Dream

Crimson beams poured down like a torrential rain, so dense that not a single gap remained.

These were not lasers, but beams composed of pure positrons.

Every beam struck a bug with perfect precision, disintegrating it completely at the molecular level, leaving behind not even a speck of dust.

In an instant, a vast section of the sky was cleared. A huge, unnatural circular void appeared in the black insect tide, revealing the false sky behind it as it fractured.

Before the victorious cheers could escape the survivors' throats below, deeper terror choked them back down.

The bugs along the edge of the cleared area only froze for an instant.

Then, new cracks split open across their shells. No bodily fluids flowed from the wounds; instead, identical individuals wriggled out through division—one becoming two, two becoming four.

The void was refilled within a fraction of a second, more crowded and darker than before.

The swarm's numbers were increasing exponentially in a way that defied the laws of physics.

"Tsk. Paths really don't play by any rules..."

Zhang Qi smacked his lips as if he had tasted spoiled milk.

The Swarm Disaster.

Creations of the Path of Propagation, whose essence was limitless proliferation.

They did not reproduce through "birth," but through "division," devouring all matter and concepts to replicate themselves.

Worse still, this was a dream.

The screams and panic of the crowd below, their despairing imaginings of the swarm, were all pouring fresh water into this ocean.

Every fearful thought would be transformed by the dream's underlying logic into a new, even more grotesque bug.

The more he killed, the more the bugs could display the power of Propagation, and the more terrified people became;

and the more terrified people became, the more bugs there were.

So the more bugs