Chapter 194

Chapter 194

At first, a cool sensation slid down his throat, but the next second, it felt as if countless fine threads had burrowed into his blood vessels, racing wildly through his meridians. Evan let out a muffled groan, his knees giving way as he collapsed to the ground. His muscles began to twitch uncontrollably, and his bones emitted faint clicking sounds—this was the unavoidable process of his spirituality reshaping his body. His vision darkened, and faint whispers buzzed in his ears, like the whispers of countless undead or the trembling of spider silk in the wind.

"Stay conscious..." Evan gritted his teeth, tasting blood on his tongue as he forced himself to focus on the spiritual core between his brows.

Just then, the potion inside him suddenly exploded. Pale purple spirituality seeped out from beneath his skin, condensing around him into translucent threads. These threads danced as if alive, pulling in several rough wooden dolls he had prepared in the room, binding them completely. After an unknown amount of time, the convulsions finally ceased, and the whispers gradually faded.

Evan collapsed to the floor, gasping for air, his sweat soaking through his linen shirt, the cold fabric clinging to his back. He raised his hand and saw a faint purple mist swirling around his fingertips. With just a thought, the mist formed into delicate threads, lightly brushing the ground.

He tried infusing his spirituality into the threads, and the next moment, the dolls on the floor suddenly moved, slowly walking toward him, guided by the threads.

With a shift of his mind, the doll raised its "arm" and made a waving motion—this was the ability of Sequence 8, the "Puppeteer": using spirituality as threads to control tangible objects, and if infused with resentment-based materials, it could even control undead puppets.

Evan pushed himself up from the floor, walked to the window, and carefully lifted a corner of the curtain. The moon was already high in the sky, and even the liveliest red-light district had fallen silent.

A smile spread across his lips. He set the wooden dolls on the table and lay down on the bed. The next moment, as drowsiness washed over him, Evan fell into a deep sleep almost instantly. His body's exhaustion left no room for thought, but deep in his mind, a faint trace of alertness lingered. Yet the next second, that alertness was yanked by an invisible force, plunging him into an endless, soft darkness, like sinking into the deep sea on a full moon night.

"I'm dreaming." Evan realized this abruptly. He tried to muster his will to open his eyes, but instead of the familiar wooden ceiling of a ship's cabin, he saw endless thick fog.

The fog was a pale, ashen gray, like watered-down ink. The damp, cold mist clung to his skin with a biting chill, yet it didn't suffocate him.

He raised his hand, and as his fingers passed through the fog, a faint purple mist emerged—the spiritual threads he'd gained after his advancement, still with him even in the dream.

This was a lucid dream.

Evan understood. Newly advanced Supernaturals often experience unstable spirituality, triggering such special dreams. The Palm Leaf Club's manual had documented this.

He steadied himself and started walking forward. The fog parted around him, leaving a fleeting trail. There was no solid ground beneath his feet; it felt like stepping on flowing clouds, each step light and airy, yet he moved precisely in a certain direction, as if something ahead was guiding him.

After about a quarter of an hour, a faint rustling sound came from within the fog.

Evan instinctively stopped, and the purple mist at his fingertips condensed into several fine spiritual threads, silently probing toward the source of the sound. Soon, a pale green light zipped through the fog—a supernatural creature he had never seen before. It had the body of a lizard but bore a pair of transparent butterfly wings, covered in glowing veins like a web sprinkled with crushed diamonds. Its wings fluttered rapidly as it flew, yet it made almost no sound. On its head was a spiral horn, glowing with a soft blue light, identical to the luminescence of rain-mist grass.

Evan recognized the spiritual fluctuation on the creature as akin to rain-mist grass, likely a native supernatural being from the Fourth Island's rainforest, though it had never been recorded in reality.

He didn't approach recklessly. He watched as the butterfly-winged lizard circled twice in the fog before suddenly glancing his way. Its golden, slit-like pupils held no emotion. Then it turned and dove back into the thick fog, leaving behind a trail of glowing wing marks that gradually faded.

As he continued, more supernatural beings appeared in the fog. There was a giant python covered in silver scales, its scales shimmering with the pale purple sheen of shadow silk threads, yet it was several times thicker than a Unicorn Python. Its silver horn split into three prongs as it slowly slithered through the fog, its forked tongue flickering, releasing the chilling, undead aura typical of spirits. There was a creature floating like a jellyfish, its body translucent and milky white, with countless long tentacles hanging below, each tipped with small, lantern-like glands emitting a warm yellow light, illuminating a small patch of fog. Where it passed, the fog thinned slightly. There were also blurred figures of indigenous shamans in traditional attire, holding burning bone bowls with pale green flames dancing inside. They muttered incantations in a distant, obscure language that made Evan's spiritual threads tremble faintly.

Evan noticed that, despite their varied forms, these supernatural beings showed no hostility toward him and even actively made way for him.

He tried extending a spiritual thread toward the jellyfish-like creature. As soon as the thread touched its tentacles, it was gently repelled by a warm force, and a fragment of vague information flooded his mind—"Star track... return... sea heart..." The information was too fragmented for Evan to ponder, and the jellyfish-like creature had already drifted away, its warm yellow light gradually merging into the fog.

After walking for an unknown time, the fog ahead suddenly thinned, revealing a faint glow.

Evan quickened his pace. As he passed through the last layer of fog, the sight before him left him completely stunned—the fog had vanished, replaced by an endless sea of stars.

Countless stars twinkled in the night sky, some radiating scorching red light, others cold blue, and still others glowing with the gentle luster of Sea Heart Stone fragments. Between the stars, countless silver light bands intertwined, resembling the spiritual threads he controlled.

Beneath the star sea was an abyss of pitch-black darkness, like a massive vortex exuding a heart-pounding pull. Evan stood at the boundary between the star sea and the darkness, his feet on an invisible edge. He could clearly feel a powerful force tugging at him, involuntarily tilting him forward.

He tried to summon his spiritual threads to grab onto a nearby star, but as soon as the threads touched the starlight, they melted instantly, leaving no trace.

"Is this... the origin of spirituality?" Evan wondered, recalling the Palm Leaf Club manual's records that high-ranking Supernaturals sometimes glimpsed the star sea during advancement—the source of all spirituality.

But he had only just advanced to Sequence 8. How could he enter such a dream? As he pondered, the boundary beneath his feet suddenly vanished, and a tremendous sense of weightlessness engulfed him—he began to fall.