Global Ghost Stories: I'm Investigating Ghosts in My Nightmare!

Chapter 78 The Queen's Gamble and the Shattered Tower

When the torrent of consciousness flowed back into the body that had long been accustomed to the cold reality, Bai Yu slowly opened her eyes.

What came into view was no longer that warm world filled with false happiness, but a huge opera house with spatial cracks everywhere, created by the collapse of the dream.

He remained standing quietly and alone in the very center of the stage. The dark gray suit that had been replaced in the dream had somehow returned to him, still impeccably tailored and spotless. The entire performance that had just spanned countless lifetimes had truly been nothing but a fleeting dream.

A figure silently materialized beside him. Hei Yan was still wearing that impeccably tailored black tuxedo, and his handsome, devilish face bore the smile of an artist watching a play come to a perfect close.

“Welcome back, my dear ‘Little White Language’.” His voice carried a hint of barely perceptible pleasure. “It seems you finally understand. Compared to that kind of ‘sweet soup’ filled with false sweetness, it is our absinthe, full of ‘brokenness’ and ‘realness’, that can better bring out the true ‘flavor’ of a soul.”

Bai Yu raised her head and cast her clear and deep eyes toward the VIP box on the second floor.

Inside the private room, Qin Yixuan remained standing. But the languid, alluring smile on her face had vanished without a trace, replaced by an unprecedented solemnity and disbelief. Her narrow, phoenix-shaped eyes no longer held the previous playfulness and control, but rather the shock and undisguised anger of being devoured by her prey.

A trickle of golden blood slowly oozed from the corner of her perfectly glossy lips, dripping onto her black evening gown like a flower of death suddenly blooming in the night.

That was the injury suffered by her primal power, which was the core of the dream, after being attacked by Bai Yu's powerful willpower.

She lost.

In this gamble that she thought she had a sure win, she suffered a crushing defeat.

She couldn't understand how this man had managed to break free from the ultimate cage she had woven with "happiness." She had constructed a perfect life for him, one without any regrets; she had laid bare his deepest desires before him. He had clearly become immersed in it, clearly forgotten who he was. Why... why, at the very last moment, could he so resolutely choose to abandon that readily available "perfection" and embrace a "reality" filled with pain and heartbreak?
"Why?" she finally couldn't help but ask, her voice trembling with barely suppressed resentment. "You could have stayed there forever. Your beloved parents, your dearest wife, your most cherished daughter... everything you wanted was there. Why did you come back? Back to this cruel world full of danger and separation?"

Bai Yu looked at her quietly, her eyes showing neither the pride of a victor nor pity for a loser, only a calm as deep as an abyss.

"Because what you give me is never what I want." He spoke slowly, his voice as calm as if stating the simplest of facts.

Do you think happiness is a perfect script without any ups and downs? Do you think love is a one-way giving without any conditions?

He shook his head, a complex expression flashing in his deep eyes. There was a recollection of that false life, but even more so, pity for the powerful yet pitiful woman before him.

"You're wrong. You've never understood what true 'happiness' is, nor have you ever understood what true 'love' is."

"Because you don't even have a 'heart' that belongs to you."

Bai Yu's words were like a sharp knife, piercing Qin Yixuan's seemingly unbreakable core of pride.

"You're talking nonsense!" For the first time, her emotions surged violently, and a furious rage, as if her sore spot had been hit, ignited in her alluring phoenix eyes. "I am the embodiment of 'desire'! I understand love better than anyone else in this world! I can give them everything they want!"

"Really?" Bai Yu smiled. "Then what you gave them was what they 'chose' themselves?"

"In your so-called 'paradise,' do the souls you absorb have the right to choose failure? The right to choose suffering? The right to choose to love an imperfect person and live an imperfect life?"

"No, they didn't. You just turned them into a bunch of pets kept in exquisite cages to satisfy your own 'collecting' obsession. What you gave them was never love, but cruel deprivation."

"shut up!"

Qin Yixuan let out a sharp shout; she was completely enraged.

A massive, terrifying torrent of spiritual energy erupted from her! The primordial power of the entire Elysium Hotel—countless souls imprisoned by her, each filled with intense "desires"—transformed into a colossal canopy of faces contorted with pain and greed, which crashed down upon the two tiny figures in the center of the stage!
She wanted to grind this man who dared to challenge her, along with his damned beliefs, into dust!

However, facing this terrifying torrent that could instantly cause a mental breakdown, Bai Yu showed no fear whatsoever.

He simply stood there quietly and slowly closed his eyes.

