Chapter 1011
The laws of the Dream Realm, survival of the fittest!
Ares immediately got up and knelt on one knee.
All the warriors noticed the manifestation of the Pillar God. They immediately stopped their actions, kneeling in unison towards the Lord of Scales and Feathers, who had his back to them. They didn’t even dare to call out to him.
When they were in the Material Realm, although the Lord of Scales and Feathers could always communicate with Eivass, it required High-Tier Divine Art as a stepping stone. And back then, only Eivass could see His existence.
But after entering the Dream Realm, the situation was completely different!
The laws of the Hourglass had almost zero restrictive effect on Pillar Gods in the Dream Realm. The Lord of Scales and Feathers could transform into thousands of beings at any time, each one both real and illusory. It wouldn’t be strange for Him to appear anywhere.
This was the Pillar God’s home ground!
The Lord of Scales and Feathers did not respond to the piety and respect shown by the warriors of the Shadow Realm.
He casually waved his hand, and it was as if all the warriors were implanted with some kind of information. They got up on their own, shook their heads, and returned to their positions, completely ignoring the Lord of Scales and Feathers and continuing their conversations and meals as if nothing had happened. Even the excitement the warriors felt when they saw the Lord of Scales and Feathers earlier had instantly calmed down.
It was as if they had never seen the Lord of Scales and Feathers from the very beginning.
They didn’t even look over anymore. Their subconscious refused the possibility of “looking at the Lord of Scales and Feathers.”
This was true memory erasure.
Seeing this miracle, Arsen was struck dumb.
Silently and directly twisting everyone’s will… was this the might of a Pillar God?
Arsen couldn’t help but feel awestruck.
“No, it’s not that powerful.”
Perhaps the Lord of Scales and Feathers heard Arsen’s thoughts, or perhaps it was from a future possibility he saw, but Arsen chose to speak his mind directly. He smiled at Arsen and said, “Because these souls have no bodies, they cannot resist the manipulation of the subconscious.
“It’s actually quite difficult to dye a sugar cube purple. Even if the outside is stained purple, the inside won’t be; but if you let it melt in water first and then add purple dye, it becomes much simpler. Mind manipulation is a similar situation… The physical body is actually a form of self-protection and self-correction… Once the shell is gone, the soul becomes much more fragile. Some ghosts go mad for similar reasons.”
The Lord of Scales and Feathers spoke casually.
He was sitting directly opposite Eivass at the round table at this moment.
This beheaded man, while picking at the food on the table, looked up and asked, “This is our first face-to-face conversation, isn’t it, Eivass… Where do you think Sherlock is?”
Eivass shook his head, “Excluding those five Paths, only the Path of Love, the Transcendent Path, The Path of Beauty, and the Path of Wisdom remain.
“When he went up, the Fallen Heavenly Envoy hadn’t come down yet. If he entered the Transcendent Path, it would mean he encountered more demons than mosquitoes in the summer. The Path of Love is the same… If he entered the domains of these two Paths, how could he have had such a quiet and peaceful time… There are no Heavenly Envoys who are normal people in the Path of Love.”
“Indeed.”
The Shadow Heavenly Envoy of the Path of Love agreed.
So, the answer was actually a choice between two.
Either the Path of Wisdom or The Path of Beauty. Coincidentally, both Paths had scenes similar to a grand library.
“But there’s no need to choose in this regard.”
Eivass spoke, “Because I have a personal matter to attend to in the Path of Wisdom. A friend of mine is also trapped in the Geometric Heavenly Envoy’s domain… Since I have to go there anyway, it’s just a matter of visiting both places.”
“Geometric Heavenly Envoy? Did he offend you?”
The Shadow Heavenly Envoy sneered, “That bronze corpse… It’s not worth mentioning. If you don’t like him, just call me when you come back.”
The Lord of Scales and Feathers let out a hearty laugh and added, “The personal matter you mentioned should be the mission entrusted to you by Haibasha, right?”
“That’s right.”
Eivass nodded.
The commission from Haibasha was to rescue her daughter’s soul.
Because once she turned into a Phantom Demon, it meant the girl would completely lose the chance for a normal resurrection. It wasn’t just deleting a file, but overwriting a new file and saving it.
