Chapter 51: Spiritual Charm

Chapter 51: Chapter 51: Spiritual Charm

A bright moon hung high in the sky. As night fell upon the Chaotic City, the crowds thinned, but the streets grew even more raucous.

This was a city dominated by gang members, and the night was their time to revel.

In every street and alley, you could see punks who had set aside their "art" to once again brandish knives and guns.

They got drunk, started fights, and brawled with one another. Passions burned and blood splattered.

Only now was the Chaotic City revealing its true nature.

’Tsk, tsk. They’re a bit fiercer than the vagrants in other cities, but they’re not quite at the point of throwing their lives away.’

’So where did all that courage from last night come from?’

Strolling under the moon, Chen Qi casually dispatched a few punks who came looking for trouble. After he taught them a lesson, they were smart enough to not even utter a single threat as they left.

It seemed to fit their logic of bullying the weak and fearing the strong, but when compared to all the clashing and banging from last night, it was quite interesting.

Chen Qi had a feeling that the scene from last night would soon repeat itself.

That old man certainly wouldn’t let them have such an easy time.

...

"You’re going to use those gang members to besiege them again tonight?"

"It’s completely useless. The gap is too wide."

Inside the art studio, Najir watched the old man working himself to the bone, practically "vomiting blood," and couldn’t help but try to reason with him.

Every time this old codger activated his ability, he had to use his own blood as dye!

According to Najir’s senses, the old man probably didn’t have much blood left in his body to spare.

’I don’t care if you die, but please don’t die right now! What about your promise to protect me?’

"Relax. The human body’s ability to produce blood is very powerful, especially for us players."

"Although the blood of ordinary people works, it contains far too little Spiritual Charm compared to us players."

Felix stood before the crude city map, holding a brush soaked in fresh blood.

On the map, besides the five large red dots representing the players, there were countless tiny black dots moving about!

At a glance, it looked like a colony of ants living in a city-sized maze.

Besides these, a moon had also appeared above the map!

This moon wasn’t drawn with ink; it was a projection of the actual moon in the sky, branded onto the drawing board.

Najir glanced at the moon on the map, then looked around the sealed, windowless art studio.

Even though this wasn’t the first time he’d seen it, he still couldn’t understand how the moon appeared!

"Whenever the moon is full, the great Azure-headed Demon Dragon will descend upon this city."

"Today is one day before the full moon. Although I cannot bring about the Descent of the Demon Dragon, I can still borrow some of its power."

Muttering to himself, Felix smeared the blood-soaked brush across the moon.

On the map, the projected moonlight was distorted, and when it reconsolidated, it had transformed into a full, blood-red moon.

The Blood Moon wasn’t the least bit ethereal; it looked completely real!

"Kill those five outsiders!"

Felix poured his will into the brush. A string of Sleep Text appeared above it, squirming downward and flowing from the tip into the Blood Moon.

In the next instant, the Blood Moon blinked, opening an eye to gaze down upon the ants reveling below.

...

’It’s starting!’

Chen Qi suddenly stopped in his tracks on the bustling pedestrian street.

It was as if this was a signal. In the next moment, everyone on the street froze.

’Just as I suspected.’

Chen Qi’s gaze swept over the surrounding graffiti. Perhaps it was due to the uneven lighting, or because the art itself was layered so heavily.

Under the hazy moonlight, these patterns seemed to pulse rhythmically, much like the shifting markings on a python’s skin.

At the same time, something subtle was being born from the graffiti!

However, Chen Qi was certain it wasn’t Spirituality, but something of a lesser grade.

If Felix had been there, he would have surely mocked Chen Qi’s ignorance for not even knowing about Spiritual Charm.

When humans imbue inanimate objects with their emotions, Spiritual Charm is born—as seen in powerful works of art, for example.

The blood of living creatures also possesses Spiritual Charm, which stems from the burst of will at the moment of cellular death.

