Chapter 526: Malicious Thought Strikes

"What's wrong?" I turned to look. Chu Men had gone rigid, his back pressed hard against the door. He looked as if he'd just seen a vengeful ghost, a heavy solemnity in his eyes.

Following his gaze, I turned around and suddenly realized there was a woman's severed head resting on the hospital bed in the middle of the room.

She had long, dyed blonde hair and a stunningly beautiful face, though her skin was an unhealthy, ghastly pale.

With a high-bridged nose, full lips, and blonde hair draped lazily across the pure white bedsheets, the person who generated this thought must have been an incredibly beautiful woman.

She had a beautiful appearance, but no matter how pretty her face was, it couldn't change the fact that she was just a thought. A severed head casually tossed onto a bed looked bizarre no matter how you looked at it.

"There's a thought in this room, too." Only now did I begin to take in our surroundings. The room was set up like a hospital ward.

"Old Chu, we should go."

I urged Chu Men, but he shook his head, gesturing for me not to make any sudden moves. "This thought has already noticed us. You didn't see it just now, but her eyes covertly opened after we entered the room. If I hadn't spotted it by accident and kept my eyes glued to her, something terrible might have already happened."

"Is it really that serious?" I raised an eyebrow. The physical form of a thought was certainly terrifying to normal people—like human-head balloons—but to someone like me, who had gone through multiple broadcasts and fought countless battles, it wasn't all that scary. "Can an abandoned malicious thought actually threaten us?"

"On her own, probably not. But don't forget this is the Deep Dream Layer, and she already knows we're here. If we leave and she immediately runs out of the room to gather the other thoughts in this building to hunt us down, it'll become a life-or-death crisis."

Being chased by countless thoughts... just running that scenario through my mind once was enough to make me uncomfortable.

"If walking away leaves behind endless trouble, then we might as well deal with her now." I was by no means a soft-hearted person. Moreover, this was the Dream Realm; destroying an abandoned thought wouldn't make me feel guilty in the slightest. "You guard the door. I'll take her on."

"Be careful." Chu Men blocked the door with his body, making sure the thought couldn't escape.

I nodded and pulled out a Suppression Talisman. Although its effectiveness was limited in the Dream Realm, it provided at least some psychological comfort.

As I approached step by step, I saw her more clearly.

To put it bluntly, the thought's physical form consisted of a human head attached to fine threads formed by countless tangled memories.

Standing by the hospital bed, I suddenly felt at a loss. "How do you even kill this thing? Smash her head? Or cut the fine threads on her neck?"

I turned to Chu Men for help, but he didn't fully understand it either. He hesitated before saying, "According to the data from my previous experiments, as long as you yank off all those fine threads beneath the thought, it will naturally dissipate without the memories to support it."

"Are you sure?" I looked at the woman's head resting on the bed. There was no body beneath her neck—only silken threads of various colors.

"Those threads are cognitive processes, the foundation from which a thought is generated. Because humans possess the ability to think, they can transform everything in the outside world into memories and store them in their minds." Chu Men reasoned logically. Even though I didn't fully understand, I decided to do as he said out of trust in my teammate.

Holding the Live Show Phone to record with one hand, I used a Suppression Talisman to pad my grip and reached for the drooping silken threads beneath the woman's head.

I slipped my fingers into the threads and grabbed them tight. Before I could even exert any force, my vision began to blur. 'Crap, I'm being pulled into the thought's memories.'

I was all too familiar with this sensation. When I opened my eyes, I was still in the same hospital ward. The positions of the bed and the cabinets hadn't changed, but there were now three other people in the room.

A handsome middle-aged man sat next to the hospital bed. Lying on the bed was a young, pretty girl with long black hair. She looked rather pale, possessed an extremely innocent appearance, and didn't seem very old.

"I've already divorced her. From now on, I will always stay by your side." The middle-aged man's face brimmed with a happy smile. He turned, and only then did I see that between him and the young woman lay a newborn baby boy. "I have a son now. After hoping for so many years, I can finally be a father."

Just as he was sighing with emotion, the door to the ward was suddenly pushed open. The woman who walked in looked exactly like the thought I had seen earlier. She had long blonde hair, a high nose bridge, full lips, and fair skin, looking like she was of mixed European descent.

