"Good man, spare my life, good man, spare..."
Wu Pifu's single hand formed a claw, gripping the neck of the dark-skinned man, his eyes showing no fluctuation. His hand clawed with force, directly tearing apart his Adam's apple. The dark-skinned man fell to the ground, covering his neck and struggling desperately. After about ten seconds, he stiffened and stopped moving.
Only when he stopped moving did Wu Pifu squat down and begin searching his body.
A small dagger, a piece of broken silver, a handful of copper coins.
Wu Pifu collected all these items into his embrace, watched the dark-skinned man for a few seconds, then dragged him into the woods beside the road. Without a second thought, he casually discarded the body and then strode towards the nunnery.
"It seems ordinary people at 0.7 haven't changed much."
Wu Pifu walked on the night road, his mind recalling some important information his predecessors had told him when he first awakened.
Because of the gaze of "?", the Dream Network mutated and transformed into the Dream World. All Citizens were completely submerged in the Dream Network and could no longer awaken. Only they, the maintenance personnel, were not in the Dream Network, so they either awakened naturally when the time came, or they established a Sanctuary in the Dream World and obtained Mainframe authority, allowing them to liberate three to five maintenance personnel from the hibernation pods.
Depending on the different baseline reality levels, the more the Dream World deviated from the baseline reality, the more terrifying it was.
After they entered the Dream World, they would be detected by the strange entities of that Dream World. Their predecessors called them Nightmares, which were divided into three levels in total.
This was not a division based on the Nightmare's intrinsic strength. Some Level One Nightmares might be stronger than Level Two ones. This Level One, Two, and Three division was not a division of strength, but a division of Dream World levels.
Level One Nightmares could only exist in the World where they were born, while Level Two Nightmares could pass through Sanctuaries to reach material reality, or follow them into the Dream World.
This was very terrifying. Once they encountered a Level Two Nightmare, unless they completely eliminated it, they would almost certainly be hunted to death by it, because they couldn't even escape.
The only fortunate thing was that Level Two Nightmares would be suppressed by the Dream World.
For example, if a Level Two Nightmare from baseline reality 0.9 entered a Dream World with baseline reality 0.8, its strength and strangeness would decrease a hundredfold. This was also the method used by Wu Pifu's predecessors before he awakened to kill a Level Two Nightmare: they brought it into a deeper level of the Dream World and killed it.
As for Level Three Nightmares...
"Little Wu, we definitely haven't encountered a Level Three Nightmare, but other districts have!" Wang Xiu Ting explained to Wu Pifu at the time.
"Other districts?"
"Yes, the entire Gaia is so vast. Our number here is Z-117-6123. Z represents our main area, the second set of numbers 117 represents our awakening shift, and the final 6123 represents our maintenance and patrol location. There are a total of twenty-six districts, designated by letters, and the awakening shifts are divided into three hundred shifts. Each shift maintains for two thousand time units. During this time, we can occasionally use hibernation pods for short-term sleep. This will consume roughly three hundred years of our lifespan, and then we can become Citizens and enter the Dream Network. You know all this, right?" Wang Xiu Ting asked.
Wu Pifu nodded in confirmation. Three hundred shifts, each maintaining for two thousand time units. This far exceeded the total voyage time, but in reality, this accounted for the loss of maintenance personnel. The so-called three hundred years of lifespan was actually equivalent to three-fifths of a Human lifespan of 2788 years. But this was only theoretical. Over ninety percent of the maintenance personnel would die on duty. They couldn't precisely calculate their short-term sleep time, so all three hundred shifts of maintenance personnel were consumables.
Wang Xiu Ting then said, "The Dream World is actually the strange mutation of the Dream Network. The Dream Worlds we enter are all born within the Dream Network. In other words, if by chance, we can encounter maintenance personnel from other areas within them. And before I awakened, my predecessor encountered maintenance personnel from other areas. Furthermore, as you know, it's not just the Dream Network that has mutated; the entire Gaia has mutated. A large number of demons, monsters, strange entities, and rule-based horrors have spread throughout Gaia."
"The Mainframe has sealed almost all connection channels and gates on the entire Gaia, which is how it prevents these horrors from running rampant everywhere. So we can't go to other areas, and other areas naturally can't come here. Our only hope is to enter the Dream World and establish Level One, Level Two, Level Three, Level Four, or even the top-tier Level Five Sanctuaries to obtain Mainframe authority. Only then can we open these channels and awaken more people, especially those Citizens who have mastered Mainframe authority!"
Wang Xiu Ting sighed as she spoke here, "My predecessor told me that he encountered Night Watchmen from another area. They were also struggling to survive in the Dream World. That team was much stronger than ours, with a total of sixteen members. My predecessor exchanged information with them and agreed to watch out for each other. But soon after, their entire team was wiped out. In a mutually agreed-upon Dream World, my predecessor found the information they left behind. They had encountered a Level Three Nightmare..."
