Chapter 791: Black Robe

Pinned to the ground, the man in the picture looked wretched. His mouth was split wide in a scream, his expression ferocious and terrifying.

The reporter had chosen an excellent angle. In an era before laws protected the identities of criminals, this face was brazenly splashed across the front page of the newspaper.

What had happened back then? Why was this man being hunted by the police?

"The newspaper is yellowing, so it must be from many years ago. The man is highly agitated, and those dark shadows on the ground around him are likely blood. That means the photo was taken at the scene of a severely violent incident. He's restrained, and the picture made the front page—which proves that even if he wasn't the perpetrator, he was definitely involved."

I placed the clipping back on the altar table. "To put a killer's photo on an altar table... the owner of this cabin is very likely his descendant."

I searched the area even more carefully. This was highly likely where Zhu Li had lived, and the man in the photo could very well be an immediate relative.

"The foundation of the Shallow Dream Layer and the Middle Dream Layer is individual memory. To seize the initiative in Zhu Li's dream, I need to figure out his past." I searched the room thoroughly. About ten minutes later, the Fate Ghost hidden in my shadow sent me a warning: something dangerous was approaching in the corridor.

Aside from a few abnormal entities like the Uncorrupted Bone and the Fox Immortal Desiccated Corpse, very little in this city could threaten me anymore.

Yin energy spread outward as I used my Judging Eye to look at the ajar door.

There were no footsteps. Breath Listening only caught a bizarre sound, like a rat gnawing on furniture.

"Creak..."

The living room door was pushed open, and a long dress trailing on the ground, surging like fresh blood, entered my view.

Tangles of black hair writhed like venomous snakes. It was a woman with no face.

"Why are you here too?" The sudden appearance of the Faceless Woman from the Red Building confirmed something else for me: this place was inextricably linked to Zhu Li. Perhaps the man in the newspaper was Zhu Li's father.

Facing the Faceless Woman for the second time, I felt no fear. She wasn't a simple ghost or monster, but an alternative obsession—one that had merged with the Red Building's obsessions and undergone a secondary mutation in this special environment.

Even so, she posed no threat to me. After my ghost art broke through to the fifth tier, devoured nearly a hundred obsessions from the Red Building, and returned from the Animal Realm, my willpower had grown inhumanly tough. My thoughts and emotions had also subtly changed.

Right now, for example, my first emotion upon seeing the Faceless Woman wasn't fear. It was an inexplicable sense of hunger—a morbid urge to devour her.

I wasn't sure if this was a side effect of absorbing too many obsessions, or an unstable state of mind from my ghost art breaking through too quickly. Regardless, it wasn't a good sign.

Unlike our first meeting, the Faceless Woman showed fear toward me this time, not daring to get too close. She pointed a finger at the ceiling, then quickly vanished into the night, unwilling to linger here for even a moment longer.

"What is she afraid of?" The Faceless Woman's bizarre behavior left me confused. "Above?"

This residential building, which should have been demolished long ago, only had four floors. I was currently on the third. "Is she warning me?"

Leaving the cabin, I ran toward the top floor.

The mottled bloodstains in the narrow stairwell gradually thickened. No one lived on the fourth floor. The dust-covered door had been violently forced open; its lock was torn off and shattered on the ground.

"Someone is inside."

They were concealing themselves very carefully, but they still couldn't evade my Breath Listening and Judging Eye.

The moment I pulled open the iron gate, the wooden door to the inner bedroom was pushed open.

A man in a black robe, completely wrapping himself in the shadows, walked out.

"So it's you. I was just about to call." The tall, thin Black-Robed Anchor hid his bloodstained fingers behind his back. His voice was flat, betraying no shift in emotion. "I've already found Zhu Li, but his condition is a bit off."

I stood unmoving. The Faceless Woman's abnormal behavior just now obviously hadn't been about me. She had deliberately shown up to tip me off because she discovered the Black-Robed Anchor. What truly terrified her must have been this man entirely shrouded in a black robe.

"What are you standing outside for?" The Black-Robed Anchor waved at me. I hesitated for a moment, then decided to follow him into the inner room.

