Is that young man Matt Chao’s silhouette?
In the dim seabed, its form changed with the glow of molten lava, maintaining an almost humanlike youthful image even in the shifting water.
It took me so long to stabilize my own form… No wonder he’s been here much longer, Yang Zicang thought to himself, uncertain of what dangers might lie ahead.
Fortunately, the Paleshade Wyrm was born!
The two approached the phantom. Matt Chao’s figure stood motionless like a wax statue. Yang Zicang reached out a hand and touched it; his palm sank into what felt like a dense mass of energy, able to stir within its core, yet the resistance was immense and he grasped nothing.
{In our Hubville, many people have talked about him. I never expected him to be from the same city as you, and that he even left his mark on you, Mr. ZiCang. Consider yourself lucky—otherwise, you might have been killed in your sleep without a clue.}
This man was undoubtedly a master, for the same reason—his opponent was incredibly formidable. Morris thought, a complicated expression flickering across his face as he looked at the nightmare resurrected from death beside him.
{Also, I must congratulate you on acquiring the psychic-type nightmare. I hope you find a way to bring it into the real world.}
Indeed, that is worth celebrating, but Yang Zicang only felt a moment of joy before turning solemnly and saying:
[Put the matter of Nightmares aside for now. Morris, do you know anything else about Matt Chao? And what does ‘Real Arrival’ mean, appearing beside those people while they sleep?]
{Ah, so his name is Matt Chao,} the man beside him said, somewhat enlightened, {Well, it is said that those marked by this gentleman Red Moxel can, at midnight while asleep, have his willpower train stop at their dream station and genuinely appear beside their target.}
Morris continued, with great envy, in his mind-voice:
{He is a precious willpower-ability bearer. Of course, now you are one too.}
Yang Zicang stiffened with stern gravity.
Simply touch their aura, or plant a willpower station… then wait for them to fall asleep, and you can appear beside the sleeping person as an ability…
Why had he himself fallen into the trap?
Just from hearing the name, he knew where his feud lay with him. (Matt Chao, just like Zhang Fei, is a famous heroic figure from Romance of the Three Kingdoms.)
Yang Zicang speculated on why he hadn’t been attacked yet. Perhaps because, during his two days of sleep in reality, he had both times entered the Yore-Realm; otherwise, Matt Chao might have already appeared by his side and finished him off.
What a close call!
He glanced at the psychic monster beside him. The creature’s stomach was like a bottomless pit; along the edge of this illusory platform projection, it devoured everything bite by bite. Amid the few small baby teeth around its mouth, two already robust, curved fangs relentlessly stuffed the torn pieces of psychic energy into its massive wolf-like—or tiger-like—head, which housed a peerlessly vast psychic force, chewing with voracious delight.
Until it reached Matt Chao, who was sitting on the stool.
The wolf-headed psychic dragon glanced at him, as if asking whether they still wanted to spar, or else it would start feasting.
Yang Zicang took two steps back to clear the way.
The psychic dragon’s enormous head swallowed Matt Chao’s phantom in one gulp, then suddenly froze in place.
Boom!
The monster’s head exploded.
The seawater rippled for a moment, and the two stood frozen, staring in shock as their formidable ally—an unmatched force capable of slaughtering without restraint in this very world—violently dissipated into dispersing energy and vanished.
[Damn it!]
Yang Zicang screamed.
{Ah, wait, what just happened? Is it… is it okay?}
Yang Zicang, slightly startled, swam a bit, but then felt some faint fluctuations gathering. Ah, Yang Zicang breathed a sigh of relief. Thankfully, the flame nightmare in the form of Thought Dragon hadn’t completely dissipated; its aura had merely scattered across this lava seabed.
After sensing carefully for a while, a slight ripple of its presence reappeared.
The Thought Dragon, nurtured for so long, had only just birthed a new spiritual intelligence before suffering a heavy blow. Yang Zicang, whose heart had grown placid over a millennium, felt a long-lost surge of anger. Because this was a real attack from reality, unlike those fake primitive men.
Suddenly, the surrounding psychic platforms began to collapse.
In that instant, Yang Zicang turned his head, as if hearing the ethereal hiss of a subway train fading into nothingness.
With a flick of his hand, he released a burst of golden radiance imbued with Chronos. Yet it couldn’t truly strike at those shattered psychic forms belonging to Matt Chao.
–Is your psychic treasure alright?–
Morris swam over.
–No need to worry. It’s just a bit of energy depletion; it will recover.–
As he spoke, under Morris’s probing gaze, Yang Zicang waved his hand, and the surrounding energy, which had barely begun to stir again, really moved awkwardly. After all, having consumed the psychic platform from his own mind, Yang Zicang thought with a hint of delight.
