A security guard aberration no weaker than a Sui-rank nightmare had been pulverized into gray mist by a single punch from Huang Tian, utterly dispersed. Did this... did this even make sense?!
Zhou Zhenhong was at first bewildered, then stunned, and finally somewhat relieved. He finally understood how Huang Tian had resolved the General Temple nightmare in less than half a minute—it must have been a single punch as well, shattering the nightmare to pieces and sending the clay-sculpted head rolling.
However—
His gaze involuntarily fell upon Huang Tian's right fist as he mused inwardly, *His dream relic must be related to his fists or palms. His close-quarters combat strength is terrifyingly formidable...*
"Let's keep moving," Huang Tian said, pulling back his fist while Zhou Zhenhong was still lost in thought.
"Ah, yes, right!" Zhou Zhenhong snapped back to reality and hurried after him. Stepping over the spot where the security guard aberration had fallen, he did not pause to search for a dream relic. A nightmare incident yielded only a single dream relic; this security guard aberration was merely a byproduct of the nightmare's core.
Catching up to Huang Tian's side, Zhou Zhenhong pointed toward the building marked B2 among the four ahead. "There are aberrations lurking in all four buildings, but the core of the nightmare is in Main Building B2. Unless the core aberration is slain, this nursing home nightmare will never dissipate."
As they spoke, the two arrived before the grayish-yellow Building B2.
The main entrance was a rust-eaten iron door standing wide open, with a heavy iron padlock hanging from it.
Inside was pitch-black, devoid of the slightest light, gaping like a massive maw ready to swallow any who entered.
Without hesitation, Huang Tian stepped onto the stairs. Zhou Zhenhong followed closely, looking grave.
*Thump... thump...*
Just as they climbed four steps, two figures swayed out from the heavy darkness behind the door, blocking their path.
Looking up, they saw two elderly figures—a man and a woman—dressed in white cotton clothes washed to a dull gray. The loose, baggy cloth accentuated their shriveled, emaciated frames. Their faces resembled dried walnuts, crisscrossed with deep furrows of wrinkles. Their eyes were cloudy, pupils nearly invisible, and pus and blood dribbled from their mouths as their jaws opened and closed.
"Young man..." A rattling gargle rose from the old man's throat, shrill and weeping. "Watch where you're going... You almost knocked down my old bones..."
The old crone beside him chimed in immediately, her voice even hoarser and her eyes gleaming with malice. "No manners at all! Youngsters these days don't know how to step aside for their elders... don't know respect..."
Muttering their bitter resentments, they swayed forward, reaching out with grime-caked palms to seize Huang Tian and Zhou Zhenhong's arms.
"No manners... no manners..."
"Those who don't respect the elderly deserve to die! Deserve to—"
*Boom!*
Expression cold, Huang Tian swept his right palm forward, enveloped in a surging wave of white air. With a deafening crack, it struck both of their heads. The spiteful, venomous muttering cut off abruptly. Driven by tremendous momentum, the two headless corpses slammed into the iron door. Pus and blood splattered instantly before dissolving into gray mist.
Watching this, Zhou Zhenhong opened his mouth, then hesitated. He had intended to explain that when confronting these two aberrations, one only had to say, "I will respect the elderly," and they would halt. But now, under these circumstances...
His mouth twitched slightly, leaving him at a total loss for words. Seeing Huang Tian head further inside, he hurried to keep up.
*Tap.*
They crossed the threshold and stepped inside. The light dimmed drastically. A long corridor stretched ahead, lined on both sides with closed doors.
The room numbers on each door were smeared and unreadable. The air hung thick with a sickly sweet smell of decay.
The corridor was empty, yet both men felt as though countless eyes were watching them—peering through the crack behind every door, down from the ceiling, up from the seams in the floor, pricking like needles.
"Aaaagh—!"
A shrill, agonizing shriek burst from behind a door on the right. Immediately after, the door banged open, and a figure lunged out.
