Chapter 760: Second Half

The pool of golden liquid fell onto the bubbles below, and the bubble surface instantly rippled with a dark-colored wave; it took several layers of bubbles to completely dissolve that pool of blood.

The bubble cluster beneath Qingque automatically condensed into a small blue fish, its size reduced by more than half from before, its scales much duller, yet it could still bear her.

She lay on the fish's back, steadied herself, then slowly got up; before she could sit steady, she tilted her head and vomited.

Golden.

Same as last time.

She feels no pain.

Since entering this dream, pain has been missing; the times she was struck by branches, bitten by monsters, or pierced by threads, she felt no pain whatsoever.

But now a vague, indescribable discomfort churns in her chest.

Like car sickness, like seasickness, like riding the Star Chariot continuously for three days and three nights without touching ground, her stomach was turned upside down, her throat blocked by a hot, bloated lump; spitting it out gave some relief, but it surged back seconds later.

Fortunately, it doesn't hurt.

She silently repeated the sentence in her mind twice.

If the pain were still there, she would probably have gone into shock by now.

She lifted her head again to look around.

The surrounding bubble cluster kept being squeezed; the outer bubbles were continuously crushed by the pressure of the golden space, and each shattered bubble was replaced by a new one from the inner layer, but the replacement speed could no longer keep up.

The bubble cluster's range was shrinking, from originally enveloping an entire block to now barely enough to cover her and the small blue fish beneath her.

Looking outward through the gaps between the bubbles, she could no longer see the sky, tree trunks, or monsters that were there before.

Only gold.

An endless expanse of fleshy, glossy gold, as if immersed in the translucent stomach wall of a massive creature.

Deep within the gold, countless densely packed red specks moved slowly—those were eyes!

The eyes on the stomach wall.

She moved her gaze upward, then downward, then swept it around, and realized this space was no longer simply 'being swallowed into a tree'.

It had structure, layers, organ-like protrusions rising from the golden stomach wall surface, a network resembling blood vessels weaving inside the wall, and tube-like intestines hanging from above.

This is already a world.

Within the Shuhuo, a complete independent ecosystem is developing.

Qingque took a deep breath, then regretted it.

Her mouth was filled with that cloying sweet, fishy taste, thick as if an entire jar of expired syrup had been poured into a fermenting swamp.

She felt that the mucous membranes of her tongue, throat, trachea, and lungs—every surface that encountered this scent—were being gently licked by something.

More terrifying, she could feel something growing inside her.

It wasn't an illusion; she could truly feel it—tiny particles flowing in her blood vessels, adhering to the inner walls, beginning to grow outward, attempting to pierce the vessel walls into the muscle tissue.

She looked down at the unhealed wounds on her arm, the wound edges sprouting extremely fine golden shoots, which were instantly burned to ash by the Patrol Hunt power inside her.

Ash fell, and new shoots emerged.

The cycle repeats.

This still holds as long as the Patrol Hunt's will steadfastly guards the spirit.

That murderous Patrol Hunt force coursed along her meridian network, continuously operating, repeatedly tugging at the invading Abundance aura in every corner of her body, fiercely protecting her consciousness and organs.

If the Imperial Bow's power were absent, she would now likely be covered in golden flowers, becoming one of the faces of the eyes-closed chanting figures on the tree trunks.

Qingque raised her hand and brushed her hair.

Her palm was covered with golden fragments and ash‑white broken hair.

She shook her head forcefully, forcibly pulling her consciousness away from the prickly cognition that 'something was growing inside her,' and her emerald eyes finally brightened with a hint of clarity.

She can't collapse here.

She must wake up.

Of course, what she does after waking bears absolutely no relation to what she does in the dream—not even half a Credit Point.

Thinking of that, Qingque felt much more grounded.

Right, a dream is a dream, reality is reality.

She force‑kissed Fu Xuan in the dream, which doesn't mean she would force‑kiss Fu Xuan in reality.

As long as she doesn't do it, the incident is as if it never happened.

Perfect logic.

Her confidence returned by a few points.

The surrounding bubble cluster had been compressed to its critical point.

The outermost layer of bubbles began to collectively deform under the golden pressure, being squeezed from spherical to elliptical, then from elliptical to flattened discs.

Qingque straightened, waved her right hand, and several jade talismans floated from the void, each emitting a warm, teal‑blue glimmer, slowly rotating around her.

Under the malevolent golden light of the space, the talismans' faces appeared especially clear, like clean springs suddenly emerging in a murky swamp.

She raised her hand and brushed away the lingering golden bloodstain at the corner of her mouth, her fingertip drawing a clean arc along her lip.

She slightly curled her mouth, and her emerald eyes looked out through the gaps between the bubbles, scanning the entire internal world that was trying to digest her.

"Second Half."

She flicked the nearest jade talisman in front of her, and its face emitted a crisp ding, "Begin."

Heimu sat on a chair.

The pale, slender hand before her still hovered in midair, the butterfly embroidery on the glove unmoving under the warm yellow light.

XiaDie tilted her head, her lavender pupils filled with gentle anticipation, a faint smile lingering at the corner of her mouth; that smile minutes ago had seemed calm and normal to Heimu, but now each pixel seemed off.

Heimu blinked.

A brief electronic prompt sounded in her mind—Tick.

It is the highest‑priority wake‑up signal she set for the system, and the trigger condition is only one: detection of external interference to the host's Cognition module.

She hasn't heard this prompt tone in a very long time.

The last time it sounded was back in Data Space during a duel with Bai E, when Bai E's Dimension Compression almost affected her consciousness core.

But this time, while she was having tea and chatting with a quiet, demure purple‑haired girl, the system triggered the highest alarm.

A chill poured from the back of her head, sweeping down her spine to her feet.

She had just been affected by something.

It wasn't Aha's entry, nor XiaDie's charm; it was a more covert external interference directly targeting her Cognition module.

Someone, while her attention was drawn to XiaDie's whispers and the text on that stack of paper, quietly slipped a filter into her perception system.

Causing her to overlook things she shouldn't overlook, and to amplify reactions she shouldn't amplify.

When she was flipping through fanfiction, her fingers wouldn't stop; when XiaDie whispered in her ear, she went rigid; her kink certainly wasn't an iron wall of copper.

But the reaction was so great, so great that the system itself leapt out to forcibly wake her; this is no longer just a matter of kink.