Eternal Night

Chapter 896 Night

A whole night is a long time.

"We have at least six hours of safe time."

A young woman looked at her phone and said to her two companions.

The two burly men nodded and lifted a terrified, naked woman onto the steel plate.

This is a metal processing factory located in the suburbs. It was already past midnight, so naturally there were no employees there.

Two burly men circled the naked woman, looking her over with a serious expression, but there was no lewdness in their eyes. This only made the naked woman look even more terrifying.

Because the two burly men's eyes were neither seeking money nor lust, but something far more terrifying—a kind of gaze that ordinary people couldn't understand at all, but which was enough to terrify them just by looking at it.

Yes……

It's the look in the eyes of farmers or shopkeepers when they're killing fish or chickens...

One of the burly men said, “Our previous tests have shown that the human bodies here are no different from those outside, possessing purely mortal characteristics. However, it seems that pollution and supernatural influences have been eliminated here. Currently, it appears that by controlling the physical body, one can unleash the power and changes of pure physical muscles. The degree of control is quite difficult to grasp, because once a certain critical point is exceeded, we will be unable to revert to human bodies. If we are confirmed to be non-human on a large scale, we may die suddenly.”

Another burly man said, "Then let's test the physical changes first, and confirm the critical point of change of the human body in this space so that we can switch at any time, so that we can master the most suitable and powerful physical form, as well as the critical point of being able to change back to the human body at any time."

He looked at the other two as he spoke, and both the burly man and the young woman nodded.

The woman thought for a moment and said, "This is indeed the most important matter. Only after confirming this do we have the most basic combat power, but it's not enough. Since 9 p.m., several of my fellow soulmates I contacted have encountered problems. One thing is certain: either other fellow soulmates who entered here have started a killing spree to clear the area, or the controller of this space has come to his senses and started killing us. Either way, it is a huge danger to us. It is not enough to just exert the full power of the human body. We need to go deeper and develop our spiritual consciousness."

Both burly men nodded in agreement.

Within the extraordinary system, physical transcendence is the safest, but at the same level, its power and wonder are inferior to spiritual transcendence. Furthermore, physical and spiritual transcendence are inferior to true spiritual transcendence, a fact universally acknowledged throughout the dream world.

Although this space rejects all extraordinary energy, those who can enter here and survive the first round of selection are basically at the level of the Ascended Body. Or to put it another way, those who dare to dig and explore for treasures in the Shattered Domain instead of hiding are basically only at the level of the Ascended Body.

For those who have transcended, even without extraordinary energy, their perfect self-control allows them to easily manipulate any physical or mental body, producing effects that are not extraordinary but comparable to them.

Any sublimated being, even if it loses its extraordinary path and extraordinary energy, as long as it is allowed to go to Wu Pifu's former 21st-century Earth with all its memories and consciousness, they can easily set off a biochemical frenzy, or a scenario of hypnosis and personality alteration of all mankind.

The reason why the three outsiders were so cautious at this time was because the first wave of "inhuman" screening in this space had frightened them, forcing them to maintain their human form in crowded places during the day and not to show any abnormal behavior. Otherwise, they would have started mass-producing "flesh weapons" the moment they entered on the first day.

After the three confirmed the next experiment, a burly man began to reach out and touch the naked woman's body. After touching her for a few seconds, he pressed hard on the woman's stomach. Instantly, an unimaginable and terrifying pain swept over the woman, causing her to cry out in pain and urinate and defecate. However, she could not make a sound when she opened her mouth.

The woman was in so much pain that her eyes rolled back several times, but when another burly man stabbed her directly in the temple with two rusty metal spikes, she couldn't even lose consciousness.

Next, the young woman next to her didn't just watch. She went up to the naked woman's head, reached out and grabbed the naked woman's skull with her claws. Then, with force, she actually ripped open the skull, exposing the brain.

"...The pain intensified, and the brain underwent the following changes..."

"...Pain that exceeds the critical point leads to hormonal changes..."

"...The muscles have changed, but it's still within the recovery range. Continue to increase the intensity..."

"...The skin has been completely peeled off, and the bleeding points are controlled as follows..."

"...Regarding the removal of internal organs, some organs can be replaced with muscle..."

"...muscles, fat, a small number of blood vessels, strengthen the digestive system, most pain nerves can be removed, and sensory nerves can be enhanced..."

"...It has exceeded the critical point and is beyond recovery. Record the critical point just now..."