"A Level Three Nightmare will not be suppressed in any World, not even... if it comes to the material World!!"
Wu Pifu saw the nunnery at this point. He sighed, temporarily setting aside his longing for Wang Xiu Ting and Li An. Now he had more important things to do.
"I cannot establish a Sanctuary in this World. Baseline reality 0.7 is not a place I can stay now. For every Level One Sanctuary, I must stay there for at least ten days every thirty days, otherwise I will be detected by Nightmares. If there are Level Two or even Level Three Nightmares among them, they can come through the Sanctuary to material reality and kill me."
"But ten days... The longer I stay, starting from beyond five days, the Nightmares of this World can roughly detect my location, and pursuits and attacks will gradually arrive. Ten days is too long. I cannot deal with any monsters in baseline reality 0.7, so I cannot establish a Sanctuary here!"
"Today is the third morning since arriving in this World. As soon as it gets light, I'll first go investigate the situation here, the dynasty, the location, and then figure out how to make money. It would be best to be able to buy a house or get a piece of land, and then, after settling Little Mute, I must immediately leave this World, even if it means losing the coordinates of this Dream World..."
"And I must be extra careful about making money. Calculating from the Level One Sanctuary I established before, I earned twenty silver dollars, so let's say it's twenty taels of silver. I cannot earn more than twenty taels of silver here!"
To establish a Sanctuary in the Dream World, the experience Wu Pifu gained from his predecessors was making money. When he earned twenty to thirty silver dollars in that World, he could establish a Level One Sanctuary.
Thinking of this, the image of the mute little nun, who was not good-looking, perhaps even slightly ugly, flashed in Wu Pifu's mind. But the way large tears rolled down her face, and how she looked when she was beaten by the ruffians, and most importantly, she saved his life!
Wu Pifu felt irritated, but could only take things one step at a time. His nature and conscience made it impossible for him to disregard the life-saving kindness.
Just as Wu Pifu chased the ruffians away from the nunnery, within the nunnery, the only decent building in the entire dilapidated nunnery was the main hall where the Buddha statue was placed. On the statue of Shakyamuni Buddha in the center of the main hall, something seemed to be wriggling.
Some black sludge gushed out from the eyes, mouth, ears, and nose of this Buddha statue, fell onto the ground, and then wriggled towards the outside of the main hall...
Although there had been ruffians causing trouble, there were still several strong, burly men sleeping in the guesthouse after collapsing from exhaustion. This sludge seemed to have some kind of sensory ability, wriggling towards the location of the tallest and strongest of these burly men.
It was already late at night. This burly man was eight feet tall, with dark skin all over, a beard like steel needles, and a physique like a wild boar. He was hugging a petite nun with each hand and was currently fast asleep, snoring. The sludge surged from the crack under the door, inching its way to the side of the burly man, and then, with the speed of lightning, it suddenly lunged onto his face.
The burly man suddenly opened his eyes and was about to roar in anger. At the same time, he used force with both arms, immediately flinging the two nuns, who were still in a daze, away.
But as the burly man instinctively roared in anger, the sludge immediately surged into his mouth. At this instant, the burly man surprisingly still had conscious reaction. He did a carp jump and leaped up, his body surprisingly agile. Flipping his hand, he grabbed a simple saber from beside the bed. Just as he was about to swing it to attack the enemy he thought was there, his movements gradually slowed down.
The sludge surged into his body through his mouth, ears, nose, and eyes, and then spread throughout his entire body along his skin, blood vessels, and Meridians, causing hideous blue-black lines to appear on the surface of his skin. In just a few seconds, the sludge disappeared, and the burly man also became still in place.
Both nuns were bleeding from their heads. They groaned and climbed up, but dared not express their anger towards the burly man.
This was a famous rogue knight from the surrounding area, specializing in doing business without paying, not even fearing the government. He was an existence that this secluded nunnery absolutely could not afford to provoke.
The two nuns stood timidly to the side, not knowing what madness had possessed the burly man standing on the bed. However, they saw the burly man slowly twisting his body from its stiffness. Amidst a series of cracking sounds from his bones, and by the faint moonlight outside the window, the two nuns saw the black in the burly man's eye pupils gradually increasing from their clear black and white, until finally, both his pupils became pure black.
Then the burly man suddenly turned his head to look at them, his face contorted into an extremely hideous smile.
Both nuns trembled all over. A fear surpassing that of villains and ruffians suddenly descended upon them. It was the intuition of humans towards a higher level of fear. Both of them screamed and rushed towards the door.
But the burly man was faster. With just one pounce, he pinned the two women to the ground. Then, his arm, bulging with veins, gripped one nun's head. Amidst her terrible wails, only the sound of dislocating joints could be heard, and then...
This burly man actually tore off the nun's head along with her spine!!