A crucial choice lay before Lei Lin.
On one side, heaven. On the other, hell.
If he entered the third layer of the labyrinth, he could seek out the inheritance of that Nightmare King. But if he stumbled into the entity's private memories, the consequences would be absolutely unthinkable.
Of course, Lei Lin couldn't read the other party's intentions either. Perhaps the Nightmare King genuinely wished to share its memories with a later
"More importantly… every detection method is useless. I have no idea what's on the other side of that passage…"
A faint tingling crept across Lei Lin's scalp.
He was a rather conservative person. Though he had taken risks many times before, he only ever did so with seventy or eighty percent odds in his favor.
But now, with the odds sitting at a dead fifty-fifty, he found himself hesitating.
"I hate relying on luck the most. That kind of unpredictable thing can get you killed…" Lei Lin muttered with a frown.
His luck was middling — neither good nor bad — but he despised situations where everything came down to sheer chance.
Yet right now, the situation left him no room to stand still.
Crash! Crash! Crash! The surrounding dream-void kept shattering, and the destruction was rapidly closing in on him. If he was swept into it, it wouldn't be a simple cycle through the dream — he would be torn apart and devoured by the myriad dream distortions, body and soul obliterated, not even his true spirit left intact.
"What do I do? Just pick one at random? Those odds are really…"
Lei Lin's nerves tightened. The feeling was entirely novel, and strangely intoxicating in its own way.
Whooo…
" The left… in the left passage, I can faintly sense a massive jumble of chaotic coordinates and concepts — it should be the third layer of the labyrinth!"
After a flurry of analysis, Lei Lin gritted his teeth and made his decision.
But just then, a low wailing sound emanated from his body, making Lei Lin's expression shift rapidly.
He snapped his gaze downward, toward the source of the sound — it was his dimension bag!
«It's it!!!» A silver light flashed, and then an ancient beast-skin scroll appeared before Lei Lin, its surface seemingly still stained with undried blood. It was a vibrant, dripping red.
Sound, light, even the fragmented space began to warp and distort before the scroll.
«This is… the power of
Lei Lin murmured, «As an Ancient Wizard, even a comrade-in-arms, was the residual will left behind by the Shadow of Distortion also stirred by the Nightmare King?»
Infinite distortion power coalesced. Even the two dark-red spatial passages were affected, bending and deforming under the massive ripples of distortion before finally merging into one.
Buzzing! After the light faded, the two original passages had fused into a single, far more massive spatial gate. Crimson runes of dream power flickered across its surface.
«What a cunning Nightmare King, to have left such a trick!»
Now he had no choice left. Lei Lin rubbed his nose, his gaze fixed on the hovering beast-skin scroll. His expression shifted uncertainly for a moment, but in the end, he took the scroll into his hand.
The scroll’s surface was very soft, yielding slightly to the pressure of his fingers, losing all its previous eerie aura, as if it were simply the most ordinary magic scroll.
But the current Lei Lin wouldn't dare underestimate it in the slightest.
«Is the power of the Ancient Shadow of Distortion, even its will, still sealed within?» Seeing that it seemed determined to follow him, Lei Lin could only shrug his shoulders and accept it directly.
After all, this was just a split soul fragment for him. The worst-case scenario would be to discard this avatar and merely suffer severe injuries to his main body again. Having possessed the means to protect himself, he was naturally fearless and willing to take a gamble!
«Regardless of what you want me to do, I get my upfront payment first!»
A sharp glint flashed in Lei Lin’s eyes. He stowed the scroll away and strode boldly into the spatial gate.
Third Layer of the Labyrinth.
«As expected… the pollution of dreams here is even more terrifying, leaving behind only the purest concepts…»
Lei Lin realized he could no longer feel his physical body, existing only in the form of his most essential soul-source will. Around him seemed to be an endless stellar cosmos, filled with the sensation of weightlessness, while he himself felt like a lone, small boat navigating an ocean of towering waves.
There were no concepts of existence around him, only infinite void.
In this state, without a prime mover, Lei Lin wouldn't doubt for a second that he would remain this way until the end of the world.
Having lost his body, his perception of time had also grown sluggish. After an unknown duration—whether it was a few seconds or tens of thousands of years—Lei Lin felt that the concept of "self" he was clinging to was also gradually fading away.
"No! I can't! I have to hold on — once the concept of self disappears, even the true spirit will be completely annihilated..."
Lei Lin shuddered violently. His powerful willpower instantly seized control of every stray thought, and his entire body solidified into clarity in a heartbeat.
