From the moment I was chosen by the holy relic

Eileen gently turned the book to the next page, her fingers pausing for a long time before she slowly said:

"The Third Tower: The Tower of Dream Curses."

When she uttered the name, her voice seemed to become exceptionally soft, as if afraid of disturbing something that shouldn't be awakened.

Eric watched her silently, waiting for her to continue. Leah no longer dared to interrupt as before, but quietly shrank into her cloak, hugging her knees tightly.

Eileen finally spoke slowly, her gaze calm and serene:

"The Dream Curse Tower is not built in a dream."

"It is real. Every stone, every piece of wood, every wall, and every step is made of reality. It stands in the fault valley between Fengluo Ridge and Shaluo Basin, a natural 'illusionary energy field' where spiritual energy is said to intertwine like nerves, making it impossible to distinguish between day and night."

"The entire tower rises abruptly from the gray-white rock layers at the bottom of the valley. It is no more than seventy feet high, but beneath its foundation lies a four-hundred-layered array of cursed stone locks."

She turned to the illustration on the page. It wasn't a towering structure, but an inverted triangle with a wide base and a tiny top. The tower was made of some kind of grayish-brown stone, inlaid with dense spiritual runes and reliefs.

"The builder of the tower, Iserlyn Logo, is an elven noblewoman from the Lortheran family of the Spiritlight Mountain system. Originally a royal chanter, she was hailed as the woman of the purest bloodline of the Morningstar Clan."

"But in the year the Demon King's seal failed, she disappeared for three whole months."

"When he reappeared, he was already on the Night Whisperer's altar, holding the Black Curse Blade, and reciting the first Heartbeat Reversal Ritual."

Leah gasped in surprise, "She's an elf? Elves would betray us?"

Eileen nodded, her expression calm: "She didn't just betray us. She was the first elf to completely implant dark magic into her mental structure."

"She sacrificed her eternal memory, allowing herself to forget who she was."

Eric's brow furrowed: "She forgot on her own initiative?"

"Yes." Eileen's gaze was calm. "She believes that memory is the origin of personality. And to manipulate others, one must first prove that the self is merely an illusion that can be rewritten."

"Her purpose in building the tower was very clear: once the Blood Seal Respondent is confirmed, her tower will activate the Illusion Lock Matrix, subjecting him to a seven-fold personality stripping, making him doubt who he is, and ultimately deny who he is."

She turned a page; it was a diagram of the underground array of the Dream Curse Tower, seven interlocking rings, each ring inscribed with the name of a different mental curse spell.

First Lock: Stripping Away Status

—It will make you hear everyone call you by a stranger's name, and even your mother will not recognize you.

The Second Lock: Memory Reversal

—It lets you relive a life, but it's all lies told to you by others.

The third lock: Misplaced family affection

—You are reunited with your loved ones in your dreams, only to find that they call you their father's killer.

The Fourth Lock: Reflection of Belief

—Your oath has been twisted, and the ideals you fought for have become absurd and laughable.

Fifth Lock: Pain Sensor Implantation

—Every time I think about "Am I me?", I get a splitting headache.

The sixth lock: Language abstraction

You want to speak, but you find that you don't know any language.

Seventh Lock: True Self Application

—Your name will be covered by the tower inscription, and you will exist in the world in the name of others.

"If the seven locks are completed, the Bloodstained One will completely lose his personality and become just an empty shell."

"And Iserline can then inscribe the Black King's will into the blank space of his personality."

Eileen gently turned the last page, which was a fragment of a eulogy.

"Iserlyn did not reappear after the tower was completed. But the Twilight Tower records that her body sits cross-legged on the nerve nucleus layer of the Dream Tower."

"She showed no signs of life, yet she was neither decayed nor rotten."

"And the Tower of Seven Locks that she built is waiting."

"Wait for that one who is marked by the first tower, confirmed by the second tower, and marked by destiny to approach."

"The tower array will awaken the illusion lock, and the curse will follow the blood."

Eileen didn't turn the page.

Her fingertips hovered over the last page of the previous chapter, the edges of which were slightly charred, as if they had been licked by flames.

She was silent for a moment before speaking, her voice much lower than usual:

"The first three towers are respectively anchored to dreams, soul, and will."

"But all magic must ultimately come down to one thing: the body."

"If the Dark Lord is to return, his will, his soul, and his power must be fully adorned."

"And the fourth tower was built to house this vessel."

She finally turned the page, and behind the page was a diagram, but unlike the regular and symmetrical architectural cross-sections of the first three towers.

