Chapter 543: The Plush Toy Points the Way

My spirit platform was clear, my intent focused as one. I recited the Profound Truth Mental Method to dispel the myriad worries from my heart. My gaze was calm and clear, untainted by a single impurity.

"I shouldn't fall for any more tricks in this state." Holding up my phone, I walked over to the security door. That ear-piercing sound of nails scratching glass tormented me constantly, as if urging me to go and check.

"With a peaceful state of mind and zero worries, the fear should naturally dissipate." As long as I didn't generate any fearful thoughts, whatever I saw shouldn't be so terrifying.

I reached out and slowly pulled the security door open. When it was just half a finger's width ajar, I suddenly realized I was wrong—dead wrong.

A heavily burned face, altered beyond recognition, lunged straight at me. I tried to dodge, but a charred hand shot out from behind the door, gripping my wrist in a death grip.

"You again!" With no time to inspect the monster's appearance, I kicked it squarely in the face with every ounce of my strength. With a loud crack, the charred figure's neck snapped, and its head flopped backward, hanging upside down against its spine like an overripe fruit.

Stumbling back two or three steps, I finally got a good look at it. It was just an ordinary charred figure. Its clothes and flesh had long since melted together, making it impossible to distinguish any details. It had no hair, and its facial features had practically liquefied. It was easily the ugliest monster I had seen in all my broadcasts!

Hideous and disgusting. But the cruelest part was knowing deep down that this terrifying monster had once been a human, just like me.

The raging fire had left behind scorched, agonizing memories. Despair had wrapped around their struggling bodies like poisonous vines until they died in the flames, leaving behind filthy, repulsive corpses to become part of the despair itself.

I exhaled softly, maintaining my calm. "The monster looks hideous, but it hasn't reached the limit of what I can handle. This thing isn't enough to make me afraid; at most, it's just a little nauseating."

I casually picked up a blackened iron rod from the room, unsure of what it had been before the fire. Testing its weight in my hand, I strode swiftly toward the figure. "Come on. Since you're so eager to kill me, I might as well use you for some experiments."

I swung the iron rod wildly, battering the dark figure. I smashed its body out of shape and dislocated almost all of its joints, yet it continued to struggle. Its snapped neck even began to slowly arc upward, turning that hideous face toward me inch by inch.

"So normal methods won't kill it?" I rolled my left wrist. Elder Chen's Buddhist Prayer Bead Bracelet emanated a faint glow, and I slammed my fist straight down onto the dark figure's head!

Like a bursting bubble, the blackened, charred corpse instantly dissolved into thick smoke. It scattered and vanished into the burnt walls around me, while a small wisp drifted behind me, seemingly absorbed by the Plush Bear.

"Doesn't seem too hard to deal with." Lost in thought, I glanced at the Buddhist Prayer Bead Bracelet, only to suddenly realize that the light flowing across the beads had dimmed significantly. That single strike had consumed a massive amount of energy, far exceeding my expectations.

"That shouldn't be right. When I escaped the Clock Tower, I calculated that the merit on the Buddhist Prayer Bead Bracelet was enough for at least a dozen more uses. Is it because I subconsciously calculated the amount of merit before striking, so this district deliberately increased the consumption just to plunge me into despair?" Cold sweat broke out on my forehead. It felt as though a pair of eyes was watching me from the dark, seizing every opportunity to slowly gnaw away at my body, vowing to drive me into an absolute dead end.

Fighting was too costly, and escaping was impossible. The true horror of this district was finally beginning to show itself.

'The path changed. Only Chen Jiuge knows the real way. He's probably not here for the first time; there might even be extra instructions on that map!' But thinking about this now was useless. One wrong step led to another, and the hope of breaking this deadlock was slim.

I returned to the room where I had lost track of Chen Jiuge and looked at the fork ahead. Three half-open doors and one window all led to different rooms. If I kept pursuing him and made the wrong choice, I would likely go completely off track, getting further and further away.

