Chapter 169: The Awakening

Chapter 169: The Awakening

The cloying, sickeningly sweet scent of unrefined cocoa and burnt sugar hung heavy in the air, pressing down on Murphy’s lungs. As his boots crunched against the brittle, dark-brown stalks of the chocolate field, he could feel the underlying structure, holding a child-like malice.

’A field of chocolate flowers that do not melt...’ Mo Fei analyzed internally, carefully separating his core consciousness from the unyielding persona of the Detective. ’This domain operates entirely on the logic of an infantile nightmare. Most of the laws of the physical world are replaced by symbolic concepts. This would align closely with a highly corrupted subspace born from an Outer Deity’s passive thought form. Could it be that it is actually a symbolic space of Dreamer?’

He tried to remember the knowledge he had gotten from the books previously. A symbolism, the core part of an Authority that strictly bound them to a particular domain.

He glanced down at his right arm. Inside the sleeve of his heavy long coat, the use of the corrupted Embodiment of Flesh Authority still throbbed. It wanted to sprout, to expand, to turn his arm into a mass of weeping dead flesh.

I don’t know how long the seal of the spirit world can remain. Murphy pondered as he scanned the horizon through the dull, flat light cast by the clockwork sun. ’Every step I take consumes a fraction of my remaining, fractured spirituality. If I don’t locate the anchor artifact within the realm soon, I may get erased from the deity’s dream.’

Suddenly, the clockwork sun behind the distant mountain let out a metallic click. The gears radiating from its perimeter spun backward with a screech. The artificial light shifted instantly into unnatural white.

Murphy stopped in his tracks. Right before his eyes, in the field, a shadow sunk deeper into the grass. Around it, there was no source of it, almost as if it were an independent being.

Rule Number Five, the memory of the plaster runes flashed instantly within his mind.

With a sickening tear, the ink-black silhouette ripped itself completely away from the field. The independent shadow flowed through the fields, carried by the wind.

Without a single moment of hesitation, Murphy pivoted on his heels and forced his body into a backward sprint, retracing the exact footprints he had left in the chocolate dust.

The moment his boots stepped into the coordinate of his previous footprint, the air behind him erupted with a foul, bubbling splash. The detached shadow moved toward the chocolate flower, its claws sinking into the stalks and instantly dissolving them into a puddle of boiling, sea-green slime.

But the retreat had altered the geography of the field.

The path he had used to enter the field was gone, and the chocolate stalks parted cleanly, revealing a small, meticulously paved courtyard made of white flagstones. Standing in the center of the courtyard was a tall, skeletal man wearing a immaculate silk top hat and a tailored black dress coat. He held a cane topped with a glittering diamond.

The man bowed with an exaggerated flourish and pointed toward a house built in a way that people would die to get.

"Ah, a traveler of the stormy seas!" The man spoke, his voice echoing with a strange cadence that carried an almost irresistible hypnotic pull. "You look dreadfully exhausted, my dear sir. Tell me, would you care for wealth that could buy an empire? Or perhaps fame that would make your name echo across the stars for ten thousand generations? I can grant it all, right here, right now. A simple nod is all it takes, and this house... will be yours."

Rule Number Six. Murphy’s cold gaze narrowed when approached by a man in a top hat offering wealth or fame, declining with utmost formality, and leaving. The price extracted will always exceed the boon.

Mo Fei could feel the temptation. The man’s words were not simple speech anymore; they were a conceptual attack targeting his deepest desires for safety, power, and stability. If he accepted, the dream would likely heal his arm, but his soul would have to pay.

Murphy raised his left hand, pressing it against his fedora. He bent his waist at thirty degrees, executing a flawless, rigid aristocratic greeting that belonged strictly to the formal etiquette of the high-class quarters.

"I must most formally and respectfully decline your remarkably generous offer, sir." Murphy replied, his voice carrying an equally calm, polite cadence. "My current wealth suffices my modest needs, and my name is entirely unworthy of the stars. Good day."

