Chapter 536: The Second Live Show Streamer!

'Human shapes? Nightmares in disguise?' The moment I saw the two of them, I started guessing their identities. 'This is too strange. Could they be people the Underworld Live Show left behind to guard this area of the Dream Realm?' I had just stolen the Flower of the Dream Realm, and these two arrived right on my heels. The timing was too tight to be a coincidence.

Hiding behind the door, I peeked through the crack. The two figures approached from down the hall and soon reached the room where Chu Men and I were hiding.

"They're checking the rooms one by one. Their division of labor is clear—they never enter a room at the same time, always leaving one outside to keep watch. We can't avoid them!" Chu Men watched carefully, his analysis spot on.

"If we can't avoid them, then we won't." Having swallowed over a hundred stalks of Dream-Entangling Grass and a Flower of the Dream Realm, my will was as sharp as a blade. My soul shone like a diamond, brimming with an imposing presence. "If things really turn ugly, who knows which side will be the one running?"

"I feel like you've changed a lot since you came out of that room," Chu Men muttered, dropping the subject. He grabbed a chair from the room and hid behind the door. From his stance, he was preparing to launch an ambush.

I cast him a glance but didn't voice any objections, standing silently by the door to keep watching.

About a dozen seconds later, the adjacent room was opened. The man walked in, leaving the woman standing alone in the hallway. Her head was lowered, preventing me from seeing her face, but my instincts told me she looked somewhat familiar.

When the man emerged from the neighboring room, he waved a hand at the woman. Understanding the signal, she walked straight toward the room I was hiding in.

Pale fingers gripped the doorknob. Pushing slowly, she opened the door.

The faint glow of the phone screen illuminated her face. She had never expected anyone to be inside. Caught off guard, she reacted like a startled swan, lifting her head to reveal a delicate, beautiful face.

My heart seemed to skip a beat the moment I saw her. A sharp light flashed in my eyes, and I involuntarily blurted out a name: "Ye Bing!"

Those familiar features were just as endearing, even here in the Dream Realm.

Whether it was because of the mask I wore or because Ye Bing had been wandering the Deep Dream Layer for too long, she didn't recognize me. In that brief moment, I saw nothing but terror on her face.

She took a step back, bumping into the man keeping watch outside.

"What is it?" the man accompanying Ye Bing asked. He was of average height and rather thin, but the most striking detail was that he, too, was holding an unusually sized Large-Screen Phone!

Our gazes clashed in the dim hallway, sparks flying. A bad premonition rose in everyone's hearts.

My eyes lingered on Ye Bing for a few seconds before quickly shifting away. The moment I noticed the Large-Screen Phone in the stranger's hand, I froze as if turned to stone.

That was the first broadcasting tool the Underworld Live Show provided to its streamers! A phone that only an Underworld Live Show Streamer would possess!

I stared at his hand. Like looking into a mirror, his reaction matched mine exactly. His eyes were locked onto my palm, staring at the Large-Screen Phone I held.

The air seemed to freeze. The shock of that instant left everyone present deeply unsettled.

"Step back, we don't mean any harm." Chu Men broke the stalemate. He lowered his chair and stepped out from behind the door, his gaze darting between me and the man out in the hall.

No one paid Chu Men any mind. Both Ye Bing and the man kept their eyes fixed on me.

"Have I met you somewhere before?" Confusion flickered in Ye Bing's pretty eyes. She touched her forehead. "I've forgotten a lot of things. Whenever I try hard to think about it, my head hurts."

"Ye Bing, don't get too close to him," the man beside her said in a gentle voice. He took a step forward, placing himself between Ye Bing and me. "This man is very dangerous."

With that, he tilted his head, sizing Chu Men and me up with a cold sneer on his lips. "A doctor and a patient? How did you two enter the Deep Dream Layer?"

Chu Men was wearing a white coat, and I had been wearing a hospital gown when I entered the dream. Calling us a doctor and a patient was actually quite fitting.

"Let's drop the pointless probing. The phone in your hand has already exposed everything. We're the same kind of people." I laid my cards on the table, raising my own Large-Screen Phone—one of the symbols of an Underworld Live Show Streamer.

