Fear of food

On the plane to Wentang City, Chen Qi closed his eyes and took a short nap.

Although he could recover his energy by consuming Nightmare Clan members and sources of contamination, the continuous high-intensity battles, coupled with the fatigue of the journey, still left him feeling somewhat mentally exhausted.

As they were nearing their destination, Chen Qi suddenly opened his eyes; there was new progress in the safe house.

He had previously sent several first-generation Nightmare Clan members onto the Ferris wheel, and after a long wait, he finally succeeded in turning them into employees.

This process was much more difficult than he had imagined. It only took him a little over an hour to transform a second-generation Nightmare Clan member, but it took him a full half day to transform a first-generation Nightmare Clan member!
This was after the third qualitative leap in its capabilities, and the Ferris wheel had also been strengthened.

Chen Qi roused himself and attached great importance to the transformation of the first generation of Nightmare Clan.

Although the first and second generation Nightmare Clan appear to be only one generation apart, they differ greatly in both numbers and strength.

The first generation of Nightmare Clan members may even possess secrets unknown to the second generation and below.

Chen Qi had previously merged with Menglong and A Liang, two members of the first generation of the Nightmare Clan, and shared some of their memories.

However, because his fusion with the two nightmares never exceeded 50% at most, the memories he shared were also limited.

In addition, the two nightmares have always consciously protected some of their most core memories, so Chen Qi has no chance to peek at them.

But from the part of his memory that he shared, he clearly knew the Nightmare Clan's classification method.

They also learned how the second generation and below of the Nightmare Clan were born.

All Nightmare Clan members below the second generation in the contaminated area are actually bred from high-level contamination sources.

The authorities have classified high-level pollution sources into six levels, from S to E.

This does not include pollution sources exceeding Grade S, or ordinary pollution sources that do not reach Grade E.

All six levels of advanced pollution sources have the function of nurturing the Nightmare Clan.

The Nightmare Clan, born from S-level pollution sources, is the second-generation Nightmare Clan; those born from A-level pollution sources are the third-generation Nightmare Clan, and so on...

However, nurturing a Nightmare Clan is costly; the more powerful the Nightmare Clan, the more energy is required to nurture it.

Polluted areas in various regions need to accumulate energy to upgrade their pollution levels, so it is impossible for them to breed Nightmare Clan on a large scale without restraint.

So basically, each group is assigned a specific role, and the number of Nightmare Clan members will be determined based on the number of ability users in the local contaminated area.

As for ordinary people, they will only choose those in key positions to parasitize, and they will use the lowest level of Nightmare Clan to parasitize them.

Simply put, not all humans are of value to the Nightmare Clan. Only those with potential abilities and those who can facilitate their corrupting development, such as doctors and teachers, are chosen by them.

So actually, the source of pollution came first, and then the Nightmare Clan appeared.

Pollution sources are formed gradually by accumulating local pollution energy after pollution has already occurred.

In terms of sequence, the source of pollution came first, then the pollution appeared. Then various advanced sources of pollution were generated, and only then did the Nightmare Clan come into being.

No members of the first generation of Nightmare Clan appeared in this process.

Counterintuitively, the first generation of Nightmare Clan did not originate from a higher-level source of pollution, and the origin of the first generation of Nightmare Clan remains a mystery to Chen Qi.

As for the source of the pollution?

This is also what Chen Qi wants to know.

The Nightmare Clan and the source of the pollution appeared in the world around the same time.

Understanding the origins of these two substances will give you a good idea of ​​the origins of pollution.

This was also the purpose of Chen Qi's trip to Wentang City.

However, now that several first-generation Nightmare Clan members have been successfully converted into employees, perhaps we can get the answer directly from them.

The first generation of Nightmare Clan appeared at the same time as the source of the pollution, and only they know the Nightmare Clan's most core secrets.

With a wave of his hand, Chen Qi saw three figures appear before him, the three first-generation Nightmare Clan members he had transformed into employees.

To this day, including Menglong and Aliang, Chen Qi has only met six first-generation Nightmare Clan members.

Four of them were people I met today.

Of these four first-generation Nightmare Clan members, Chen Qi killed one, and the other three were converted into his employees.

Before meeting Chen Qi, Monroe had already given the three of them a brief employee training. Upon seeing Chen Qi, the three of them were very respectful, bowing slightly as they greeted him:
"boss!"

