Chapter 19: Giving the Evil God a Little Taste of Human Shock

"Item Name: Whisper of the Nameless."
"Type: Consumable."
"Item Grade: C."
"Item Description: Upon use, the user gains the 'Forced Comprehension' status. While under this effect, the user's willpower will not drop to zero regardless of circumstances, nor will they suffer damage from low willpower. Duration: One minute."
"Note: Unexplained whispers fill my ears. It’s wonderful; I am gradually understanding everything."

The reason Randy's soul did not dissipate even as his body was enveloped in the Flames of Purification was that when Wu Chang had handed him the medicine, he had substituted the original contents of the capsule with a "Whisper of the Nameless."

It was a form of insurance.

If his plan failed and Randy came to believe in the existence of magic, leading to the rebirth of Lyman, this insurance might be enough to rouse Randy’s consciousness and allow for a desperate comeback.

If his plan succeeded and Randy remained a devout believer in science, preventing Lyman’s resurrection, he would have merely lost a C-grade consumable.

As it turned out, his insurance was well-placed.

The Cult of Tranquility was indeed well-prepared; even though he had foreseen their conspiracy in advance, he had still fallen into their trap.

Wolf did not need him to help convince Randy; he only needed him to lure Randy out of the office and expose him to the Cult of Tranquility.

In other words, any player who entered the instance and sought to use Randy's power to deal with the Cult of Tranquility had already walked into a trap, inevitably triggering the ending where the Evil God descends.

Unfortunately for them, the Cult of Tranquility had encountered Wu Chang.

Wu Chang was not fighting alone.

At this moment, he inherited the legacies and relics of past players—mages, gamblers, doctors—as well as those of Old Anderson and the members of the original Arcane Knights.

That was why he had laid this trap for Lyman.

When the King’s Badge was equipped, the hidden note on the Magic-Breaking Crossbow Bolt stated, "Only by striking the source can one truly harm an Evil God."

There were two ways to strike the source: sacrificing the Magic-Breaking Crossbow Bolt or using the Purification Formation—both ruthless methods prepared by the Arcane Knights for Lyman long ago.

Lyman hadn't experienced them back then, so Wu Chang was making sure to provide them now.

First, he used the Purification Formation to "slow-roast" Lyman, paralyzing him while controlling the intensity to bring Randy’s soul to the brink of death, putting him within the execution range of the formation.

Once in range, he immediately caused the King’s Badge and the Arcane Badge to resonate, unleashing the trump card of the Arcane Knights: the Final Purification, turning up the heat to finish the job.

The Final Purification could be considered the greatest masterpiece of human occultism; even an Evil God would struggle to resist it, let alone one already trapped in a state of terminal purification.

In just a few breaths, Lyman could no longer hold on.

The pitch-black darkness in Randy's eyes began to fade rapidly; at this rate, he would regain clarity in a dozen seconds.

However, just as Wu Chang stared into Randy's eyes, Randy’s body, covered in the Flames of Purification, suddenly stopped convulsing and abruptly looked up to meet Wu Chang’s gaze.

The next moment, Wu Chang saw the darkness in Randy’s eyes expand, swallowing everything in an instant.

"What the hell!"

Wu Chang felt as if he were falling into the deep sea, his body struggling instinctively. Then, he heard a loud *thud*, followed by an indescribable, sharp pain in his little toe.

The pain jolted him awake. He opened his eyes to find himself lying on his dormitory bed.

There was no sanitarium, no zombies, no resurrected Evil God; it had all been a dream.

He had just kicked the bed frame in his sleep.

Looking down, his little toe was bruised purple, the nail nearly torn off.

*Hiss!*

Even looking at it made him feel a piercing pain.

*Knock, knock, knock.*

He frowned. Which unlucky soul was coming to visit at this hour?

"Who is it?"

He crawled out of bed, limping. Before he could reach the door, it was smashed open with brute force.

An indescribable monster appeared in the doorway, rushing into the room like seawater flooding a cabin when the Titanic struck the iceberg.

The monster’s existence was beyond description. It resembled nothing Wu Chang had ever seen; it was like an aggregate of countless writhing things, its form shifting constantly.

Yet, to say it had no appearance was also wrong, for one could see shadows of everything within its countless tiny, writhing parts.

The more closely he looked, the more alien it seemed.

The monster’s existence seemed to transcend space. As Wu Chang looked at it face-to-face, his perspective kept shifting between eye-level, top-down, and upward views, sometimes even appearing from the inside out or in even stranger ways.

After a certain perspective flashed by, a realization struck him: the thing before him was not a physical entity, but an emotion—or rather, a spiritual entity.

At that moment, he truly saw it.

At the same time, the tiny writhing part he was staring at tore open, and a vast, irresistible terror flooded him.

The impact of that fear and despair was enough to instantly turn an ordinary person into an imbecile.

Black blood flowed from Wu Chang’s seven orifices. He began to tremble, every cell in his body shaking as if they might collapse and scatter from sheer terror at any moment.

Just then, an inexplicable whisper sounded in his ear.

The content of the whisper was unclear, yet it brought him immense peace, steadying his shattering willpower and helping him gradually regain his composure.

He had almost crashed and burned.

He hadn't expected Lyman to be able to counterattack while on the verge of death, dragging him into a dream.

Even more unexpected was that Lyman had revealed its true form in the dream, and he had nearly been scared to death just by glancing at it.

Fortunately, while activating the Final Purification, he had taken the precaution of popping a "Whisper of the Nameless."

As the master of dreams and reality, Lyman could manipulate the passage of time within the dream, but the duration of the "Whisper of the Nameless" was based on absolute external time and remained unaffected by the dream’s temporal distortion.

This meant that even if the dream dragged on forever, his mind would not collapse before Lyman was burned away by the Flames of Purification.

Lyman’s final counterattack had only trapped itself.

Recalling the fear that had struck his soul, Wu Chang felt a surge of rage and malice; he prepared to give this Evil God a little taste of "human shock."

He grabbed a towel from the bedside, wiped the blood from his face, and revealed a slightly eerie smile.

He was the master of the dream. After being attacked by Lyman, the dream had become a lucid one, granting him partial control over it.

"You showed me something good, so I’ll show you something good in return."

With that, he opened his roommate's computer, found a hidden folder labeled "Fetish," and began playing the restricted videos inside.

Under his control, hundreds of gigabytes of bizarre, fetishistic videos finished playing in mere seconds.

Having watched his roommate's private collection, Lyman seemed to have seen something truly filthy, its entire body convulsing violently.

A strong emotion, imbued with intent, flooded the entire dormitory.

"Ugh! Pervert! Disgusting! Even Hell would lock its doors at the sight of you!"

Lyman’s "physiological discomfort" significantly weakened its control over Wu Chang’s dream, and the Flames of Purification followed its source, burning right into the dream.

White flames erupted from the crevices of Lyman’s body, scorching every writhing mass that composed it.

As the writhing masses turned to ash, the dream shattered.