CHAPTER 323: NIGHTMARE DOMAIN

He didn’t wake up in the Lingyun Realm this time. There was no mist-shrouded mountains nor drifting ethereal lights.

Instead, Victor found himself standing in the familiar surroundings of his old home. The sunlight felt warm on his skin. The air carried the smell of roasted sweet buns from the market street nearby.

He blinked with a stunned expression.

"...Home?" he whispered.

His heart clenched when he saw the front door slide open. His mother stepped out, smiling with the same soft brown eyes he remembered. The eyes that always felt like safety. She was wearing the same pyjamas she always wore when tending the small garden out back.

"Victor," she said warmly, as if she’d been expecting him.

He tried to speak, but the lump in his throat made it impossible.

She chuckled and walked over, brushing some imaginary dust off his sleeves. "You look like you’ve been off playing rough again. What did I tell you about getting into trouble?"

Victor laughed weakly with both joy and pain. "Guess I never listen, huh?"

"You never did," she responded with a soft smile.

Then, the scene shifted. He found himself sitting under the same tree in school where he and his friends used to hangout.

Danny tried to balance on a wooden pole and fell into the pond for the fiftieth time. Max was there too, tossing him a towel while Jake mocked him playfully.

It was all so vivid... so painfully real.

He could feel the warmth of the sunlight, the cool splash of water, the rough texture of bark under his hand. For a fleeting moment, he forgot about cultivation, realms, and death. He forgot about pain. He forgot that he was lost.

For that short while, Victor was just Victor. The boy who loved to make people laugh. The boy who had once dreamed of greatness. The boy who didn’t want to be mediocre.

---

Back in reality, Victor’s body twitched slightly while in the dream state.

His breathing slowed further, becoming shallow. A faint pinkish glow began to emanate from his forehead, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.

The smile on his face grew wider in an almost eerie fashion while he remained unconscious.

Suddenly, pink mist began to seep out of his face like vapor, curling and twisting before sinking into the statue behind him.

For a moment, the statue remained motionless.

Then its carved eyes flickered.

A dark violet light mixed with faint traces of the same pink mist that came from Victor, began to swirl within the stone sockets.

A soft hiss reverberated through the ground, deep enough to make nearby pebbles tremble as the purplish goo covered ground rippled.

If Victor had been awake, he might have noticed how the air grew hotter. How the faint echoes of whispers began to dance around him like serpents slithering in the dark.

But he was still asleep... and in his dream...

"You’ve opened the door... kikiki... I thank thee..."

The whisper slithered through Victor’s mind like a serpent made of cold smoke.

It was like a distorted echo in the background of his dream but then it became clearer.

Victor’s surroundings warped like melting paint. The quiet meadow where he’d been joking with his friends twisted into a swirl of red mist.

Danny’s face, which had been smiling just moments ago, split open into a zigzagged grin as his eyes glowed a violent crimson.

"Uh... Danny?" Victor voiced slowly, taking an uneasy step backward. "You look... uh... different. Did someone mess with your skincare routine or...?"

His mouth opened, and a voice that was not his emerged:

"You’ve opened the door..."

Before he could respond, the world shattered like glass.

Everything went black and when Victor’s vision returned, the air had turned stale and unmoving. The sky above was a heavy purple dome veined with streaks of black lightning. Below him stretched a landscape that looked like the inside of a dying world... the ground was glowing red ground with massive stone pillars extending endlessly in every direction.

And on each pillar... were chains.

Victor looked down and realized, with a cold jolt, that he was bound to one of them.

Glowing yellow restraints wrapped around his wrists, ankles, and chest, that burned against his skin whenever he tried to move.

"What the hell? Where the hell am I?" he muttered while repeatedly trying to free himself.

A loud laughter suddenly rang out in response.

It echoed through the endless domain until it felt like the world itself was laughing. Slowly, Victor’s eyes shifted toward the massive three layered altar at the center of everything.

A figure that seemed slightly humanoid sat upon it with their legs crossed and body wrapped in dark tendrils. Its face was concealed by a bone mask cracked down the middle, and when it smiled, Victor could see teeth that didn’t in anyway look normal.

"Thank you..." the being stated. "Thank you for coming here of your own accord. Now you will feed me until I am powerful enough to break free."

Victor stared for a long second, blinked twice, and then said flatly, "Feed you? Bro, I’m not a buffet. You’ve got the wrong delivery order."

The being tilted its head. "Still clinging to humor... interesting. The others screamed for days before understanding their place."

"The others?"

The being extended a long, crooked finger toward the distant pillars.

Victor followed its direction and his stomach turned.

Each pillar had a body bound to it. Or what used to be one. Skeletons hung like grotesque ornaments to the pillars... some slumped forward while others were still upright. A few had scraps of flesh clinging to their bones, faces frozen mid-scream. One skull even rolled off its pillar and landed with a hollow clack on the glowing ground below.

Victor’s blood ran cold.

"Those were dreamers too," the being said, almost tenderly. "Mortals who touched my seal in the new waking world. Now they feed me... eternally."

Victor swallowed hard. His mind flashed back to earlier... how he’d fallen asleep leaning against that weird statue...

He stared back at the being on the altar and suddenly came to a realisation.

"You... you’re that statue," Victor breathed.

There was no doubt about it... the being on the altar, looked identical to the statue he leaned against before falling asleep.

The being chuckled. "You seem to have figured it out. Yes, your real body leans against my cocoon even now. But don’t worry—you won’t ever be leaving here. Soon you will become like them."

"Yeah, hard pass," Victor muttered while pulling harder on the bonds.

He tried to use qi but for some reason, he couldn’t summon even a single wisp.

It was like he didn’t even have any qi.

The current predicament, this strange world, was quite shocking to him because there were so many statues he had come across since he arrived here.

Every single one of them were harmless.

Why was it this time any different?

Were they all like this and he just never knew? Did each statue contain life? And a strange world with a strange being?

Victor struggled more against the restraints but failed to free himself. The situation was both peculiar and precarious.

"Well," Victor sighed, "at least now I know these aren’t cheap knockoffs. Ten out of ten craftsmanship."

The being tilted its head again. "You mock even in despair. That will make your dreams... more potent."

"Dreams?"

"Yes," it purred. "This place feeds on happy emotion. On imagination. The longer you dream, the stronger I become."

’Is that why I somehow got here? Because I was dreaming happy dreams? He did say my real body was out there, which means I just have to wake up, right?’ Victor thought about it and struggled with moving one of his fingers.

"Its pointless..." the being stated.

Victor ignored it and managed to crane his index and pinky fingers well enough to pinch himself.

"Ouch," he voiced in slight pain.

"Still here..." he pinched even harder but nothing happened.

"Forget about escaping. Now... sleep again. Dream happy dreams for me, and feed me more power."

Victor felt a strange pull like invisible hands pressing against his temples. His eyelids grew heavier. The ground beneath him began to glow as strange runes crawled up the pillar like living things.

He realized too late that the being was trying to force him into another dream layer... a deeper illusion.

"Not today, Sleepy McDemonface," Victor growled while trying to use his qi again.

Unfortunately, no matter how much he tried... qi didn’t seem to exist within his dream body.

However, he did feel a strange twitch on the inside.

He let out a surprised gasp; "Don’t tell me... I can use that here?"

His belly region suddenly glowed up and then slowly spread to other parts of his dream body.

Strange arrow like markings began to appear all over as his Void Emperor Bloodline awakened.

The arrow-like streaks of light crawled up his arms and face, causing the domain to tremble slightly.

The being hissed with a surprised tone. "What is this power...? Impossible! A mortal cannot wield this in the dream plane!"