Chapter 527: She Sat Upon Time

I had learned Crushing Fist and was skilled in close-quarters combat. Now, with the protection of merit, that woman's head posed absolutely no threat to me.

I threw punch after punch, giving her no chance to fight back. With a sharp, piercing shriek, I shattered the entire thought!

The scene shifted. The middle-aged man in the room and the young woman on the hospital bed both vanished, and I found myself back in the room from earlier.

Opening my eyes, I looked at my palm. The woman's head had shriveled up like a withered flower, and the colorful silk threads in my hand had also shriveled and snapped.

"Is it dead?" Chu Men walked over in excitement. "Streamer, you succeeded."

Holding the "thought" in one hand, I recalled the encounter. "I originally wanted to yank off the silk threads beneath the 'thought,' but the moment I touched them, my consciousness was dragged into its malicious intent. I was almost swallowed by it."

That brief clash had actually been incredibly perilous. Ordinary methods were useless against a "thought." Before the merit of the Buddhist Prayer Beads manifested, I had been affected by the "thought" and nearly assimilated by it, which would have turned me into a vicious, mindless soul.

"Then how did you escape?" Chu Men had only seen me staring blankly for a moment while holding the thought; he had no idea I had nearly perished.

"With this." I raised my left hand. Merit flowed over the string of Buddhist Prayer Beads bearing the lotus imprint. "Merit can suppress malicious thoughts, but the amount is limited. It acts as a consumable resource, and I don't know how many more times this Buddhist Prayer Bead Bracelet can be used."

I fell silent for a moment. There was actually even worse news I hadn't told Chu Men. My own merit was at negative one hundred thousand, and I was entangled by karmic obstacles. If I were ever eroded by malicious thoughts, I would likely turn into a truly terrifying existence.

I banished those thoughts from my mind and inspected the room. After making sure I hadn't missed anything, I pushed the door open. "It's time to leave. We'll keep heading upstairs. Be careful not to bump into that woman from earlier. She's extremely dangerous!"

After stepping out of the room, I didn't leave immediately. The thought inside had already been dealt with; if necessary, we could hide in here for shelter.

Since the doors had no numbers, it took me a dozen seconds or so to memorize this room's location. "All right, let's go."

Just as Chu Men and I turned around, we heard a noise from behind us. We looked back and saw that the previously closed door had cracked open.

Before either of us could react, the door burst open. A shriveled human head tumbled out, dragging newly sprouted silk threads behind it as it rolled downstairs!

"Oh no! That woman's 'thought' isn't dead!"

The corridor formed a spiral. The head rolled incredibly fast, vanishing from sight in the blink of an eye.

"This is bad." Both Chu Men and I looked grim. A crucial reason we had made it this far safely was that we had stayed hidden in the shadows, entirely undetected.

But the situation had changed. It was highly likely that this "thought" would communicate with the other "thoughts" in the building, exposing us two outsiders.

A single "thought" was already terrifying enough. What if a whole swarm of them came? I didn't even dare to imagine it!

Without hesitation, I immediately chased after it. However, I ran all the way down to the fourth floor without seeing any sign of that "thought." I suspected it had secretly hidden inside one of the rooms.

Standing in the corridor, I realized that every single floor consisted of countless rooms and cubicles. Checking them one by one was simply unrealistic.

"Streamer, what do we do? Should we evacuate the building?" Chu Men was slower than me and had only just caught up. He sounded anxious and deeply worried.

"This building is the tallest in the area. If we want to see further away and figure out the surrounding terrain, there's no better place than here. We can't retreat. Come on, let's speed up and head for the top floor!"

I took the lead and sprinted upstairs.

In truth, there was another reason I was reluctant to leave. That woman wearing the Paper Doll Mask was still inside the building. The Underworld Live Show had offered a bounty of one hundred points to kill her. If possible, I wanted to observe her up close—perhaps I would make a startling discovery.

With the woman's head missing, a hint of urgency crept into both of us.