The internal layouts of these old buildings were roughly the same. Inside the twenty-square-meter bedroom, furniture and bedding were scattered across the floor, and fresh blood was everywhere.

"Don't be nervous. This blood was all left by that puppet from White Rose. Subduing her without alerting the Butcher took quite a bit of effort." The Black-Robed Anchor shook out a quilt from the corner, spread it on the floor, and dragged a man out from under the bed. The man's entire body was plastered with Blue Talismans.

"I used some methods to lock Zhu Li within a Dream Realm. He absolutely won't wake up before dawn, at the very least." The Black-Robed Anchor crouched beside Zhu Li, occasionally slapping down various sized talismans.

I followed behind him without speaking, my eyes narrowing slightly. The blue talismans stuck to Zhu Li were all Dream Dao Talismans, completely identical to the talisman arts of Xiao Zhuang Taoist Temple in my memory.

Zhu Li was one of the host bodies for the Butcher's Will, making him an extremely dangerous existence to ordinary people. Yet in the hands of the Black-Robed Anchor, he couldn't even put up a struggle and had been easily subdued. I grew even more wary of the Black-Robed Anchor.

"Since you're already here, that saves me the trouble of notifying you. Let's begin the first step of the hunting plan." Black Robe stuck the final talisman to the center of Zhu Li's brow, then stood up and tossed me a talisman embryo. "You and I will enter the dream together, sift through Zhu Li's memories, and find the other people hosting the Butcher's Will. I will find a way to draw the Butcher's will into the Deep Dream Layer. When that happens, you'll leave the dream and destroy their physical bodies in reality. Even if we can't kill the Butcher, we have to completely exile him within the Deep Dream Layer."

It was the first time the Black-Robed Anchor had spoken in such a solemn tone. "I've been planning this for a long time. There can be no mistakes in either reality or the Dream Realm. I'll do everything in my power to stall the Butcher's Will. The hunt in reality is up to you."

He pointed at the blue talisman embryo in my hand. "This is a rare Upper Vehicle Mother and Child talisman embryo called the Dream Immortal Chant. It can connect the Dream Realm and reality. I'll lend you the child talisman for now. It carries an imprint I left behind, which will make it easier for us to find each other in the Dream Realm. If either of us faces peril, the talisman will react accordingly, so pay close attention to it."

"One talisman in the Dream Realm and one in reality can still produce an effect and communicate with each other?" I looked at the blue talisman embryo with its complex divine patterns in my palm, somewhat surprised.

"Of course, but there's one thing you need to note." The Black-Robed Anchor paused. "The Dream Realm I'm talking about does not include the Deep Dream Layer. If I am in the Deep Dream Layer and you are in reality, the effect of this talisman will be very weak. If forcefully activated, the child talisman will collapse after two uses."

"There's a limit to the number of uses."

I nodded to show I understood. The Black-Robed Anchor instructed me on a few more details, then proceeded to stick talismans in every corner of the room to set up an array.

This comparison finally made me realize that even to a master of the Dream Dao like the Black-Robed Anchor, entering a dream was highly dangerous and required absolutely perfect preparation.

"Hunting the Butcher benefits us both. I hope you'll go all out. Otherwise, if we fail, neither of us will likely survive his retaliation." Black Robe sat alone in the center of the array of Dharma talismans and gave me a deep look. The hand that had been curled up beneath his dark black robe slowly reached out.

The black robe slipped back, and the aura surrounding him drastically changed. It was as if an ancient, ferocious beast were slowly breaking free of its seal. An intense sense of crisis surfaced in my heart. My back muscles tensed, and my eyes locked onto the hand extended from the black robe.

It was covered in burn scars. Pinched between his fingertips was a faint blue talisman token.

"Heaven knows my longing for this soul, and grants us a meeting within the mortal dream!"

Hundreds of talismans in the room rustled without wind. When everything settled, the black robe once again covered his extended hand, as if nothing had happened.

I looked at the quietly seated Black-Robed Anchor and slowly took two steps toward him. I raised my arm, my fingertips about to touch the edge of his black robe.

'Just what kind of face is hidden beneath this black robe?'