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Chapter 225 - 224: Nightmare Center

"Amazing, amazing!" Gu Zhaoning was stunned.

No, this is beyond amazing! Su Xingwan was shocked by the scene. Superpowers could actually be this strong? But all those popular clips she watched online seemed more like a form of "magic" without tricks, didn’t they?

The spear she made herself and the gun she struggled to get felt like jokes in comparison.

Moreover, the monster that had tormented her for almost a year was eliminated in the blink of an eye. What then were all the agony and despair she experienced?

Su Xingwan was momentarily speechless.

"It’s not this one." Chen Xuan frowned.

Only Lin Qing heard him talking to himself, "What do you mean?"

"It’s not the Shadow Demon. With this amount of Spiritual Qi, it wouldn’t even qualify as a low-level Demon Fiend outside." Chen Xuan glanced at the gloomy sky. "Moreover, the nightmare doesn’t seem to be ending; we need to keep searching."

Lin Qing turned back and said, "Su Xingwan, do you encounter multiple monsters at the same time in your dreams?"

"Uh... never noticed. Usually, just one is enough to make me wish I were dead." The opposing party answered.

"No problem, let’s keep looking." Chen Xuan glanced at the car disassembled into parts, a thought crossed his mind. "Can you steal cars?"

"Stealing sounds terrible!" Lin Qing objected, "It’s called technical invasion!"

"Alright, can you technically invade a car?"

"Depends on how many electronic components it has."

Chen Xuan selected an electric car, expertly punched and shattered the side window glass, then unlocked the car door from inside. "Try this one."

Lin Qing opened the cover of the driver’s seat, found the hardware interface, and connected the system. In a few seconds, the car started.

"Get in the car." Chen Xuan called the other two, "We’ll search while driving."

Faced with this highly professional series of actions, Gu Zhaoning was somewhat lacking confidence. "Dr. Chen... what did you do before?"

"Fast-food restaurant worker."

"Ah... I see."

What do you mean you see! Su Xingwan held her forehead, working on the streets indeed allows one to learn various miscellaneous skills, but it doesn’t include stealing cars, right? Her friend has a good personality and upbringing, just overly protected by her family.

Lin Qing drove the car aimlessly along the city’s main road, while Chen Xuan continued using the Celestial Mist Skill to scan for Demon Fiends’ Spiritual Qi reactions. By that evening, they had dealt with at least four monsters.

"If only I had your kind of power." Su Xingwan couldn’t help but sigh, "A monster comes, you kill one; two monsters come, you kill two; even having nightmares could be so gratifying!"

Watching Chen Xuan eliminate one terrifying monster after another, her long-depressed emotions finally found release.

"Didn’t I say Dr. Chen is reliable?" Gu Zhaoning boasted with pride.

Indeed he is reliable... although this has nothing to do with medical skills.

"Do you think we’re truly in a dream?" Lin Qing softly asked Chen Xuan.

"You feel something’s off too?" Chen Xuan countered.

"Yes, theoretically, it’s too abnormal."

"For example?"

"For instance, everything around us is too real." Lin Qing ran her fingers over the steering wheel, sharing her thoughts, "Take this car, for example. I had Lv check the onboard system. It’s a fully functional entity, even the parts we can’t see, like battery temperature control and motor power distribution units... they all operate normally. I doubt a 17-year-old high school student could be so familiar with a fully electric car."

Saying this, she glanced at the two still joking with each other. "Even if she could completely replicate a car in her dream, it’s unlikely to replicate an entire city. Touch, smell, and vision are all electrical signals, but the original human brain cannot store such a massive amount of data."

"Nor can my memory backup chip store so much. It would need at least a gigantic supercomputing system to simulate a realistic city."

Chen Xuan nodded, "I think the same."

When first in that small room in the stadium, he didn’t feel it, but once outside, in the vibrant yet quiet urban environment, the disparity appeared. The more real the dream, the stronger the sense of discord.

"Could we have really crossed into another world?"

"That’s unlikely. The GPS doesn’t work, and phone maps can’t be accessed, meaning there isn’t a single satellite above us." Chen Xuan shook his head, "Although it looks vast and boundless, it certainly has boundaries. Moreover, we are indeed connected by the Smoke Soul Pillar, and the Demon Fiends are truly attached to her, so most likely, our real bodies are still lying on the floor in that room."

