Li Xiye took the Cyan Iron Ingot, turning it over and over to inspect it. "How do I use this? Inject Essence?"

She tried to inject her Essence and immediately felt a Soul Link form between herself and the Lapis Iron Ingot. The ingot then melted into liquid Lapis, swiftly covering her right hand and forming a thin, lapis-colored glove. It felt like a second skin, completely comfortable.

"This glove can absorb your Biological Electricity, store it, and then release it all at once. It can also act as an auxiliary tool, helping you condense your Biological Electricity into weapons like swords, shields, and axes. I call it the Energy Storage Gloves," Zhou Chen explained. This was an Extraordinary Artifact he had tailor-made for Li Xiye using Lapis Lazuli.

Li Xiye tried it out a few times and was very satisfied with the artifact's effect. She smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. "Thanks. What's next?"

"This school should be someone's Nightmare. It might also be the source of this Dream Realm. Let's go in and take a look."

The two of them entered Third Elementary School. The place was gloomy and silent, with an ominous flock of crows circling overhead. The hallway was pitch-black—so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face—but a classroom on one of the floors was lit up, making it stand out in the dark corridor.

Zhou Chen and Li Xiye cautiously approached the classroom and could faintly hear a child sobbing inside.

"So much homework..."

"Why is there still so much homework... AHHHH... Summer vacation is almost over, and I haven't even started my homework. What do I do... *sob*... So much homework... The teacher is definitely going to kill me..."

"*Sob sob sob...*"

'Huh...' Upon hearing the sounds from the classroom, Zhou Chen was completely stunned.

This was clearly a child's Nightmare about not having finished their homework before school started... He'd had similar dreams himself, so he knew the Fear and panic of being the only one who hadn't finished their work on the first day of school. He couldn't count how many times he'd woken up from such a dream in a panic.

Li Xiye was equally speechless. She thought there'd be some vicious ghost in the school, but it turned out to just be about unfinished homework.

The two peeked in from the classroom doorway and saw that the room was packed. One elementary school student had a mountain of homework piled on his desk and was frantically trying to finish it while wiping away tears. At the front of the room, a stern, fierce-looking female teacher with her hair in a bun and a mole by the corner of her mouth was slamming a ruler on the lectern, shouting sharply:

"Out of all the students in the entire class, why are you the only one who hasn't finished your homework?"

"You must finish all of it today! I've already called your parents. I really don't know what you were doing all summer vacation!"

Hearing that his parents had been called, the student cried even harder, and his pace of doing homework sped up considerably.

"Zhou Chen, what should we do?" Li Xiye turned to ask him. "If this is the source of the Dream Realm, how do we get rid of it?"

"Uh... To be honest, I don't know either. If it were a monster, we could just brute-force our way through. But this kid's Nightmare is about unfinished homework... We can't just help him finish it, can we?" Zhou Chen looked troubled. Looking at that mountain of homework, he wondered, 'How much time would we waste finishing that for him?'

"I don't think this is the source of the Dream Realm's corruption. Let's go look somewhere else," he said.

In the Dream Realm, the dreams are all connected. Each dream occupies its own area, and Zhou Chen and Li Xiye could walk freely through the Dream Realm, entering dream after dream to explore.

The moment they left the school, they stepped into a park.

"This is Central Park. The school is still right behind us. How strange..." Li Xiye looked back and saw the school was just a step away. Though the two dreams were adjacent, they did not interfere with each other.

'What kind of Nightmare will it be this time?' Zhou Chen advanced cautiously, spotting a man in a white-collar uniform squatting on the ground, weeping into his hands. He was tightly clutching a termination letter; it looked like he had been fired from his company.

"*Sob sob...* I still have loans to pay back. What am I going to do...*"

This time it was a miserable corporate drone, having a Nightmare about being fired and unable to pay back his massive loans... Zhou Chen sighed at the hardships of life. 'Thankfully, this is just a Nightmare.'

