togophonebook Chapter 498, Part 507: The World Rekindles 8
Chapter 498, Part 507: The World Rekindles 8
Chapter 498, Part 507: The World Rekindles 8
The dark silver light shone like a fish swimming in water.
The difference is as small as a millimeter.
They passed right through that brief "hole"! The moment they passed through, the wall of flesh immediately returned to its original state, even becoming thicker and more menacing!
But it was too late.
Behind them, the torrent of pursuing will roared silently. Wherever it passed, the flesh wall automatically parted, the runic light bands went out, and the monster phantoms retreated. However, its speed of pursuit was slowed down by half a beat because of Ian's unconventional escape method of finding and instantly exploiting the "system loophole"!
After passing through the wall of flesh, the scene before them changed once again.
They seemed to have entered a winding passage formed by the constantly opening and closing inner walls of a giant seashell. The inner walls of the passage were riddled with holes from which a slime flowed.
It occasionally spews out cloud of acidic liquid with strong corrosive and mental interference properties, while the ground beneath your feet is slippery and fleshy, resembling the lining of some kind of creature's esophagus.
It kept wriggling, trying to devour people.
"Stay close, don't step on the glowing spots!" Ian's voice was short and clear. He pulled Lina along, and his figure rapidly changed direction, glided, and even occasionally "attached" to the top of the passage in a way that almost defied the laws of physics, precisely avoiding every hole that spewed acid mist.
"Trivial tricks can't hold me back!"
With each step he took, he traversed the undulating fleshy ground, capturing the brief, stable "troughs" of the waves. His movements were so fluid, as if rehearsed countless times, demonstrating an unparalleled understanding and utilization of his environment. This was not merely speed, but an ultimate insight into and exploitation of the loopholes in the "dream rules"!
Just like in the dream world of Inception, where dream architects use their knowledge of the physical rules of dreams to construct incredible scenes and paths, Ian is now using the imperfections and contradictions inherent in the "trap rules" hastily constructed by the pursuers to find a way out!
"Was that the monster that awakened us?! What's chasing us?!"
Lina was being pulled along by Ian.
She felt like she was on a crazy roller coaster without seatbelts, the scenery rushing past her, her stomach churning, but she gritted her teeth, forcing herself to trust Ian's every instruction and trying to keep up with his inexplicable pace. She could feel the chilling malice, like maggots crawling on her bones, drawing ever closer behind her.
It felt like they were about to be caught up and devoured in the next second!
After narrowly avoiding acid mist and bone spikes suddenly erupting from the ground several times, three paths appeared ahead. Each path shimmered with a chilling light.
It exudes a different kind of dangerous aura.
"This way!" Ian didn't pause for a moment, nor did he spend any time carefully sensing the surroundings. He suddenly stopped at the fork in the road.
The dark silver light suddenly contracted, and then—he did something that made Lina's heart stop! Instead of choosing any path, Ian pulled Lina back a small step in the direction the pursuers had come from, then turned sideways and slammed his shoulder hard into the wall at the fork in the road, which was made of countless tiny bones!
A muffled "bang!"
It wasn't the sound of a wall shattering. Rather, at the instant of impact, Ian thrust a highly compressed Raven Force, possessing characteristics of "cognitive interference" and "information overload," like a cone, into a highly concealed "common node" inside the wall that connects the energy supply of the three branching paths!
In an instant, the dangerous lights flashing within the three forks in the road flickered violently, became chaotic, and even interfered with each other! The dream structure around the forks experienced a brief period of "snow" and distortion, like a bad signal!
It's now!
Ian, pulling the dumbfounded Lina along, didn't rush towards any of the side paths, but instead directly—"merged" into the wall of the side path itself, which had temporarily become unstable and developed logical cracks due to node overload!
Like Neo in The Matrix, who at a crucial moment saw through the virtual nature of the Matrix code, thus enabling him to do things that defy the laws of physics, what Ian is doing now is forcibly "deceiving" and "overloading" the local "logical operations" of this temporarily solidified dream region.
He created a brief "system error" window, and then used this error window to perform a theoretically impossible "wall-penetration"!
The scene before her instantly became abstract and distorted, like viewing the world through a broken prism. Lina felt her body being stretched, disintegrated, and then reassembled in the next moment. When they "reappeared," they were no longer in that passage, but in a place that was even more bizarre.
