Shen Ge really wanted to say that the last guy who pulled this stunt had been pulverized into meat paste by him. But as he looked into the mirror, he noticed something different this time.
The “Shen Ge” in the reflection just stood there blankly—pale-faced, with pitch-black pupils that made him look every bit as terrifying as a malevolent ghost.
“That’s it?”
If this was just meant to frighten the target, it was utterly meaningless to Shen Ge. He’d weathered far too many storms to be spooked by something like this. Even if Sadako herself crawled out of the mirror, he’d probably tie her hair into pigtails and turn her into a “people’s Sadako”—let alone a version of himself that just stood there like a zombie.
After three seconds of standoff, Shen Ge confirmed that all this thing could do was “intimidate.” Without hesitation, he stepped forward and punched the mirror.
As the shards clattered to the floor, something bizarre happened. The space around Shen Ge seemed to crack like glass itself—fractures spread through the air, and within two or three seconds, it all collapsed.
The next moment, a hand shot out from behind the broken mirror, aiming straight for Shen Ge’s throat—but it stopped a foot away, blocked by an invisible wall of air.
“Tsk, tsk. Trying to sneak attack me?” Shen Ge cracked his neck, his tone dripping with disdain.
Without Little Seven or the Red Mist Battle Armor by his side, he had to handle his own defense, which naturally made him a bit more cautious.
So before punching the mirror, Shen Ge had already extended his domain just in case—not expecting that a simple precaution would actually land him a catch.
The pale, clammy ghost-hand, enraged at failing to grab Shen Ge, started pounding furiously against the invisible barrier. But no matter how hard it struck, the barrier didn’t budge—not even a crack.
Then, Shen Ge reached behind his back. The barrier suddenly vanished, and as the ghost-hand lunged forward, it found itself staring down the barrel of his Vanquisher Revolver.
Bang!
Bang!
Shen Ge had never been one to conserve bullets when using the Vanquisher Revolver. The “infinite” recharge speed of its ghost-energy magazine gave him plenty of room to splurge.
The ghost-hand was riddled with holes. By the time it tried to retreat, it was already too late—Shen Ge activated his domain’s “Bullet Time” and blew the entire hand off before it could pull back.
He glanced at the hand as it dissolved into dissipating ghost-energy black mist on the floor and quickly pieced together what this mirror monster was.
It wasn’t an anomaly or a freak—it was “Ghost-Energy Black Mist,” the kind born from Earth’s resentment toward humanity, the same mist that rejected human life.
Every time Shen Ge tried to collapse and escape a dream world, these black mists would rise up to stop him. So this one was no different.
But what he couldn’t figure out was this: in the dream world, the ghost-energy black mist emitted by the “sentient” Earth was based on worlds that had already met their end. That mist carried immense repulsive force, seeking to eradicate all living things. So why would such dangerous black mist appear here?
Could it be… similar to the Peace Hotel incident—not the Freak Organization pulling strings behind the scenes, but the dream world itself going out of control because of his presence?
If that were true, it meant the dream world’s “instability” was becoming more and more frequent—and Shen Ge had become a walking time bomb, setting off ghost-space explosions wherever he went.
But now wasn’t the time to dwell on that. First, he had to find Wang Han.
Since the dream world consisted of countless twisted fragments of ruined timelines, Shen Ge couldn’t guarantee he’d land in the same dream world as Wang Han. So he had to “lock on” first.
He might not have been able to do this before, but last time, with Little Seven and the three ladies’ help, he’d successfully seized dozens of dream fragments—enough to form a clump roughly the size of a baby’s fist.
Shen Ge flipped his hand, and the glowing dream fragment appeared in his palm. A white light immediately enveloped his left hand. He reached out and grabbed the retreating severed arm, hoping to use the ghost energy diffused throughout the dream world to trace Wang Han’s whereabouts.
Searching for one person across an entire world was nearly impossible—let alone across countless planets (fragments). But the dream world had one peculiar trait:
Each fragment was a “destroyed world” that had already reached its ending. That meant no living beings existed in these twisted spaces. So locating a single life form like Wang Han should be much easier.
