Buddha Statue

"Spare me, hero, spare..."

Wu Pifu formed a claw with one hand and gripped the dark-skinned man's neck. His gaze did not waver in the slightest. Tightening his grip, he directly crushed the man's Adam's apple. The dark-skinned man fell to the ground, clutching his throat and struggling desperately. Ten-odd seconds later, he stiffened and stopped moving.

Only after the man was still did Wu Pifu crouch down to search him.

A small dagger, a fragment of silver, and a handful of copper coins.

Wu Pifu tucked everything into his clothes. After looking at the dark-skinned man for several seconds, he dragged the body into the woods beside the road, casually tossed it aside, and strode toward the nunnery.

"Looks like ordinary people in 0.7 Dream World haven't changed much either."

Walking down the night road, Wu Pifu recalled some of the important information the veterans had told him when he had first awakened.

Because of the gaze of "?", the Dream Network had warped and become the Dream World. All citizens had sunk into the Dream Network and could never awaken again. Only maintenance personnel like them, who had not been inside the Dream Network, could either awaken naturally when their time came or establish a Sanctuary in the Dream World and gain Main Brain authorization, allowing them to free three to five maintenance personnel from their Stasis Pods.

Depending on the baseline reality level, the farther the Dream World deviated from Baseline Reality, the more terrifying it became.

Once they entered the Dream World, they would be noticed by the strange entities within it. The veterans called them Nightmares, and they were divided into three levels.

This was not a classification of the Nightmares' strength. Some Level 1 Nightmares might be stronger than Level 2 ones. These three levels did not measure power, but rather the layers of the Dream World.

Level 1 Nightmares could exist only in the worlds where they were born. Level 2 Nightmares, however, could pass through Sanctuaries into material reality, or follow them into the Dream World.

That was terrifying. Once one encountered a Level 2 Nightmare, unless it was completely destroyed, it would almost certainly hunt one to death. There was nowhere to run.

The only fortunate thing was that Level 2 Nightmares were suppressed by the Dream World.

For example, if a Level 2 Nightmare from Baseline Reality 0.9 entered the Dream World of Baseline Reality 0.8, its power and strangeness would decline a hundredfold. Before Wu Pifu awakened, the veterans had once killed a Level 2 Nightmare that way—luring it into a deeper layer of the Dream World and killing it there.

As for Level 3 Nightmares...

"Little Wu, we definitely haven't encountered a Level 3 Nightmare, but other districts have!" Wang Xiuting had explained to Wu Pifu at the time.

"Other districts?"

"Yes. Gaia is enormous. Our designation is z-117-6123. Z represents our primary region, the second number, 117, represents our awakening shift, and the final number, 6123, represents our maintenance and patrol location. There are twenty-six districts in total, marked by letters. The awakening shifts are divided into three hundred rotations, and each rotation maintains the system for two thousand years. During that time, we can periodically use Stasis Pods for short periods of sleep. That consumes roughly three hundred years of our lifespan, after which we can become citizens and enter the Dream Network. You know all this already, right?" Wang Xiuting asked.

Wu Pifu nodded. Three hundred rotations, each maintaining the system for two thousand years—far longer than the total voyage time. But that included maintenance personnel losses. The so-called three hundred years of lifespan was actually equivalent to three-fifths of a human lifespan in the year 2788. Yet that was only in theory. More than ninety percent of maintenance personnel died at their posts. They had no way to precisely calculate their short sleep periods, so all the maintenance personnel in those three hundred rotations were expendable.

Wang Xiuting continued, "The Dream World is actually the strange transformation of the Dream Network. Every Dream World we enter is born within the Dream Network. In other words, if we are lucky, we can encounter maintenance personnel from other regions there. Before I awakened, one of my seniors met maintenance personnel from another region. And as you know, it wasn't just the Dream Network that warped. All of Gaia warped. Demons and monsters, bizarre entities, terrifying rules—they have spread across the entirety of Gaia."

"The Main Brain sealed almost all of Gaia's connecting passages and gates, preventing those horrors from running rampant everywhere. That is why we cannot go to other regions, and other regions cannot come here. Our only hope is to enter the Dream World and establish Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Level 4, or even top-tier Level 5 Shelters. Only by gaining Main Brain authorization can we open those passages and awaken more people, especially citizens who possess Main Brain authorization!"

At this point, Wang Xiuting sighed. "My senior told me that he met Night Watchers from another region. They too were struggling to survive in the Dream World, and their team was far stronger than ours. There were sixteen members in total. My senior exchanged intelligence with them, and they agreed to watch over one another. But soon after, their entire team was wiped out. In a Dream World they had agreed to share, my senior found the information they left behind. They had encountered a Level 3 Nightmare..."

