The Only Answer
Night had deepened.
Oko, exhausted in body and mind from frantically practicing "Spirit Realm," lay on the bed in her bedroom, sunk in a deathlike sleep.
Ye Chen stood beside the bed, looking down at Oko's sleeping face. He quietly brushed aside a strand of her hair, then gently pulled the blanket over her.
After doing all this, Ye Chen tiptoed out of the bedroom. As before, he went alone to the pool in the courtyard, leaned back in a reclining chair, looked up at the moon, and silently smoked a cigar.
Then, amid the clouds of smoke he exhaled, the cold moonlight began to thin through the gaps in the haze.
"Phew."
Suddenly, a voice tinged with gloom and mockery rang out beside Ye Chen without warning.
"What's wrong, great hero of the Hunter Corps?"
The instant he heard that voice, Ye Chen's expression changed drastically. He immediately and instinctively unleashed the false "Spirit Realm" he had created!
"Boundless Blood Sea"!
Crash!
In the next instant, the world before Ye Chen transformed in every direction into a vast, boundless crimson ocean shrouded in mist, streaked with lightning and rolling thunder.
Ye Chen himself, along with the table and chairs, now sat in the very center of the blood sea's surface.
Then Ye Chen turned toward his side—and once again saw that man who seemed like a nightmare.
At this very moment, Jietisikoki the Butcher Hunter had somehow crossed the barrier between dream and reality without Ye Chen noticing, silently taking a seat beside him.
Faced with this hallucination that overturned all common sense, Ye Chen's pupils widened slightly, only to swiftly return to their calm state.
"..."
Jietisikoki tilted his head and stared at Ye Chen, his eyes brimming with ridicule and contempt, before continuing his