He had a vague suspicion but needed to deal with the root cause of the nightmare to confirm it. "Turn right toward the east; I sense a very strong signal."

"How far?"

"Over ten kilometers away."

Lin Qing was somewhat surprised, "You can detect enemies that far with your Heart Method?"

"No way; two kilometers is about the limit." Chen Xuan admitted, "Actually, the Heart Method scan is similar to ultrasonic detection; it just tracks Spiritual Qi fluctuations. I can’t see Demon Fiends two kilometers away but can sense a strong reaction of Spiritual Qi to the east."

"It’s the difference between active probing and passive reception... which means the opponent has an astonishing amount of Spiritual Qi?" Lin Qing was slightly excited.

"Why are you so happy?"

"You’ve shown off so much earlier; I want to test the weapon system." She smiled, "You’ll see what future technology looks like!"

However, when they drove to the easternmost part of Shen City, they were all dumbfounded.

"What... what kind of monster is this?" Su Xingwan, in disbelief, muttered by the window, "I’ve never seen anything like it before!"

"This is it..." Chen Xuan’s expression was somber, "The source of your nightmares."

A gigantic spider lay atop a cluster of buildings, so large it almost occupied half the horizon! In the moonlight, its undulating back looked like a mountain range. Just one of its folded legs was comparable to a train with dozens of cars! As for its head and torso, they could easily house seven or eight skyscrapers over a hundred stories tall. If a person stood beside its legs, they might not even be as long as one of its leg hairs.

The more he observed its details, the more goosebumps rose on Chen Xuan’s back. Faced with a monster of such terrifying size, even he felt a bit of a phobia of large objects. "So... can your future technology handle it?"

"Forget what I said earlier," Lin Qing grimaced, "I’m a Warrior, not a walking arsenal. Feels like Shuyue set me up."

Chen Xuan deeply agreed.

The Shadow Demon was supposed to be rare, and not difficult to deal with? Take a look at what Liu Shuyue said! Even if it lay there to let them strike freely, he doubted if he could completely eliminate it with the Celestial Thunder Order before exhausting his Spiritual Qi.

After all, the disparity in size was simply too enormous!

Perhaps the Demon-slaying True Sword is suitable for eliminating such a large demon, but his last ability slot is for Extraordinary Sleeping Ability, and he can’t bear to expend his life force here.

At that moment, blue electric light flickered under the Shadow Demon’s abdomen!

Suddenly, the streetlights dimmed, emitting crackling sounds, and the lights in nearby buildings flickered, as if the entire city’s power supply was affected by it.

Chen Xuan was shocked; at the moment the electricity flashed, he discovered dozens of light spots within his sensing range, identical to the previous humanoid monsters!

The problem was they appeared without any approach, almost as if they materialized out of thin air!

And the nearest light spot was less than ten meters ahead of them!

The high beam lights suddenly illuminated a shadow standing in the middle of the road—

"Oh no!" Lin Qing suddenly jerked the wheel, hit the brakes hard, then slammed the gas pedal, making the car fly forward several meters in a drift, avoiding a collision. "What’s going on? Where did these monsters come from?"

"The Shadow Demon is summoning them!" Chen Xuan suddenly understood the true origin of the monsters—why there seemed to be so many yet only appeared one by one in front of Su Xingwan. It’s because the Shadow Demon intended to torment her, instilling fear and dread, but not allowing her to despair too soon. The longer she lived, the more power the Demon Fiends could draw from parasitizing her.

But likewise, when faced with an unknown threat, it still opted to summon a large number of humanoid monsters to hinder them, rather than dealing with them personally, which at least indicated that Liu Shuyue was right: the Shadow Demon itself hardly had much combat ability!

"Where are we now?" Chen Xuan loudly asked the back seats.

"Wh-what?" The two girls, still scared from the sudden maneuver, were somewhat dazed.

"What area of Shen City corresponds to this place?" He repeated.

It was Su Xingwan who reacted first, "It should be... East City Power District! Yes, this is the Asia-Pacific Nuclear Power Plant!"