Pet King
Pet King - Chapter 1066-1067: Who Is the First to Dream

Early morning.

Zhang Zian was woken up by his natural clock.

He yawned. He didn’t sleep well the night before, not because of anything in particular, but because he had been dreaming. In his dream, he stood on the street, holding a piece of paper and pen in his hand, and stopped pedestrians walking by to ask them to sign his petition. For some reason, however, he could not say anything in his dream; the only thing he could do was say “ah” over and over again. He was very anxious in his heart, and in the end, he woke up.

Whatever one thought about during the day, they dreamt about at night. He knew why he had that dream. It was, of course, because of the proposal for protecting small animals. Over the last two days, his thoughts had been consumed by it. Even when he was sleeping he dreamed about it.

The temperature was getting warmer and warmer, and even the mornings were not cold. Zhang Zian stood up, wearing his pajamas, and grabbed a piece of paper from his desk.

The empty spaces in the proposal had been filled with names––even the back was totally filled with signatures. There were not only signatures from people he was acquainted with; there were actually more signatures from strangers. He had not tricked them into signing. If they wanted they could randomly call to check on the status of the proposal, they were more than welcome to.

When the next meeting of the Chinese Peoples’ Political Consultative Conference was held, he intended to read the proposal in the meeting. He hoped to get the attention of the people there.

Anyway, he could only do so much. The rest was based on the people’s decisions… But there was one thing he did not doubt: China would one day have a law for the protection of small animals. It was just a question of time.

When he put down the proposal and turned around, he found that Famous was already awake and in a daze. The light from the nightlight had been buried in the sunlight of the morning.

The other elfins also woke up one by one. Zhang Zian walked over to ask, “Famous, did you not sleep well?”

Famous shook its head and said in confusion, “I had a very strange dream.”

“All dreams are very strange.” Zhang Zian smiled and said, “I often have dreams about marrying a wife!”

“Ga ga! You already feel that it is strange to dream of marrying a wife? You should dream of marrying a husband! That would be more accurate!” When Richard heard their conversation, although it was lazing around on the bed, it jumped up like it had been injected with chicken blood. Its face was full of excitement.

Zhang Zian’s facial expression did not change as he threatened it. “I love killing birds in my dreams. You better be careful.”

“Ga ga! Are you sure you’re not killing your own small bird?” Richard called out slyly.

“Meow, meow, meow! I can help you!” Snowy Lionet added, rolling over like a ball of fur.

“You live a comfortable life right now. Be careful, or I’ll bring up the list to use against you in the future!” Zhang Zian stared at Richard. There was no point in arguing with Richard. It would often pull Zhang Zian down to its level, then use its rich experience to attack him. Only using a chicken feather duster could let him fully express his anger!

As for Snowy Lionet, it was better to just ignore it. He really could not stand it trying to sneak attack him at night.

“Ga ga! I’m so scared! I want to poop green pills now!”

Zhang Zian was speechless. He turned to Famous and asked, “What did you dream about?”

Famous said, “I don’t know how to describe it… Dreams I’ve had in the past have been very lifelike, but I was always just a bystander. Whatever I did was destined to be unchangeable. The dream I just had was different… I forgot what happened, but the most important thing was that it was like a half-dream and half-awake event. I knew I was dreaming, and I felt as though I could control something, such as when to wake up. So I tried it, and I woke up.”

Zhang Zian thought about it. “Hmm… I seem to have heard something about this before… Let me try to remember… Have you heard of ‘Qingming dreams’?”

“Ga ga! Qingming dreams? There’s rain at the Qingming Festival, and the Zhang family children want to break their backs. Ask where there are calcium tablets, and I point at America!” Richard came out of the bathroom with a stink and joked. “Speaking of that, when are we going to visit England? I want to buy you a Scottish skirt to wear… Scottish men are so happy that they can wear women’s clothes!”

“I thought about that. Someone in one of my dreams said that China’s greatest and longest art form is men crossdressing…” Famous recalled.