While I was thinking, that ear-piercing, maddening sound echoed right next to my ear again. It felt so close, as if something could lunge out and ambush me at any second.

"Sound is one of the human body's most important channels for receiving information from the outside world. This omnipresent static is a form of interference, designed to affect subjective judgment and make a person lose their cool, driving them to take irrational actions." Having figured out the abilities of those charred figures, I stopped paying attention to them. Even if I gave them a chance to ambush me, they wouldn't necessarily be able to hurt me.

"The key right now is how to choose the path. My merit is at negative one hundred thousand, so my luck is absolutely rotten. The chances of me blindly guessing the right one out of four is practically zero." The noises in my ears gradually grew clearer, as if the things hiding in the dark were rushing over from the other rooms, their numbers steadily increasing. Although my intent guarded my spirit platform to force down the fear in my heart, my body faithfully produced basic human instincts. Threads of cold seeped from my spine into my brain, and my legs tensed up, ready to sprint at top speed at any moment.

"Listening to this noise, it doesn't sound like something a single person could make." The scraping of nails on glass, faint footsteps, and short, suppressed pants—a cacophony of mind-breaking sounds mixed together, echoing from every room in all directions.

"If it were anyone else, they'd probably have broken down and started running blind by now." Gripping the iron rod, I was just about to pick a random door when something suddenly grabbed my back. "What the hell?"

I snapped my head around. A red thread extended from the Plush Bear's torn belly. Sliding over my shoulder without drawing any attention, it secretly pointed toward the leftmost door.

'A hint? How does the Plush Bear know which way Chen Jiuge went? Is it because they once shared the same body, allowing them to sense each other at close range?' I didn't dare dwell on it. Terrified of any more unexpected changes, I obediently walked in the direction the Plush Bear pointed.

For the Plush Bear to wake up at such a critical moment, I figured there were two possibilities. First, there was no one else around, so it didn't need to play dead. Second, it had to do with that wisp of black smoke it had just absorbed.

After I killed the charred corpse, its body turned into black smoke and returned to the building, but the Plush Bear had intercepted a portion of it for its own use.

'Chen Jiuge discovered the Plush Bear's existence, which is probably one of the reasons he attacked me. Between him and the Plush Bear, only one can be human, while the other has to live as a ghost inside a toy.' I had been schemed against by Chen Jiuge because of the Plush Bear, but thanks to the Plush Bear's presence, I also saw a sliver of hope to break this deadlock.

'This black smoke must be made of various negative emotions and memories filled with despair. If the Plush Bear can absorb this energy, that's a good thing.' With the Plush Bear guiding the way, the anxiety hanging over my heart finally settled, and I pressed forward.

Tracking my target along the way, I encountered a few more charred corpses. I didn't use any merit. Suppressing my nausea, I simply shattered their joints and let the Plush Bear absorb the black smoke from their bodies. Once the black smoke dropped below a certain level, they automatically dissipated.

After slaughtering six corpses in a row, the Plush Bear recovered a great deal, although from the outside, it still looked as tattered as ever.

Normally, in the Deep Dream Layer, prolonged intense activity would lead to mental fatigue, accelerating how quickly one lost themselves. However, I was clearly an exception. Even after wrestling with six charred corpses, I was still full of vigor and bursting with energy. I guessed the main reason had to do with swallowing all that Dream-Entangling Grass and the Flower of the Dream Realm earlier.

With the Plush Bear pointing the way, I sped through the Ash Ruins, leaving even those piercing noises behind. Right now, I only had one thought in my mind: catch Chen Jiuge, beat him to a pulp, and rob him of every good item he had.

About ten minutes passed without me encountering a single charred corpse. The surrounding architecture began to change. The stench in the air grew heavier, and mangled human limbs began to appear inside the rooms.

"Are these formed from memories too?" I kicked away a charred severed leg in front of me and frowned. Under the Plush Bear's guidance, it seemed I had entered the very core of this building complex.

The structures here were practically unrecognizable from their original forms. The blazing fire had changed everything about them, leaving behind nothing but endless despair.