Eternal Night

Chapter 886 Encounter

Wu Pifu and his group have been in the Broken Domain for nearly two months.

During this time, they obtained a sandalwood bead containing information about Buddhist secrets. Together with another sandalwood bead that Wu Pifu had previously obtained, these two sandalwood beads pointed to the location of a Buddhist secret. At the same time, they also encountered a containing civilization. After a series of events, they obtained useful information from the containment objects of the containing civilization, as well as a page of reader experience card containment objects.

In addition, over the course of two months, Wu Pifu and his group moved from the outer edge of the Broken Domain to the middle layer, where they exhibited an increase in various strange and bizarre phenomena.

In the middle layer of the Shattered Domain, even those world fragments with life and nature may harbor strange and bizarre things. For example, in a world fragment that looked like a dense forest, even Wu Pifu did not sense any danger or attack. After the group stepped into it, all the plants turned into something that was neither snake nor vine. After blocking the path to the void outside, these things surged towards Wu Pifu and his group from all directions, trying to devour them.

Of course, Wu Pifu could wipe out monsters of this caliber with a single stomp of his foot, without even needing to lift a finger. Xu Shilan and Amadei, who had both consumed Devil Fruits, would not be easily harmed. Although a counterattack might be difficult, maneuvering and escaping would certainly not be a problem.

So for everyone else, it was just a minor incident.

Any monster that actually exists, whether it has a physical form or not, is practically easy prey for Wu Pifu right now. Just imagine the true damage within five steps – it's a matter of instant death if you get hit, and serious injury if you get grazed, there's no exaggeration whatsoever.

On the contrary, starting from the middle layer of the Broken Domain, some rule-like strange things appeared. These were not tangible or intangible monsters, but rather some kind of rule or meme.

The most outrageous instance was when Wu Pifu and his companions entered a world ruin that quickly reverted to a complete world with civilization and a surface area at least four or five times the size of Earth—a true dream world.

In this dream world, Wu Pifu and his companions can freely explore and interact with the people of that world, and learn how the civilization of this world gradually transformed from a complete dream world into a world of ruins.

Wu Pifu felt like he was playing a puzzle game.

Most importantly, time in this dream world is not linear. Every word they say, every decision they make, and every interaction they have with the characters in this world will cause changes to the world's timeline. Then time will flow rapidly without them realizing it, eventually reaching the end point where they become the remains of the world.

But this is not the end. Every time the end of time is reached, the world becomes ruins, time flows backward, and a new cycle begins.

At first, Wu Pifu and his friends explored this world with great interest and learned about its past.

This dream world should be a derivative world of a civilization with sacrifice or communication with other beings as its unique extraordinary means, rather than the main world of that civilization. This is because, in addition to sacrifice and communication with other beings as the main extraordinary means, this world also has many other extraordinary means, including battle aura, magic, martial arts and other conventional extraordinary means. Wu Pifu even discovered other extraordinary means such as domineering aura, puppets, and holy armor.

In short, this dream world is a derivative dream world, but its real civilization may be declining or has already perished. In any case, this derivative dream world has encountered a terrible crisis, and the crisis is... the sun is gone.

The sun in this world set one day and never rose again. The world began to deteriorate rapidly. Plants withered and died on a large scale, the air became murky and polluted, and the temperature began to drop sharply. At the same time, various terrifying curses and monsters began to emerge in the darkness without light. Even the corpses of the dead began to turn into zombies and revive.

Without any warning, the entire world was plunged into an apocalyptic crisis.

According to the information that the Gaia humans have collected throughout the dream world, when a real civilization appears in each era, derivative dream worlds of that real civilization will be widely distributed between 0.9 and 0.5. The higher the level of the dream world, the smaller its deviation value. If it reaches the 0.6 to 0.5 dream world, multiple derivative dream worlds will appear, which are dream worlds mixed with information from other civilizations.

However, these derivative dream worlds all share an important pattern: when the real civilization perishes, most of these derivative dream worlds will also perish within a short period of time. The disappearance of the sun is one of the more common scenarios of its demise, because the sun in these derivative dream worlds is mostly not a star, but rather the radiance of a real civilization.

In short, this dream world is a similar situation, where the sun disappears and the end of the world arrives.

The extraordinary beings in this dream world temporarily ceased their infighting and conflicts, pooling their wisdom and efforts to find a way to resolve the apocalyptic scenario. Their primary task was naturally to bring the sun back to life. To this end, Wu Pifu and his group experienced five cycles of reincarnation, witnessing four different endings.