Yet seconds later, Shen Ge realized he hadn’t just guessed wrong—he was astronomically wrong. Countless dream worlds didn’t have just one or two with life forms—they had innumerable ones, like stars scattered across the sky. Trying to pinpoint a single person among that galaxy was harder than finding a needle in a haystack.
“How the hell am I supposed to find him?” Shen Ge was genuinely stumped. If he couldn’t lock on, he couldn’t enter the dream world—and with Wang Han’s abilities, he’d never escape on his own.
“Tch.”
That kid still owes me five hundred thousand. No way he’s dying on me… Not a chance!
Shen Ge thought of one last resort: searching in reverse through his own domain. At this point, all he could do was pray Wang Han’s luck wasn’t too terrible—and that the dream world was spreading into reality, rather than Wang Han having fallen into some specific dream fragment. Otherwise, there’d be no saving him.
Shen Ge withdrew his domain, abandoning the active entry approach. Instead, he switched to the old method—letting the dream world “drag” him in.
But without Little Seven and the Red Mist Battle Armor’s protection, he had to be extra cautious. So he fully released the power of a single dream fragment to envelop himself.
The moment his domain vanished, the shattered mirror erupted like a smoke bomb, unleashing a torrent of ghost-energy black mist that surged straight toward Shen Ge.
He made no move, focusing solely on controlling the dream fragment’s power as he watched the black mist coalesce into a massive hand, gripping him tightly.
But shielded by the dream power, it was like opening an empty bottle—the air inside and outside was the same. Neither could harm the other.
Unable to kill this life form directly, the black mist tried to drag him into the dream world—which played right into Shen Ge’s plans.
He let go of all resistance, allowing the massive mist-hand to pull him into the pitch-black dream world. And then… nothing.
“Hm?” Shen Ge found himself floating in a completely dark void, as if everything around him had frozen in place.
“Is it because I wrapped myself in dream power?” He looked at the faint white glow coating his body. In this darkness, he was like a glowing light bulb.
But without his constantly forming Red Mist Battle Armor, even though his Primordial Anomaly Cells had enhanced his physique two or three times beyond a normal human’s, he was still “mere flesh and blood.” If he could reach thirty or fifty times the strength, he might risk dropping the dream fragment’s protection—but he wasn’t arrogant enough to tank ghost-energy black mist with his bare body.
“Wait. I couldn’t locate Wang Han before because I didn’t know which fragment he was in. But now that I’m inside the dream world, locking on should be simple, right?”
His idea was: even if he found that Wang Han wasn’t in this particular dream world, he could still figure out a way to leave. So he couldn’t afford to skimp on the dream fragment’s power.
Shen Ge summoned the baby-fist-sized dream fragment again, extracted its power, and began scanning for life forms within this dream world.
Fortunately, Wang Han’s luck held—this ruined dream world was already completely destroyed, leaving him as the sole living being.
Once he’d locked onto Wang Han’s location, Shen Ge tried transferring him over using dream power. With a flash of white light, a figure materialized before him—the unconscious Wang Han.
“Wang Han!”
“Wang Han!”
Shen Ge called out several times. Wang Han’s breathing was steady—he was clearly in a deep sleep.
Without ceremony, Shen Ge delivered a flurry of slaps—smack, smack, smack—over a dozen in total, swelling Wang Han’s face, yet he still wouldn’t wake up.
Shen Ge channeled dream power, pressing a finger to Wang Han’s forehead. White light instantly poured into his skull, and images began to emerge around him, just like the collapsing worlds before.
Lightning split the sky, illuminating the night. On a mountaintop stood a grim, terrifying hospital—a rickety iron gate, a rusted signpost.
“Is that… Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital? How did Wang Han’s consciousness get dragged there?” One glance was enough for Shen Ge to recognize the hospital on the hilltop. He also understood why Wang Han was unconscious.
In his earlier dream-world excursions, Shen Ge’s consciousness and body had been separated—only his mind was pulled in. Then dream power would match him to a person in that world who closely aligned with his own existence. Since that world had a “Shen Ge,” his consciousness naturally entered that body—which was why adult Shen Ge’s mind had taken control of ten-year-old Shen Ge’s body.
