Chapter 392: 392 Beetle

"Tch, a violent woman!"

Looking up at the night sky blanketed with fragments of Dream Realm creatures, the Scorpion Bureau Chief couldn't help but sneer, then gestured with a finger toward the doll crawling out of the box.

"Your turn… take a look at every Dream Realm creature she missed."

Upon hearing the tall, thin man's words, the pale doll, who had been staring at Li Ang, nodded. Its slender body straightened with unnatural stiffness, then mimicked the Scorpion Bureau Chief's motion, tilting its head upward toward the blood-red sky.

"Roar!!!"

At the very moment the pale doll lifted its head, countless tiny black dots suddenly appeared across the sky, thickly carpeted with sharp crimson hairs.

Even though the Red-Haired Bureau Chief's killing efficiency was astonishing—tens of thousands of Dream Realm creatures were sliced to shreds every second as they passed through the crimson hair net—the River of Nightmares seemed endless, continuously spewing forth new nightmares.

Under the relentless, fearless onslaught of countless Dream Realm creatures, the crimson sky stretched by the Red-Haired Bureau Chief eventually developed gaps. Some elite nightmares, more solid in form and more grotesque in appearance, battered and bleeding, broke through the barrier of 【Blood-Slaughtering Crimson Hairs】 and squeezed into reality, drenched in blood.

Ghastly spirits with gray mist cloaks and twisted grins, headless knights wielding whips made of spinal bones, towering skeletal colossi assembled from fragile bones, beautiful women in thin robes walking through blizzards… one after another, figures from stories and nightmares appeared before Li Ang's eyes, unmistakably real.

…

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These things… I feel like I've heard of them somewhere before…

Watching the nightmares that had breached into reality and were now rushing desperately toward the Capital, Li Ang's eyes darkened with thought.

The ghastly spirit wrapped in gray mist… it seemed to be the monster from folk tales of the Black Forest Duchy, said to wander wildlands and prey on lost travelers; the headless knight with the long whip… was rumored to be a messenger of Death, harvesting the spines of evildoers as offerings;

The skeletal colossus also appeared in some legend—likely formed from the corpses of those who starved to death during famine and war, devouring anything edible; and the beautiful woman with translucent pale skin, arriving with snowstorms, had been part of ancient tales in the Northern Kingdoms for countless generations.

Compared to the Dream Realm creatures easily shredded by the Bureau Chief, these nightmares that had successfully breached into reality seemed vastly more renowned.

So, for these Dream Realm creatures, the more people knew of them—or believed in their existence—the easier it was for them to appear in nightmares, and the stronger the nightmares they spawned became?

"Squeak."

As Li Ang pondered the origins of these Dream Realm creatures, the pale doll covered in thorns shook its head, its ball-joints grinding stiffly as its unsettling hollow gaze locked onto the foremost grinning spirit.

"Squeak!" "Squeak!" "Squeak!"

The sound of joint twisting echoed again—but this time, it did not come from beside Li Ang. It came from the night sky above the Capital.

To Li Ang's astonishment, the spirit cloaked in hazy gray mist—the one said to prey on lost travelers—suddenly solidified into a physical form, then slumped lifelessly like a doll.

Next, the headless knight atop the skeletal horse also collapsed, his armor scattering into pieces, revealing arms and legs as pale as the doll's, limp and lifeless amid the broken plates.

Even the skeletal colossus, taller than the Capital's bell tower, had somehow transformed into a towering pale doll—incapable of any movement. The moment it shifted even slightly, thorns embedded across its body pierced deep, spewing torrents of blood, forcing it to roar in agony.

"Fewer slipped through than I expected… Let's kill a batch first!"

After glancing at the nightmares turned into dolls in the sky, the tall, thin man muttered, pulled a slender stiletto from the box, and stabbed the silent doll beside him—clean, swift, straight through the heart!

Immediately, as if triggering a chain reaction, the elite nightmares "captured" by the pale doll's gaze all shuddered violently—their chests suddenly splitting open with diamond-shaped wounds, gushing torrents of crimson blood.

Whether the gray mist spirit, roughly human-sized, or the hundred-meter-tall skeletal colossus—all of them screamed in despair the instant the tiny wound appeared, dying instantly, their bodies dissolving into ruins that drifted lifelessly through the night sky.

"Keep watching—don't miss any!"

After instructing the doll still gazing skyward, the Scorpion Bureau Chief yanked out the stiletto with a wet pop, then, holding the dripping blade, rummaged through his box, still not turning back as he spoke:

"You're Li Ang, right? The nightmare that approached you before I arrived—its words were nonsense, but one thing it said wasn't wrong."

Pulling a bottle the size of a human head from the bottom of the box, he uncorked it and poured out the black-gold beetles, then extended his hand toward Li Ang with a cold expression:

"Give me Olivia's hair. Then go wherever you please. This isn't a place for a Level Three Cleaner like you."

"…"

After glancing at the steady, statue-like hand before him, Li Ang couldn't help but look up at the sky.

The corpses of the headless knight and the skeletal colossus still floated in the Capital's night sky. This Scorpion Bureau Chief demanding hair couldn't be a nightmare in disguise—but still…

"I'm sorry. My mission is to follow you and notify the Bureau Chief the moment I find the Nightmare King."

"Tch… So why not just hand me the hair? What use is a burden like you staying?"

"It's none of my concern—but I trust the Bureau Chief's judgment. She told me to stay, so there must be a reason."

"Hmph. Suit yourself."

Glancing at the crimson hairs coiled around Li Ang's shoulder, the Scorpion Bureau Chief sneered in disgust, then hurriedly emptied every beetle the size of a fingernail from the bottle, then pinched out the palm-sized mother beetle and stuck it to his chest.

"Ssshh! Ssshh! Ssshh!"

After completing this sequence, the scattered black-gold beetles on the ground let out piercing cries. Once they had chirped for a while, he plucked the mother beetle's antennae—and the palm-sized golden mother beetle joined in the chorus.

Instantly, the scattered black-gold beetles, as if given orders, surged like a tide across the dock, each one latching onto a sleeping human—even one crawled onto Li Ang himself.