She originally wanted to make a special potent Drunken Dream T for Eivass, so that the souls of living people could also float into the Dream Realm.
When Haibasha was still a mortal, her daughter died in an uncontrolled state due to a Path conflict before she came of age. But Haibasha was already a very powerful Mage at that time. She forcibly retrieved her daughter’s soul from the Origin River to prevent her soul from being shattered and used as material for the next generation of souls, thus completing “reincarnation.”
Retrieving a soul from the Origin River was something that only Heavenly Envoys or Pillar Gods could do. It was also the core skill and necessary condition for them to create Discs.
It was truly admirable that Haibasha could achieve such a feat as a mortal. But this also meant something else. Although she could retrieve her daughter’s soul, she didn’t have the extra power or Authority to give to her, so she was just a mortal soul.
A mortal soul might not necessarily be impossible to appear in the Dream Realm. But just like how the power of shadow gradually erodes the warriors of the Shadow Heavenly Envoy. The longer one stays in the Dream Realm and the more Path Power is used, the soul will be gradually stained, ultimately taking the shape of a certain Path.
The girl’s soul was temporarily placed in a very exquisite ancient doll. To prevent her from going mad from loneliness, Haibasha also sealed her consciousness, memories, and sense of time. This way, for the girl herself, it felt like “closing and opening her eyes, and thousands of years have passed.”
Haibasha’s decision to handle her daughter’s soul in this manner was to preserve the “possibility of resurrection.”
If the soul was shattered at the end of the Origin River, then it would naturally be impossible to resurrect. And a young child like this could basically not become a Disc, nor could they obtain much power from death.
But if the soul was preserved properly, and only the body was remade… both the Twilight Path and the Path of Devotion could do it.
This idea was quite similar to Yulia’s pendant in the original timeline. However, Haibasha still hesitated for a moment, and the interception was too late. As a result, she couldn’t preserve the soul in the Material Realm, and only began to retrieve it after the soul had entered the Origin River.
The result was that the little girl had already been contaminated by the waters of the Origin River. If her consciousness hadn’t been frozen immediately, she could have been stimulated at any moment and turned into a Phantom Demon.
Haibasha chose to reincarnate into the lower realm, partly to evade the Overlord’s Tide of the Father of Snakes and the Ouroboros Ring Ritual of the Ring Heavenly Envoy, a perfect combo of cornering; another reason was that she wanted to see if she could directly rescue her daughter if she reincarnated as a living person.
Obviously, she couldn’t.
Haibasha discovered after reincarnating that although she had to reacquire Path Power, her soul was already at the Disc level. If someone killed her, she could directly return to the Geometric Heavenly Envoy and continue to be a Disc.
Therefore, even if she infiltrated the Dream Realm again, it would only be “retrieving her main account.”
In other words, Haibasha couldn’t have any form of contact with her daughter!
“Where do you plan to go first? The Path of Wisdom or The Path of Beauty?”
The Lord of Scales and Feathers seemed to want to watch the show, offering no suggestions or opinions. “Do you need me to follow along?”
“The Path of Beauty,” Eivass said casually, “You don’t necessarily have to follow…”
“It could indeed be The Path of Beauty,” Arsen pondered seriously. “Because the Professional Heritage of the Vendome Family is the ‘Pied Piper’ of The Path of Beauty. However, the Path of Wisdom is also possible, as there are so many books there…”
“Going to The Path of Beauty’s territory first, right?”
The Shadow Heavenly Envoy said cheerfully, “Alright, I’ll help you find the Moon Deer and send you to the Twin. Are you coming back this time? If not, you might as well stay for half an hour longer. The fairies are cooking Shadow Hunter Beasts… it’s a prey you hunted yourself, it would be a shame not to try it.”
“…Can that thing really be eaten?”
Eivass frowned, showing some resistance.
That thing, which looked like a thousand-eyed sacrificial demon, was like a deep-sea fish. It was so ugly that Eivass didn’t feel like eating it…
“Absolutely delicious.”
The Shadow Heavenly Envoy tried her best to persuade him, “You find this wine delicious too, don’t you? Trust me, brother, I wouldn’t trick you!”
This female giant, whose personality was like a captain’s, became more and more intimate, vulgar, and down-to-earth in her address to Eivass.