The image on this page resembles a sketch of a deformed organ.

The tower's structure is twisted and irregularly shaped, like some kind of giant snail shell, layered and wrapped around a huge heart-shaped rock core.

Leah looked at the picture, her expression changing: "Is this a tower?"

"Yes," Eileen nodded, "but it's more like a workshop."

Its name is: Blood-Sculpted Tower.

"It was built by the most isolated and dangerous of the Night Whispers."

Eileen gently pressed the edge of the page to prevent the night wind from turning it upside down.

"Vos Riddle was originally a live anatomist at a medical school in the North."

"He doesn't understand dream interpretation, he's unfamiliar with spells, and he doesn't believe in gods."

"But he was an expert in the structure of organs of all living things, including some that do not belong to modern races."

Eric's brow furrowed, and he slowly said, "He's an anatomy specialist?"

"No," Eileen said calmly, "He is the creator."

She pointed to the center of the picture, where it looked like the core of the tower, where a constantly expanding ball of flesh was depicted, with a metallic black spinal cord core embedded in the center, and six thick bone cables extending from behind it, piercing through the entire tower.

"That's called a bone imprint."

"It was forged by Voss by melting and recasting the spines of five hundred different alien creatures."

"It neither dies nor lives, it just keeps growing."

"The entire structure of the tower is not made of stone, but rather of layers of fleshy walls, bones, and nerve cords that have grown out."

"The tower itself is an incomplete, growing behemoth."

Eric couldn't help but ask in a low voice, "Then what kind of body does he want to create?"

"A perfect container," Eileen replied.

"Neither dwarf nor human nor elf nor beast."

"It is a magical form perfectly adapted to the Dark Lord's soul frequency, a kind of 'pseudo-god body' that defies fate."

"It must be able to withstand the Black King's soul pressure without collapsing, disintegrating, exploding, or cracking."

"It must be able to contain his memories and curses, without backfiring or resisting."

"It must have no self."

She turned to a page containing hand-drawn text, a record of the trial notes from the first "Pseudo-God Body Experiment," the handwriting extremely messy, as if written with trembling hands:

"The fusion of the thirteenth test subject failed."

"Severe conflict between the flesh and blood led to the self-destruction of the brain nucleus and ectopic reproduction of the frenulum."

"Open the upper palate to twenty-four inches and spit out fragments of the incantation."

"Forced to be sealed on the seventh level of the tower, numbered S-13."

Leah whispered, "He's made something?"

"Yes," Eileen nodded. "He created the first batch of modified beasts."

"It's not for war, nor for defending the tower."

"It's for trial and error."

"That was the earliest named failure in the Twilight Tower Scrolls, 'S-13'."

"It was originally a battlefield knight in the Southern Territory, seven feet tall, with an outstanding record. After Voss forcibly brought it into the Blood Shaping Tower, its soul was stripped away, leaving only its reaction center and nerve sensation."

"He implanted twelve types of bone parasites, four nerve folding mirrors, removed the language center, and added a curse core tooth."

"Result: On the tenth day, the test subject uttered an ancient black incantation on his own without being awakened."

"On the twelfth day, they began attacking the wall and attempted to cut their own spinal cord with bone hooks."

"On the fifteenth day, the Tower Heart determined that it was a self-generated entity and activated the annihilation mechanism."

"That body was buried alive on the seventh floor of the tower, but it has not yet decomposed."

Eric said softly, "He failed."

"Yes." A complex emotion flickered in Eileen's eyes. "But perhaps, for him, that wasn't a failure."

"He wasn't trying to defeat anything. He just wanted to prove that divine bodies could be created."

"Like a blacksmith forging a sword, like a clay sculptor molding a puppet."

"Among the five pagodas, he is the most mortal-like, and also the most god-like."

She closed the page without turning the next one, seemingly not intending to finish speaking all at once.

"The Blood Tower has not completely ceased operation."

"According to the last record, it was still actively proliferating at the end of the Fourth Age, with the tower growing a layer every thirty years."

"And the tower owner, Worth, himself did not leave any record of death."

"He wrote only one sentence on his last manuscript: 'If I am finished, I will be a complete vessel; if he comes, he will dwell within me.'"

The fire was burning brightly, casting interplay of light and shadow on the three people's faces.

Eileen didn't continue flipping through the book. Instead, she gently tapped the cover with her fingertips, as if sorting through unspoken fragments. She lowered her voice further, as if afraid of disturbing something still wriggling in the distance.

