Chapter 112: The World Within the Black Fog

Su Mu stepped forward, walking deeper into the Black Fog. With the glowing bubbles gone, his surroundings had plunged into complete darkness—a deathly, silent pitch-black.

Walking through it, he could only feel wisps of fog brushing across his face like gentle little hands.

His eyes glowed with a crystalline blue light. His powerful spiritual strength enhanced his perception, allowing him to vaguely make out his surroundings a few meters away.

The ground was uneven, even bulging into small hills in places, but it was completely devoid of life.

'Do all nightmare apostles who enter the Black Fog end up starving to death in here?' Su Mu frowned. This wasn't the surprise he had hoped for. If the Black Fog was just a prison, exploring it would be completely pointless.

He pressed on, walking for a long, long time. Judging by his Pocket Watch, three hours had passed, yet he still hadn't seen a single living creature or any other glowing bubbles.

It defied logic. If all nightmares were just glowing bubbles scattered throughout the Black Fog, why hadn't he seen another one by now?

After all, these three hours of walking hadn't been at the pace of an ordinary person, but a transcendent.

At Su Mu's current speed, three hours was more than enough time to cross an entire county town on foot.

'Either this place is some kind of maze that traps anyone who enters, or the Black Fog is simply too massive... Or perhaps, this isn't the hollowed-out belly of a mountain. It's... underground!'

A sharp glint flashed in Su Mu's eyes. Only the underground could span such an enormous area. And if there was an underground, there naturally had to be a surface above.

Where would that surface be? Where else could it be?

Could the so-called Nightmare World actually be an underground realm lying directly beneath the Real World, where nightmares were packed into bubbles and stored below the earth?

This discovery was absolutely revolutionary for understanding the origins of the Nightmare World. Previously, every nightmare apostle believed the Nightmare World was an alternate dimension—an independent realm built entirely out of nightmares.

But now, it seemed they were all wrong! It was highly likely that the Nightmare World and the Real World were one and the same, existing right beneath the surface!

Just as Su Mu was lost in thought, a sudden hum erupted!

An eerie humming echoed around him. Mixed within it were strange, chaotic whispers spoken in a bizarre cadence—sounds no human could ever produce.

The noise sounded like the murmurs of an evil god, deep and chaotic. It felt as if it were right next to his ears, yet also drifting in from a distant space and time.

Sometimes it rolled like muffled thunder, vibrating into the depths of his soul; other times it hissed like ghostly whispers, making his flesh crawl. Every single syllable felt like a challenge to his sanity.

Su Mu's head began to ache. He could feel a surge of frantic, violent emotion rising from the bottom of his heart. The Rage Potion he had just swallowed hadn't been able to force his mind into a frenzy, yet now, simply listening to these ravings was throwing his mind into chaos.

[Immaculate Heart]!

A lustrous white light rose from his body, and the whispers by his ears abruptly quieted down. Though they hadn't completely vanished, they were now within a tolerable range.

A normal person would have immediately chosen to flee upon hearing those ravings, but Su Mu was not a normal person. He was intensely curious about this voice that could throw his mind into chaos. Since he was already here, he had to go take a look.

He headed straight toward the source of the ravings. Gradually, the bizarre noise grew louder and louder until the [Immaculate Heart] was on the verge of collapsing. Finally, he saw light!

In the sky not far away—or rather, not the sky, but the upper layer of rock—floated a colossal sphere emitting a yellow glow. It shone a bright yellow, just like a sun.

However, the light cast by this sun offered no warmth whatsoever; instead, it was exceptionally cold.

A sun? There was a sun underground?

Su Mu quickened his pace, breaking into a run toward the massive glowing sphere. As he drew near, the evil ravings became almost deafening. Faint trickles of blood began to seep from his ears.

When he raised his eyes to look at it, a flash of yellow light struck him. A sharp, stinging pain instantly pierced his eyes, and a line of bloody tears ran down his face... He went blind.

But the single image he saw before losing his sight stubbornly lingered in his mind.

That wasn't a sun. It was... an eyeball!

An unimaginably massive eyeball embedded in the upper layer of rock. The pupil was a dark yellow vertical slit, as chillingly cold as a cold-blooded animal's.

Danger! Danger! Danger!!

The moment Su Mu's brain stored the image of that eyeball, his bodily instincts triggered the highest level of alarm—the most primal terror carved deep into human genes.

Yet, when that physical signal reached his consciousness, it was automatically replaced with excitement! Excitement! Excitement!!

He had never encountered an entity like this before. A single glance was enough to provoke a dread etched deep into his genes, as if humanity had been born to fear this kind of existence.

This was simply... too wonderful!!

Suddenly, the blinded Su Mu felt a bone-piercing chill, as though he were being stared at by some indescribable entity. Every cell in his body throbbed with a faint, prickling pain.

At the same time, his mind began to suffer corruption. The terrifying ravings seemed to come alive, acting like hundreds of millions of tiny tadpoles frantically burrowing into his body.

The [Immaculate Heart] was instantly pushed to its absolute limit, flooded with a massive amount of spiritual strength. Under such frenzied activation and immense external pressure, the [Immaculate Heart] seemed to undergo a qualitative change, its purification abilities rising to a whole new level. Su Mu knew this meant the [Immaculate Heart] had been completely digested. Yet, it was all entirely useless.

The Bronze Law simply couldn't block corruption from such a high dimension.

All that was left was for Su Mu to endure it himself. As the corruption invaded, his consciousness was affected, becoming incredibly violent and chaotic. His mind was filled with all sorts of dark impulses. He wanted to kill. He wanted to slaughter every living creature, destroy everything in his sight, and even harbor inclinations to end the world.

Just a moment later, however, an even stronger emotion surged into his heart: So boring...

The moment the thought of destroying the world appeared, it triggered an overwhelming sense of boredom.

In his dreams, he had truly grown sick of destroying worlds. Back when he had fallen into extreme emptiness and boredom, his mood had turned incredibly violent, and he had simply started ending worlds. All of this was just stuff he had already grown tired of playing with.

Just as an innocent child was easily corrupted by the dark, how could you corrupt someone who was already so accustomed to it that they were bored of it?

To stain a man who had destroyed the world countless times, a man who had already vented every last shred of his dark side within his dreams, you would need to pull out a dye darker than black.

This so-called corruption was nothing more than an amplification of the dark side of human nature, and Su Mu didn't need anyone's help with that. In his omnipotent dreams, with zero oversight, the depths of his own darkness were beyond anyone's imagination.