Chapter 747: Fusion

I stood in the middle of the corridor, the malevolent yin energy at my brows condensing into cold frost. My body radiated an ominous aura, my long shadow swaying over the stairs.

"I can barely hold it back..."

My ghost art was on the verge of a breakthrough. After sweeping the bottom floor and swallowing sixty-seven obsessions in a row, I had finally reached my limit.

"Even if Xue Zhuo possessed my body, he wouldn't dare devour this many in one sitting, would he?"

As I teetered on the edge of reason and madness, every bloodshot vein in my eyes brimmed with killing intent. I had never craved an outlet this desperately before.

The faintest scent of blood drove me near insanity. I dug my fingernails into my flesh; only the sheer pain could ground me and allow me to maintain a shred of clarity.

Countless wicked thoughts collided in my mind. Greed, gluttony—humanity's original sins forced their way into my memories, blurring everything, including time and my own sense of self.

My blood vessels bulged, threatening to split open my battered body. I hadn't even realized it, but in the few short months since I became a live show streamer, my body had become covered in a dense network of scars.

Every hideous wound represented a terrifying past. Spurred by these negative emotions, the most unbearable memories suppressed deep in my heart surged to the surface.

I was a murderer. This wasn't the first time I had killed!

A bloody taste bloomed in my mouth—I had bitten the tip of my tongue. I felt like a monster lived inside my body, and right now, it was trying to break out of its cage and claw its way out of my throat!

The black magician, Jiang Long, Chen Jiuge, and the disciples of the Three Yin Sect—figure after sinister, sneering figure flashed through my mind. They transformed into inner demons, crawling out from the depths of my sea of consciousness.

They gnawed at my memories. My once-calm sea of consciousness was now completely transformed. The sky was blood-red, the water pitch-black. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but slaughter and sin.

I wanted to scream but couldn't make a sound. I craved slaughter, yet I was terrified that I would lose myself to it forever.

Even now, I still remembered what Blind Liu had told me: if I became a demon, no Buddha would dare offer me salvation.

This was a path with no return. If I broke down now, there would be no coming back.

Power was intoxicating. My burning desire to return to Jiangcheng, combined with the terrifying, treacherous conspiracies at every turn—all this pressure forced me to seek strength through the most extreme methods.

My Judging Eye was glitching. Black veins slowly crawled across the world in my vision. I knew very well that the black threads formed by the obsessions had not been fully refined; they were swallowing my body alive.

This was an incredibly perilous battle. While I devoured them, they were devouring me.

All the obsessions in the Pig Cage Apartments were actually a single entity, representing the unwilling resentment of the tens of thousands who had died tragic deaths in Longchang. Unfortunately, I realized this a little too late. The moment I devoured the first strand of resentment, this battle of one against tens of thousands had already begun.

I needed power. My heart was clouded by desire, and in a way, my sea of consciousness had become a breeding ground for these obsessions.

They wanted to be reborn in my body. If that happened, my fate would probably be worse than that of the Red Building Tenants. I would become a monster that only knew how to kill, an absolute lunatic.

"This is an open conspiracy. Even knowing that devouring obsessions will bring all kinds of disasters, I have no other choice."

Blood finally flowed, dripping from my own palms onto the floor, but the piercing pain could only bring a few seconds of clarity.

Completely alone, I stood in the drafty corridor as my battered body endured the most brutal torture.

Malicious thoughts assailed me, shaking my very foundations.

Over a dozen live broadcasts, constantly running for my life—what was it all for?

What was the point of constantly hovering between life and death?

To be an actor performing for a screen?

Or to satisfy my own petty vanity?

I was a murderer, my hands stained with blood. I should be kneeling before a tombstone, begging for mercy.

Did I feel at peace?

I had crossed two provinces, my wanted posters scattered across thirty-six cities. I even had to wear a Human Skin Mask just to stay in a hotel. I scurried and hid like a rat, living a wretched, cowardly existence!

Was it worth it?

What exactly was I doing?

To search for a truth that might not even exist? Or just to prove that I was special?

To walk down this endlessly pitch-black road, only to save the very murderers who had pushed me into the abyss?

This wasn't what I wanted!

I was so tired. I should just give up.

My nails dug into my flesh, the pain searing my heart. My teeth drew blood from my lip, and sweat slid over my bulging veins.

My face was twisted in a hideous grimace, long unrecognizable from how I used to look. I resembled an evil ghost walking between the crescent moon and the muddy earth.

I yearned for the light, yet I only deserved to hide in the deepest, darkest night.

My clenched fists slowly relaxed, and the pain began to fade. Fine black threads intertwined in my eyes, as if trying to stitch them shut and seal away my heart. Perhaps when the last fragment of my memory was devoured, only the name Gao Jian would be left in this world.

I wasn't unwilling, nor did I know how to feel sad. It was just that after persisting at something for so long, suddenly giving up felt a little strange.

My nails slowly slipped out of my palms, blood running down my fingertips. Just as I was about to pull my hands back, strands of black hair gently wrapped around my palm, and a cold yet familiar sensation gripped my hand.

I could sense a hint of anxiety and panic from that black hair. A child-like figure appeared in my vision. He was gaunt and pale, harboring an innate reliance on me.

"Fate Ghost."

Our lives were linked. To me, he was my most loyal shadow, but to him, I was his entire world.