The man in the top hat froze as a low, disappointed hiss escaped. He stepped aside, his cane striking the flagstones with a hollow thud that caused the entire white courtyard to dissolve into a aquarium.

Murphy strode forward. The farther he walked, the more the rules began to compress, a clear indication that he was approaching the absolute center of the dream realm domain.

The chocolate stalks grew taller behind. Thump. Thump. Thump.

"Another stage over."

He walked through the aquarium, but there weren’t any fish to begin with. He exited the aquarium quietly, without facing any terror.

Just as he came out, the mechanical sun completely disappeared behind the mountain peak.

The violet sky turned instantly into a black night. The crimson clouds rolled back like a curtain, revealing the vast, celestial expanse above as the stars began to blink rapidly in a synchronized manner that mimicked a million opening and closing eyes.

Rule Number Seven, an alarm blared within Mo Fei’s consciousness, screaming with absolute panic.

Murphy instantly snapped his gaze downward, staring at the dark chocolate dust at his boots. The psychic backlash hit him as blood began to pour rapidly from both of his ears, staining the collar of his coat. The sheer spiritual pressure of the blinking stars was trying forcibly to tilt his head upward, compelling his eyes to look at the cosmic deity watching from above.

"Ph’nglui... mglw’nafh... Cthulhu..." The million drowned voices exploded inside his brain, the maddening prayer shattering his internal mental defenses.

The Lord Light that Walks Beyond the Sun! The Keeper of Godless Heaven!

Mo Fei shrieked within his own mind, utilizing the divine honorifics to anchor his dissolving sanity once again. He refused to look up. Keeping his chin locked tightly against his chest, he forced his trembling legs to move forward.

One step. Two steps. Three steps.

Finally, he reached the end of the first part of the dream world; the next part was the nightmare stage.

A rope hung by two trees; a few clothes were settled on them to dry them. One of the blankets dripping by it had a needle that had a long, thin thread that seemed almost invisible as it shifted colour.

Murphy extended his left hand, his fingers blindly reaching toward the needle. He didn’t look at what he was grabbing. His hand brushed against the cold object.

The moment his skin made contact with the artifact, the Dream World shifted as a long pathway opened up behind him.

’That’s my last chance to escape.!’

A gateway opened in the land, but it had no door. That almost seemed like a puzzle piece had been opened randomly.

He sprinted forward, holding the artifact in his hand. Around him, shadows gathered as multiple fireflies erupted green light.

The boundaries between illusion and reality dissolved entirely.

The whole world shifted; at one moment it was land, another it was ocean’s surface, and then another he was in air, but he pushed through them and grabbed the portal, forcing his body to jump outside.

Gasp!

Mo Fei snapped his physical eyes open, drawing a violent, ragged breath as his consciousness slammed back into his physical shell.

He was sleeping all this time, his whole body lying on the floor near the window. He couldn’t remember anything, but he grabbed his head and slowly stood up. The first thing he noticed was that... there was no window to begin with, his head dripped crimson blood as a bump emerged. ’Did I hit... the wall... and went unconscious?’

He looked at his hand where the needle had been. Alongside it, a yellowed page rested. Looking down, he saw the small, barnacle-like bumps had reached all the way to the top of his shoulder, pulsating with a dangerous, active violet glow. The Flesh Authority’s corruption was seconds away from breaching his neck and reaching his brain.

He grabbed the page and read it through the bottom.

[Warning before using the artifact.]

1: Stitching the ego: The artifact can’t distinguish between the user and the Phantom puppet. May face temporary fake trauma, memory, and thoughts. 27% chance of it permanently being absorbed.

2: Phantom Thread. A thread would remain in contact with you, spiritual ribbon, for seven days. Vulnerable to cosmic corruption and will face twice spiritual damage.

3: Cosmic Attention: Vulnerable to prying eyes of the cosmos, use it in secrecy or use anchors.

Mo Fei soon realized that using here would mean a certain exposure to malicious eyes of Cosmos, but the location of the ritual was Bloodborne Sea. How could he take the risk...?

Moreover... he would have to face twice the damage if corruption got him.