Zhang Zian said, “These words… There really was someone who said that before.”

“Right. What is a Qingming dream?” Famous did not care who had such foresight and was instead concerned about its dream. It was the first time it had heard such a foreign phrase.

“Qingming dreams… They are metaphysical and controversial. People who believe in them are highly respected. People who don’t believe in them sneer at them. There is hardly any intermediate transition zone.”

Zhang Zian thought for a moment and began to talk about what he had heard. Many boys were interested in mysterious things when they were young. For example, he had a pile of UFO Exploration magazines left at home that were collecting dust somewhere. At that time, he was quite addicted to the magazine and spent his pocket money on them.

Qingming dreams, to put it simply, were when one was in an awake state while they were dreaming. They were also called lucid dreams.

For a normal dream, the person having the dream would not know that they were dreaming, even if the dream was very unbelievable. The person dreaming would keep moving on in the dream like a wooden puppet being controlled by strings, and would forget the dream entirely upon waking up.

There were different levels of Qingming dreams. They were generally more realistic. The dreamer could vaguely realize that he was dreaming, but the feeling of powerlessness still existed. It was just like watching a movie with a fixed plot. Even though they knew the movie was going to have a tragic ending, they were unable to do anything. The sober state was often fleeting and elusive.

At a higher level, the dreamer knew that he was dreaming. If it was a good dream or a wet dream, of course, he was willing for it to go on. But if it was a terrible nightmare, the dreamer would be anxious to wake up. Sometimes, when the dreamer was in a hurry, he could wake himself up and break away from the nightmare.

Most people had more or less experienced the above three dreams, but they may not have remembered them after waking up, which was not out of the ordinary. But the controversy of Qingming dreams was in that it could be further controlled by repeated practice, which could not only end nightmares in advance, but also prolong good dreams… and wet dreams. Even further, people could control their actions in their dreams, as well as change the direction of their dream. It was said to practice reality at the highest level, and even ignore the boundaries between dreams and reality to reach the metaphysical level.

“Ga ga! Qingming Dreams––the gospel of premature ejaculation, and the secret of women’s climax!” Richard sneered at the slogan, imitating the small advertisement. “Only an idiot like you would believe in this!”

Lucid dreaming sounded like a shady thing. No proper research organization had done any extensive research on it. The human brain was extremely complicated, and scientists hadn’t even figured out how consciousness had come to be. Needless to say, subconscious consciousness was even less understood.

Zhang Zian clarified with Famous, “Of course, I don’t believe in this. That repeated practicing can make you forget the boundaries between dreams and reality… This is just like something out of a fantasy novel. Only Wang Qian and Li Kun would believe in something like that. But saying that repeated practice would be able to help you control the outcomes of your dreams… I wouldn’t dare deny it completely.”

“So you mean to say that there’s such a possibility?” Famous asked.

Zhang Zian hesitated for a bit before nodding. “I don’t think we can completely rule it out.”

Famous sank into deep thought.

“Even though scientists haven’t researched lucid dreaming much, there is something similar—the VR games that many fantasy books mention,” Zhang Zian added. “Both of these allow the human body to experience things that they would never be able to in real life, or to experience something that has a high cost in real life easily in VR…”

“Isn’t that great?” Famous asked. “Since a very small amount of people in the real world can take control of a huge amount of resources and wealth, isn’t it a good thing to let normal people experience power and wealth through things like lucid dreaming and VR games?”

“If it’s just once or twice, just occasionally, then it’s fine. But, in most fantasy books, most VR gamers eventually end up too immersed in the virtual world, unwilling to surface,” Zhang Zian warned. “Because of how amazing the virtual world is, the real world becomes boring to them, unappealing and unattractive. Some of them willingly let go of the real world… You can only experience VR games once or twice, but in order to be good at lucid dreaming, you have to continuously practice it, and it has a risk of addiction, causing a disappointment in reality.”