It belongs to the next level of the dream.
Cthulhu wants to trap Ian and the others.
It created multiple dreamscapes.
This place looks like a huge, empty "plaza," but the plaza's surface is made up of countless slowly pulsating...
The sky is composed of translucent, cortical-like material, and clouds resembling rotting viscera hang in the air, constantly dripping with viscous black liquid. In the center of the square stands a stone monument composed of countless bas-reliefs of screaming human faces.
At the top of the stone tablet, a dark purple ball of light, constantly changing shape, was slowly rotating, emitting a rich aura that shared the same origin as the will to pursue.
This appears to be a "control node" or "energy center" of this temporary dream trap!
Almost at the same time they appeared, the space around the square rippled, and the turbulent current of the pursuing will broke through the barrier and appeared behind them, transforming into a more solidified, terrifying shadow that seemed to be made of boiling darkness and countless tiny tentacles, blocking their retreat!
The dark purple light on the stone tablet in the center of the square suddenly lit up, casting a beam of light that looked like a cage!
"What should we do?"
With nodes blocking her way in front and pursuers closing in from behind, it seemed there was no way to escape! Lina's heart sank to the bottom as she looked at this desperate situation before her.
However, as Ian looked at the central stone tablet and the ball of light, a faint glint of triumph, almost like a successful scheme, flashed in his cold eyes.
"Finally—we've found a decent 'backdoor' interface."
He muttered to himself, his voice so soft that only he could hear it.
From the very beginning, his intention was not simply to escape. Once he realized that the other party could manipulate the rules of the dream, he knew that simply running away would only lead to his demise at the hands of the ever-changing traps. He needed to find a place where he could either "counter" or "utilize" this temporary dream system.
A heavily protected area that appears to be core often contains "interfaces" with higher privileges or is more prone to "vulnerabilities" due to its excessive complexity!
The stone tablet and the ball of light before them exuded a strong aura of Cthulhu's will, clearly a crucial support for this temporary dream. Attack it?
No, that would provoke an even stronger backlash. But—what if we just "borrow" its power to create a small "logical contradiction"?
Just as the shadowy pursuer was about to pounce and the cage of light was about to close in, Ian moved!
He didn't attack the shadows, nor did he attempt to break through the pillar of light. He suddenly raised his right hand, fingers spread, aiming at the twisted stone tablet in the center of the plaza! Within his palm, the cold, orderly "Raven" information stream that had previously been used to awaken Lina and sow the "information seeds" once again frantically converged and compressed!
But this time, he compressed more than just the power of the raven. He also secretly collected fragments of "rule code" and "energy frequency" information belonging to this temporary dream trap itself during his escape from the shallow dream realm.
It was also incorporated into the design!
Then, he hurled this highly complex ball of light, full of contradictory information, like a specially made "logic bomb," at the dark purple control ball of light at the top of the stone tablet!
"Accept this — System error command!"
The dark silver and dark purple light collided!
There were no earth-shattering explosions.
There was only an extremely eerie sense of stagnation, as if the entire world had frozen! The dark purple light on the stone tablet suddenly stopped, then flickered and twisted violently, as if countless contradictory data were clashing wildly within it! The light beam cage it projected instantly became flickering and fragmented!
The pursuing shadow seemed to have become noticeably slow and sluggish due to the brief disruption of its "control center," and its solid form even began to disintegrate!
The entire dream structure of the square began to fluctuate violently and become unstable due to the "logical conflict" at the core node, resulting in large areas of distortion and blurring!
Now! The only, fleeting opportunity! This thought flashed through Ian's mind like lightning, simultaneously striking both Ian's and the struggling elderly Saruman's minds.
In the dream, Ian seized upon the brief chaos created by the logical conflict at the core node, preparing to launch a final breakout.
Outside the dream, the elderly Saruman also sensed this opportunity. A sharp light suddenly shone in his deep silver eyes on his pale, weary face.
"Now—in history, Your Majesty was misled by this brief opportunity, thinking you had found a way out, and tried your best to break through, but instead fell into a more hidden trap of the will of Cthulhu—behind that rift, there lies a deeper dream corridor that will drag people into a more desperate and time-consuming cycle—" The fused fragments of memory and the inferences drawn from a thousand years of research gave him a clear understanding of the "historical trajectory" that might happen next.