He focused again, attempting control, and the nightmare spirit dragon with a wolf-and-tiger-like head finally re-materialized into a faint form, though still quite fragmented.
It hadn’t directly perished after all, which slightly relieved Morris as well.
{Glad it didn’t explode.} he said.
Near the subway station, countless fragmented, faint phantoms of Yang Zicang flickered across the seawater, gradually converging closer.
These figures were the remnants of his shattered spirit, instinctively gathering like a Paleshade Wyrm, yearning to merge.
But in that fleeting instant, Yang Zicang suddenly had a striking epiphany.
No, they must not merge!
In an instant, he made a decision, raised his hand to point at the phantoms of himself ahead, opened his mouth, and with a surge of determination, forced his throat to produce a guttural sound.
–Quick, devour them!–
The nightmare monster, on the verge of dying again, writhed as its mostly blasted-apart, trembling head swam through the water.
Yang Zicang kicked off with one foot, his fists churning the seawater violently, stirring up two of his own fragmented psychic bodies.
[Deploy, Trajectory Alteration!]
The two phantoms of himself shot into the Beast of Mind-Birth’s mouth, transforming into mental energy as they entered the Paleshade Wyrm’s body.
After this daring attempt, Yang Zicang, already somewhat weakened by the extraction of his mental focus pillar, felt his connection with the mental dragon-monster deepen!
It’s effective!
Then, Morris, at the bottom of the sea, saw the floating Quad owner swiftly dragging that clumsy, mutilated thing through the seabed.
More and more of his own phantom manifestations were being fed into the resurrected mind-monster’s maw by Yang Zicang.
{Old Mo…}
Morris kicked his legs and floated over.
{What are you doing?}
Yang Zicang tossed him two deformed gold coins.
{Quick, help me gather Chronos to feed it.}
Thinking of the obedient and sensible Morris, he sighed slightly while infusing some Chronos, then tossed the coin under Yang Zicang’s thousand-ear dominance. He abruptly poured a thousand years’ worth of Chronos into it, after which he sent the coin into the monster that was beginning to re-materialize its head with renewed effort.
Crick-crack!
The freshly regrown crooked teeth of the nightmare demon pierced through the coin, the golden radiance swiftly merging into the faint white mental spirit dragon-like monster.
Yang Zicang felt an increasingly intimate connection of minds with it.
{Great, it survived. What is its name?}
Even Morris rejoiced in Yang Zicang’s success.
Crick-crack-crunch!
The obedient nightmare beast tore at the energy of the surrounding platforms, including the phantom mist left behind after Matt Chao’s psychic construct collapsed.
This creature could detect and devour psychic objects on the spiritual level. Even if it couldn’t bring them out of this world, merely consuming the psychic platforms buried deep in Yang Zicang’s sea of consciousness was more than worth it.
[I want to call it –Paleshade Wyrm.-****]
{Great name. God, I wish I had one too.}
Morris’s envy was written all over his face.
The Paleshade Wyrm spiraled through the seabed, chasing the remaining faint energy. As it swallowed the last piece of the platform, Yang Zicang felt a subtle, almost intangible presence take root in his heart.
[The Paleshade Wyrm devoured the psionic body of its kin, transcending boundaries.]
[I know it will begin to absorb the abilities of its kind. Soon, it will fall into slumber.]
As expected of the torch ignited by the First Generation Great Shaman. Yang Zicang briefly reminisced about his –Xiao Wu– from thousands of years ago.
The gift he had given that child was like a hidden treasure, still unfolding even millennia later.
With a single thought from Yang Zicang, the Paleshade Wyrm returned to the lava ahead.
[Sleep, good child.]
Amid the seabed’s molten rock, a faint red aura of nothingness surged, as if woven from scorching currents of air.
The nightmare beast, bearing a head like that of a tiger or wolf, coiled its dragon-like serpentine body into rings, buried its head at the cenmter, and lay on the lava.
This slumber would stretch on for who knows how many more years.
Yet it could afford to wait.
{This is your damned experiment, huh, Mr. ZiCang? When in the world are you coming to Hubville!}
Morris said with a helpless sigh.
[Oh? Are you inviting me to visit?]
{Mr. ZiCang, become my teammate. Me, Boboli, and a capable man like you—our abilities could synergize perfectly and deliver immense results.}
There was never any truth to –delivering immense results.–
Yang Zicang broke into a smile. Just as he was about to speak, the Moxel on his chest flickered with light.
[I’ve received a finished proxy training contract.]
So someone has passed away.
Yang Zicang looked up in the direction of the land, his heart torn between joy and sorrow, unable to tell which stirred it more.
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