Chen Qi nodded, and without beating around the bush with his employees, he spoke directly:

"Tell me, what exactly is your Nightmare Clan? And how did you come into our world?"

The three first-generation Nightmare Clan members exchanged glances. The youngest-looking man stepped forward and introduced himself first:

"Boss, my name is Xiao Yu..."

Chen Qi interrupted, "Don't all of you Nightmare Clan members like to have the surname 'Meng'?"

This generation of Nightmare is quite cooperative: "This is the original name of this body. If the boss doesn't like it, you can give me a new one."

Chen Qi nodded in satisfaction. After being transformed into employees, they no longer displayed the arrogance of the first-generation Nightmare Clan, like Menglong; instead, they showed only humility and maturity.

“From now on, you’ll be called Dream One.” Chen Qi was too lazy to think of a name, so he pointed to the two people next to him. “You two will be Dream Two and Dream Three.”

The three nodded in agreement and repeatedly expressed their gratitude, saying, "Thank you for bestowing this name upon us, sir."

“Continue answering my question,” Chen Qi said.

Meng Yi continued, "Our Nightmare Clan should be considered a special kind of life form to humans. Just as humans cannot understand our existence, we originally could not understand the existence of humans either."

Chen Qi tried hard to understand the meaning of Meng Yi's words: if the Nightmare Clan is also regarded as a kind of life, then they are obviously not carbon-based life.

Before humans came into contact with the Nightmare Clan, they certainly couldn't have imagined that such a form of life existed in the world.

But perhaps from the perspective of the Nightmare Clan, they could not comprehend the existence of carbon-based life before they came into contact with humans.

Meng Yi continued, "We Nightmare Clan originally lived in another world. We are few in number and do not have the ability to reproduce, but we have a long lifespan and are almost immortal."

"In our Nightmare Clan's world, there are three types of Nightmare Clan members: Nightmare of Dreams, Nightmare of Devouring, and Nightmare of Love. Our three clans are hostile to each other and constantly clashed."

"However, the long lifespan and the ability to resurrect after death have gradually led to a stable relationship between our three races, and large-scale wars rarely break out unless there are unexpected events."

Chen Qi frowned slightly: "A nightmare?"

He had actually seen some related information in some official documents recently, but it was mostly mentioned in passing with little description.

The reason is simple: there are no "nightmare contamination zones" in China. Nightmare contamination has only occurred in some areas abroad... and the scene is roughly like the whole city having an imparting session.

Strangely, it seems that some mysterious force is preventing this pollution from appearing in the country.

"And what is the source of the pollution?"

Meng Yi scratched her head, seemingly unsure how to answer the question.

Meng Er chimed in at the opportune moment: "The source of pollution in our Nightmare Clan world is roughly equivalent to crops for humans, or rather, grain-producing machines."

"Our Nightmare Clan's small population is all sustained by the source."

The three first-generation Nightmare Clan members took turns describing their Nightmare Clan world to Chen Qi, allowing him to initially construct a world completely different from Earth in his mind.

First, there's the population of the Nightmare Clan. He'd always heard that the Nightmare Clan was small, but Chen Qi initially had no idea just how small they were.

Until they heard that the entire world, including all three Nightmare races, only numbered a few thousand...

If you imagine it as the human world, with only a few thousand people, how empty would it be?

However, the Nightmare Clan they mentioned only included the first generation of Nightmare Clan.

Or rather, in their world, there is only one generation of Nightmare Clan.

The so-called second-generation Nightmare Clan, third-generation Nightmare Clan... those are concepts that only came about after they came to Earth.

In other words, the original Nightmare Clan of the Nightmare Clan world was the first generation of Nightmare Clan.

The second and third generations were all conceived after they came to Earth, and their strength was far inferior to that of the first generation of Nightmare Clan.

Therefore, the first-generation Nightmare Clan has an innate sense of superiority over the lower-level Nightmare Clan, and doesn't even truly regard them as Nightmare Clan members.

The true core of the Nightmare Clan consists of only a few thousand first-generation Nightmare Clan members. They have lived in another world for countless years, with almost infinite lifespans, and can be resurrected after death. However, because they cannot reproduce, they cannot grow and expand.

The Nightmare Clan's world is completely different from the human world; to humans, it is probably nothingness.

