My Dream Connects to 3000 Years in the Future

Slowly walking in, Chu Bamboo surveyed his surroundings as a strange feeling rose within him.

A damp, decaying scent permeated the entrance. Moss grew on the cave walls, and the path underfoot was rugged and uneven.

’Seriously, is this really the entrance to a nuclear facility? It looks just like a cave! Even if it hasn’t been maintained, it shouldn’t look like *this*... Or was the original design theme supposed to be ”cave chic”? Did the guy who proposed this architectural style get a promotion from his boss? How on earth did this get approved...’

Chu Bamboo continued his internal rant. ’And there aren’t even any lights? If I’d known, I would’ve chopped down some wood to make a torch!’

There were no lights, but because Chu Bamboo was an Extraordinary and wasn’t too far from the entrance, some light still filtered in, allowing him to make out the scene inside.

After walking for about thirty or forty meters, he came to a sudden turn.

As Chu Bamboo rounded the corner, the scene before him changed drastically.

At the turn was a wide-open doorway.

Beyond the doorway, the rough stone walls gave way to cold, smooth metal ones that had a texture similar to the Nuwa Base.

There were still no visible lights in this metal tunnel—but the place wasn’t dim. It was as if the silvery walls themselves were emitting a faint glow.

’Just like the Nuwa Base?’ The thought flashed through Chu Bamboo’s mind as he stepped through the doorway. The transition from stone to metal created the illusion of passing through a portal.

As he walked, he ran his fingers over the metal’s surface—it was cold and textured. He even noticed neatly arranged rivets at regular intervals.

’The construction quality here is inferior to the Nuwa Base!’

Chu Bamboo concluded. The silvery walls of the Nuwa Base were smooth and seamless, with no visible joints or welds from the outside, as if built from a single, integrated piece. This place, however, was much cruder.

Continuing forward, Chu Bamboo soon saw another open mechanical doorway—a huge metal door suspended from the ceiling. It was clearly forged from a special alloy, with roller tracks on either side.

Clearly, if this door were closed, it would slam down from above and seal the passage completely. He had to admit, Chu Bamboo had only ever seen doors like this in anime and sci-fi movies; he’d never encountered one in real life.

’I have to say, this kind of door looks cool as hell, but what if it breaks? How the heck would you even fix it?’

’A normal door is connected to the wall with hinges, letting it swing open and shut. If it breaks, you just have to fix the hinges.’

’But if *this* door broke... you’d probably need heavy machinery to force it up... Just imagining the workload, the sheer spectacle of it, made Chu Bamboo’s eye twitch.

After walking a bit further, Chu Bamboo saw a descending staircase. He paused for a moment before continuing on.

Before long, he saw another huge metal door, identical to the last, hanging open from the ceiling.

’Were all the doors inside the base open from the start? Or were they all closed, and opening the main entrance triggered them all to open at once?’

Thoughts churned in Chu Bamboo’s mind.

The one thing he was grateful for, and also found strange, was that there were no bizarre forks in the road.

From start to finish, there had only been one path. It just twisted and turned, punctuated by occasional staircases leading down and a series of wide-open doorways.

’If there’s only one path, why have so many doors? It gives the impression that in an emergency, they would all slam shut to prevent something inside from escaping.’

Chu Bamboo paused. ’Hold on. What if this place was never a nuclear facility at all, but some kind of biology lab?’

’No... that’s impossible, right?’

His eyelid twitched. As much as he wanted to deny it, when he thought about it, his main reason for believing this was a nuclear facility was that he had jumped down a smokestack and landed in what looked like a reactor pool. Plus, he’d heard an AI alarm warning of excessive radiation...

’But in terms of actual, undeniable proof? There really wasn’t any, was there?’

After several more turns and descending three more staircases, Chu Bamboo’s expression finally turned grim. He could hear them now—frenzied roars, crashing impacts, and guttural screams.

’There are... living things inside a nuclear facility?!’

”What the hell,” Chu Bamboo muttered, pursing his lips. His pace only quickened.

He wasn’t particularly worried about any great danger. For one, he could just reset if he died. For another, he had already gauged the strength of the personnel the Captain’s Office had sent from their logistics department.

He didn’t know how strong their most powerful member was, but if the place were truly dangerous, they would never have let Gao Changming, or even the regular logistics members who were weaker than him, go inside to haul things out.

’Don’t tell me someone has been maintaining and operating this facility the whole time. If so, what was B2 talking about? He said that once I was inside, I just had to close the door and no one could break in for a while. What a load of crap!’