After scanning a few more memory images, Shen Ge finally understood why Wang Han had been pulled into Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital. In this ruined world, Wang Han was a male nurse there—and psychiatric hospitals rarely assigned male orderlies unless a patient was so severe they required round-the-clock supervision.
“Shen Ge” wasn’t dangerous per se, but he was important to the hospital, so assigning Wang Han to watch him wasn’t unusual.
But what truly surprised Shen Ge was that besides “Wang Han,” “Ma Zhao” was also there—along with some familiar faces from the Special Policy Department. He couldn’t help but marvel at how small the world was—they’d all “reunited” at Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital in the most unconventional way possible.
The further he watched, though, the more uneasy Shen Ge became. At first, the hospital treated this world’s “Shen Ge” exactly like an ordinary mental patient—no bizarre experiments, no connection to freaks.
“Wait—did anomalies never break out in this world?” He quickly dismissed the thought. Without anomalies, ten-year-old Shen Ge wouldn’t have watched his father turn into an anomaly in Haiya and get devoured whole…
No!
A critical detail hit him. According to the “truth” he’d glimpsed through his Ghost Eye, the “Shen Ge” of World 1 had used World Power to send a modified Primordial Anomaly to World 2. Only in his reality—the current one—had the delivery “arrived decades too early,” leading Shen’s father to discover the Primordial Anomaly Cells on baby Shen Ge and triggering everything that followed.
In other words, without that mistake, Shen’s father would never have founded the Primordial Anomaly R&D team, and the Haiya Institute would never have existed.
Based on the information Shen Ge currently had, this reality—his reality—was the final reset. No next time. No future. So it was impossible for this world to be “destroyed” and give birth to countless similar worlds.
“Where did things go wrong?” A headache began to pound in his skull. He realized he’d overlooked a crucial issue all along.
And now, only two explanations seemed plausible:
- The Ghost Eye’s vision was incomplete—even “wrong.” In the countless resets before this one, there had been many instances like this “early delivery,” which would explain why his previous dream-world visits included the ten-year-old psychiatric hospital experience.
- The Ghost Eye’s vision wasn’t wrong. His reality was the only case of “early delivery.” But since those ruined dream fragments had already collapsed, they were influenced by his consciousness and experiences—giving birth to worlds eerily similar to his own.
Shen Ge leaned toward Explanation 2. It was the only way to make sense of why every previous dream-world journey had featured that all-too-familiar Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital.
He unconsciously raised a hand to rub his forehead. This problem was far more complex than he’d imagined. But now wasn’t the time to dwell on it—he had to wake Wang Han and get out of here.
The banquet was still in full swing, with counter-ghost representatives from around the world in attendance. If Doctor Chen seized this chance to stir up trouble, it would deal a devastating blow to counter-ghost organizations worldwide.
Shen Ge continued observing a few more scenes and spotted “Doctor Chen”—identical to his memory: white coat, surgical mask, metal-rimmed glasses. He desperately wanted to see what lay beneath the mask, but no matter how many images he flipped through, he was left disappointed.
What did catch his attention, however, was “Young Shen Ge” gradually exhibiting strange behavior after a period of “treatment.”
Then Shen Ge watched as Wang Han and the hospital staff played along, engaging in role-playing games with young Shen Ge—accompanying him through “adventures” within the hospital.
“Wait… the way this world’s young Shen Ge is acting… doesn’t it remind me of my first dream-world visit, when I met San Zai?” Shen Ge quickly cross-referenced the images with his memories of that initial dream journey and found multiple overlaps.
It felt bizarre—like watching a sci-fi blockbuster with all the special effects stripped away, leaving just a group of people playing pretend in a green-screen room.
Did anomalies never exist in this world? Or had “he” gone crazy, perceiving horrors that ordinary people couldn’t see?
No, that doesn’t add up. Without anomalies, how did this world get destroyed?
“Then… am I crazy or not?”
