Silver Pivot Town.

Boboli brought over a plate of plump green grapes and placed them in front of Morrie, who was propping up his head with a sigh.

This medium-built English teacher had not left his home for over half a month. And according to the agreement with Yang Zicang, Morrie’s house arrest would last until three years later—the day when he himself “answers the phone.”

“What did you and Yang Zicang talk about last time? Why can’t you tell me?” Boboli sat down on the chair beside him, grabbed a fruit, and tossed it into his mouth.

Morrie turned his head, thought for a moment, and looked at Boboli.

“He didn’t actually say I couldn’t tell you, actually…”

“He? Who’s that?”

Morrie hesitated for a second, recalling Hong Haocheng’s words, “Why don’t you bring Boboli along too.”

That’s right…

Considering how rare Master Boboli’s power-up ability is, it’s been overlooked so far. If someone still can’t see his value now, that would be utterly foolish.

“What are you thinking about? You look so troubled as if you’ve suffered some great injustice.”

“Uh, nothing.” Morrie put his hands down and thought:

Simply revealing a bit of information about Hong Haocheng’s existence, like when chatting with Yang Zicang, probably doesn’t count as changing things now. After all, it’s still early days, and the time skip won’t happen until three years from now—I just have to hold out until then.

“Last time, Zicang and I talked about why I fell into a coma. The reason I was unconscious for so long has to do with someone.”

“Oh,” Boboli looked surprised. “I was wondering how you ended up like that after taking a phone call. Fess up quickly. Who’s this about? Was it Lady Maiya, who supplies the nightmare calls?”

“No. It’s about someone named Hong Haocheng. He called me from the future.”

“Huh? Who’s that guy? I’ve never heard of him before.”

“He’s a teammate of ours in the future.”

“No way! Anyone who can join our ranks must be super popular!”

……

Zhang Miao nervously faced the dilapidated Demonic Nightmare aircraft, clasped his hands together, and bowed with a thumping heart.

“Big shot, don’t eat me, okay? With me around, you can avoid a lot of detours.”

After saying that, the man looked at a hole that was wriggling as it repaired itself, and quickly stepped forward to rush inside.

A sinister aura permeated the aircraft as some “living” objects wandering around slowly retracted after touching him. Intense pain tormented Hong Haocheng’s body as he pressed his hand against the door and slowly pushed it open.

“Bloodline of… Marked Traces of Mind…”

The mattress, originally from the wedding bed, had tipped over against the wall, but it had merely become old and worn, not destroyed.

“That bad woman wife…”

Hong Haocheng’s hand covered his head, which was threatening to fall off at any moment.

“And an unknown, ancient bloodline that can devour souls of monsters and seal them away… What kind of messed-up world is this…”

Everything here was aging, as if years or even decades had passed. A certain “vital essence” of these items was being absorbed by the aircraft, becoming part of the monster gestating inside.

[Come, come eat, come… now I have more lifespan to give you.]

Hong Haocheng placed his hand on the wall, which had grown a film of flesh.

[I’ve shared 2000N with us.]

About 1,500 years remaining.

With the sharing of additional lifespan, the aircraft shook violently. The flesh film quickly spread across the entire broken cabin, like a rust-red metal of flesh repairing the damage.

“Cough, cough!” Zhang Miao coughed as he walked to the door.

He saw the charred man fall headfirst to the ground, but just as he hit the surface, countless membranes of flesh sprouted there, catching the man’s entire body and quickly wrapping him up.

{I see, teammate means helper!}

The aircraft’s Demonic Nightmare, having devoured the two struggling individuals, rapidly increased its intelligence.

“Can you move? You’d better leave quickly; it’s dangerous here.” Zhang Miao urged anxiously.

{Dangerous, what does that mean.}

“It means just like this now. Many people are on their way here from nearby, and some want to kill you.”

{Kill, us? Kill, the one who loves me, Daddy?! Bad, bad guys!}

The city was vast.

Thus, even though tens of thousands of people were scattered across it, it still felt quite empty.

But at this moment, the rumbling car engines were coming from more than one direction.

“Kill the one who took down the Red Model!”

On the long road, a person with his head out of a pickup truck window pointed at the sea of fire ahead and shouted.

“Hurry, that Demonic Nightmare is about to successfully hatch.”

“Oh my god, that guy hasn’t even fully matured his Demonic Nightmare, yet he can kill the one who can fire artillery—his Demonic Nightmare must have awakened an incredible ability.”