In that experience spanning countless reincarnations, his understanding of "happiness" and "truth," as well as his confirmation of his mission to "protect," have all coalesced into his pure will at this moment.

That will was no longer the cold and lifeless "nothingness" that it had been before, like a black hole.

It carried a hint of warmth.

A touch of human warmth.

Just as the enormous canopy of countless desires was about to engulf him, Bai Yu suddenly opened his eyes!
A tremendous spiritual power was unleashed from him!
This force is neither an aggressive "erasure" nor a defensive "rejection".

It was a kind of "resonance" full of "infectious" and "awakening" power!
He did not resist the torrent, but instead opened the "embrace" of his soul and took the initiative to meet it!

He unreservedly conveyed his will, the love and protection he had experienced in reality and reincarnation, to every imprisoned soul in that torrent!
"Wake up!"

His voice resonated like a great bell in the ears of every soul.

"Look at yourselves! Look at what you've given up for that false 'bliss'!"

He allowed the man who had lost everything through gambling and ultimately chose to find "happiness" in this place, where he could "win every time," to see again his wife and daughter who had been weeping every day because of his downfall.

He allowed the artist, who had been unable to accept the depletion of his talent and ultimately chose to find "eternal inspiration" here, to rediscover his studio, which, though poor, was filled with laughter, and his beloved who had always silently supported him.

He allowed the mother, who, unable to bear the pain of losing her son, ultimately chose to find "family reunion" here, to see again the purest smile of her child, who, though gone, would forever live in her memory.

He showed these souls, who were indulging in false happiness, the preciousness of "truth".

Reality means pain, regret, and imperfection.

But reality also means choices, growth, and the hope and love that will never be abandoned, even in dire straits.

The enormous canopy composed of countless desires began to tremble violently after coming into contact with Bai Yu's will, which was filled with the power of "truth".

Those faces that were originally filled with greed and numbness began to show a trace of struggle and pain.

They are awakening.

"No...no! Come back here!"

Qin Yixuan let out a horrified scream. She could clearly feel the connection between herself and those souls being forcibly severed by a powerful force! Her proud "paradise" was beginning to crumble from within! Her source of power was draining away at an unprecedented rate!

She realized that if things continued like this, she would not only lose the "refuge" she had managed for hundreds of years, but she herself would also be "repositioned" and "reclaimed" by that more terrifying being that had been lurking in the shadows because she had lost all her power!
Faced with the immense fear of "losing everything," her proud self-esteem was finally shattered. She was forced to make the most humiliating choice of her life—to compromise.

She forcibly withdrew all her power.

That overwhelming curtain of desire receded swiftly like the tide, eventually disappearing completely.

The entire dilapidated opera house was once again enveloped in a suffocating silence.

In the VIP box on the second floor, Qin Yixuan's body trembled violently uncontrollably. She barely managed to keep from collapsing to the ground by holding onto the cold railing. For the first time, her unreal beauty revealed genuine weakness and distress on her face.

She looked at the man in the center of the stage, whose expression remained as calm as an abyss, her eyes filled with complex emotions. There was anger, there was resentment, but even more so, there was a sense of apprehension at having met her match.

"I lost."

She spoke slowly, her voice hoarse like a piece of glass that had been sanded.

"Speak, what do you want to know? About... the 'Tower'."

Bai Yu watched her quietly; this deadly gamble had finally come to an end.

"What is it?" he asked the first question.

"It's not 'anything'." Qin Yixuan shook her head, a bitter smile filled with self-mockery and fear on her face. "It's everything. It's a 'structured conceptual collection' similar to a 'cosmic virus.' Its instinct is to 'proliferate' and 'stacking.' Like a greedy librarian, it forcibly 'collects' all the civilizations, knowledge, rules, and even life forms it comes into contact with as part of itself, and then builds its own new 'structure' on top of these 'collections.'"

"It has no fixed form, nor a unified will. Or rather, its will is 'chaos' itself. It is itself a 'chaotic order' that is constantly expanding and full of logical paradoxes."

Bai Yu's pupils contracted slightly. Qin Yixuan's description matched the fragments he had seen in the [Top Secret Ω] file with astonishing accuracy.

"So what is your relationship with it?" he asked his second question.

“Me?” A more complex smile appeared on Qin Yixuan’s face, a smile that contained pain, hatred, and a hint of undisguised pride. “I was once one of its countless ‘collections.’ A survivor from a civilization whose core rule was ‘desire’ that it had long since devoured.”

