Chapter 92: Devouring Divinity

The angel's typically compassionate face went completely blank. The sudden shifts in his surroundings had taken him completely by surprise; he seemed unable to comprehend how a mere mortal could stand so far above him.

"Blasphemer... die!" Looking like a malfunctioning machine, his face cold as ice, the angel transformed into a streak of holy light and shot straight toward Su Mu at the pinnacle of heaven and earth.

Su Mu sneered in disdain. He had already seen through the angel's intentions: trap him in this illusion forever, force him to become a devout believer, and then seize control of his body. Unfortunately, a God's imagination was far too impoverished. Rather than finding these illusions beautiful, Su Mu found them utterly repulsive.

If they were in the outside world, he might truly lack a countermeasure against an Illusion Technique of this caliber. But this was his dream. This was his domain!

The angel had only himself to blame for forcing him into unconsciousness.

Because the moment he fell asleep, he entered this omnipotent dream.

With a gentle wave of his hand, billions of stars suspended in the cosmos rained down! They smashed frantically into that brilliant streak of holy light. Yet, even as the stars shattered and heaven and earth overturned, the holy light remained absolute and unchanging. It simply could not be shaken.

Su Mu's eyes flickered. "Just as I expected. Everything in this dream is fake, while the angel represents a reality from the outside world. The illusory cannot shake the real."

He had anticipated this. It was exactly the same as when he dealt with the crimson light of the Nightmare World. The illusory could not shake the real, even if his dream felt more authentic than reality itself.

Bang!

The holy light slammed into his imposing body, spreading frantically across his form like maggots clinging to bone. A layer of holy light instantly washed over Su Mu's crystal-blue eyes, and his expression took on a faint look of piety. An overwhelming urge swelled in his chest—a desperate impulse to sing the angel's praises.

He knew this was the angel forcefully altering his thoughts, trying to reduce him to an Angel Believer.

But Su Mu did not panic in the slightest. Instead, he smiled silently. "In my dream, I might not be able to change a reality that invades from the outside, but... I can change myself."

The moment he spoke, his imposing figure disintegrated inch by inch. He vanished into thin air, leaving the holy light to dart wildly in every direction like a headless fly.

From beyond the endless dimensions, Su Mu quietly watched the erratic holy light, studying it with deep interest. "A God? Nothing more than this."

He might not be able to destroy the holy light, but it had no hope of ever finding him inside this dream.

With a single thought, he could fracture the dream into infinite dimensions, freely concealing himself entirely outside of them.

"What should I do with you now?" he murmured, rubbing his chin in thought. Suddenly, his eyes lit up. "An Illusion Technique might not be able to affect reality, but its greatest use has always been deception. Why don't I try tricking a God?"

Instantly, an identical Su Mu materialized right in front of the holy light. It was a replica he had conjured—a flawless duplicate.

The angel took the bait. Seeming to lack higher intelligence, he plunged directly into the duplicate, and the holy light quickly engulfed the clone.

Su Mu could clearly sense the angel merging with the duplicate.

"Aren't you just courting death?" Su Mu muttered to himself. He could not control an external reality, but if the angel insisted on merging into his dream, he would gladly accept the gift.

He made the duplicate stand down, allowing the angel to fuse with it without resistance. A moment later, the two entities became one.

A Silver Vertical Pupil opened on the duplicate's forehead, and eight holy, angelic wings unfurled from its back.

Snap!

Su Mu snapped his fingers. The duplicate was instantly annihilated inch by inch, returning to total nothingness. The angel vanished right along with it, entirely absorbed into the fabric of the dream.

Just as he thought the problem was solved, the entire dream underwent a cataclysmic shift. Everything he had conjured shattered with a deafening crash, returning all creation back to absolute nothingness.

Amidst this boundless void, Su Mu stood entirely alone.

He furrowed his brows as he surveyed the emptiness. A faint, inexplicable intuition tugged at him, telling him his dream was no longer the same.

Yet, he could not quite articulate what had changed.

He attempted to conjure the Summit Immortal Palace once more. The dream quickly obeyed his will, shaping the celestial structure back into existence. Everything looked exactly as it had before, but that inexplicable feeling only grew stronger.

Suddenly, a flash of enlightenment swept through his eyes. He realized exactly what that feeling was.

Reality!

After absorbing the angel, a trace of true reality had bled into the dream! That miraculous sensation defied description, yet Su Mu felt it with absolute certainty. His dream had drawn closer to reality.

At the exact same moment, a searing pain spiked in his forehead, as if he were being burned by open fire.

Whoosh!

A massive full-body mirror materialized before him, reflecting a tall and slender figure.

Su Mu stared into the mirror, astonished to find that a Silver Vertical Pupil had opened on his own forehead. Its gaze was cold and utterly indifferent, like a supreme God peering down at the mortal masses.

As the Silver Vertical Pupil surfaced, a flood of fragmented memories that did not belong to him surged into his mind. In a trance, he witnessed two colossal Gods engaged in a brutal war. One was a demon with pitch-black wings erupting from its back. The other was an angel with a silver eye upon its forehead and pure white wings.

As they fought, their spilled blood rained down upon a slab of pitch-black stone. Soaked in their blood, the stone eventually transformed into the Divine and Demonic Dual Phase Statue he had seen before.

Their battle raged until the earth itself began to shatter. Ultimately, the Statue plummeted into the Abyss, vanishing without a trace.

The second memory fragment showed a throng of figures in black and white robes prostrating themselves before the Statue upon an altar. Then, they began to slaughter each other, their blood dyeing the Land of Sacrifice entirely red.

The third and final fragment revealed a small, hairless monster with wings and no eyes or nose. It continuously exhaled a thick, smog-like fog. The mist seemed to tip some delicate balance, causing an old wooden door to materialize within the fog. The little monster discovered the door and pushed it open.

The memories ended abruptly there.

"Do Gods and demons truly exist in this world? Or are they just byproducts of the Nightmare World?" An excited gleam danced in Su Mu's eyes. "This is simply wonderful!"

The more dangerous and bizarre the world proved to be, the more thrilled he became. He was like a hardcore gamer who never feared a game being too difficult, only that it might be too boring.

With that excited gleam still in his eyes, his mind raced to analyze the new information. The blood of the Gods and demons had imbued the Statue with Divinity. Later, the Statue must have been discovered by a cult, which then constructed the Land of Sacrifice specifically to house it.

The Land of Sacrifice wasn't actually located in the Abandoned District. Rather, when The Unrememberable arrived in the Abandoned District, it had inadvertently disrupted some hidden balance, causing the entrance to the Land of Sacrifice to manifest there.

Everything lined up perfectly now. He had previously wondered why the mastermind behind the scenes had bothered with a Statue when they clearly only needed The Unrememberable to achieve their goals. The answer was simple: the Statue hadn't been planted by them at all.

This confirmed his suspicions. The Unrememberable had been the one to unleash the Statue, only to end up trapped by it within the Land of Sacrifice.

The memory-corroding fog it produced was repelled by the Statue and vented entirely through the wooden door.

His own dream was deeply peculiar as well. It could actually devour the Statue's Divinity and gain a trace of genuine reality. Following that logic, wouldn't that mean if he devoured enough Divinity, his dream could become reality? Could it truly become a physical world?

What exactly was this dream? Was it truly something a mere mortal like him could dream up?

More and more mysteries shrouded Su Mu, constantly stimulating his thrill-seeking nerves. He thrived on the unknown. He loved surprises.

Just as he was lost in his own exhilaration, a sudden tremor rippled through the space. An instant later, the entire dream began to shake violently.