Their pollution sources are indeed like crops for humans, planted in the soil, absorbing nutrients from the land, and producing food.

However, their world has no land, and the food they produce is not grain, vegetables, or fruit, but "desire"!
"After arriving on Earth, I realized that our world actually overlaps with the human world."

"And the food we have been eating all along is actually human desires."

Chen Qi was also shocked. The Nightmare Clan's world and the human world actually overlapped, but they seemed to exist in different dimensions. The two worlds were not connected or interoperable, and they could not see each other.

However, human desires have seeped into the Nightmare Clan's world and become their food.

Humanity's three major desires—the desire for food, the desire for sleep, and the desire for passion (and reproduction)—created the three races of the Nightmare Clan.

The human world and the Nightmare Clan world are like two sides of the same piece of paper; they are right next to each other, but they will never see each other and will never have any interaction.

Human desires are like ink on this paper, capable of seeping from one side to the other.

However, the current situation is that a hole has been poked in this paper, allowing the Nightmare Clan on the other side of the paper to invade the human world on this side.

The Nightmare Clan on the other side of the paper could only consume a little bit of the desires that had seeped through them, and they still needed to rely on the source of pollution to collect and gather these scattered desires.

Upon arriving in the human world, they indulged in unrestrained feasting and even polluted humans, causing them to accelerate the production of their desires.

What exactly caused this situation?
Who poked that hole?

To this, the first generation of Nightmare Clan gave Chen Qi an answer he hadn't expected.

"Actually, it wasn't our Nightmare Clan that invaded the human world first; it was the humans who invaded our world first."

Chen Qi had considered all sorts of possibilities, but he never thought of this one.

"So it wasn't your Nightmare Clan that opened the passage to the human world, but rather humans who opened the passage to the Nightmare Clan's world?"

"Pretty much. It was because of that human's arrival that a passage was opened for our Nightmare Clan, allowing us to come to the human world."

Chen Qi frowned: "Does that mean that simply shutting down this passage will cut off the source of pollution?"

Meng nodded: "Our Nightmare Clan's ability to create pollution in the human world comes from the source of pollution, and the source of pollution is connected to our Nightmare Clan's world. As long as the channel is cut off, the source of pollution will quickly deplete."

As long as the source of pollution is cut off at its root, even if some Nightmare Clan members remain on Earth, Chen Qi can gradually eliminate them.

He asked, "So how do we cut off that passage? And where is that passage located?"

Meng San replied, "That passage has no physical form. It is actually the human who invaded our Nightmare Clan world. That person is the passage. We all entered the human world through him."

Chen Qi has now witnessed just how much trouble a person can cause.

Who is that person? Where are they now?

“We, the Nightmare Clan, don’t care about his identity in the human world, so we haven’t bothered to find out about it,” Meng Yi said. “He is currently imprisoned in our Nightmare Clan world and is under special protection.”

This person's value to the Nightmare Clan is immeasurable. It can be said that if anything happens to him, it will directly lead to the failure of the Nightmare Clan's invasion plan.

It's perfectly normal that the Nightmare Clan would give him special protection.

But this also put Chen Qi in a difficult position: how could he end all of this?
To deal with that person, we need to break into the Nightmare Clan's world, but how do we get into the Nightmare Clan's world?

"Is this passage one-way? Is there any way for me to enter the Nightmare Clan's world?"

But the answers from the three Nightmare Trio disappointed Chen Qi.

These Nightmare Clan members who entered the human world could maintain contact with the Nightmare Clan world by using the power of the source of pollution, but even they themselves could not return.

These Nightmare Clan members had no intention of returning. They came to the human world to transform it into a paradise for their race.

Here, they not only have an inexhaustible supply of desires as sustenance, but they can also use the energy of these desires to upgrade their abilities to become even more powerful.

Moreover, they can breed new Nightmare Clan members here, making up for the Nightmare Clan's lack of reproductive ability.

"So how did that person enter the Nightmare Clan's world back then?"

Chen Qi understood that if he wanted to enter the Nightmare Clan's world and end all of this, perhaps he could only follow that person's example.

To figure out all this, he first needed to know who that person was.

"Could it be Momo's brother, Mo Nan?"

Mo Nan discovered the food mutation earlier than anyone else, and disappeared immediately after the pollution outbreak, remaining missing to this day. Chen Qi naturally made this connection. (End of Chapter)