"Lord Voss Riddell never believed that the world would willingly welcome the Demon King."

He said, "Doors don't open by themselves, keys don't fall into place by themselves, and bodies don't take shape naturally."

"So he wanted to build it himself, to build the vessel that could hold the soul of the Black King."

"But if you ask him how many he wants to build, he will ask you in return: 'Do you know how many faces God has?'"

Eric raised an eyebrow slightly: "What do you mean?"

Eileen's gaze fell on the firelight: "He never intended to build just one."

"What he created was not a divine body, but an army."

Eileen said softly, "That legion is called the Hundred Souls Formation by the Night Whispers."

"They are called corps, but they are not actually an army. They do not form orderly ranks, do not obey orders, and do not think about strategies."

"Their existence serves one purpose: to provide test subjects for the Black King's arrival."

She turned the pages of the book, which depicted rows of humanoid skeletons of varying heights, some humanoid, some half-beast, and some even dragon-like. Each skeleton was covered with incantations and slots, as if waiting to be injected with some kind of "liquid of will."

"Every yoga pose is an attempt at a new form."

"The Hundred Souls Style" is derived from one hundred failed soul configurations.

"Between the ninth and twenty-ninth floors of the Blood Shaping Tower, Voss set up Soul Construct Pit and Bone Imprint Slots. He cut and reassembled the souls of a large number of captured prisoners and then embedded them into these empty shells."

"You can even see two sets of spines, three pairs of ribs, a double throat, and double eye sockets in some poses."

"That's not for deterrence, but for adaptation."

Eric frowned: "He just keeps making them one by one?"

"He created seventy-nine basic forms, thirty-two reconstructed forms, nineteen enhanced forms, five demonic bone forms, and one unnamed form."

Eileen pointed to the bottom right corner of the page, where the Night Whisperer's internal record runes were, like a kind of engraved catalog:

S-01 ~ S-79: Basic Adaptor Configuration

R-01 ~ R-32: Soul Reconstruction/Spirit Vein Intertwining Experimental Subjects

X-01 ~ X-19: Strengthening the Body/Cursed Bone Embryo Experiments

M-01 ~ M-05: Deep Demon Bone/Necromantic Anchor Body

Z-∞: Unnamed shape, core layer of the sealed tower.

Leah felt a chill run down her spine: "They're all still in the tower?"

Eileen nodded, her tone calm: "The last chapter of the Twilight Tower Scroll mentions that thirty-five entities were still active and functioning before the end of the Fourth Age."

"One of them wandered around outside the fiftieth floor of the tower for twelve days and nights. It needed to be repositioned at the center of the tower before it could be lured back."

Eric asked, "So how does he plan to make these things contain the Demon King?"

Eileen gently closed the book and whispered:

"He doesn't know which one can handle it."

"Therefore, he prepared for all possibilities."

She paused for a moment, her tone suddenly becoming serious:

"But Tower Master Voss Riddell did not leave behind any remains or spirit cores like other Night Whispers."

"But the memory patterns at the bottom of the tower record his last action:"

"He disintegrated himself."

"He embedded his nerve cords, bone marrow chains, blood drops, and oral cavity into four separate structures."

He is not dead.

"He has let himself go."

"He transformed into a component, becoming one of the key operational hubs of the entire tower."

"Therefore, the Blood-Sculpted Tower, in its state of 'neither dead nor alive,' still retains an astonishing ability to 'self-generate its structure.'"

Leah's eyes widened: "So you mean he might be able to have more children?"

"If someone awakens these four aspects, he will return as a new divine craftsman reshaped from the heart of the tower."

Eileen pulled out a piece of black parchment tucked inside the book; it had a diagram of the Tower's Heart Seal on it.

"This is the closest thing to success recorded in the 'Fragment'."

Number: Z-∞ (Unnamed form)

Structural type: Hybrid mimicry skeletal layer + semi-soul anchoring array

Size: Standard humanoid form, with six extended limbs and an unreduced tailbone.

Status: Dormant, sealed within the Quiet Well at the heart of the tower; proliferation has ceased.

"It is speculated that the vessel was the true vessel that Voss reserved for the returning soul."

"It never started, nor did it ever go berserk."

"The Fragment mentions that during a nerve concussion, it stretched itself into a fetal breathing shape, as if it foresaw something in the future."

They call it: shell.

The fire burned for a long time, the charcoal turned to ash, but no one got up to add more firewood.