“That Crimson bunch must be thrilled to death, but relying on just one newbie won’t change their fate.”

“Not necessarily. Don’t you know about that guy from rank 41 city?”

“Which one? Oh, the Metro Team you mentioned? They just happened to encounter the emergence of the ‘Defender,’ destroyed its containment, and obtained a Century Weapon and a complete postal transfer. Pure luck, that’s all.”

“The one who showed up in our city today isn’t so lucky.”

Dozens of people near the explosion site had gradually approached the wreckage of the plane. Just as they were about to reach it, the plane exploded violently once again.

Countless fragments whirled and scattered across the sky.

“What’s going on?”

The light dimmed.

“Is it dead?”

“No, look!”

In the dim light, something kept rising!

The dozens gathering around looked up—through the spreading smoke, a broken skeleton of the plane rose like a framework from the ground, resembling a giant bony frame!

Like a gruesome beast of flesh and blood, it climbed high into the air with a gloomy aura and charged beyond the city’s edge—where there lay an endless expanse like a vast blue ocean.

The crowd immediately followed its slow, sluggish trajectory, surging toward the other side of the city.

Boom!

The shadow of the wrecked plane, already flying low, plunged into the blue water over a dozen miles away and skidded further into the distance.

When Cheng Yunze and the rest of the Four-Phase Team arrived, not even a trace of the monstrous aircraft could be seen. However, from a small boat on the blue waves, a faint image of its readings was sent back from afar.

In the sensing image, a figure seemed to crawl out from the top of the distant plane, lying on its surface and looking back this way.

“That’s the fence-sitter.”

“That newcomer didn’t even kill him. Brother Chen, seems like the people inside might not necessarily have their personalities twisted by the Demonic Nightmare after all.”

A hint of gloom flickered in Cheng Yunze’s eyes. “Someone like that is actually harder to handle. Try to recruit him; if not, kill him.”

……

Morrie was recounting what he had been doing over thousands of years in the telekinetic field.

“So envious~” Boboli clapped his hands with joy at the exciting parts.

“Able to elevate the world’s civilization to a new level and give them a new language—truly worthy of our Morrie the Teacher.”

Morrie tossed a grape into his mouth.

“Just killing time out of boredom.”

“What about that Hong Haocheng guy? He showed up briefly on the day you woke up, and then never appeared again?”

Morrie lowered his gaze thoughtfully.

He didn’t tell Boboli that Hong Haocheng had been writing novels inside the telekinetic field.

Naturally, he also omitted the long period before his awakening, when the people on the continent had subjected him to various inexplicable experiments—all of which he only learned about later.

These included, but were not limited to, being scorched with various substances and soaked in liquids. There were even tens of thousands of useless formulas, which were later accidentally discovered to have all sorts of bizarre uses—such as curing certain rare diseases, creating dyes and perfumes, producing stimulating scents that refreshed the mind or brought on bouts of joy, or aromas that induced unconsciousness… pesticides and seasonings, and… fertilizers.

All these discoveries were regarded by the Temple as “boons” bestowed by the followers of the Undying King.

Besides that, there were sacrifices of various magical creatures, manipulations of elemental symbols, countless prayers over millennia, kisses from pure maidens and lifelong servitude, blood and flesh, and even things more hair-raising and unsettling.

None of them awakened me.

These were all contents explicitly recorded by the Temple.

In his later years, within his so-called “Dream Temple,” Morrie often overheard people in the confession room repenting for their ancestors of many generations prior.

Those were remnants of experiments conducted by ordinary people who, in ancient times… during the first few centuries after my body was discovered drifting across the mainland, ignorant of what it was, either happened during the centuries of contention among the kingdoms, or were secret strange experiments carried out by some zealous guards after my body entered the Temple.

At times like this, Morrie, in his small room behind the Temple, listening through brass speaking tubes to these confessions, wished he could rub his face into a different shape.

“Hey, why did you go silent for so long just by mentioning this person?”

Morrie rubbed his face and let out a sigh.

“Yes, there were a few more instances later, but just some unremarkable stuff.”

“What did he do? Unremarkable? Not a person of integrity?”

“Well… integrity…” Morrie hesitated, “He managed to contact me through such a grand method, so he must be quite upright.”

……

Inside the battered cabin, as decrepit as a demon’s body.

The flesh and blood enveloping Hong Haocheng continuously grew hotter, even draining the vitality from the bizarre flesh born of the nightmare plane, causing it to wither. It was as if a demon was being gestated within.