never found, the case was thus resolved.