I created a safe zone in the nightmare world.

Spare me, boss, spare me!

Although Hongtao really wanted to shout it out, his mouth seemed to be sewn shut, and he couldn't utter a single word.

The three suits—spades, clubs, and diamonds—are also included.

They really wanted to beg for mercy: "Boss, look into our eyes, give us a chance, boss!"

At this moment, not only were the four thieves frozen in place, but everyone else in the hall held their breath.

Shi An stroked his chin.

He was thinking.

Today is an auction, and he never intended to see blood. Judging from the expressions of the others around him, the deterrent effect was sufficient.

So,

He waved his hand again, and one by one, cursed objects, tools, and materials flew out from the bodies of the bandits and landed in his hands or in front of him.

"These will all be confiscated."

"As for the specific punishment..."

Let him think about it first.

Shi An waved his hand, and the four figures were moved to another location.

The auction has ended, but the handover of the auctioned items is proceeding as usual.

However, at this point, many people were no longer discussing the precious auction items, but rather the store manager's stunning purchase.

"The master thieves of trickery roamed multiple regions, and even Tiannan City couldn't do anything about them. I never expected to be caught here."

"Thankfully, thankfully we all followed the rules of the safe zone."

One of the extraordinary individuals secretly rejoiced.

He didn't dare to steal the goods, but when he couldn't get the treasures before, he couldn't help but want to threaten his competitors with harsh words. Fortunately, he only thought about it, otherwise, he would be sitting at the same table with several notorious thieves right now.

"I wonder how the shopkeeper will deal with those notorious thieves. He won't just kill them, will he?"

"Maybe not? The punishment for troublemakers in the safe zone isn't severe. Unless it's malicious murder, causing someone's death, or a long list of crimes, the most serious punishment in the rules is just being expelled from the safe zone, having your membership revoked, and being permanently blacklisted."

The lenient punishment is also related to the positioning of the safe zone.

The safe zone is designed to be flat, hoping to attract more people who have fallen into despair, so the management needs to be more relaxed.

If it were like Red Maple Town, where any outsider entering would be closely monitored, then very few people would come.

Of course, the safe zone doesn't have that many people to monitor it.

On the other hand, many members of the safe zone are themselves monitors. Anyone who dares to do something against the safe zone will be discovered, reported, and controlled almost instantly.

Reporting also earns you contribution points.

"In the past, there weren't many serious incidents in the safe zone, but there were quite a few petty thefts. I remember one guy did something really serious, trying to steal the spell scrolls from the library. That guy is now permanently blacklisted."

"This is what a member from Baijiang City said."

Nearby, a member from Nightmare Camp frowned: "I think the punishment in the safe zone is too lenient. If this kind of guy were in our camp, he would at least have his hands and feet broken, and he would deserve to be killed on the spot."

The modern world still has laws, but the nightmare world doesn't.

Sometimes, making a mistake is as easy as dying.

At this point, a veteran member spoke up: "Our safe zone is a civilized place, so of course there won't be any bloody punishments. However, it's not necessarily too lenient. If you get blacklisted, you can imagine how bad it would be."

How miserable is it?

It's just going back to the old days.

One member muttered something, and as he spoke, his voice lowered.

He thought about his life during this period, with the safe zone as a refuge.

He is a seasoned Refinement Realm expert; if he is careful, he is confident that he can survive one nightmare after another.

But being confident doesn't mean being relaxed; every nightmare is like dancing on a knife's edge.

What now?

After falling into the nightmare, they can go directly to the safe zone, no longer needing to face the various dangers of the nightmare. This is not to be complacent; they can focus their energy on solving the nightmare.

Life has become easier, the results have been remarkable, and our strength has improved much more rapidly than before.

These are all changes brought about by the safe zone.

"I used to be used to living on thin ice, but now..."

Having enjoyed the convenience and comfort of the safe zone era, could he bear to go back to the past?

He probably can't take it.

It's one thing to be unable to stand it, but you might also have to watch your peers make rapid progress, break through one bottleneck after another, and reach unimaginable heights while you remain stagnant.

This is worse than killing yourself!

New members who had only been in the safe zone for a short time gradually realized this as well.