"To meet a colleague in this godforsaken place—the world really is interesting." The man chuckled at his phone screen and slowly backed away, keeping a safe distance from me.

"You're the first colleague I've run into. The Dream Realm is dangerous; cooperating benefits us both, while fighting will only get us both hurt. We work for the same platform. If possible, we should join forces." Even with the Dream Wing Gu, my chances of escaping the Deep Dream Layer weren't great. Furthermore, since he seemed to have already earned Ye Bing's trust, I was reluctant to fall out with him.

"Cooperate? Sure, that's exactly what I had in mind. But before we do that, we had better exchange whatever information we each have." He looked at me with a bizarre hint of a smile. As for Chu Men, he didn't even bother giving him a glance. "My name is Chen Jiuge. What about you?"

"Your name is Chen Jiuge?!" My expression changed drastically. Fortunately, the Good and Evil Mask hid my face, so he couldn't notice a thing. I casually threw out a name: "I'm Xia Chi."

"Xia Chi?" The man muttered the name, waving his phone, and both sides fell into silence again. The reason I didn't speak was because I was still carrying the Plush Bear on my back. I knew perfectly well that if the man in front of me wasn't lying, he was the evil spirit who had taken over Chen Jiuge's body!

'How did he become an Underworld Live Show Streamer? Isn't that too much of a coincidence?' I still remembered the scene in the little boy's dream where the evil spirit inside the Plush Bear took over Chen Jiuge's body and left Heaven's Gate. 'After usurping fate, when I went to the Underworld Live Show, I saw an ad card on the paper doll examiner's desk with the character "Nine" written on it. During the Death Train Live Broadcast, the person who secretly approached me, pretending to be Feng Minglong, also had a "Nine" on his work ID. I originally thought the "Nine" was a codename, but it turns out it's actually part of his name.'

My thoughts raced. Chen Jiuge's appearance brought both a turning point and a volatile variable to this entire situation. He had found Ye Bing before I did, and I couldn't tell whether that was a good or a bad thing.

"Why are you in the Deep Dream Layer?" I paused for a moment, keeping my tone calm. "My broadcast task is to bring Ye Bing out of the Dream Realm and return her to reality. What about you?"

"You're just going to tell me something as important as your broadcast task right off the bat?" Chen Jiuge smiled, but his smile was extremely fake. It was incredibly uncomfortable to look at, making me want to punch him right in the face. "Since you laid your cards on the table first, I won't hide it from you either. My broadcast task is to enter the Deep Dream Layer and kill Target A at all costs."

I thought it over carefully and felt that Chen Jiuge wasn't telling the truth. The Underworld Live Show never directly issued assassination tasks; killing was usually just one of the options.

"Target A? Coming into a dream to kill someone?" The one who spoke wasn't me, but Chu Men. He found it completely unbelievable. "You're absolute lunatics. Everyone in your line of work is a lunatic."

Chen Jiuge chuckled twice and turned his eyes to me. "Interested in cooperating? This task is worth a total of one hundred points."

He knew very well just how tempting points were to a live show streamer. If I hadn't met that woman before, I might have actually taken the risk for such a massive sum of points and agreed to work with him.

"A hundred-point reward?" I deliberately let my tone shift slightly, pretending to draw a sharp breath. Acting like a fish taking the bait, I probed seamlessly, "There's no such thing as a free lunch. If the Live Show has put out a hundred-point bounty, this task must be extremely dangerous. I wonder, what's so special about this Target A?"

"I don't have much information myself. I only know that she's been hiding in the Deep Dream Layer and used to be an Underworld Live Show Streamer as well. Later, for some unknown reason, she had a falling out with the Live Show and single-handedly destroyed their branch inside the Deep Dream Layer. However, she was severely wounded in the process. With only one percent of her strength left, she can only survive within the Dream Realm forever." Chen Jiuge thought for a moment before adding, "The task also revealed a few key details. Target A is a woman, and she wears a pair of red high heels."

As he said this, Chen Jiuge kept a close eye on me, but unfortunately for him, the Good and Evil Mask blocked him out completely, leaving him unable to see a thing.