"Pendulum of the Virtual Realm" - When dreams become behemoths that swallow reality, who can keep the last second of "awakeness" in the whirlpool of reality and reality?
Gu Cheng is the youngest dream tracer among the "Net Weavers". His duty is to sneak into other people's dreams and repair the fragments of consciousness eroded by reverse dreams. But this time, the mission he received was to enter the ruins of the "Forgotten Sanatorium" - a strange place that was sealed off due to mass hysteria three years ago, and is now seeping out "anti-dream fluctuations" that are more dangerous than nightmares.
Behind the iron gate of the nursing home, he met Yan Yu, an intern in a white coat. This girl who always holds an old-fashioned camera seems to have been waiting for his arrival. Her lens contains truths that have been forgotten by time: on the lawn of the nursing home, hydrangeas are growing in a luxuriant way that is inconsistent with reality; at the copper bell at the end of the corridor, every time the pendulum swings, reality is bitten; and what is even more terrifying is that those "memory devourers" who should be trapped in dreams are turning real living people into dream decorations through broken mirrors...
Gu Cheng's pocket watch stopped at 3:17 three years ago, which was the time when his mentor disappeared in "Jingyuan Abandoned Capital". Yan Yu's camera captured the figure of his mentor in the nursing home - he was holding a pot of green radish and said: "When the pendulum stops, reality will be completely swallowed up."
When the two of them went deep into the 17th level of the dreamland and faced the whirlpool of memories woven by the "forgotten ones", Yan Yu suddenly showed an unfamiliar smile: "Do you think I'm here to help?" Her fingertips scratched Gu Cheng's wrist, and in the sting of the fragments of consciousness, he saw another Yan Yu - wearing a cheongsam, standing in the memory devourer's camp, the mirror under his feet reflected countless gnawed faces.
It turns out that the most dangerous dream rebels are never monsters trapped in dreams.
When the sky of the city was shrouded in gray-black "virtual clouds", and when the same cracks began to appear in everyone's memories, Gu Cheng finally understood his mentor's words before his death: "The real danger is ourselves." And he and Yan Yu, one holding the fragment of lucidity and the other holding the memory camera, must uncover the ultimate conspiracy of "dreams counteracting reality" before the pendulum completely stops -
Perhaps, since the first time humans collectively looked up at the stars and weaved their first dream cocoon, the outcome of this battle between reality and fiction has already been written.
And are they game-breakers or new chess pieces?
Intent: When virtuality and reality coexist, only by anchoring reality with clarity can existence be prevented from becoming a footnote to a dream.
