Chapter 4

"Hero, spare my life, hero, spare..."

Wu Pifu formed a claw with one hand, gripping the dark-skinned man’s neck. His eyes had no fluctuation at all. He exerted force with his claw, directly crushing the man’s Adam's apple. The dark-skinned man fell to the ground, clutching his neck and struggling desperately. After ten seconds, he became stiff and motionless.

After he stopped moving, Wu Pifu crouched down and began to search his body.

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

Wu Pifu collected all these things into his arms, looked at the dark-skinned man for a few seconds, then dragged him into the woods by the road. He didn't care, threw the corpse away, and then strode toward the nunnery.

"It seems that ordinary people in 0.7 have no changes."

Wu Pifu walked on the night road, recalling some important information his seniors had told him when he first woke up.

Because of the gaze of "?", the dream network distorted and turned into a dream world. All citizens sank into the dream network and could never wake up again. Only they, the maintenance personnel, because they were not in the dream network, either woke up naturally when the time came, or obtained the main brain’s permission after establishing a sanctuary in the dream world, which could liberate three to five maintenance personnel in the hibernation chambers.

According to the different baseline reality degrees, the more the dream world deviates from the baseline reality, the more terrifying it is.

After they enter the dream world, they will be perceived by the eerie things in that dream world, which the seniors call Nightmares, divided into three levels.

This is not a division of the Nightmare’s own strength. Some Level 1 Nightmares may be more powerful than Level 2 ones. This Level 1, 2, and 3 is not a division of strength, but a division of the dream world level.

Level 1 Nightmares can only exist in the world where they were born. Level 2 Nightmares can pass through the sanctuary to the material reality, or follow them into the dream world.

This is very terrifying. Once you encounter a Level 2 Nightmare, unless you completely eliminate it, you will almost certainly be chased to death, because you can't escape.

The only luck is that Level 2 Nightmares will be suppressed by the dream world.

For example, a Level 2 Nightmare in Baseline Reality 0.9, if it enters a Baseline Reality 0.8 dream world, its strength and eeriness will drop a hundredfold. This is also the method used by the seniors before Wu Pifu woke up to kill a Level 2 Nightmare: bring it into a deeper dream world to kill it.

As for Level 3 Nightmares...

"Little Wu, we have definitely never encountered a Level 3 Nightmare, but other zones have!" Wang Xiuting explained to Wu Pifu at the time.

"Other zones?"

"Yes, Gaia is so huge. Our number here is Z-117-?" Wang Xiuting asked.

Wu Pifu nodded in confirmation. Three hundred shifts, each shift maintaining for 2,000 years, far exceeded the total voyage time. But in fact, this included the attrition of maintenance personnel. The so-called 300-year lifespan was already equivalent to three-fifths of the human lifespan in 2788. But this was only theoretical. More than 90% of maintenance personnel would die at their posts. They couldn't accurately calculate their short-term sleep time, so all 300 shifts of maintenance personnel were consumables.

Wang Xiuting said again: "The dream world is actually an eerie change in the dream network. The dream worlds we enter are all born in the dream network. In other words, if it’s a coincidence, we can meet maintenance personnel from other zones. And before I woke up, my senior had met maintenance personnel from other zones. And you also know that it’s not just the dream network that has distorted; the entire Gaia has distorted. A large number of demons, ghosts, strange things, and terrifying rules have permeated the entire Gaia."

"The main brain has almost completely closed all link channels and gates of Gaia, which has blocked these terrors from running rampant everywhere. So we can't go to other zones, and other zones naturally can't come here. Our only hope is to enter the dream world and establish Level 1, 2, 3, 4, and even top-level Level 5 sanctuaries to obtain the main brain’s permission. Only then can we open these channels and wake up more people, especially those citizens who have mastered the main brain’s permission!"

Wang Xiuting sighed and said: "My senior told me that he met a night watchman from another zone. They were also struggling to survive in the dream world, and that team was much stronger than ours, with a total of 16 members. The senior exchanged information with them and agreed to watch over each other, but soon, their team was wiped out. In a dream world they shared, the senior found the information they left behind. They encountered a Level 3 Nightmare..."

"Level 3 Nightmares will not be suppressed in any world, even if... they come to the material world!"

Wu Pifu had already seen the nunnery. He sighed, putting aside his nostalgia for Wang Xiuting and Li An for the time being. Now he had more important things to do.