Someone spoke up: "Not only that, the safe zone is still developing. I heard that the store manager is constantly building the safe zone, and there may be new special buildings in the future."

Even if not, we all understand that the number of members in the safe zone is increasing, and the number of powerful forces cooperating with the safe zone is also increasing, which means...

If we consider the various factions within the safe zone as an alliance, then...

Within an alliance, factions can easily exchange resources, making communication and trade incredibly convenient. Outside the alliance, however, they are still limited to primitive communication methods. The larger the safe zone alliance, the greater the losses for factions that fail to join.

The longer this goes on, the greater the power gap will become between those inside and outside the alliance!

"So, if you get blacklisted in the safe zone, hehe, your future is going to be bleak."

Shi An asked someone to learn more about this group of cunning thieves.

This team is rather mysterious, but because they possess the distinctive feature of spatial artifacts, these thieves are quite easy to identify.

They stole quite a few treasures.

But it was just theft.

"The places they've targeted include Tiannan City, Red Maple Town, and various other strange territories. They even dared to directly rob strange treasures belonging to those at the Ascension Realm."

"You guys are pretty bold, huh?"

Shi An looked at the four people in front of him.

He didn't exert any restraining force, but the four mysterious thieves were completely submissive and dared not make any move.

They really didn't dare to move.

Shi An opened his mouth:

"Now, I'm giving you two choices. One is to be blacklisted from my safe zone, and you can forget about getting your things back." "The other is to stay and work for a year, without pay or days off."

His original idea was that if these people had committed serious crimes, he would kill them without hesitation.

Otherwise, remove these people from the safe zone and add them to the blacklist.

But then I thought, these are still a few extraordinary beings, and killing them or throwing them away would be too wasteful.

However, he, the store manager, did not have any means to control the supernatural.

Therefore, he offered two options.

The four of them stared wide-eyed.

"Can...can you let us leave?"

Red Hearts spoke tremblingly, in disbelief.

As for the so-called safe zone blacklist, it doesn't seem to have much of an impact on them.

"No," the powerful figure wearing the spade mask said, "We choose to stay and pay off our debts through work."

"Big brother?!"

The other three were surprised.

The Spade expert looked at them and said, "This is the right choice."

Ultimately, the four of them chose to stay and work.

Shi An gave each of them a membership card.

"Let's bind it."

In their eyes, this membership card seemed to be some kind of means to control life and death, or at the very least, some kind of monitoring and checks and balances.

So they had never considered becoming members of the safe zone before.

There is no other choice now.

Shi An knew what they were thinking, and he deliberately led them to imagine things in that direction.

The binding was completed quickly.

The membership cards displayed portraits of their respective representatives, similar to the masks they wore: spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds. The members removed their masks.

The four people are two men and two women, and they are siblings.

Among them, Spades is the eldest brother, a young man in his thirties with a weathered face; Hearts is the second sister, whose age is difficult to determine due to her makeup.

Meihua appeared to be a quiet, reserved young woman, around twenty years old.

The cube is the youngest, and he looks like a high school student.

but……

"Four extraordinary beings from one family? That's a bit outrageous!"

Despite the large number of extraordinary individuals within the safe zone, who are these extraordinary individuals? Almost all of them are leaders of major forces.

Shi An asked a few simple questions.

Spade said, "Boss, we had some good fortune. We once stumbled into a strange building. If you could pass the levels inside, you would get a reward. Heart and I both advanced directly to the extraordinary level while passing the levels, and Third and Fourth Brothers also laid an incredibly solid foundation because of this."

"After we came out, we realized that it was a wonder, and a rather high-level one at that. However, we couldn't enter the wonder again, and when we came back a second time, the entire wonder had disappeared without a trace."

He was somewhat uneasy.

Everyone was envious of such a spectacle, but they searched the surrounding area thoroughly and still couldn't find any trace of it.

Unexpectedly, Shi An didn't ask any more questions, just gave a light "hmm" and told the four of them to report to the security department.

"Achieved Amazing Level 4!"

Shi An didn't really have any means of control, but he never thought about controlling it either.

It's better to use incentives.

Take it slow. If they work diligently, he will certainly reward them.

