Unborn Mother and the Paper People's Weakness

The instant Lin Heier saw the paper people, countless thoughts flashed through her mind. First, she wondered if she had been poisoned.

Lin Heier had heard that those who consumed opium paste often saw hallucinations. Some believed they had glimpsed an immortal paradise, some saw themselves holding power over the world, some saw eternal life. Occasionally, she had heard stories of people seeing terrifying scenes, but they had all been hearsay.

Yet that possibility was far too unlikely.

She was a dark force master. Her control over her body far surpassed that of ordinary people. Though she would not claim immunity to every poison, she would be keenly aware of any changes to her body after being poisoned. Since arriving here, she had indeed detected no signs of poisoning.

Second... this place was strange. There was terror here—those things of legend!

Thoughts racing through her mind, Lin Heier stood sideways, keeping guard against the eerie paper people while sternly demanding of Wu Pifu, "What did you do!? Where are my sisters!?"

Wu Pifu could only helplessly point upward. Lin Heier immediately looked up, then her entire body shuddered, and she could no longer speak.

Because they had come into contact with Wu Pifu, they could see all this. Xu Rongyu had been the same before, and Lin Heier was the same now. Clearly, some mechanism allowed him to share his spiritual perception with others. That was why he had tested the waters by touching Lin Heier. Xu Rongyu had not turned into a paper person after Wu Pifu touched him—what if Lin Heier had likewise avoided becoming one because of that touch?

These paper people were exceedingly dangerous. Wu Pifu could instinctively sense it.

They looked like nothing more than light, flimsy sheets of paper, yet they radiated an eerie and terrifying fluctuation.

And these were merely paper people transformed from ordinary humans. If a martial arts master like Lin Heier also became a paper person, would she turn into something even more terrifying?

No matter what, when Wu Pifu saw the thread above Lin Heier's head fall away, some ideas formed in his mind.

As Lin Heier looked into the air, she saw the huge, twisted humanoid figure from which the threads hung.

Others might not have been able to identify what that figure was, but her entire body jolted. A familiar sensation made her limbs turn ice-cold.

This was... the Unborn Mother!!

Though it was only an extremely hazy phantom, a distorted humanoid shape, Lin Heier had visualized the image of the Unborn Mother for more than ten years. She was more familiar with it than anything else. There was no way she could mistake it!

The cultivation method Lin Heier practiced was the Yellow Lotus Holy Mother Scripture.

It was said that the Unborn Mother had five lotus incarnations: the Supreme Azure Lotus, the Merit Golden Lotus, the World-Destroying Black Lotus, the Purgatory Red Lotus, and the Thick-Earth Yellow Lotus that she cultivated. This was, in truth, a Buddhist cultivation art. During cultivation, one needed to visualize the Unborn Mother's Yellow Lotus form—and that Yellow Lotus form was the twisted, hazy humanoid figure before them!

The five lotus incarnations also represented the locations of the True Emptiness Homeland where the Unborn Mother resided. The Supreme Azure Lotus represented the Heavenly Dao, the Merit Golden Lotus represented the Buddhist Realm, the World-Destroying Black Lotus represented nothingness, the Purgatory Red Lotus represented the prison of sin, while the Thick-Earth Yellow Lotus represented the mortal world... Was that why they were paper people?

Lin Heier was shocked, yet she also seemed to gain some insight. She looked at the threads above the paper people's heads and urgently said to Wu Pifu, "If all of this is real, then can cutting the threads save my sisters?"

Wu Pifu hesitated briefly before shaking his head. "I don't know if it can. When I touched you earlier, part of your body had already turned to paper, but now you've recovered. Feel yourself and see if anything is different."

Lin Heier was startled. She immediately examined herself closely, and her expression soon became incomparably grim.

At least thirty percent of the qi and blood throughout her body had been drained, nearly damaging her foundation. Worse, if no one had pointed it out, she would not even have noticed. If she forced her qi and blood into motion to unleash dark force again with her current loss, she might very well drop dead on the spot!

And that was only partial paperification. Her sisters had already completely turned into paper people. They might already be...

Gritting her teeth, Lin Heier still flicked her Red Soft Spear and struck at the thread above the nearest paper person's head.

Before the eyes of the three of them, the Red Soft Spear passed directly through the thread above the paper person's head. Yet it was as though it had cut through air—or perhaps it truly had only cut through air. The thread did not move in the slightest, while the paper person continued to "float" closer, step by step.

Seeing this, Lin Heier backed away slightly. Although she still stood some distance away from Wu Pifu and Yamadai, that movement and posture already revealed much.

Even if these paper people had once been her sisters, matters had reached the point where the living and the dead had gone separate ways... No, these paper people were not even ghosts. They were something stranger still.

"Master, do you have any solution?" Lin Heier was frantic inside, but her voice remained steady as she asked.

Wu Pifu frowned and was about to step forward to stand alongside Lin Heier. At his side, Yamadai immediately reached out to stop him. Seeing this, Lin Heier sneered. "Don't worry. If Master intends to fight, then I will certainly fight as well."