"I cannot establish a sanctuary in this world. Baseline Reality 0.7, this is not a place I can stay in now. For every Level 1 sanctuary, I must stay here for at least 10 days every 30 days, otherwise, I will be perceived by the Nightmare. If there is a Level 2 or even Level 3 Nightmare, they can come to the material reality through the sanctuary to kill me."

"But 10 days... the longer I stay, after more than 5 days, the Nightmare in this world can generally perceive my location, and the chase and attack will gradually come. 10 days is too long. I can't deal with any monsters in Baseline Reality 0.7, so I can't establish a sanctuary here!"

"Today is the third day of dawn since I arrived in this world. As soon as it gets light, I will first investigate the situation here, the dynasty, the location, and then find a way to get money. It would be best to buy a house or get a piece of land, and then settle the little mute. I must leave this world immediately, even if I lose the coordinates of this dream world..."

"And I must be very careful when getting money. If the Level 1 sanctuary I established before earned 20 silver dollars, then let's say it's 20 taels of silver. I cannot earn more than 20 taels of silver here!"

To open a sanctuary in the dream world, the experience Wu Pifu got from his seniors was to make money. When you earn 20 to 30 silver dollars in that world, you can establish a Level 1 sanctuary.

Thinking of this, the image of the mute little nun flashed through Wu Pifu’s mind—not good-looking, even slightly ugly, but the way those large tears rolled down, and the way she was beaten by the rascal. Most importantly, she saved his life!

Wu Pifu’s heart became irritable, but he could only take one step at a time. His character and conscience made it impossible for him to ignore the kindness of saving his life.

Just as Wu Pifu was chasing the rascal away from the nunnery, in the nunnery, in the only decent building in the entire dilapidated nunnery, which was the hall where the Buddha statue was placed, something seemed to be wriggling on the Shakyamuni Buddha statue in the center of the hall.

Some black sludge poured out from the eyes, mouth, ears, and nose of the Buddha statue, fell to the ground, and then wriggled out of the hall...

Although there was a rascal making trouble, there were still several strong men in the guest house sleeping after being exhausted. And this sludge seemed to have some kind of perception ability, wriggling toward the location of the tallest and strongest man among them.

It was late at night. The man was eight feet tall, with dark skin, beard like steel needles, and a figure like a wild boar. He was hugging a small nun in each arm, sleeping soundly. The sludge surged in from the crack of the door, bit by bit, to the man’s side, and then with lightning speed, it pounced on his face.

The man opened his eyes abruptly, immediately wanting to roar and growl. At the same time, he exerted force with his arms, and the two nuns who were still in a daze were immediately thrown away by him.

But when the man roared and growled subconsciously, the sludge immediately surged into his mouth. At this moment, the man still had reactive consciousness. He jumped up with a carp-like movement, his figure was incomparably agile, and he reached out to pick up a broadsword from the bedside. Just as he was about to wave it to attack the enemy he thought was there, his movements gradually slowed down.

The sludge surged into his body from his mouth, ears, nose, and eyes, and then passed through his skin, blood vessels, and meridians to his whole body, making his skin surface covered with hideous blue-black lines. In just a few seconds, the sludge disappeared, and the man also stood still in place.

The two nuns were both bleeding from their heads, crawling up, but they didn't dare to be angry at the man.

This was a famous knight-errant in the area, who specialized in business that didn't require money, not even afraid of the government, and was an existence that the Covert Nunnery absolutely couldn't afford to provoke.

The two nuns stood timidly on the side, not knowing what madness the man standing on the bed had gone through. But they saw the man slowly twisting his body from the stiffness. Amidst the crackling sound of bones, borrowing the faint moonlight outside the window, the two nuns saw the man’s pupils gradually turn from black and white to more and more black, and finally, the pupils turned into pure pitch black.

Then the man turned his head abruptly to look at them, his face twisting into a hideous smile.

The two nuns trembled all over. A fear that transcended the fear of villains and rascals suddenly descended. It was the intuition of humans for higher-level fear. They screamed and wanted to rush out of the room.

But the man was faster. With just one pounce, he knocked the two women to the ground. Then, the arm with bulging blue veins gripped one nun’s head. Amidst her miserable wails, one could only hear the sound of joints dislocating, and then...

The man actually tore the nun’s head off along with her spine!!

(End of chapter)