By this stage, Han Fei still vividly remembered the task information he had heard before entering the Shrine Memory World.
This Class D Shrine Inheritance Task had very low requirements for him—death count not exceeding one hundred, but he had already died ninety-nine times, and this was his last life.
"Once my consciousness fully merges with the First Generation Ghost, I will cease to exist." Han Fei was very clear-headed, knowing he had reached the most critical moment. These next few minutes would be his last time in the Shrine Memory World.
"The first thing to destroy is the Dream! Drive out that Unspeakable Will from the Shrine of Fu Sheng!"
Seated next to Paradise, his massive body slowly rose. The whole city was overwhelmed by waves of despair. Han Fei ignored the gazes of the onlookers as he maneuvered the corpse’s arms, reaching to grab the flesh on the corpse’s abdomen.
His sharp fingers pierced the flesh, and amid everyone’s astonished gazes, Han Fei tore off the piece of skin covered in butterfly stains!
The crazed people in Paradise were dumbstruck; no one had expected that the First Generation Ghost, rumored to be the source of disaster, would self-mutilate upon awakening.
Pain surged into his brain, and countless hopeless souls roared skyward. The entire night sky trembled as all Ghosts and Monsters related to the Deep World roared along with Han Fei.
The stained skin had been torn off, but the traces left by the Dream were not completely erased. Those black unknown substances had seeped into the viscera, harboring a massive insect cocoon within the internal organs.
This insect cocoon bore a rather androgynous face, stunningly exotic, indistinguishable as male or female, merely appearing incredibly beautiful, as if a single glance could plunge one into a dream.
The exquisitely beautiful face was branded on an ugly, disgusting insect cocoon, like a bug’s body adorned with a beautiful human head, seemingly a monster that crawled out of a nightmare.
Once the insect cocoon was exposed, all the followers bearing sacrificial offerings went mad; they charged forward with their offerings, willing to sacrifice their lives just to be a step closer to their deity.
A case of ill-fated coincidence, upon seeing the insect cocoon hidden in the corpse’s viscera, Han Fei immediately reached for his own lower abdomen.
"Are you sure you want to choose this path?" a barely tangible voice entered Han Fei’s mind, seemingly coming from inside the corpse, as if the insect cocoon was speaking.
"Destroying you has nothing to do with choosing any path," Han Fei’s gaze was resolute, "No matter which path I choose, I will destroy you, even if one day I fall into the Deep World, becoming the world’s greatest villain, I will still be the first to kill you."
The Dream had done too many inhumane things; all the Resurrection Ceremonies and Living Sacrifices in the city were because of it. That monster, in order to fulfill its plan, had indirectly or directly killed countless people, who died in the deepest despair, suffering unimaginable physical and mental torture before death.
This pure malice, in Han Fei’s view, had to be eradicated as soon as possible.
"You will regret it." The human face on the insect cocoon slightly twitched, struggling as if to open its eyes and be born ahead of time.
"Fu Sheng and I have made many different choices, but we have reached a consensus on how to deal with you. You must die!"
Han Fei maneuvered the corpse’s arms, grabbing the insect cocoon.
He did not know how long the insect cocoon had been inside the corpse. The large amount of tentacles and blood vessels that grew on the cocoon’s surface had all burrowed into the internal organs of the corpse. To destroy it, the corpse would have to pay a heavy price.
"You can symbiotically live with me! Why choose mutual destruction? All your despair comes from reality, from being discarded, isolated, and forgotten in a small room by them! Don’t you remember your pitiful state back then? You even forgot how to smile!"
"You fought for your life, paid everything, just to save them? To save those who are trying to kill you?"
"Their occasional kindness towards you is merely because you bring benefits to them; no one in this reality truly cares about you!"
Han Fei ignored the voice coming from the insect cocoon. He grabbed the abdomen’s cocoon with both hands, tore off the tentacles and blood vessels, and with hands covered in fresh blood, gradually pulled the cocoon out from his stomach!
"You will regret this! You definitely will be abandoned by them! You will see it soon! Once you leave the Shrine Memory World, you will see their utterly selfish and terrifying side! Despite your saving them, they will kill you with their own hands!"
The voice from within the cocoon became shrill. It seemed not just to be intimidating Han Fei but stating a fact.
"I have indeed plunged many people into despair, ruined countless happiness and contentment, but don’t forget, I was merely exploiting the emotions that already existed in their hearts. If they truly had no pettiness, selfishness, or cruelty, how could I have succeed so easily?"
No matter what the cocoon said, Han Fei didn’t listen. He removed the cocoon, the huge cocoon underneath sticking to the corpse’s viscera and blood vessels, partially fused together.
"You can choose another path!"
The cocoon seemed to know it was about to be destroyed. Its shell rapidly changed, starting to unabashedly absorb the blood from the corpse.
Those followers carrying sacrificial offerings, who were also part of the offerings themselves, exploded into a cloud of blood mist as they approached the corpse, blood-red butterflies emerging from their bodies.
With the help of the swarm of blood-red butterflies, the cocoon intensified its absorption of the corpse’s blood, but it was unfortunate that Han Fei was even more frantic.
With an upward pull, Han Fei did not consider the consequences, forcibly tearing apart the blood vessels and viscera connecting the cocoon and the corpse.
Dark blood spilled across Paradise, and the face on the cocoon let out a piercing scream.