It wore a soiled orderly's uniform stretched over a spherical, grotesquely swollen body that split the fabric, revealing greenish-black skin. Its head was shriveled, its mouth split wide to its earlobes, revealing two rows of saw-toothed fangs dripping slime.
It bounded on all fours like a beast at blinding speed, kicking up a foul wind, its sickly green glare locked dead onto Huang Tian.
"How hideous..."
Meeting the orderly's greedy, venomous glare, Huang Tian felt no fear at all—in fact, he almost found it laughable. He raised a foot and delivered a vicious kick to the grotesque ball of flesh lunging at him.
*Bang!*
Like a soccer ball, the orderly went hurtling through the air, spinning into the ceiling with a resounding crash that blew open a massive crater. A shower of blood rained down, quickly dissipating like smoke.
With its death, many of the peering gazes from all around vanished, easing that prickly sensation on their backs.
Zhou Zhenhong glanced at Huang Tian before him, swallowed quietly, and took out a spirit candle from his pouch, lighting it. The dim yellow candlelight held back the surrounding darkness, and even the foul stench in the air faded somewhat.
Huang Tian strolled forward unhurriedly, his footsteps echoing softly down the deep corridor, while Zhou Zhenhong remained on high alert, ready to activate his dream relic at any second.
*Rustle, rustle...*
After a few paces, Huang Tian stopped, his gaze falling upon a wooden door to his left.
The writing on the doorplate was obscured by grime. From behind the door came faint, rustling sounds.
Pausing in front of it, he reached out, but before he could push, the wooden door slid inward in absolute silence, as though it had long been waiting for him.
Seeing this, an intrigued smile touched Huang Tian's lips as he strode inside.
The moment he stepped in, he saw a faint, flickering grayish-white glow directly across from the doorway—the light emitted from the screen of an old-fashioned television.
The television was an antique model encased in cheap, crack-riddled beige plastic. Dense static crackled across the screen, emitting an irritating hum of electrical noise.
*Hsss...*
Entering right behind Huang Tian, Zhou Zhenhong drew a sharp breath.
For sitting before that television were over a dozen rigid backs.
*Crack, snap...*
The sound of fracturing bones echoed out. The bodies of those dozen figures remained facing the television, but their heads twisted backward, degree by degree, until they had rotated a full one hundred and eighty degrees.
Faces covered in deep wrinkles and liver spots appeared ghastly pale. Their eyes were filthy and clouded, yet the corners of every mouth split toward their ears, stretching into identical grins.
Stiff, exaggerated grins, like circus clowns, dripping with mockery and malice as they glared at the reckless intruders, Huang Tian and Zhou Zhenhong.
"Mr. Huang, should we fall back a bit?"
Zhou Zhenhong looked grave. If so many aberrations swarmed them at once, even a Rank 2 dream expeller would break into a cold sweat...
Before his voice finished falling, the dozen aberrations let out a roar and prepared to surge forward in unison. But Huang Tian stepped forward instead of back. With his movement, fire—a blazing wall of flame—swept outward from behind him!
*Boom!*
Crimson fire surged like a raging tide, instantly sweeping through the room. Wherever it passed, brilliant light shone pure and bright. In a flash, the buzzing television melted away; the walls, the floor, the ceiling—every bit of cluttered filth was burned clean by the raging flames.
Before the dozen aberrations could even pounce, they and the chairs beneath them crumbled away under the red-gold fire.
Yet the fire did not stop there. Having reduced everything in the room to ashes, it surged with even greater fury, roaring into the sky like a red-gold fire dragon!
"What on earth is that?"
Outside Shande Nursing Home, Wang Guangming and the others waiting anxiously were all startled. Looking up at the mist-shrouded nursing home, they saw that the obscuring mist had parted significantly, while within it, a red-gold brilliance flickered, growing more and more intense.
"Roar—!"
Like the roar of a dragon, an enormous red-gold dragon swept away all evils, soaring straight into the heavens before diving down, turning into a sky-obscuring curtain of fire that plunged upon the four buildings!