As soon as she entered, she got into a huge argument with the man, then pointed at the young woman on the bed and cursed her out. Through their shouting match, I gathered a rough understanding of what had happened.

It was a melodramatic affair. The mistress had gotten pregnant and successfully forced her way into the picture. The blonde original wife was infertile; she had been trying very hard to save her marriage, but unfortunately, all her pleas had been useless.

The argument slowly escalated into a physical altercation. The blonde woman tried to lay hands on the young woman who had just given birth, but she was shoved to the ground by the middle-aged man. He pushed her hard, showing absolutely no regard for their past relationship.

Enraged, the blonde woman scrambled up from the floor. Her stunning face was twisted and deformed, and her sapphire-like eyes filled with malice. Love could make people blind, and after crossing forbidden lines, blind love could ferment into the ultimate hatred.

As she picked herself up from the floor, her face went pale with anger, her fingers trembling. On her full lips, it was impossible to tell if it was bright red lipstick, or if she had bitten through her own lip and drawn blood.

With her blonde hair draped behind her, she looked like a vicious ghost staring fixedly at the tiny life on the hospital bed. She believed that it was the appearance of this child that had robbed her of everything.

As blood oozed from her lips, in this very moment, she generated an utterly insane "thought"!

Springing up from the floor, she suddenly dashed toward the hospital bed and snatched the infant lying next to the young mother. Then, like a demon, she held the baby high with both hands and slowly turned around.

Her venomous eyes locked onto me, standing right by the door!

'What's going on?' I went on high alert. This memory was incredibly vivid; it must have happened in reality. 'Is she really going to slam that newborn to death?'

Before I could come up with an answer, the blonde woman in front of me swung her arms down, forcefully smashing the child toward the floor with pure resentment!

Even though I knew perfectly well that this was the Dream Realm, my body still instinctively reached out to catch the infant.

I leaned forward and stretched out my arms, but to me, that baby was nothing more than a phantom illusion. I couldn't catch it at all.

"This crazy woman!" I looked up. The blonde beauty in front of me had already undergone a mutation. Her head had detached from her body, and the silken threads representing her cognitive processes were tangled together.

Staring with those venomous eyes, she lunged and bit right at my face!

She was too close, leaving me no time to dodge. I swung a fist at her head and chanted a suppression incantation, but the Suppression Talisman had almost no effect in the Deep Dream Layer. My hand was quickly entangled by the silken threads beneath the woman's severed head.

These fine threads acted like venomous snakes, burrowing into my flesh and corroding my consciousness. They made my head grow groggy and caused my vision to blur.

'Shit!' Only now did I realize the terror of these malicious thoughts. They were practically the ugliest, most vicious dark sides of humanity. It was no wonder they were discarded in the Deep Dream Layer.

I rapidly retreated as the floating woman's head gnawed toward my eyes. Time was incredibly tight. My mind raced, and within fractions of a second, I made a decision.

'I brought very few items into the Dream Realm, and they're all tucked close inside my pockets right now. The only thing I can use directly are the Buddhist Prayer Beads hanging on my wrist that I got from Elder Chen.'

The "thought's" teeth scraped against my mask. I hesitated no longer and took the initiative, thrusting out my left hand to grab her mouth. "Get down here!"

Shoving my fingers into her mouth, I threw caution to the wind, using all my strength to pin her to the floor. If talismans were useless, I would use my fists.

Our consciousnesses clashed. I felt that with every punch I landed, the malice and resentment inside the thought seeped into my body a little more. And just as these evil thoughts began to affect my reasoning, the Buddhist Prayer Beads that I had been wearing on my wrist underwent an astonishing transformation.

Lotus-like patterns began to flow across the otherwise completely ordinary beads, and streaks of white divine runes attached themselves to my hand.

"This is... merit?!" I stared at my left hand in disbelief. Merit protected my palm. With every strike that landed, the thought let out a bloodcurdling scream! Its body was shrinking at a speed visible to the naked eye!

"Merit can actually suppress malicious thoughts? Is this another one of merit's uses?"