Chapter 528: Lightless District

I covered my mouth. Even after surviving more than a dozen livestreams, I had never witnessed a scene this terrifying.

The drifting thoughts swarmed like birds startled from a nest. Each bore a different, ferocious face as they flooded the corridors. They scoured every single room, sweeping down floor by floor in a relentless search before finally surging down the stairwell and bursting out through the ground-floor exit!

Countless strands of black hair wove together like a shifting storm cloud.

My scalp prickled as I watched from the sidelines. Flashing faces and heads brimming with pure malice shot past, flying toward every corner of the city as if on a hunt.

"This is terrifying!"

I didn't dare breathe. I held my posture, absolutely motionless, terrified of bumping into something.

The hands on the massive clock kept ticking. As the thickest hand shifted down half a notch, the woman stood up. She walked back into the clock's inner workings along the numbers on the dial, the click of her high heels mingling with the grinding gears. She never looked back, leaving as breezily as she had arrived.

The nineteenth floor was crammed with discarded junk, leaving barely any room to step. Chu Men and I waited until the woman's footsteps completely faded before slipping out of our hiding spot, both of us seeing the shock in each other's eyes.

"Who is that woman?" Chu Men asked. "Why do I get the feeling she controls the time in the Dream Realm?"

"How should I know?" I sat down on a table missing a leg, my eyes fixed on the massive clock overhead. "The innermost ring of the dial is divided into black and white. Earlier, all the hands were turning in the white section. Now ninety percent of the face is black, and the hands have all crossed into the black zone. Does this black-and-white shift represent the change of day and night?"

"The Dream Realm has day and night?" Chu Men couldn't wrap his head around it. "The structure of the Shallow Dream Layer and the Middle Dream Layer depends entirely on the dreamer's memories. But the Deep Dream Layer can be considered another world. We know far too little about it."

"What if we think about it like this?" I said. "The Dream Realm is divided into day and night. We happened to arrive during the day, which is relatively safe. Thoughts and nightmares rarely act up in the daylight. But night is a different story. You saw it yourself—after the twelfth chime, all the thoughts in this building swarmed out. We might run into even more bizarre and terrifying things." I frowned, my expression grim. "The true danger of the Deep Dream Layer is finally starting to show."

"Should we just hide in here and wait for the time to change again?"

I was tempted by Chu Men's proposal, but I didn't think it was the best method. "This building is a nest for those thoughts. Right now, the most dangerous place is the safest place, but there's no telling what could happen if we stay too long. If we get cornered by those thoughts in here, it's a dead end."

"Never mind, let's just stick to the original plan." Chu Men and I stepped out of the junk and climbed up the steel framework supporting the Clock Tower. These twisted steel beams and mechanical parts intertwined in a way that completely defied real-world physics, looking like a piece of abstract art.

Standing at the very top of the Clock Tower, I finally got my wish. I gazed out into the distance, looking down over this dream city.

Building after bizarrely shaped building filled my vision, their complex streets intertwining like a spider web.

"There doesn't seem to be a way out..." This city was simply too vast, stretching infinitely to the edge of the horizon. "I can't even see the path we took to get here."

Chu Men was somewhat pessimistic. Before climbing the high-rise, we both knew the Deep Dream Layer was essentially another world and that no one had ever escaped it. We had just harbored a sliver of hope, wishing the rumors were wrong and that we would be lucky enough. Unfortunately, reality was cruel.

"There's no way out. We can't escape this city." Chu Men leaned back against a steel rebar. "Maybe in a few years, when our memories blur, we'll forget our origins and think we always belonged to this twisted world."

"Don't panic, there's still a chance." Despite saying that, I knew the odds of escaping the Deep Dream Layer were already microscopic. This city was simply too massive; walking out of it was impossible.

What was even more despairing was that as long as people still dreamed, as long as they kept abandoning their memories and forgetting their pasts, this city would continue to expand.

No one could walk out, just as no one could possibly understand everyone's past.

Standing atop the nineteenth floor, I used my Judging Eye to see much more clearly than Chu Men. Night had arrived in the Dream Realm, and many unseen things crept out from their hiding places. Misshapen and grotesque, they wandered through this kaleidoscopic city, reminding me of a line I had read many years ago: "Monsters walk the human world."

"Is this the Deep Dream Layer?" The clock's hands rotated across twenty-four numbers, its three concentric dials representing the rules of the Deep Dream Layer. As I looked down at the world below, scanning the endless bizarre sights, a completely absurd thought struck me.

'Compared to the rampant materialism and selfish indifference of the real world, this city, with its wandering thoughts and memories, might actually appear more authentic.' Gripping a bent piece of rebar, I leaned half my body out over the edge of the building.

"We can't escape. I suggest we hurry up and find a safe place to act as a shelter, and prepare for a war of attrition." Chu Men quickly adjusted his emotions. "We can't give up. At the very least, the two of us can be considered pioneers in humanity's exploration of the Dream Realm."

"Did you forget about that woman just now? She came in earlier than both of us. If we really get down to it, she's the pioneer." I shook my head and patiently went back to observing the environment outside the building, forcing myself to memorize the terrain and distinct buildings within a kilometer radius. I never considered myself a particularly smart person. The main reason I survived so many livestreams was my caution, and that I would absolutely never give up until the very last moment.

Using the Judging Eye to observe carefully, it didn't take long for me to actually spot something.

Every few meters along the streets of the dream city stood a streetlamp with a highly abstract design. The light was very dim, but they were the only light sources illuminating the roads.

And right to the north of the building, roughly five or six kilometers away, was a district plunged in total darkness. Looking down from this height, it looked like a single blueberry sitting on top of a massive block of butter cake.

"Why are the streetlamps all extinguished in that one spot?" The more I looked, the more familiar it felt. After sweeping my eyes back and forth a few times, I suddenly realized. "This dilapidated street layout... why is it so similar to the Jiangcheng Lightless Road?"

"The architectural style is different, but the street layout has some uncanny similarities." I had been to the No-Lights Road many times and was quite familiar with its environment. "Is the true foundation of the Underworld Live Show inside the Deep Dream Layer? Impossible, the architectural styles are too different. Perhaps this is just a coincidence."

At that moment, I thought of the woman wearing the Paper Doll Mask just now. She was dressed exactly like a Live Show Examiner, and the general layout of the district I was looking at now was very similar to the Jiangcheng Lightless Road. Did some kind of connection exist between the two?

'If only I could chat with that woman for a bit. I might even get some intel about the Underworld Live Show out of her.' Of course, I could only keep this thought to myself. I didn't even dare say it out loud. I knew there were people from the Live Show in the livestream channel, and if those words reached their ears, it would be extremely detrimental to me. After all, this woman was the target of a Live Show bounty. Cooperating with her would cross the Live Show's bottom line.

"This unlit area is worth exploring. We might even uncover some secrets related to the Underworld Live Show." The mission issued by the Live Show was quite concise. It only demanded that I kill that woman, but it didn't mention what the grudge between them actually was.

"The answers might be in that Lightless District." I memorized the location of that area and turned to look in other directions, quickly making another discovery.

"I actually found something!" My eyes were locked onto a spot halfway between the Lightless District and the building. It looked completely ordinary, a three-way intersection surrounded by low, dilapidated buildings.

"What did you find?" Chu Men walked over out of curiosity, squinting into the distance.

"Look over there!" I pointed toward the middle of the three-way intersection. There, right where the streets converged, stood a solitary phone booth!