Even though some dreams helped people to calm down, dreams were just that—dreams. They were not reality, and it wouldn’t be good to be too obsessed.

Famous understood the message between the lines. “I got it. I will be careful.”

In its dream, it knew that it was dreaming, but it had always been hesitant about changing the direction of the dream. For example, there was the dream that showed up according to Old Time Tea’s memories. What was outside the scope of its memories? Was it white, unfinished pictures like an uncompleted video game, or was it a deep abyss of which you couldn’t see the end?

It didn’t know, and it hadn’t tried to find out.

But it didn’t know what had happened to cause its hesitation to decrease and its confidence to inflate drastically, pushing him to venture into the unknown. For example…

In Old Time Tea’s memories, there were definitely no traces of 20th century Europe. If Famous kept walking west while in the dream, what would happen? What would it see?

If Famous had really succesfully reached Europe, in the midst of the war, would it see its young self?

No! Not its young self—it was the young Rin Tin Tin!

Famous jolted, shaking its head to wake itself up. It was too deep into the character, and it had almost mixed itself up with Rin Tin Tin again.

It had played Rin Tin Tin for too long. The movie company staff had asked it to imitate Rin Tin Tin in every breath and every step. Deng Ken often carried it to repeat how it had carried the young Rin Tin Tin out of the fire years ago… After some time, it became almost like brainwashing.

The other elfins started to come downstairs too. Zhang Zian opened the curtains and windows to air the room out before picking up his phone from beside his pillow to check his unread messages.

He had been pulled into several groups and had a lot of unread messages. Nearly twenty to thirty people added him as friends every day. Some of them were customers, some of them fans of the films, some of them reporters, and some of them government officials. He had to filter through them before adding some of them as friends.

Peng Xuan had sent him several messages at around one in the morning.

Zhang Zian thought he might have some important issues to discuss, so he opened those messages first.

Peng Xuan: “Hey Zhang, are you asleep?

Peng Xuan: I have good news. Our movie finally premiered after getting delayed twice. The preliminary numbers for our box office sales are out. Guess what the number is!

Peng Xuan: Alright, guess you’re already asleep. There’s not many youngsters that sleep so early like you. I wanted you to guess, but I suppose I should just tell you directly. I’ll get insomnia if I keep it to myself.

Peng Xuan: One billion!

Peng Xuan: Isn’t it shocking? Everyone in the production crew was extremely shocked. Our budget for production and marketing wasn’t even half a billion, and a part of it was additional marketing fees that we got after the award. This is like a dream!

Peng Xuan: Alright, I’m going to sleep. My wife nagged at me several times, but I think I’ll still lose sleep tonight.

Peng Xuan: The crew’s preparing for a celebration dinner. Are you able to come?

Peng Xuan: Hope to see your reply! Tell Famous hi for me! Good night!”

Zhang Zian finished reading the messages, surprise and excitement bubbling in his heart. Even though they had all thought that the box office results wouldn’t be bad—they could see this from the number of fans coming into the shop to take photos with Famous every day, some of them even coming from miles away just to tell Famous how impactful the movie had been for them—no one had guessed that they would have one billion sales!

One billion—they could almost squeeze into the top ten movies in China for the year. For a movie with a dog as its main character, this was a never-before-seen accomplishment.

Besides, even though those results were nothing compared to extremely popular movies, the response from the overseas market was surprisingly good. Several countries had already brought the movie in. If everything went well, they could get another wave of profit from overseas.

The other messages were mostly congratulations from the production crew or other directors or producers that had wanted to work with them. Even the main producer Nie Yuan had sent him a few customary congratulations… It was fine just skimming through them, since he could just send all of them a general message back. Some of them were just fair-weather friends, after all.

After reading all of his messages, Zhang Zian had wanted to lock his phone, start washing up, and tell Famous the good news too.

Right then, another message popped up.

[Game notice]: Congratulations! Your reincarnated dog has collected enough belief points and can level up now!