"The flow of time in the Deep Dream Layer is different from reality. If we stay here for too long, we might completely mix up reality and illusion." I swiftly ran up the stairs. The internal structure of the building was largely identical throughout, spiraling upward as a whole, with each room tightly connected to the next.

It wasn't until we reached the eighteenth floor that the situation finally changed. First was the color of the walls: the walls on all the other floors had been white or light gray, but on this floor alone, they were pitch-black.

"Something's not right." The pitch-black walls appeared deeply mysterious in the dreamscape, radiating a sense of danger. As I stepped inside, I discovered that all the doors on this floor were black as well. Without looking closely, it was impossible to distinguish where the walls ended and the doors began.

"Streamer, don't rush in. Black is not a good color in a dream. There's likely something horrifying hidden on this floor." The room doors were unlocked. If there really were things hiding inside, they might charge straight out and surround Chu Men and me.

Colors held special meanings in dreams; Sakurako had told me that before. Thus, I didn't rashly push any of the doors open to investigate. Instead, I stood my ground and waited for Chu Men to catch up. "Old Chu, what do you think black signifies in a dream?"

"Black is the shadow formed in the absence of light. If you dream of black, it normally means you will uncover a truth you never knew, or that the feelings you've kept hidden in your heart are about to be discovered by those around you. Black represents danger and is often tied to evil." Chu Men frowned, pondering for a moment. "According to the data provided by our volunteers, dreaming of walking into a dark room or seeing someone dressed in black indicates that someone will sabotage your relationships or career, or even bring danger into your life."

"I couldn't tell you were so experienced in dream interpretation."

"It's not expertise; it's experience. This is all summarized from the oral accounts of volunteers." Chu Men lowered his voice. "Hurry up and find a window. Once we're done looking, let's leave immediately. Black really isn't a lucky color in a dream."

Passing through the pitch-black corridor, Chu Men and I arrived at the end of the passageway. The stairs leading to the next floor were also an ominous black.

"This building didn't seem this tall from the outside." Chu Men and I stepped onto the black stairs one after another, arriving at the nineteenth floor.

This was the top floor of the entire building. The space was massive and piled high with all sorts of miscellaneous clutter.

There were dolls, flower pots, peeling furniture, rusted iron stoves, massive gears, and mechanical parts as tall as a person.

There were many items, but without exception, they were all old—waste likely abandoned by people.

"Why is it all piled up here?"

Looking up, I realized the nineteenth floor had no ceiling. Like a castle in the sky, twisted steel beams served as a scaffold to support a massive clock at the very top of the building.

The clock face was five meters in diameter and divided into three concentric layers. The outermost layer was marked with twenty-four numbers, seemingly representing the twenty-four hours of a day. The second layer was marked with twelve numbers, just like a clock in reality. The strangest part was the innermost layer; that dial was covered in dense, fine text. One half was pure black, and the other half was pure white, seemingly symbolizing day and night.

"Does this clock record the time within the Dream Realm?" I was merely guessing blindly. In truth, my gaze only lingered on the clock face for a few seconds before shifting away, because I had discovered an even more inconceivable presence.

On the outermost clock dial, three hands pointed crookedly in different directions. The thickest hand lay horizontally across the center of the dial, and the woman I had seen earlier was sitting right on it!

On the nineteenth floor of the building, her skirt fluttered in the dream's wind. Wearing the Paper Doll Mask, she gazed into the distance, swinging her bright red high heels. Beneath her feet lay the entire dream world.

"This woman..." For a moment, I couldn't even find the words to describe her.

I didn't know what she wanted to do, nor was it clear where her gaze rested. I could only hide among the piles of clutter and steal glances at her profile, watching as she gently raised her hand the instant the clock hands intersected.

After twelve chimes of the clock, the innermost dial began to turn in tandem with her fingers. All the hands fell into the black region.

At that exact moment, the sound of doors being pushed open echoed throughout the building. Crouching at the top of the stairs, I peeked down. Door after door burst open, and one "thought" after another flew out!