At that point, even if he tries to get rid of them, they might not be willing to leave.

"Four people, two at the mid-stage of the Transcendent Realm and two at the early stage, which is roughly the level of Lu Qing to Yan Xiangtian. They are not weak, but not strong either. However, these four cooperate seamlessly and possess extraordinary abilities."

They were able to escape unscathed from the strange creatures of the Ascension Realm, which must have been due to the power of the wondrous object.

But if they didn't have any other skills, they would have been buried long ago.

Shi An looked at the treasures that had been taken from them.

Unexpectedly, the group wasn't wealthy, but there were still some treasures inside that caught his eye.

"Earthly Jewel (Rare)"

"Description: Allows lost individuals to temporarily enter the real world, or an area similar to the real world."

This is what allowed them to enter Tiannan City.

Shi An was not surprised.

The bizarre can invade reality, and those who are completely lost in their dreams may naturally return to the real world.

After the auction, the safe zone returned to normal.

All the extraordinary powerhouses are extremely busy, including many top experts from powerful factions; they only have a limited time to come to the safe zone. Even so, extraordinary powerhouses can still be seen in the safe zone from time to time.

A very few exceptional individuals also reside permanently in the safe zone, constantly taking on missions and relentlessly conquering the nightmare.

With their abilities, they'll be promoted to senior members in no time.

"Of course, in the next month, it is estimated that several, a dozen, or even more members of the safe zone will advance to the extraordinary level." "The more extraordinary powerhouses there are, the more stable the world will be."

The previous calamity involving the fake humans was indeed due to humanity's insufficient understanding of nightmares, leading them to fall into the fake humans' trap. However, if Baijiang City had dozens of extraordinary beings, each personally taking action to sweep through the entire city, any scheme could be shattered by absolute power.

As veteran members gradually break through to higher levels, Baijiang City will build bridges connecting multiple locations, bringing together dozens of extraordinary individuals—perhaps this won't just be a dream. That day, Shi An stayed within the safe zone, even finding excuses to slack off at his actual work.

He would open the panel from time to time.

At first, it was only opened once every two or three hours.

Later, it was opened once every half hour.

And then every few minutes I couldn't help but glance at it.

"The Dreamer Visitor: 999/1000"

All other upgrade conditions have been met, except for this one.

The ranking was 999 this morning, then suddenly dropped to 998, before rising back to 999 an hour ago. "Just one more person needed, system, give it your all!"

Finally, when the word count reached 1000, the condition was met, and Shi An tried to click "upgrade".

"Prompt: Proceed with a safe zone upgrade? This upgrade requires 2 Faith Points and 300 Dream Crystals." "Prompt: This upgrade will take 24 hours. During the upgrade process, the core areas of the safe zone (Manager's Office, Mission Hall) will be closed, and the safe zone entrances and exits will be moved to the Garden area. No new random entrances will appear in the safe zone during this process."

Shi An breathed a slight sigh of relief.

"Fortunately, the upgrade won't shut down the entire safe zone."

Given the current size and number of people in the safe zone, closing it would likely cause considerable chaos.

Of course, even if things go wrong, the upgrade still needs to be done.

Shian quickly issued an announcement.

An hour later, he pressed the button to confirm the upgrade.

A thick white fog enveloped the entire mission hall.

Time seemed to pass slowly that day, until…

"Ding!"

"Notice: Safe zone upgrade complete, current level LV4."

"Note: The number of Nightmare zones that can be connected to from the Safe Zone has been increased from 20 to 50. The coverage area of ​​the Safe Zone has also been expanded."

"Hint: Safe Zone employee contract count +1, building slot +1, cursed item containment slot +1."

"Note: The core lobby of the safe zone has been expanded. The upgrade limit for safe zone buildings has been increased by 1."

Tip: You can view a member's basic information.

"Tip: Within the safe zone, you can use the full power of existing buildings. Outside the safe zone, the farther away you are, the less 'building power' you can use."

"Note: A new building blueprint, "Spellcaster Sentry Tower (Normal)," has been added to the Level 4 Safe Zone. This blueprint can be reused, and the building does not occupy a building slot."

The safe zone is about to undergo a complete transformation.