Infinite Nightmares

Listening to the old man in front of them curse out the Big Circle, Zhang Wenda was completely stunned. 'Who is this old guy? Where did he come from? What is going on?'

"Do you know him?" Zhang Wenda asked Jia Junpeng.

"He seems to be..." Jia Junpeng's expression was hesitant, as if he wasn't sure.

"Sir! Hey, sir!" Zhang Wenda shouted toward the giant old man in the distant mist.

"Whatever beef you have with the Big Circle has nothing to do with us. If there's nothing else, we'll be on our way."

"You can't!" A furious roar boomed out again. A wave of pressure, like a mountain crashing down, slammed into them, sending them tumbling. "You want to leave? Fine! But leave the foreigner behind!"

"What the hell do you want?!" Seeing that communication was failing, Zhang Wenda started to get angry too. This old man was really pushing it.

As soon as Zhang Wenda finished speaking, he saw the figure immediately settle into a horse stance and bellow, "I want the foreigner dead!!"

"Why?! What did he ever do to you?!"

Just as he said that, Zhang Wenda's heart sank. He looked at the unconscious Mayan and a possibility struck him. "What, did he steal your family's oil or something?"

Before Zhang Wenda could finish, the figure was already charging toward them, its nearly meter-long feet pounding craters into the ground with every rapid step.

Feeling the ground tremble, Zhang Wenda knew a fight was now completely unavoidable.

He immediately tossed Ahava onto the Black Cat beside him. As he bit down on a mushroom, sharp scythes instantly shot out from his rabbit paws.

"You guys take Ahava and go! I'll hold this thing off!"

A translucent Wai Rabbit flew ahead to probe the creature's defenses, its large incisors flashing as it bit down on the man's neck.

Unexpectedly, the creature's skin was incredibly tough. The Wai's teeth barely left a faint white mark.

In just those few moments, Zhang Wenda had reached the creature. Up close, he finally saw its grayish-blue skin, which looked like that of a giant statue.

Sparks flew as the incredibly fast Zhang Wenda leaped onto the creature's knee and then vaulted upward, bringing his scythe down hard on its head.

When Zhang Wenda looked again, he saw he had sliced a third of the way through the creature's massive neck.

Yet, not a single drop of blood spurted from the gash. Instead, the edges of the wound began to writhe and squirm.

And that was when Jia Junpeng finally realized what this thing was.

"Wenda! Run! That thing isn't alive! You can't kill it! Don't attack them!"

Jia Junpeng's voice drifted from far behind.

Just as he finished speaking, Zhang Wenda saw a fist burst out from the gash in the giant old man's neck, smashing violently toward him.

This sudden development was something Zhang Wenda had never expected. He hastily crossed his claws in front of him, barely managing to block the punch.

But his sharp scythes sliced several gashes into the fist. The next second, more fists, swelling and growing, burst from those new gashes and slammed into Zhang Wenda, knocking him flying.

Seeing the airborne Zhang Wenda about to fall back to the ground, the old man, still standing in the same spot, abruptly plunged both hands into the earth.

In an instant, as if the earth was reawakening, the ground sprouted a dense lawn of hands, right where Zhang Wenda was about to land.

As he watched himself fall closer and closer to the untouchable, unstoppable hands on the ground, just moments from being torn apart, Zhang Wenda suddenly felt his body go light and stop, hovering in mid-air.

Not many people had this ability, but as it happened, one of the teammates he'd brought along did.

"Maomao?!" Zhang Wenda said in surprise, looking at the young girl floating in front of him.

"Call me Auntie." With a forceful wave of her hands, Hu Maomao flung Zhang Wenda far behind her, where Song Jianguo had already made the cats form a giant, soft bed.

After landing and steadying himself, Zhang Wenda looked up just in time to see Hu Maomao flying through the air to intercept the giant old man, who was charging once again.

Zhang Wenda took a few quick, anxious steps before stopping short. He turned to Jia Junpeng at his side and asked, "What's going on? Did you figure out what this thing is? What faction is it from? What are its weaknesses?"

Jia Junpeng waved his arms frantically. "It's not a faction, and it has no weaknesses! It's not a person at all! It... it's just a fissure from the Tower of Babel."

"What?! A Tower of Babel fissure?"

"Yes, it's just a fissure," Jia Junpeng said, pointing to the Tower of Babel nearby. "The ancient Tower of Babel collapsed because more and more of these fissures appeared! I thought they only existed inside the ruins of the Tower, I never thought we'd run into one out here!"

After experiencing so many bizarre things, Zhang Wenda could just about wrap his head around it. The old man seemed to represent some kind of concept—judging by his words, an extremely xenophobic one.

Whether that was true or not, Zhang Wenda's first priority was figuring out how to deal with it. "Let's not worry about what it is for now. Since you know about these things, how do we fight it?"

Jia Junpeng, having been paid, proved to be very reliable, immediately offering a highly effective suggestion: run.

"When you encounter these things, you can't fight them! The more you resist, the more they'll cling to you, and the more of them there will be! The optimal solution is to get away! Let's get out of here, fast!"

"Run? If we run, what about her?"

Zhang Wenda looked at Hu Maomao, who was now tied up in the air. He could see that her Mind Control Ability and Tissue Interference Technique were completely useless against this kind of entity.

More importantly, what was once one old man had, after a few of his own slashes, cloned six new ones from its wounds. They were even starting to form a human pyramid.

"Then one more person who runs is one less person who dies! It's better than all of us getting wiped out here!" Jia Junpeng said anxiously.

"No! We leave together or not at all!" Zhang Wenda's brow was tightly furrowed as he stared at the bizarre, giant old men in the distance. Then, his gaze shifted to the broken tower, dark as a mountain range, far away.

He refused to believe this thing was so invincible, even harder to deal with than Qianxi.

'If this thing is just some kind of concept, then there has to be a way to counter it.'

'It's no use. In the illogical Internet World, strength isn't everything. Sometimes, you have to use your brain!'

'Use my brain?' Suddenly, he thought of something. His red eyes, fixed on the distant Tower of Babel, lit up. "Wait, you just said that this isn't the only fissure in the Tower of Babel, right?"

"Of course not! If it was just one fissure, a tower this big wouldn't have collapsed."

Zhang Wenda looked at the old men in the distance and thought to himself, 'If every fissure represents a concept, and there's one for extreme xenophobia... then doesn't that mean there might also be one for...'

He couldn't beat one concept, but he could find another to fight it.

Deciding to give it a try, Zhang Wenda turned around and shouted at the distant Tower of Babel, "Somebody help! This is an outrage! How dare someone show such disrespect to a Lord Yang!"