Chapter 140: The gears of fate start turning

Step forward....

Take the King's throne!

Become a legend! Bear all fate!

Zhang Jie.... you liar....

?

Zhang Jie suddenly sat up from the nutrition cabin, looking around blankly at everything.

What the hell? He actually had a dream?

Before truly becoming a player, he would occasionally be troubled by nightmares, but after becoming a player, he never had a nightmare again.

Dreaming.... seemed like something from a long time ago...

He had merely gone offline from Dream Online to use the toilet, and in the blink of an eye he had already had a full dream.

Really strange.

But what he just dreamed of, he can't quite recall the details, though that's normal.

After all, dreams are forgotten upon waking; even if remembered, only fragments remain.

Zhang Jie was the same; although he didn't remember what he did in the dream, he remembered it was a nightmare and those scattered words.

Become a legend? Bear all fate?

What the hell.

Zhang Jie rose puzzled, went to the toilet to urinate, yet involuntarily recalled those scattered fragments in his mind.

Speaking of which, in the game, only protagonists have such weird dreams.

Zhang Jie shook off the snake, tucked it back into his pants, and thought as he headed back.

Could it be that I'm really some protagonist or child of fate?

Absurd.

Zhang Jie didn't take his speculation seriously at all, smiled indifferently, turned around, and lay back down in the nutrition cabin.

Yu Xiaomo and Liu Delie were still waiting for him to return and clear the game.

As his consciousness immersed into the Dream Realm, Zhang Jie's figure appeared once again at the place where he had previously logged off.

Yu Xiaomo and Liu Delie had already been waiting here for a while.

Zhang Jie! You're so slow!

At this moment, Yu Xiaomo wore an orange-yellow hoodie, making her look like a yellow penguin, quite adorable.

Zhang Jie ruffled the loli's head without changing his expression, smiling as he spoke to the two.

Are you two ready? After clearing this game, you'll become master players—how nervous do you feel?

Yu Xiaomo angrily pulled Zhang Jie's hand off her head, about to say something, when a piercing alarm blared.

"The Dream Management Bureau warns: massive Nightmare invasion detected in Dream Online! Please evacuate immediately!"

Before anyone could react, the surrounding space trembled, and black smoke erupted out of nowhere.

In the next moment, countless humanoid Nightmares suddenly appeared on the surrounding streets, filling the entire road.

Zhang Jie widened his eyes; before him, this humanoid Nightmare, aside from his own summoned beast, left only one possibility.

These Nightmares can directly delete a person in this world!

Only then did everyone realize the gravity of the situation—they could not log off at this moment!

Ah!!!!!

Instantly, countless cries and battle sounds intertwined; although players were continually slain by Nightmares, more chose to resist.

The three exchanged a glance and immediately sprang into action.

Against this level of Nightmare, for the two of them, while they couldn't completely crush it, self-defense was certainly no problem.

But Zhang Jie was different—Nightmares slaughter players, while he slaughters Nightmares!

In the next moment, a similarly humanoid Nightmare army suddenly appeared behind Zhang Jie, and seven figures among them exuded especially strong auras.

Up!

Zhang Jie uttered a single word, and the Nightmares behind him surged outward, clashing with the suddenly appearing Nightmares in a melee.

Among these Nightmares, the humanoid ones were fully armed, the beast-like ones were swift, and their appearance instantly threw the clearly divided battlefield into chaos.

Seeing their own kind, the humanoid Nightmares were bewildered as they suddenly came under attack.

The players likewise thought the battlefield couldn't get worse, never expecting the two Nightmare factions to start fighting each other.

"Nightmares can actually restrict players' systems—this is not a good omen...."

"Does this mean the Nightmares have already begun to erode the Genesis Permit?"

Zhang Jie stood beside Liu Delie and Yu Xiaomo, his face solemn, his heart faintly sensing something amiss.

The attack didn't last long; after ten minutes, everyone's system interface returned to normal.

When the players realized they could log off normally, they all swiftly exited Dream Online, leaving only the Nightmares battling each other around them.

Jie Ge? Us?

Wait a moment.

Zhang Jie furrowed his brow, surveyed the situation, and shook his head.

He felt that, given this abnormality, Bai Zhou would surely come looking for him later.

After all, his Nightmare and these Nightmares differ too little in form—his very presence here raises great suspicion.

Sure enough, as he expected, three minutes after Dream Online's system returned to normal, he saw Bai Zhou approaching with a grim expression.

Beside him were also three top‑god players; when they saw Zhang Jie still fighting the Nightmares, their grim looks eased a little, but they remained wary of him.

"Bai Zhou, top god, you've indeed come."

Bai Zhou came to a spot not far from Zhang Jie and stopped, a faint golden light flaring in his pupils as he continually sized up Zhang Jie.

"You know I'm coming?"

Zhang Jie shrugged, pointing at the Nightmares around him that were basically wiped out, and said helplessly.

"Something this big happened; it'd be abnormal if you didn't come looking for me."

"Besides, before the root cause is confirmed, I'm the biggest suspect, right?"

Hearing Zhang Jie's answer, the tense atmosphere around them eased a bit.

"Since you know I'm coming, I won't say more; you probably know what I'm about to do next."

"I won't waste more words—'tell me': are you human or a Nightmare?"

Bai Zhou's words are impossible to defy, and Zhang Jie has experienced this scene countless times in the past year.

Every so often, Bai Zhou suddenly appears and asks this kind of question; he's grown used to it.

"I'm human, not a Nightmare, and this matter has nothing to do with me."

Bai Zhou's grim expression finally eased completely, and the three top players around him who had been ready to attack also simultaneously relaxed, lowering their fighting stances.

"So, what exactly happened?"

Zhang Jie asked Bai Zhou, and the other's just-soothed face flashed with helplessness again.

"The Genesis Permit has been corrupted by the Nightmare."

"The culprit is likely some game administrators."

"Now they have truly taken a stand against us."

What seemed like an ordinary day, the gears of fate turned once more.

(Hehehe, cherish the preceding semi‑daily simulation; the author's big hand is starting to exert force! Everyone, ready to launch?)