"Level 3 Nightmares are not suppressed in any world. Even if they... enter material reality, it is the same!!"

Wu Pifu could now see the nunnery. He sighed, temporarily setting aside his longing for Wang Xiuting and Li An. He had more important matters to deal with now.

"I can't establish a Sanctuary in this world. Baseline Reality 0.7 is not somewhere I can stay right now. For every Level 1 Sanctuary, I must remain here for at least ten days every thirty days. Otherwise, the Nightmares will notice me. If there are Level 2 or even Level 3 Nightmares among them, they can pass through the Sanctuary into material reality and kill me."

"But ten days... Once I stay longer than five days, the Nightmares in this world can roughly detect my location. Hunts and attacks will gradually come. Ten days is far too long. I can't deal with any monsters from Baseline Reality 0.7, so I absolutely cannot establish a Sanctuary here!"

"Today is the early morning of my third day in this world. Once dawn breaks, I'll first investigate this place—the dynasty, the location—then find a way to make money. It would be best if I could buy a house or get a plot of land. After settling Little Mute down, I must leave this world immediately, even if that means losing the coordinates of this Dream World..."

"And I need to be extremely careful when making money. The Level 1 Sanctuary I established before earned me twenty silver dollars. Let's treat that as twenty taels of silver. I can't earn more than twenty taels of silver here!"

To establish a Sanctuary in the Dream World, the experience Wu Pifu had gained from the veterans was that one needed to make money. Once he had earned the equivalent of twenty to thirty silver dollars in that world, he could establish a Level 1 Sanctuary.

Thinking of this, the image of the mute little nun flashed through Wu Pifu's mind. She was not pretty—one could even say she was somewhat ugly—but there had been those large tears rolling down her face, and the sight of her being beaten by that thug. Most importantly, she had saved his life!

Wu Pifu grew irritated, yet he could only take things one step at a time. His nature and conscience would not allow him to ignore the debt of a life-saving favor.

Just as Wu Pifu had left the nunnery in pursuit of the thug, inside the nunnery, the only decent building in the entire dilapidated place was the main hall housing the Buddha statue. Something seemed to be writhing atop the statue of Sakyamuni Buddha at the center of that hall.

Black sludge seeped from the Buddha statue's eyes, mouth, ears, and nose. It fell to the ground, then wriggled toward the outside of the hall...

Although the thugs had caused a disturbance, several sturdy men still lay asleep in the guest quarters after collapsing from exhaustion. The sludge seemed to possess some sort of perception, wriggling toward the biggest and strongest of them.

It was already deep into the night. The man stood eight chi tall, his entire body dark-skinned, his beard like steel needles, his build like a wild boar. He had a petite nun tucked under each arm and was snoring loudly. The sludge seeped in through the crack beneath the door, inch by inch reaching his side, then abruptly pounced onto his face with lightning speed.

The man's eyes snapped open, and he immediately tried to roar. At the same time, he flexed his arms, flinging the two still-dazed nuns away.

But as the man instinctively roared, the sludge immediately poured into his mouth. In that instant, he actually retained some awareness. With a carp leap, he sprang upright, his movements astonishingly nimble. Flipping a hand, he grabbed a simple saber from beside the bed. Just as he was about to strike at what he believed to be an enemy, his movements gradually slowed.

Sludge entered his body through his mouth, ears, nose, and eyes, then spread through his skin, blood vessels, and meridians to every part of his body. Hideous dark bluish-black veins rose across his skin. In only a few seconds, the sludge vanished, and the man froze where he stood.

Both nuns had split heads and bloodied faces. Groaning, they crawled to their feet, but they dared not speak out against the man despite their anger.

He was a famous wandering hero throughout the surrounding villages, a man who specialized in robbing without payment. He did not even fear the authorities. He was someone the Closed-Door Nunnery absolutely could not afford to provoke.

The two nuns stood off to the side, trembling with fear. They had no idea what madness had taken hold of the man standing atop the bed. Then they saw his rigid body begin to twist slowly. Amid a series of crackling bones, illuminated by the faint moonlight outside the window, they watched as the black in his eyes gradually spread until his pupils became entirely pitch-black.

Then the man abruptly turned his head toward them, his face twisting into an incomparably vicious smile.

The two nuns began trembling all over. A fear beyond their fear of evil men and thugs descended upon them. It was the instinctive terror of humans toward something on a higher level. Screaming, they rushed for the door.

But the man was faster. With a single pounce, he pinned both women to the ground. Then, his arm bulging with veins seized one nun by the head. Amid her agonized screams, the sound of joints dislocating rang out, and then...

The man actually tore the nun's head off together with her spine!!