The pain spreading from his fingertips grew increasingly intense. At first, the Dream Priest had only felt discomfort. Gradually, it felt as though he had plunged his hand into scalding water, and then as though he were gripping a red-hot branding iron.
It all came from the eyeball in his palm—or, more precisely, from the name inside that eyeball: Gao Ming.
The Dream Priest was the bridge between the people and gods of Dreamfold Town. Everyone's name in the dream was tattooed across his body. Those names were both their credentials for entering Dreamfold Town and the price they paid.
Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals had built this place to cultivate an Unspeakable existence. All the Testers and the various ghost gods were like insects in a venomous breeding jar, with the Dream Priest as the sole exception. Even Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals had yet to understand how he had come into being.
The deranged Dream Priest bore the traces of countless dreams. Within certain limits, he could borrow the powers of the various ghost gods and the town itself.
That was precisely why he could easily see Gao Ming's name—or rather, Gao Ming's name in the dream.
It was easy for people to lie in reality, but in their sleep, their subconscious would expose the truth instead.
"Gao Ming?"
At first, the Dream Priest had not thought there was anything special about this name. But when his five fingers closed around it, he felt as though he were holding up a volcano that might erupt at any moment, its scorching magma almost spraying into his face.
In a dream, a person's entire lifetime of memories was carried by a single name.
For the Dream Priest, most Testers were very easy to deal with. All he had to do was erase their names,