Chapter 109: Headless Men's Lair

Boiling with rage, Mu Cheng unleashed the full might of a Silver tier expert. The five cyborgs coordinated flawlessly alongside him, slaughtering the surrounding headless ones with ruthless efficiency.

"Come on! Didn't you monsters want a piece of me? Get the fuck over here!" he roared as he slaughtered them, venting his fury.

"Just you wait, Su Mu! Once I'm done butchering these things, you're next! No... I won't kill you. I'll lock you up and torture you bit by bit. You destroyed everything I had, and I'm going to teach you the true meaning of despair!

"I was a magnificent Silver Transcendent! I had a limitless future and a perfect Mithril Alloy Body! I had already shattered the limits of the human lifespan! But you ruined it all! You ruined it!!

"Who knows when this damned Nightmare World will finally claim my life? I'm living on borrowed time now. But until then, I will torture you. I'll torture you right up until the day I die, and then we can die together! That way, I can keep torturing you once we drag each other down to Hell! Hahaha..."

Mu Cheng threw his head back and laughed wildly. Not even his cold, mechanical body could mask his overflowing madness—the sheer, unhinged hysteria of a man backed into a corner.

Though he wasn't a Nightmare Apostle himself, he understood them better than they understood themselves. They were dead men walking. Cursed souls. No matter how hard they struggled, even if they reached the Gold tier, they were all doomed to die in the Nightmare World eventually.

Still cackling, Mu Cheng kept slaughtering his way through the horde. The corpses piled higher and higher beneath his feet, nearly burying him alive as he vented his rage in blood.

But slowly, a shadow fell over him. Then a second. Then a third... until there were ten.

Mu Cheng froze. He tilted his head up with a shudder, the red glow in his metal prosthetic eye nearly flickering out. Darkness swallowed his vision. Ten headless giants had formed a circle around him, and they were all 'listening' to him.

From within the Shadow Space, Su Mu peered through the gloom at Mu Cheng, who was currently getting stomped by the ten giants. He actually felt a twinge of pity. How had a mighty Silver tier expert fallen so low?

All he had to do was stay quiet. Could he really not manage something so simple?

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Three of the cyborgs self-destructed, their terrifying blasts shredding the ten headless giants to pieces.

Seizing the opening, Su Mu slipped out of the Shadow Space and bolted into the distance.

Mu Cheng was now down to just two cyborgs. His rage finally began giving way to fear; this meant he only had two lives left.

That fear restored a sliver of his rationality. He realized he'd been too impulsive. Those doomed Nightmare Apostles had always said that fighting monsters head-on in a nightmare was a fool's errand. The only smart move was to find the source of the dream and break the nightmare entirely.

Frustration gnawed at him. If he had just listened to the Apostles' experience from the start, he might not be in this mess.

This dream wasn't actually that difficult. As long as you didn't make a sound, you wouldn't be attacked, leaving you completely free to slowly search for clues. But it was far too late for regrets now.

Watching Su Mu pull farther and farther away, Mu Cheng gritted his teeth and chased after him. He already had a plan in mind. He wouldn't dare act recklessly again; it was time to change tactics.

The gap between them began to close, but then Su Mu started chucking rocks again.

Shock and fury surged through Mu Cheng at the sight of the flying stones. He dodged them as frantically as if they were fatal bullets, terrified of letting even a single one strike him.

The most infuriating part was that he couldn't even throw rocks back. Su Mu was made of flesh and blood; a rock hitting him wouldn't make much noise at all.

Worse yet, Su Mu could nimbly dodge and make wide movements. Mu Cheng couldn't. His body was made of metal and incredibly heavy. The wider his movements, the louder the noise he'd make.

He never imagined that his proud Mithril Alloy Body would one day become such a massive liability.

Up ahead, Su Mu suddenly stopped in his tracks.

Terrified, Mu Cheng froze in place, not daring to move an inch. He quickly scanned the depths of the forest ahead, dialing the infrared function of his prosthetic eye to the maximum. Then, he stared in blank shock.

Red dots! Tens of thousands of densely packed red dots swarmed his vision.

This was the Headless Men's Lair!

Right then, Su Mu looked back over his shoulder and waved at Mu Cheng. He didn't speak, but his message was crystal clear—'Come and get me.'

Mu Cheng nearly exploded with anger. He knew exactly what would happen: the second he got close, Su Mu would make a noise and slip right back into the shadows, leaving him to face the wrath of tens of thousands of headless ones.

But to get his revenge, he pushed forward anyway.

He sent one of his cyborgs tiptoeing after Su Mu. It was a comical sight: a hulking, metal-plated cyborg bounding lightly on its toes and scurrying forward in a crouch.

Mu Cheng had no other choice. Now that they were right on the edge of the Headless Men's Lair, he didn't dare make even a sliver of noise.

Su Mu didn't care at all about Mu Cheng creeping up behind him. He jogged briskly toward the Headless Men's Lair. His powerful spiritual energy granted him unparalleled perception, allowing him to judge every step with absolute precision. There would be no cliché, idiotic movie moment where he snapped a dry twig and alerted the enemy.

Slipping past a massive tree, he finally caught full sight of the Headless Men's Lair. It was an entire city!

It was an incredibly primitive city. All the buildings were constructed from bare, weathered stone, clearly having stood there for ages.

The structures were less like houses and more like caves. They had no doors and were simply piled-up mounds of enormous rocks, housing countless headless ones inside.

Some were sleeping, while others were eating. Their method of feeding was equally simple: they would just pick up a rock and smash it wildly to generate noise. However, none of the sound ever managed to travel outward; it was entirely devoured by the headless ones before it could spread.

Su Mu's arrival didn't attract any attention. The headless ones had no eyes, relying entirely on the ears covering their bodies to perceive their surroundings.

They simply continued going about their business.

After a quick glance around, Su Mu realized that this city sat right on the edge of the nightmare. Looming directly behind the city was the sky-blotting Black Fog, churning in absolute silence.

He slipped into the primitive little city without the slightest hesitation. Because all the structures were so low to the ground, he quickly spotted something that stood out.

The center of the city held a massive plaza, vaguely resembling a concert amphitheater. It was enclosed by a thick, semicircular stone wall. Deep hollows resembling seats had been carved into the rock face, and numerous headless ones were lying quietly inside them.

A colossal, jagged boulder rested right in the middle of the plaza. Dozens of ten-meter-tall headless giants formed a ring around it, prostrating themselves on the ground as if deep in worship.

Su Mu assumed they were worshipping the boulder itself, until a figure abruptly sat up on top of it. He was the size and shape of a normal adult man, but his ghastly pale skin was completely covered in ears. More importantly, the space above his neck wasn't empty.

Instead, a single, gigantic ear sprouted right where his head should be!