Everything he saw was everything I experienced.

A sudden, inexplicable ache shot through my heart—a pain far worse than nails digging down to the bone!

I should have died with that leap at the Lanjiang Dam. As someone who had already lost everything, what right did I have to be so sentimental?

All the memories connected to the Fate Ghost seemed to break free from their constraints, surfacing from the pitch-black sea of consciousness: struggling to survive at the Henshan Psychiatric Hospital; the life-and-death battle against the fully matured Fate Ghost at Century New Garden; and how, in the Ghost Amusement Park, he single-handedly held off all the Mirror Ghosts in the maze, leading me out while my eyes were shut tight. He had died in my place at the Lanjiang Dam, only to be reborn against destiny within the Ten Directions Ghost Refining Grand Formation!

Far too many memories kept surging up, stirring my pitch-black sea of consciousness and returning a brief moment of clarity to me.

The black hair gripped my hand tightly, seemingly afraid I would leave. I radiated an ominous aura, but the gaunt ghost behind me, who was just like my shadow, slowly walked up and stood shoulder to shoulder with me.

He didn't say a word, yet he made everything perfectly clear.

Emotion touched my eyes, mingled with frost, rain, and a sliver of guilt.

I forced my eyes as wide as I could to see him clearly. The world seemed to come into slightly sharper focus. The black threads blocking my vision were still squirming, but they couldn't obscure the spot where the Fate Ghost stood.

His black hair wrapped around all my wounds, slowing the collapse of my willpower, but the obsessions were still wreaking havoc in my mind and sea of consciousness.

To be human is to have desires. My desires were being exploited by the obsessions of those who died tragically in Longchang Apartments. I had killed people, and I possessed an extreme thirst for power; these were undeniable facts. By seizing upon these flaws in my mind, they continued to launch their most ferocious attacks.

I felt like a shipwreck survivor drifting on the ocean, being dragged endlessly into the bottomless depths.

The sky was red, the ocean was black. I could see where the Fate Ghost was, but I couldn't reach him.

There was no light around me—only total darkness, which enveloped the Fate Ghost as well.

My memories were still being corroded by the obsessions, and my past became increasingly blurry. I felt as though I had experienced a similar situation before. The agony of losing my memories was worse than being sliced by knives!

Fragment after fragment of memory dissolved into the obsessions like snowflakes, and the black threads bloomed in my sea of consciousness like mandala flowers.

Everything seemed completely beyond saving. As the flowers blossomed, the remaining black threads wove together into spiked roots that plunged into my sea of consciousness. They chased after me, attempting to pierce my body and completely turn me into nourishment.

My downfall seemed inevitable. My thoughts were being affected, and I was constantly forgetting many things.

The process of forgetting was very slow—so slow that I could see with my own eyes exactly which memories were disappearing.

The black waves crashed against the scattered memory fragments while my consciousness stared at them blankly.

The black threads were still spreading in my sea of consciousness when suddenly, they all converged toward a single spot. Hundreds, thousands of threads began to mass together; their target seemed to be nothing more than an incredibly ordinary memory fragment.

Waves suddenly erupted. Even tens of thousands of black threads were entirely unable to wear away that single memory.

My attention was drawn over as well, and my consciousness sank into that memory without me even realizing it.

A torrential downpour raged, and monstrous floodwaters surged to the heavens!

Atop the forty-one-meter-tall Lanjiang Dam, she was covered in blood, looking as if she were wearing a blood-red bridal gown.

Dragging her frail body, she faced the howling, monstrous waves of the flood peak entirely alone.

Wielding a sharp knife, she was picking out the iron needles that had rusted into her flesh, one by one.

She looked at me, her gaze gentler than it had ever been.

She left me with one last smile—pure and deeply reassuring.

"Gao Jian, remember to wait for me!"

Blood splattered over the blade's edge. Her slender, fragile fingers raised the Fate Manipulator Token. A Red Luan danced in the air, and the first ray of dawn pierced through to shine upon her.

The memory buried deep in my heart reappeared. At this moment, my body trembled slightly. Those two words that I never wanted to mention, that I never knew how to face, slipped out of my mouth without the slightest hesitation.

"Xiaofeng!"

The memory seemed to pick a lock, sending my sea of consciousness roiling. At the same time, the United Heart Jade around my neck abruptly shattered, and a warm, dense power—like the earth itself—seeped into my heart.

As if sharing a telepathic connection, my sea of consciousness and my mind began to vibrate simultaneously.

Scene after scene flashed continuously through my mind, faster and faster, while evil thoughts were constantly being generated. The two merged, my memories completely blending with the wicked thoughts. It was as if I had gone through countless cycles of reincarnation, experiencing the despair and death wishes of tens of thousands of people.

Along with the fusion of my memories and the obsessions, the black threads representing the obsessions in my sea of consciousness completely vanished. A portion of them sank into my sea of consciousness, while the rest circulated throughout my body before finally seeping into my Eighteen Yin Apertures!

Reincarnation was difficult to comprehend, yet within the obsessions of those who died tragically in the Pig Cage Apartments, I sensed the aura of reincarnation tainted within them.

Ghosts exist in the world and do not enter reincarnation mostly because they harbor unfulfilled obsessions. Now, after devouring nearly a hundred obsessions that had existed for decades, in the space between life and death, I had finally knocked open the door to the Ghost Art Fifth Layer!