"Ethan Zhang, Ethan Zhang..."
Low, rumbling shouts echoed from the crowd. The calls rose and fell, the people all around seemed to be dancing, arms raised as if in worship, their hands gently moving up and down.
At a glance, their hands looked like waves, rising and falling with the rhythm of the chanting.
Surprised, I saw that none of them had faces—each wore an iron mask, disturbingly strange. I lowered my head again; Vivian Ouyang's head was gone. I looked over.
A long, buzzing note—an electric guitar. I looked over and saw Easton Grant clutching a guitar, a microphone floating before his mouth. Suddenly, with a powerful beat, he began to sing.
The crowd, once lifeless, started to dance. Their movements were perfectly synchronized, just like the dance I performed for Rufina Howard after casting a spell that day.
With a bang, I stared in shock. Vivian Ouyang's headless body stood atop the overturned van, and, like a prophet, began to dance.
The rhythm grew stronger and stronger.
"Amitabha... ah... ah... ah... Amitabha... bha... bha... bha..."
Following the guitar, the rhythmic sound of a wooden fish began to knock. It was my cousin, sitting cross-legged and floating beside Easton Grant, tapping the wooden fish and chanting Buddhist verses in rhythm.
I rubbed my eyes. Everything before me was just too strange.
From the sky, colorful paper scraps drifted down. Suddenly, neon lights on the surrounding buildings began to flicker. The street turned into a dance floor, deafening music blasting as people twisted and writhed like a frenzy of demons.
Abruptly, the music shifted to a mechanical style. The crowd moved in perfect step, like robots, stomping the ground, their bodies stiff yet rhythmic, dancing along.
Suddenly, something clicked in my mind. Mrs. Blake once said, everything is illusion, everything is real. I dashed forward, weaving and dodging through the dancing crowd, hands clamped over my ears.
This is my own dream—it's all illusion. I have to find the part of this dream that belongs to the real future.
Dreams are built of both illusion and reality. What I see here is illusion—I must find the real part.
I glanced at the clock in a shop—it was 8:21. I had twelve minutes left. This was real. The time hadn't moved before, but now it did.
I searched carefully among the dancing crowd for the man who had just smiled eerily in the crowd—I had to find him.
As I walked, a figure suddenly darted out in front of me. It was the person in the gray hooded tracksuit. I hurried after him.
"Stop!" I shouted. The man ran onto the sidewalk; there were fewer people around now. I vaulted the guardrail and chased after him.