"Hah... What exactly is the structure of this third layer of the labyrinth? Even the fundamental concept of a Wizard keeps dissipating here..."
Having reasserted his sense of self, Lei Lin looked down at his newly condensed hands, a lingering fear flickering across his face.
"This is the Land of Loss... the place where the Nightmare King forgot himself..."
A few black feathers drifted down, and then Lei Lin spotted a black crow flying toward him.
In this void where nothing physical existed — only concepts — the appearance of a crow was already deeply strange. What startled Lei Lin even more was that this crow could move freely of its own accord.
"We meet again! Sir!" The black crow preened its feathers and greeted him cheerfully.
"Have we met before?" Lei Lin asked, bewildered.
"Mm! For me, it happens at a certain moment in the future. For you, it lies in the past. My future form will be a one-eyed owl."
The crow spoke in a cryptic, almost mystical manner.
"One-eyed! Owl!" Lei Lin's mind raced back to the nightmare curse he had endured after advancing to the fifth tier. During that rift in the dreamscape, he had received the owl's gift — and from that point on, he had begun to explore the power of dreams.
"Excuse me, but who exactly are you?" Lei Lin voiced the question that had been burning in his mind.
"Who am I? I am merely a collection of concepts. Wherever dreams exist, I exist..."
Lei Lin had a premonition that this creature — whether crow or owl — was clearly not telling the whole truth. But he didn't press the matter.
"You said this is the place where the Nightmare King forgot himself. What does that mean? Did he truly perish? Who struck him down?"
"As long as the Nightmare King did not wish to die, no one could make him fall. But here, he abandoned the very 'concept' of his own existence, and so he truly died — not a single fragment of his true spirit remained..."
The crow seemed to possess a thorough knowledge of the events of antiquity.
"Abandoned the concept of his own existence — isn't that just suicide? So even back when the Nightmare King first invaded the world of the gods, he had already resolved to die?"
Lei Lin had a nagging feeling that perhaps that Nightmare King, Adi, had been dead for a long time. After the Bloodbath Secret Realm, the Adi who still existed was nothing more than a walking corpse.
But the other party was simply too powerful — so powerful that he couldn't even kill himself. Did that mean he had to rely on the aid of the gods?
"As expected… advanced Wizards all have some degree of mental problems. This Nightmare King is way too far gone. I can never end up like him…"
This senior Wizard's example gave Lei Lin a valuable warning.
A true peak Eighth-Level Wizard, as long as they didn't want to die, would find falling in battle essentially impossible. Just like the Twisted Shadow — clearly dead for tens of thousands of years, yet still able to stir up trouble at every opportunity. But the Nightmare King had been dead-set on dying, and so he truly died…
"Then… Wizard, tell me the purpose of your coming!"
The Crow spread its black beak, a hint of amusement glimmering in its two bead-like eyes.
"I…" Lei Lin gritted his teeth, but said it anyway. "I hope to obtain the Nightmare King's legacy — at the very least, find a way to counter the decay of the power of dreams!"
"Master the power of dreams? Caw caw… That's no simple thing. Are you certain you want to do this?"
The Crow asked one final time.
"I'm absolutely certain!" Lei Lin answered in a firm voice, his eyes burning with the resolve to pursue truth at the cost of his own fall.
"Caw caw! Good! I see Adi's shadow in you…"
The Crow cawed, and its body underwent a bizarre transformation.
With a great rush, its frame swelled enormously, instantaneously expanding from pigeon-size into a monstrous dragon. Dense black scales erupted along its serpentine neck, its beak lengthened and broadened, and serrated teeth like a shark's emerged from its edges.
Crack! A bolt of blood-red lightning struck down, hitting the black dragon's forehead squarely. A line of blood slowly split open, forming a third vertical eye of crimson!
"This… this is…" The drastic transformation left Lei Lin completely stunned.
"Accept it! This is a gift from the world of dreams!"
The black dragon roared, and the third crimson eye on its forehead suddenly dissolved into a beam of light that plunged into Lei Lin's forehead.
An immense tearing sensation ripped through him, and the agony that reached down to his very soul sent his vision black, plunging him straight into unconsciousness.
Vast quantities of dream power surged toward him like a tsunami, enveloping his figure entirely and forming an enormous crimson cocoon.
By the time the dream tide had receded, the crimson cocoon at the center had vanished without a trace. Only the black Crow remained where it had been.
"Old friend! After I help you this one last time, every favor between us will have been spent..."
The Crow murmured to the empty air, its form gradually growing translucent until it vanished into the endless void.