He paused for a moment before saying, "I've noticed that these Nightmares are all still within the ordinary range and aren't too dangerous. It's probably because these areas were only recently devoured by the Dream Realm.

"The deeper we go, the more dangerous the Nightmares will probably become, but we'll also get closer to the source of the corruption."

"In that case, why don't we just charge straight in and head for the heart of it?" Li Xiye suggested.

"Sounds good."

With that, the two left the Nightmare and began to run. Countless scenes shifted rapidly around them as they crossed through dream after dream, heading straight for the depths of the Dream Realm.

After an unknown amount of time, they arrived in a dilapidated city. The buildings were decaying and collapsed, the sky was thick with dark clouds, and the air was filled with the heavy stench of burning. Smoke rose from the ground, where the corpses of several Skinless lay, either decapitated or riddled with bullets.

"This must be the core area of the Dream Realm. Someone is being hunted by the Skinless," Zhou Chen quickly assessed, just as he heard the sound of gunshots in the distance.

He no longer held back his Essence and used Flame Jump to take Li Xiye with him, rushing toward the source of the gunshots. If you were killed by a monster in a dream, you were very likely to die in reality, and Fear and death would inevitably strengthen the Nightmare's Power.

But when they arrived on the scene and saw what was happening, they both froze, rubbing their eyes in disbelief.

A husky wearing a tactical helmet and a canine tactical bulletproof vest was clenching a sharp Tachi in its mouth. It carried a small Gothic Puppet on its back. The puppet, holding a machine gun, was letting out an evil laugh as it sprayed a hail of bullets at the zombie-like Skinless that were swarming them. Shell casings rained down like water.

The husky moved like an agile, wild wolf, weaving and dodging through the surrounding Skinless. It moved with fluid agility, evading their attacks. Every so often, it would flick its head, and a flash of steel would be followed by the thud of a Skinless's head hitting the ground.

In coordination with the machine-gun-wielding Cursed Puppet, it was routing the Skinless, slaughtering them mercilessly.

In sharp contrast, a group of humans was huddled in a ruined building not far away, trembling in fear and too scared to help.

"Holy shit, a dog with a sword!" Zhou Chen exclaimed. 'What the hell is going on?'

Li Xiye was also dumbfounded. 'Our dog can be this agile?'

"Master, you're finally here!"

The Gothic Puppet, Angela, was delighted but didn't stop firing the machine gun. Its voice was thick with madness and excitement. "Master, I've discovered this thing is way better than a knife!"

It was a Cursed Puppet that could kill people by Entering the Dream. Its weapon was a knife, and it enjoyed the thrill of torturing and hunting its prey in dreams, watching them slowly fall into despair...

But that was before.

Now, it had fallen in love with the machine gun. It had fallen in love with firearms. It had fallen in love with this feeling of mowing down enemies like grass, this convenient and efficient method of killing!

Zhou Chen's mouth twitched. He felt like the whole vibe had suddenly taken a weird turn.

"Anyway, let's take care of these Skinless first."

He scratched his head, his heavy mood having lightened considerably. He took the Contract Ring from his pocket, put it on, and charged into the horde of Skinless alongside Li Xiye.

These Skinless were all "Clones." Although they had been nourished by the Nightmare and were stronger than before—no longer shattering at the slightest touch—they were still no different from fragile goods in front of two powerful Ascenders.

The slaughter lasted only three minutes, after which nearly a hundred Skinless had been reduced to a floor of mangled corpses.

The humans hiding in the ruined building breathed a sigh of relief. They were safe for now.

"You guys took your sweet time."

The dog dropped the Tachi with a CLANG and spoke in a human voice.

"!!!"

Zhou Chen and Li Xiye were thunderstruck and stared in disbelief. "You can talk?"

"Of course not. I'm a dog."

The husky looked at them with an intelligent gaze, as if looking down on them. "But this is a dream. I'm a spiritual body, a being of thought. I vocalize with my mind, not my physical organs. Of course I can speak human. You guys are so dumb."