Cthulhu, even if it is only a ripple of its unconsciousness, is far more cunning and has a greater control over dreams than humans can imagine.
It skillfully exploits its prey's survival instincts, weaving layers of increasingly dangerous traps. Therefore, a direct assault is not an option! A change of strategy is needed! A hint needs to be given to the ruler inside!
But he couldn't enter that deep dream battlefield. His power could only barely maintain his anchor in reality, isolating him from external pressure.
What should I do?
The old Saruman's gaze suddenly fell on the fragile force field he maintained, which flowed with dark silver and clock runes!
More precisely, it landed on the part that subtly resonated with Ian's "Raven" power!
A bold, almost insane idea emerged.
He cannot convey complex information, nor can he transmit power. But he can—using this faint resonance—transmit the simplest "concept"! A directional "hint"!
It's like sending a specific code on a battlefield with severe radio interference, one that can't be fully deciphered but still conveys one's intentions!
Thinking about this...
Without hesitation, Saruman used the faint bridge of resonance to "send" Ian into the area, aiming at his approximate location.
This action was extremely risky, almost causing the already crumbling force field to dim even more instantly, but he held on tightly, his eyes filled with a resolute determination to gamble everything.
In the dream, Ian was preparing to activate "Raven's Nest" to forcefully break through the top of the dream that had cracked due to logical conflicts.
Just as his power was about to erupt, a line of words appeared out of nowhere in the void before his eyes.
It's not a product of the dream itself, but of those twisted, blasphemous runes or insane whispers.
The text was composed of extremely fine, yet unusually stable and clear dark silver light spots, arranged in the English he was familiar with. The structure was simple, and it carried a kind of time aura that was the same as his "Raven" power, but even more ancient and profound, and mixed with a trace of unfamiliar time aura that clearly did not belong to this dream, or even to Lina's soul.
"Saruman?" A hint of surprise flashed in Ian's eyes. He immediately recognized that the source of this information was the silver-robed wizard from the outside world. That guy with the strange soul state who had previously displayed bizarre knowledge and power that did not match his actual strength when he withstood the pressure of Cthulhu's will.
How could he possibly transmit information to this deep dream battlefield at this time and in this way? Although the method was crude and the consumption was enormous, it was already quite remarkable in itself.
That Saruman.
The secrets he carries are probably more than he imagines.
However, now is not the time to explore this.
"Let's go outside first!"
Ian's eyes quickly swept over the line of text.
Dreams are a derivative of imagination. Your Majesty, as the pinnacle of wizardry, you should have no shortage of imagination, right?
]
imagination?
Ian was slightly taken aback.
Then, a realization dawned on his cold face.
It was as if an invisible layer of mindset, formed by an obsession with "breaking loopholes in the rules" and "technical escape," was gently shattered by this sentence!
Yup!
I was blinded by a leaf! I almost got sidetracked by this realistic dream chase and rule-breaking confrontation!
What is this place? It's a dream! A non-real space of consciousness built upon Lina's soul and Cthulhu-contaminated information!
While its "rules" are indeed influenced and reinforced by the will of Cthulhu, ultimately, its "essence" is a dream that can be distorted and defined by a more powerful "cognition" and "will"!
He had always acted like a top hacker, frantically searching for system vulnerabilities and code backdoors, trying to slip away at the lowest possible cost. But he forgot that as a wizard, especially one with such powerful mental strength and a unique "status," one of his most powerful weapons was never any kind of skill!
Rather, it is—a boundless imagination that can even distort reality!
Especially on someone else's home turf, trying to outmaneuver an Old One by playing the rules or being more cunning? Isn't that using your weaknesses to attack their strengths?
If we're going to compete, let's compete on who's more unreasonable! Let's compete on whose "imagination" is more outrageous, more powerful, and more able to disrupt the very structure of the dream itself!
"This guy—he's right!" Ian's eyes lit up, with the eager gleam of someone discovering a new toy.
He couldn't resist slapping Lina on the forehead.
"Compete in imagination? I've never been afraid of anyone!!"
Ian instantly abandoned his original plan of "raven returning to its nest" and a technical breakthrough. The dark silver light no longer tried to break through upwards, but instead suddenly receded back around him.
Strong self-confidence.
It was almost overflowing.
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A