Graffiti art happened to combine both aspects. Now, triggered by some unknown power, it began to radiate its own beauty.

...

"It’s hypnosis, and a deep hypnosis at that!"

"Dammit, this graffiti actually has a hypnotic ability that covers the entire city."

Just like Chen Qi, Kolos and his group of three companions also encountered the sudden freeze.

The Chaotic City seemed to have had its pause button pressed.

Only the five players moved within the frozen time, shattering the surrounding tranquility.

As veteran players, Kolos’s group quickly saw through the phenomenon, however strange it was.

But what they couldn’t understand was, ’We’re all Level 2, so how can you spread your ability over the entire city?’

This didn’t follow the rules of the game.

"Damn it, I totally misjudged this!"

"This graffiti actually contains Sleep Text! I haven’t even managed to learn more than a few characters of that ancient script myself, so how could these gang members possibly know how to use it?"

"Could it be that the guy hiding in the shadows not only hypnotized and controlled them, but can also interfere with their Dreams?"

Jiru, who prided himself on being smart and studious, was nearly driven to despair by the answer he had just deduced.

He had managed to modify a Biological Radar, which was already an incredible feat among players.

And yet here was some son of a bitch who was so ridiculously overpowered he could teach Sleep Text to hundreds of thousands of people!

After eliminating all other impossibilities, the only remaining answer was that this person could control the Dreams of everyone in the entire city.

How could a new player possibly be capable of this?

This mess in the Chaotic City was a deep one.

...

’Haha, I saw through it after all!’

’It’s just as I guessed. Everything happening here isn’t as simple as a hypnotic dream.’

Amid the jungle of frozen statues, Chen Qi was so excited he almost danced with joy.

He was thrilled because he was witnessing true "art," born from the impossible.

’Who would have thought that in the Lanyu Kingdom, under the shadow of the King’s Game, someone would be audacious enough to create a Dream Game?’

’To be more precise, a virtual game that uses the brain’s Dreams as its platform.’

’Is this supposed to be a tribute to Gutaf?’

After collecting enough graffiti samples, Chen Qi had felt a sense of familiarity from the embedded Sleep Text.

It wasn’t until he saw the old man creating his art so brazenly in Demon Dragon Plaza that Chen Qi finally saw through everything!

’Bullshit art. This isn’t graffiti at all; it’s clearly lines of code.’

’The only difference is that this code uses Sleep Text, and its medium isn’t a silicon chip, but the graffiti branded all over the city.’

After a detailed analysis, Chen Qi discovered that the framework used for this code came entirely from Virtual Technology.

The so-called hypnosis was actually someone using the Brain Escape technique from virtual games to link the shallow memories of everyone in the city.

In other words, someone had built a virtual game in the Chaotic City.

And the computing power and Energy source for this virtual game was none other than the brains of every single person in the Chaotic City!

The most tragic, or perhaps hardworking, were the violent artists themselves.

Their daily bloody graffiti art was, in reality, them writing lines of code to perform game maintenance!

Of course, they didn’t understand Sleep Text or code, but someone had cleverly used the learning properties of Sleep Text to send the game’s code into everyone’s dreams.

Even if each person only remembered one or two characters of Sleep Text upon waking, with hundreds of thousands of people piecing them together, it was enough to type out the complete game code and even perform daily automatic maintenance.

This was the truth of the Chaotic City!

And this was only part of the truth!

The mastermind behind Tulun City was not only an expert in virtual game architecture but had also certainly studied the *Theory of Resonance Between Humanity, the Stars, and the Earth Veins*.

The legend of the Azure-headed Demon Dragon descending on the night of the full moon was definitely not just some random fabrication.

Perhaps only by witnessing the Azure-headed Demon Dragon’s descent with his own eyes would Chen Qi see the final truth.

If that mastermind was also a player, then the murky waters of the King’s Game were unfathomably deep, hiding monsters of immense power.