"I know your name, and soon you will be abandoned by them! Just like the once Fu Sheng! Becoming sinners!" The cocoon’s surface cracked, and it seemed ready to force its way out.
Han Fei now faced many enemies, but in his eyes, dealing with the Dream was his highest priority.
Controlling the corpse to hold down the Insect Cocoon, Han Fei stabbed his fingers into it. He raised his arms high as if lifting a crimson moon, then smashed the cocoon hard onto the ground.
Countless butterflies flew from all directions to stop him, but Han Fei realized that this way, he could not harm whatever was inside the cocoon. He needed to pierce through the cocoon itself.
Han Fei reached back and grabbed the broken Slaughter Saber by his chest. As he prepared to pull it out, all the staff in Paradise also began to stop him at all costs. That saber seemed to be the key to sealing the corpse.
His consciousness rapidly merged with the corpse. Han Fei let out a scream of despair as the Slaughter Saber was slowly pulled out of his chest.
The dead heart began to beat again, blood from his whole body flowed into the earth. Fed by the corpse, Paradise turned into an uncontrollable Monster that began to swallow the entire city.
Han Fei felt the ominous signs too. If he could have held on for a few minutes before, now the time left for him could be counted in seconds.
"It’s over, the First Generation Ghost has fully awakened!"
Eternal night descended; the city was swallowed by darkness as despair, like a tempest, capsized the entire city.
The body controlled by Han Fei then became the source of this despair. Everyone’s gaze at him was similar to that of looking at a final villain. Few could imagine that Han Fei pulled out the Slaughter Saber to pierce through the cocoon.
Screams, like thunder, echoed through the Shrine Memory World. In a moment of blood-red lightning, Han Fei pulled the Slaughter Saber out from his chest!
An unimaginable vitality sprang from the heart. The despair that had been accumulating inside the body for countless years was awakened, and that body began to undergo new changes.
Han Fei did not care about these things; his only target was the cocoon.
"Han Fei!" An immensely powerful will beyond hatred emanated from inside the cocoon. It merely spoke two words, almost tearing apart the merged will of Han Fei and the corpse.
If he hadn’t been hiding in the brain of the corpse, the other’s words could have killed him directly.
"Since I cannot unearth the final secret that Fu Sheng hid, then don’t you dream of inheriting his last Shrine!" The human face on the cocoon twisted and deformed. "There’s a passage leading to the outside world hidden in the Paradise of the Deep World. If the Shrine bursts, that passage will open. I will turn you into a true Sinner, condemned and spat upon by everyone!"
"Do even Unspeakable beings only know how to threaten?"
Han Fei plunged the broken Slaughter Saber into the cocoon without a second’s hesitation.
In dealing with things related to the Unspeakable, one mustn’t give it any chances.
The broken Slaughter Saber easily broke through the cocoon, piercing the Monster being nurtured inside.
A scream rose as all the blood-red butterflies fluttering in the air fell.
As the cocoon shattered, a man identical to Fu Sheng fell out with a saber impaled through his chest, his body covered in butterfly patterns.
Han Fei roughly understood Dream’s plan; it wanted to use its lasting impression in Fu Sheng’s mind to recreate a Fu Sheng within the Shrine Memory, allowing its remnant thoughts to devour Fu Sheng’s Memory Fragments and become the new master of the Shrine.
The main body of the Dream was far away, thousands of miles distant. It managed these feats with only a remnant thought, and its terrifying nature had to be acknowledged. But it likely did not anticipate that Han Fei, as Fu Sheng’s inheritor and only at level twenty-one, would have already reached Paradise and started the Shrine Inheritance Task, utterly disrupting its plan.
It should be noted that when Fu Sheng was initially struggling in the Deep World, he had just managed his first building at level nineteen.
This gap was so large that not even the Unspeakable could understand. Later, Dream found itself an excuse, realizing Han Fei and Fu Sheng had chosen different paths. It subconsciously thought that Han Fei’s choice to help the Deep World had greatly reduced the difficulty level, allowing him to enter Paradise at level twenty-one.
Because of this preconceived notion, Dream had doomed itself.
Faced with Dream’s scream, Han Fei’s response was very much like himself—he relentlessly slashed, chopping Dream’s cocoon and the Monster inside to pieces. This wasn’t the end; he also wanted to call forth Big Evil to devour Dream’s remnant thoughts.
The Dream hadn’t anticipated Big Evil either, a special existence hoping that Han Fei would fall into the Deep World, part of the reason lying in Big Evil itself. Although it had woven countless dream cocoons, it had never seen a special existence like Big Evil before.
But now, in this situation, Big Evil had become the last thing Dream wanted to encounter—it truly feared this Shrine-destroying Big Evil might come and nibble on it.
The plan completely failed, and the laboriously cultivated Fu Sheng substitute turned into mush. Dream had never harbored such intense hatred for someone before.
"Then let the secret of Fu Sheng be buried forever."
Dream seemed to make a decision. Butterfly patterns from the cocoon spread like a poison scar on the corpse, then seeped into the body, dyeing each blood vessel black.
"Its target is the heart of the First Generation Ghost!"
Looking down, Han Fei discovered the deepest hidden things on the First Generation Ghost.
After the Slaughter Saber was pulled out, the blood vessels coiled around the heart of the First Generation Ghost broke one by one. The heart slowly shattered, and a passage entirely constructed of despair appeared, with boundless black mist slowly emerging from within.
"What place is connected to the heart of the First Generation Ghost? Is that the origin of the Deep World?"