"But in the process of being 'included' by it, I used the innate 'desire' of my own civilization to reverse-analyze and steal a part of its ability to 'include' and 'construct dreams', and finally successfully escaped from its 'structure'."

“This ‘paradise’ is essentially a ‘refuge’ that I built for myself using the technology I learned from it, to absorb the power of ‘desire’ in order to fight against it. I need a sufficiently strong power of ‘desire’ to shield myself from its ‘location’ in order to maintain my own ‘existence’.”

"So, in a sense, it and I are both natural enemies that cannot coexist and kindred spirits."

Bai Yu finally understood. It turned out that the seemingly powerful and evil queen in front of him was nothing more than a survivor struggling in the cracks.

"Now, it's my turn to ask you." Qin Yixuan's eyes sharpened again. "How did you get that mark on the back of your hand?"

Bai Yu did not hide anything. He briefly recounted how he came into contact with the diary and how he was marked by "Tower" in the reading room.

After listening to his explanation, Qin Yixuan fell into a long silence. After a long while, she looked at him with an almost pitying gaze and slowly said, "I see. You are not its 'messenger,' you are just 'prey' who accidentally wandered into the hunting grounds and was targeted by the predator."

She paused, then gave Bai Yu a cruel warning: "I must remind you, the 'Tower's' mark is irreversible. Moreover, it determines the level of attention it pays based on the 'value' of the mark. The more you struggle, the stronger you become, the brighter the 'signal' you emit will become. You are like a lighthouse constantly increasing its brightness in the endless night, illuminating the surrounding darkness, but sooner or later it will attract the giant ship of the 'Tower' to descend, at which point it will devour everything."

After saying that, she slowly raised her slender hand and made a grasping motion in the air in the direction of Bai Yu.

Bai Yu felt a sudden, sharp pain on the back of his right hand, as if it had been burned by a red-hot iron! The "Eye of the Vortex" mark instantly became scalding hot and emitted an ominous black light!
Immediately afterwards, a small piece of black crystal-like "fragment" was forcibly peeled off from the mark by an invisible force, and then slowly floated into Qin Yixuan's hand.

“This is…” Bai Yu looked at the crystal that exuded an aura of “chaos” with a look of vigilance in his eyes.

"Consider this my 'reward' for losing this bet." Qin Yixuan looked at the constantly twisting and deforming crystal in her hand, a complex expression flashing in her eyes. "This is a small piece of 'Tower Fragment' that I temporarily peeled off from you using my own primal power. It contains the 'structural' rules of the 'Tower's' core. For any living being, it is the most deadly 'conceptual virus.' But at the same time, it may also be the only 'antidote' that you foolish humans who call yourselves 'guardians' can use to study and fight against the 'Tower.'"

With a flick of her finger, the black crystal transformed into a stream of light, instantly disappearing into Bai Yu's brow and being temporarily sealed away by a gentle force.

“Take this and leave.” Qin Yixuan’s voice carried an undisguised weariness. “I don’t want to see you again until I’ve repaired my ‘world.’ But, Mr. Bai, please remember, our ‘game’ is far from over. I hope to see more surprises from you next time we meet.”

Bai Yu gave her a deep look, but said nothing more.

He knew they would meet again sooner or later.

He nodded slightly to Hei Yan beside him. Hei Yan understood, and he reached out and gently slashed across the broken void. A black rift filled with spatial power quietly appeared.

The two walked slowly into the crevice, one after the other, their figures eventually being completely swallowed up by the endless darkness.

When Bai Yu opened his eyes again, he found himself still in that luxurious, palatial presidential suite.

Outside the window, the city's neon lights still flickered. Everything in the room had returned to normal, as if the thrilling dream battle had truly been just an unreal illusion.

But everything is different now.

Bai Yu slowly raised her right hand, looking at the "Eye of the Vortex" mark on the back of her hand, which was still clear despite being somewhat dimmed. The confusion and struggle in her deep eyes were gone, replaced by a calm and resolute look, like the sea before a storm.

He picked up the communicator that had been out of service on the table and put it back on his ear.

"Captain, it's me."

After hours of dead silence, Lan Ce's voice, filled with surprise and disbelief, suddenly came from the other end of the communicator: "Bai Yu? Is that you? You're still alive!"

Immediately afterward, An Mu's calm voice, filled with suppressed emotion and concern, rang out: "Bai Yu! How are things on your end?!"

Bai Yu's lips curved into a smile, and he could feel the warmth in his heart.

"I'm fine, Captain."

"and……"

"...I got what we wanted."

(End of this chapter)