The first attempt involved a grand sacrifice to communicate with the alien being, inquiring about the reason for the sun's disappearance. However, the communication went awry; or rather, without the protection of a true civilization, the alien being abandoned all pretense. During the communication, a powerful meme rapidly spread throughout the world, with the sacrificial priest as the node. All survivors worldwide were reduced to blood and gore within seconds, then completely consumed by the alien being. In the second cycle, the priests, the core of this world's supernatural beings, still attempted to communicate with the alien being. This time, Wu Pifu and his group intervened, not only killing all the priests who planned the blood sacrifice, but also changing the offerings to fruits, pork, and sheep heads. Although they successfully communicated with the alien being, it enraged the being, which tore open the sky and descended, engaging Wu Pifu in a fierce battle. The entire world was shattered, reduced to a pile of ruins.

The third time, after Wu Pifu killed the priests who planned the blood sacrifice, he kindly inquired about the entire families of those priests who intended to offer sacrifices. Thus, the path of sacrifice was blocked. As the apocalyptic scenario continued, some geniuses in this world with wildly imaginative ideas devised a collective glowing method powered by love... Yes, it's similar to the method of turning all of humanity into orange juice. The final result was that a glowing sphere appeared in the sky, and not a single person could be seen on the ground. If one wore sunglasses or lowered the brightness to look at that sphere, one could see that it was a strange sphere of flesh and blood composed of countless heads, limbs, and torsos. The most terrifying thing was... all those heads, limbs, and torsos on it were still alive!

The fourth time, Wu Pifu simply kept wielding his knife, hacking and slashing his way through everything in sight, killing all the mischievous creatures, all the dark beings, and all the alien beings. But he still couldn't solve the problem of the sun's disappearance. The temperature of the entire world dropped to around minus one hundred degrees Celsius in just one month. Even though Xu Shilan tried to teach the scholars of this world various scientific and technological knowledge in an attempt to develop controlled nuclear fusion, the time was too short, and the entire world still fell into a deathly silence in an unstoppable manner.

The fifth time... well, Wu Pifu's three external brains have solved the mystery of this world. In fact, the mystery of this world is that there is no mystery. It is a seemingly solvable rule-based strange trap full of malice. There is only one answer: Wu Pifu must sacrifice himself to become the source of energy for this world, so that he can hang in the sky and illuminate this world. Only in this way can the apocalyptic scenario of this world be resolved.

All other methods are futile.

So, after the fifth attempt, the group gave up. Wu Pifu went back to his old ways, pulling the strange rule that caused this world's regression into the deathmatch space and hacking it to death. After that, the world became a desolate ruin, devoid of any strange existence.

In short, over the course of two months, the number of monsters, strange occurrences, and bizarre tales encountered by Wu Pifu and his group gradually increased. Fortunately, they mostly escaped danger without any real harm, or even any real danger at all. Everyone truly understood just how exaggerated and useful Wu Pifu's Nen ability, "I Am Just a Commoner," which he had obtained by trading all his potential, really was.

As time passed, the group gradually came to understand just how dangerous the Shattered Domain truly was. At the same time, they found several world remnants related to the Spirit Particle Civilization. Although these remnants were small and empty, the translation of the inscriptions and the collection of information confirmed that they were indeed the remains of the dream world where the last individual of the Spirit Particle Civilization resided after its collapse.

This also means that they are likely getting closer and closer to the extraordinary path of their Zanpakuto.

Two months and seven days.

On this day, everyone awoke in their tents. Outside the tents was a desert, while the place where the tents were set up was a small oasis.

This is a fragment of the world, the kind with life, and there's nothing strange or dangerous about it. Everyone is taking their first nap of the week in this world.

There was a moment of silence. Everyone was in good spirits after a good rest. They ate a fairly hearty breakfast, rested for a while, and then embarked on their journey again.

However, this time, Wu Pifu encountered a problem when he led everyone through the void.

In the void, as Wu Pifu used his inner force to carry everyone towards the next world's ruins, a shadow suddenly enveloped them at an incredible speed. Before Wu Pifu could react, the shadow expanded and engulfed him and everyone else.

The next instant, Wu Pifu came to his senses. He was about to pounce, but instead he fell to the ground. Upon closer inspection, he was completely stunned.

Because of his small hands and feet, he turned into a five or six-year-old child, and all his extraordinary powers disappeared.

nightmare!

An extremely high-level nightmare!
Wu Pifu inexplicably knew what this shadow was, and at the same time, he instinctively knew the special abilities of this nightmare.

"Suppress all supernatural abilities, including... Nightmare's own supernatural abilities."

A middle-aged, plump woman smiled and said to Wu Pifu, "Hello, I am the life teacher of your kindergarten class, and also your so-called nightmare. Now, defeat me, the child of the new era."

(End of this chapter)