“Yeah,” the Lord of Scales and Feathers chimed in, perhaps to stir the pot, “I came out to get some good food too.”
“Nothing can help you understand the essence of the Dream Realm better than this,” Ares and Fergus said at the side. “It’s not a loss to eat some.”
While Eivass and Arsen were hesitating, they couldn’t escape anymore.
The food cooked with Shadow Hunter Beasts had already been served by the witches.
The three Shadow Hunter Beasts seemed to have been dismembered into countless pieces.
Each piece looked like a giant moth. It had crispy fried golden wings, and instead of an insect abdomen, its abdomen was an eyeball that, though fully cooked, was still vibrating and twitching at high frequency.
Seeing the Shadow Heavenly Envoy pick up an “eyeball moth” and put it into her mouth, Eivass did the same. If he didn’t eat a few bites, trying to escape would feel impolite…
But as soon as he took a bite, Eivass was a little confused:
The taste was surprisingly good! It tasted like roast pork eyes mixed with roast cicada nymphs, and it even burst with juice in his mouth.
But what truly surprised Eivass was the prompt that suddenly appeared before his eyes:
[Soul Crystal used, obtained 14 Free Experience]
[Soul Crystal used, obtained 52 Free Experience]
…
Every time he took a bite, a prompt for obtaining experience appeared before his eyes, making it feel awkward to eat… like eating a person.
Soul Crystal was a game setting similar to experience books in “Ouroboros Ring.” In later versions, low-level players could buy these from the reputation store to level up quickly.
And this meant… that each eyeball on this Shadow Hunter Beast was an unabsorbed Soul Shard!
“When it was slaughtered, I led people and used a ritual to return the soul shards of the victims who were still alive. These parts that have been cooked were from the victims whose souls had already been completely shattered by the Origin River before this Shadow Hunter Beast was killed. They were all prey it had eaten before,” the elf man Luke said softly. “It ate us, and we eat it. This is fair.”
“This is… the essence of the Dream Realm?” Eivass murmured. “But these shards… shouldn’t they be from other victims?”
Does the Banquet Master usually host meals that give experience points? Is this that great?
“Yes,” the Shadow Heavenly Envoy nodded slowly. “The essence of the Dream Realm is survival of the fittest. After all, all Phantom Demons are composed of ‘souls,’ so everyone can devour each other. This is true even across Paths.
“As for the latter – I don’t think it needs to be concerned. It’s like honey comes from a beehive, not from pollen. Anyway, I didn’t use the Shadow Hunter Beast to hunt other mortals and Phantom Demons. We have already released the soul shards of those dream-lost people who were unintentionally lost in the Dream Realm and then hunted by the Shadow Hunter Beast.
“These remaining ones cannot be claimed by anyone. They belong to you – you defeated the Shadow Hunter Beast, and this is your reward.”
“This is called ‘acting on behalf of heaven’,” the Lord of Scales and Feathers added smilingly. “And in the Dream Realm, it is reasonable for anyone to eat anyone else.”
The Shadow Heavenly Envoy continued, “Similarly, if you don’t have mounts that can traverse space, I don’t advise you to roam the Dream Realm in any way. Because you could also become prey and food for others at any time…
“This place is completely different from your peaceful and harmonious Material Realm… I’ll lend you the Moon Deer for now. It can take you directly to any place whose location you know precisely. However, try not to cross the boundaries between different Heavenly Envoy domains, as they are the most dangerous and chaotic. Many people who have committed crimes or harmed others hide on the other side… Even Dream Traveling Monks are not keen on approaching it.”
“Will The Path of Beauty be like this too?” Arsen asked disbelievingly.
“Yes.” “Of course.”
Except for Eivass and Arsen, almost everyone responded in unison.
This made Arsen curious. He himself was from The Path of Beauty, so he had a good impression of it.
What kind of Phantom Demons would attack passers-by in The Path of Beauty?
However, Eivass was not too worried about his own safety.
After all, he had a special form specifically for use in the Dream Realm!
That was Eivass’s Sin Eater Beast form.
In the Dream Realm, transforming into the Sin Eater Beast form did not consume mana!
This was Eivass’s home ground!
(End of Chapter)