Wu Pifu also turned to Yamadai and said, "We have to test them. We need to know how these paper people attack, whether they can be changed back into humans, and whether they can be destroyed. If we don't even know that, what are we supposed to do next?"

Only then did Yamadai release Wu Pifu, and Wu Pifu went to stand beside Lin Heier.

At this point, the nearest paper person was only a little over two meters away from them. Lin Heier suddenly threw her Red Soft Spear toward the mortuary, then assumed a stance with empty hands.

This was also her way of telling Wu Pifu that she had no intention of clashing with him now. These paper people before them were their shared enemy.

Lin Heier asked softly, "How did you make me break free from the paperification just now?"

Wu Pifu did not hesitate and answered directly, "Anyone who touches me can see these things. As for changing back from a paper person, that depended on you."

Lin Heier said thoughtfully, "You have yin-yang eyes, or perhaps the eye of wisdom? And to reverse the paperification, one needs one's own qi and blood?"

Wu Pifu did not know either.

To be honest, although he had awakened only a little over a hundred days ago, and though there had been several surviving seniors guiding him before, neither he nor those seniors had dared venture beyond the Dream World at baseline reality point nine. Even then, they usually did not dare establish shelters casually. Once five days had passed, they would return to Gaia. Only if they had confirmed that there was nothing strange in that world, or if the nightmare was truly weak, would they establish a shelter.

And a weak nightmare was defined as one without absurdities or supernatural phenomena, possessing only pure physical strength—such as mutated beasts or the relatively weaker monsters from various legends.

Only under such circumstances would his seniors establish a shelter in that world.

As for supernatural types, absurd types, and all manner of terrifying, rule-based, incorporeal absurdities, the last time they encountered one—a Level Two nightmare—it had directly caused the deaths of the two remaining seniors. He himself had survived alone only through luck.

Strictly speaking, the paper people before him, along with the twisted humanoid that transformed people into paper people, were the second non-physical nightmare he had encountered.

Lin Heier did not receive an answer from Wu Pifu, but she did not ask again. Instead, she stomped the ground and charged forward. Wu Pifu was only an instant slower, and the two of them rushed toward the first paper person almost side by side.

Lin Heier raised her palm and struck at the thread above the paper person's head, saying softly at the same time, "Wait for me."

Wu Pifu had originally been about to tear at the paper person's throat with a claw strike. Hearing that, he paused slightly, changed the claw into a palm strike, and struck at the arm holding the paper mallet.

One after the other, separated by no more than an instant, they each struck their targets. Then both their expressions changed sharply, and they each retreated several meters. They looked at one another and spread open their palms, revealing bluish-black marks upon them. The mark on Wu Pifu's palm vanished in the blink of an eye, while the one on Lin Heier's hand took two or three seconds to fade. Her face had even turned slightly pale.

"It works, but this..." Lin Heier's expression was extremely ugly. She knew her sisters might not be saved.

The instant they touched the thread and the paper person, both felt an icy pain at the point of contact. Even that momentary touch made it feel as though some of their qi and blood had been lost. Though they could immediately circulate their qi and blood to recover, their total reserves of qi and blood had still been absorbed.

Looking again at the paper person, there were a few wrinkles on the paper surface of its arm, and the thread above its head had wavered slightly, but that was all. The paper person still floated slowly toward them, while the dozen or so paper people behind it maintained the same pace.

"It works," Lin Heier said softly. "But we can't fight so many... paper people!"

Wu Pifu nodded as well, then turned to Yamadai behind them and shouted, "How are the preparations coming!?"

Yamadai grinned and opened his mouth to roar loudly. Two seconds later, a woman's shout came from inside the mortuary.

Wu Pifu said to Lin Heier, "Go, into the mortuary. We prepared something to deal with the paper people!"

With that, Wu Pifu and Yamadai quickly ran toward the mortuary.

Lin Heier did not retreat immediately. Her face was full of sorrow as she looked at the paper people. Several of them had been her trusted confidantes, and the rest were all her sisters. She had never expected that a casual trip out would turn them all into such absurdities.

As the paper people drew near, she gritted her teeth and followed close behind Wu Pifu and Yamadai, rushing into the mortuary.

On the open ground before several buildings of the mortuary, Xu Shilan and Xu Rongyu stood holding several unlit torches. When they saw Wu Pifu and Yamadai running over, followed by a beautiful woman whose shoulder revealed a hint of spring, they immediately lit the torches. At the same time, Xu Rongyu shouted, "Is that the Red Lantern Society's Senior Sister?"

Lin Heier was a few steps behind. When she saw Xu Rongyu, whose clothing and hair differed from the other three, she shouted back, "That is me. Are you Young Master Xu?"

Both understood the other's identity, but this was not the time for pleasantries. Behind the three of them, more than a dozen paper people were slowly approaching. Wu Pifu took a torch first and loudly told everyone, "These are paper people. Their bodies are made of paper. Don't touch them with your bodies—your qi and blood... your life force will be drained away, and the cold will seep through you until you have no strength left!"

"It's a good thing we spent a fortune buying all the oil from that post station earlier. Use fire!"

"Let's see whether these paper people are afraid of fire!"