Finally, Chu Bamboo passed through the last door, and the space before him opened up dramatically.

He was on a high platform.

He was nearly thirty meters above the ground.

The metal hall was immense. Looking out, Chu Bamboo almost thought he’d been transported to Yanjing’s Bird’s Nest Stadium. No, even the Bird’s Nest might be a size smaller than this place.

The sheer, empty space was so vast it baffled him; from the outside, the mountain it was housed in hadn’t seemed nearly large enough to contain it—

But then he belatedly recalled all the turns he’d made and all the stairs he’d descended. Perhaps he was already deep underground.

Chu Bamboo glanced around. The platform he was on was also a great distance from the ceiling above.

The distance from floor to ceiling was nearly a hundred meters!

This platform was situated about halfway between the floor and the ceiling.

In the very center of the metal hall stood a massive metal pillar, stretching from the floor all the way to the ceiling.

However, Chu Bamboo had no time to admire the magnificent sight.

He glanced down, and his gaze was instantly riveted. After a few breaths, cold sweat beaded on his forehead. He murmured, ”What in the world is this?”

On the floor below, iron chains stretched out from the walls in every direction, each one shackling a monster.

A few of the monsters were roaring and struggling, their movements causing the chains to clang loudly. Yet, they couldn’t budge the shackles in the slightest.

Aside from them, the vast majority of the creatures were curled up near the walls, completely still.

Only the slight rise and fall of their chests indicated they were still alive.

Meanwhile, in front of some of the chained monsters lay the bodies of unchained ones. These corpses had been ripped open and disemboweled. They were clearly dead.

Judging by the large chunks of flesh missing from their bodies and even the few snapped bones, he could only assume one thing. ’Are they... food for the ones that are still alive?’

”...?”

’What the hell kind of place is this?!’

Before arriving, Chu Bamboo had imagined many possibilities. He’d thought he might see a near-future, sci-fi-style laboratory, or maybe something like a bio-chem lab. Heck, he would have even accepted a simple, concrete-walled office. After all, the Divine Continent wasn’t known for flashy designs; practicality was king.

’But what the hell is this barbaric scene, a grotesque mix of advanced technology and savagery?’

Suddenly, one of the monsters spotted Chu Bamboo. It let out a sharp roar and lunged upward with a ferocious expression. However, with a piercing clang of metal, the slender chains binding its limbs and torso only dug deeper into its flesh.

A pale, whitish blood flowed from the wounds carved by the chains, but before it could even hit the ground, it froze in mid-air. Then, as if alive, it shot across the hall and into a huge, open-topped vat placed beside the central metal pillar.

The vat was only about three or four meters high, but its diameter was roughly ten meters.

Chu Bamboo peered over and saw that the bottom of the vat was already covered in a thin, pale layer of the white liquid.

It was Fushui.

”...”

A long silence followed.

’So that’s how it is. It’s actually like this. No wonder... No wonder what B2 said before sounded so insane.’

Chu Bamboo nodded, his expression blank. So this was the truth behind Fushui.

He had misunderstood from the very beginning. Perhaps Cultivation really was related to radiation, but it had nothing to do with chugging down radioactive water straight from a reactor. It was about absorbing the... blood... that flowed from these monsters!

’Are they... human? Or something else entirely?’

A terrifying thought suddenly struck Chu Bamboo. If he recalled correctly, hadn’t the information from the ruined timeline revealed that a Cultivator with too much contamination would turn into a monster?

’If I start from that premise... then these creatures in front of me...’

’No, no, no, there have to be native monsters, too!’

Chu Bamboo tried to think rationally. But even with all he had seen, this was almost too much to handle. The Cultivation system had just pivoted from nuclear radiation to being sourced from monsters—or even worse, from the body parts of monsters that were once human...

After taking several deep breaths, Chu Bamboo steeled himself and leaped. He landed with a resounding THUD.

For a moment, the entire chamber fell silent.

Even many of the monsters that had been lying motionless slowly rose, their gazes fixed on him. In their eyes, he saw ferocity, killing intent, madness... but also calm, and even... confusion? Huh?

’Confusion?!’

Stunned, Chu Bamboo looked toward a strange man with two heads and scaly skin, whose expression was surprisingly normal.

He was sitting cross-legged with his back against the metal wall. Seven chains bound him—one for each hand and foot, one for each of his two necks, and one for his waist.