About twenty minutes later, the naked woman had transformed into an unknown creature whose muscles were completely disintegrated, and whose bones, internal organs, nerves, and even brain had changed into a monstrous state. The only sound it emitted was a single, guttural roar; all its sanity had been utterly destroyed in the excruciating pain, far worse than being slowly sliced ​​to death, leaving only unconscious muscle twitches. The three men nodded in satisfaction. They tossed the flesh monster to the ground, briefly discussed some academic questions about flesh and blood, and then pulled a middle-aged man from a nearby burlap sack.

The middle-aged man had already soiled himself. He had only seen a small part of the scene, but even that small part was a million times more terrifying than his worst nightmare, and at one point he even felt that he might be in a nightmare.

"You monsters, what are you...?"

The middle-aged man roared silently, but received no response. Only a burly man lifted him up with one hand and placed him on the metal platform covered in blood and flesh.

At this moment, the young woman said, "It seems that a small number of spatial entities cannot identify us as non-human... There is probably a process of quantitative change involved, or rather, a matter of the magnitude of existence?"

The burly man next to him said, "It's a matter of the magnitude of the existence of the observer effect. Individuals in a single space, or a small number of individuals in a single space, cannot generate 'non-human' anchored cognition. This is good news for us, and it will be a testing option later. However, we need to capture other like-minded people before we can test it."

The other two nodded, and they were about to conduct the next round of physical threshold tests on the middle-aged man when a voice suddenly came from the corner of the factory: "You people are still as disgusting as ever."

The three of them simultaneously darted five or six meters away, their muscles rapidly changing like fluid. They looked towards the source of the sound and saw a boy standing in the corner of the factory with a straw in his mouth.

The boy didn't even glance at the three people, but looked at the muscular monster trembling and struggling on the ground. A look of sorrow appeared in his eyes, and he shook his head slightly. He took the straw from the monster's mouth and flicked it gently at the monster. The straw immediately pierced through the monster's brain and embedded itself somewhere in its brain. The muscular monster slowly calmed down and finally stopped moving.

"You maggots remnants of past eras, you are as disgusting as ever!"

The boy looked back at the three humanoid figures that had turned into muscular monsters. His expression remained unchanged, and he simply spoke.

The streamlined, muscular monster, transformed from a young woman, said in a hoarse voice, "Oh, oh, oh, to be able to speak words from past eras, this fellow Daoist is truly magnanimous."

The boy shook his head slightly.

A burly, muscular monster said in a deep voice, "Who else but those arrogant and conceited ancient civilizations would call us maggots? Ha, I didn't expect that even ancient civilizations would send people here. Isn't the Shattered Realm always considered a garbage dump by you?"

The boy disappeared from the spot, and when he reappeared, he was already two meters away from the three muscular monsters.

The three muscular monsters were greatly shocked. They each unleashed their full power, leaping more than ten meters in a single bound, crashing through the factory's outer wall, and landing outside the factory.

"Information closed loop!" the largest muscle monster cried out in fear.

The streamlined, muscular monster immediately said, "No, it's not a true information loop, because I still remember what he looked like as a boy!"

The muscular monster said, "...It's not a conceptual information loop, but an illusionary attention-erasing information loop. It hides itself in our blind spots of consciousness; this is the root of critical existence!!"

The three muscular monsters were filled with dread.

They had previously referred to each other as an ancient civilization, which was merely a test. However, upon learning that the other party was a critical existence at the root level, they truly confirmed that the other party was indeed a member of an ancient civilization. This was because only an ancient civilization had the means, resources, and strength to preserve a critical existence at the root level, preventing its demise, and also to serve as combat power to move from lower-level dream worlds to middle-level and even higher-level dream worlds.

They... were filled with fear and decided to run away!
But the next second, the streamlined muscular monster began to explode and disintegrate from its side, its flesh turning into pieces the size of fingernails. The boy pointed a finger at its waist, and the streamlined monster didn't even have time to say a word before it exploded and died.

The remaining two muscular monsters didn't even bother to glance at them. They immediately stomped their feet and their entire bodies shot wildly into the darkness at an incredible speed, almost reaching 200 meters per second.

This is the speed of a flesh and blood body without any extraordinary energy or extraordinary means!
However, the muscular monster had only run less than a hundred meters when it began to crack from its back, and the boy's figure behind it vanished in a flash, leaving only the still-exploding pieces of flesh and blood.

The giant, muscular monster was terrified. It no longer cared that it could not return to human form. As it roared madly, its flesh and blood began to transform into tentacles that expanded outwards. But in an instant, all the fleshy tentacles froze. Right in front of it, the boy pointed a finger at its head between its eyebrows. The entire muscular monster crashed to the ground and remained motionless.

The boy reappeared from where he had vanished. He looked at the factory with a sad expression, casually plucked a blade of grass from the ground, put it in his mouth, and disappeared again.

And so it went.

(End of this chapter)