"Luo Wei, wake up! The sun’s already shining on your butt!"

  A coarse and grating voice drilled into her ears. Luo Wei struggled to open her eyes, but the scene before her remained blurry.

  The dream world was like a clear water mirror. The sudden voice crashed into it like a stone, sending ripples across the surface and distorting the surrounding images until they faded away.

  In the st second before leaving the dream, Luo Wei seemed to catch a glimpse of the dark elf’s stunned expression.

  The sharp arrow fell to the ground with a ctter. His body trembled, and his bck eyes desperately searched the air. His lips moved silently, forming a prayer or plea in her direction.

  Holding her breath, Luo Wei tried to hear what he was saying, but all she could hear was that irritating duck-like voice.

  "Luo Wei! You should really wake up now!"

  "How can you sleep so much? Even more than me! Luo Wei, get up already. We can’t figure out how to make that gliding chicken thing you mentioned!"

  "Luo Wei, Luo Wei, Luo Wei—"

  With a sharp intake of breath, Luo Wei opened her eyes and gred fiercely at Theodore.

  "Theodore, can you stop yelling? I was dreaming!"

  And it was right at the critical moment when this guy woke her up.

  Luo Wei was filled with frustration.

  "It’s already noon. What are you still dreaming about?" Theodore said, a skewer of charred fish dangling from his mouth as he chewed. "Want some fish? If you don’t, I’ll finish it and then we’ll work on that gliding chicken."

  "It’s called a glider," Luo Wei corrected, rubbing her temples as she crawled out of the tent. "Leave me a raw one. I’ll cook it myself."

  She couldn’t stomach the pitch-bck, overcooked fish.

  After eating the bnd roasted yellow croaker, Luo Wei yawned while weaving sturdy ropes from vines to secure the glider’s frame.

  Her mind kept drifting back to the pair of desperate eyes in her dream. Without realizing it, she became lost in thought.

  The dream from the morning had felt too real. When she grabbed the elf’s wrist, she could almost feel the cool, estic texture of his skin. That moment had startled even herself.

  Why would she dream something like that?

  Could it be because of Haisya’s story from yesterday? Daytime thoughts turning into nighttime dreams?

  "Luo Wei, what are you thinking about?" Theodore waved a hand in front of her face, puzzled. "Luo Wei?"

  "Huh? What is it?" Luo Wei snapped back to reality, looking at him.

  "Hol said we’ve got enough rope. No need to weave more," Theodore said, pcing the pnks he had chopped on the ground. "We’ve got everything you asked for. What’s the next step?"

  "It’s simple. Hold on, I’ll draw you a diagram."

  Luo Wei picked up a thin stick and sketched the outline of a glider on the smooth sand of the beach.

  "The spots I’ve circled need enchantments. You two work on inscribing wind and weight-reduction runes there before tying everything together."

  With their teamwork, the glider’s frame was quickly assembled.

  In the afternoon, Luo Wei attached the wings to the glider and completed some finishing touches. Theodore went into the forest to hunt, while Hol went to the sea to catch fish and make dried fish.

  They pnned to leave at dawn the next day. If the sea serpent cn found them, they wouldn’t have a chance to escape.

  To conserve energy, Luo Wei decided not to explore the Misty Pins that night. Before going to bed, she ground charcoal into granules, mixed it with crushed vine fibers, and wrapped the mixture in cloth to make three rudimentary gas masks.

  Meanwhile, Hol and Theodore spent half the night tinkering and finally managed to create a basic compass. It seemed their alchemy lessons hadn’t been in vain.

  After preparing everything they would need for the next day, the three of them y down in the tent.

  The warm firelight illuminated their faces as they drifted into peaceful sleep.

  In her dream, the ticking of a clock’s hands echoed once again.

  This time, Luo Wei didn’t meddle with the clock. The dream unfolded just as it had the previous night.

  The withered Tree of Life, the fallen flowers of vitality, the winged spirits plummeting to the ground, and the dark elves hiding in the cold underground after consuming the flower buds.

  She entered the underground pace again, walking past rows of elven statues, until she saw the dark elf who was barely breathing.

  Elves that left the Tree of Life were like fish out of water, relying on sleep to dey their deaths. In their prolonged slumber, they awaited a miracle that could revive the dead wood.

  But century after century passed, and no miracle came. The elves who had slept for too long decayed in the darkness, turning into stiff fossils.

  Only one elf remained alive in the underground pace. All his kind had perished.

  The despairing elf repeated his actions from the previous night, pulling out an arrow and driving it into his chest.

  Once again, Luo Wei instinctively reached out to stop him. But when her hand passed through his like loose sand, she suddenly realized it was all an illusion—a projection of the past.

  History that had already happened couldn’t be altered.

  In the end, the st elf still died in the lightless depths.

  Luo Wei witnessed the extinction of the elven race firsthand, feeling an inexplicable sense of regret.

  If only she could have saved him.

  She sighed and was about to leave when the scene around her suddenly changed.

  Bright sunlight filtered through the treetops, dispelling the morning mist in the forest.

  A dark elf, carrying a longbow and a quiver of arrows, walked through a graveyard of colpsed stone pilrs and entered the sacred ground of the elven race, untouched for five hundred years.

  This was once the home of the Tree of Life. Generations of elves had built wooden houses, pnted flowers, and constructed vine bridges around the mother tree. They had even erected tall spires and elegant arched castles, which encircled the Tree of Life like yers of onion rings. Here, they sang and danced day and night.

  But time had changed everything. The Tree of Life had long since rotted away, the spires had colpsed, and the castles were buried under fallen leaves. Only a few ancient flowering vines remained, sprawling across the forgotten elven city. The thick vines coiled around the Tree of Life’s stump, blooming with vibrant flowers swaying in the wind.

  The dark elf wandered through the ruins, eventually finding what had once been his home on the surface.

  Starting with a dipidated wooden house, he began cleaning the ancient elven city bit by bit, removing the dirt from the castles and repairing the broken stone walls.

  Luo Wei sat on a stone wall, quietly watching him move through the city, day after day, alone.

  One day, the dark elf pced a rge bouquet of fresh flowers and a jar of dew on an altar. Kneeling in the clean elven city, he prayed devoutly to a god.

  Curious, Luo Wei approached and heard him asking for the name of the god.

  Weren’t elves supposed to worship the God of Life? How could this elf not even know the name of his own deity?

  In that case, she wouldn’t stand on ceremony!

  Luo Wei loved nothing more than gaining a new follower for free.

  Immediately, she dipped her finger into the dew, crouched down, and wrote a line of flowery script on the vertical face of the altar, thoughtfully pcing it at eye level for him.

  After finishing, she suddenly felt a pang of loss, nearly forgetting that this was just a dream. He couldn’t see her, so how could he possibly see the words she had written?

  """