"Holy shit... What is that? A dragon?!" the youth in the black jacket cried, dumbfounded.
"How could there be a dragon in this world?!"
"If even nightmares exist, why can't there be dragons?"
"That's not a dragon—that's fire! Divine fire! Heavenly fire!!"
"Could that be Mr. Huang's dream relic? To think it's this powerful! Is he really just a Rank 2 dream expeller?"
"This is insane..."
...
As shock gripped them, raging flames swiftly swallowed the buildings. Steel rebar melted, slabs of concrete peeled away, and everything writhing in the shadows twisted and shrieked within the inferno, promptly roasted into hissing, foul-smelling smoke that was swept away by fiercer flames and annihilated in the rolling currents of heat.
The four buildings collapsed rapidly amidst the blaze, disintegrating into showering sparks and a sky full of drifting ash as they tumbled down.
Staring at the world turned into a sea of fire, Zhou Zhenhong fell into a daze, eyes unfocused and mind completely blank.
*Heh... heh...*
Amidst the sweeping sea of fire, a figure of mangled flesh crawled out from the ruins with a struggle. Looking at Huang Tian standing with his hands behind his back, it instinctively recoiled.
"Found you, little guy!"
A genial smile appeared on Huang Tian's face. Raising a hand in a beckoning motion, he grasped a spear of crimson flame condensed from several red-gold fire dragons!
The entire spear steamed with horrifying heat, waves of heat radiating outward in visible ripples that warped the air. The shaft vibrated, producing the roar of a fire dragon!
At this moment, gripping the blazing spear, Huang Tian stood majestic, like a god of fire descending upon the mortal world!
"Sss-hiss—!"
The figure uttered a low roar and spun around to flee. Yet accompanied by a dragon's roar echoing between heaven and earth, the red-gold blazing spear cut across the sky, carrying churning, boiling shockwaves as it crashed straight through the center of the figure's body!
*Boom!!!*
A shrill, anguished shriek was swallowed by endless light and heat. In midair, it was as if a miniature sun had risen, radiating blazing, incandescent gold light that painted the sky a brilliant golden hue!
Dozens of meters from this miniature sun, Zhou Zhenhong was forced to shut his eyes against the intense glare, raising his right hand to shield his face. A scorching gale swept toward him, blowing him stumbling backward several steps.
Outside the nursing home, members of the emergency squad stared at the radiant sun in midair, faces transfixed with fervor.
"Light! Boundless light!!"
"Such power! Such magnificent might!"
"A Rank 3 dream expeller! Only a Rank 3 dream expeller could possess this level of strength! I once saw that Rank 2 dream expeller from Pingfeng City take action—it wasn't anywhere close to this kind of majesty!"
"Too terrifying! Too formidable!"
...
The dazzling light persisted for a dozen breaths before slowly fading. Zhou Zhenhong lowered his shielding hand. His vision was a blur; he blinked hard several times before the surroundings came back into focus.
Before his eyes lay an expansive field of ruins: rubble, dust, beams, pillars, concrete, shattered glass, broken tables and chairs...
And where the miniature sun had risen, the ground had melted, revealing a massive hemispherical crater, charred black and reeking of burnt material.
The dream domain had been burned to ashes, and reality had been incinerated along with it...
Zhou Zhenhong was dumbfounded.
The nursing home they had entered earlier was actually the dream domain formed after the nightmare unfolded. Huang Tian's divine fire had not only burned through the dream domain, but to leave the nightmare core with nowhere to hide, he had simply incinerated the physical nursing home in reality as well. In any case, aside from him and Zhou Zhenhong, there was no third person inside, so there was no fear of harming innocents.
Thus, once the nightmare core was slain and they returned to reality, they found the entire nursing home reduced to ruins.
"Mr. Huang!"
"Brother Zhou!"
"Chief Zhou!"
At that moment, Wang Guangming and the others rushed in from outside the nursing home, every face alight with excitement. Their gazes toward Huang Tian were filled with awe and fervor.
Huang Tian gave them a slight nod, while Zhou Zhenhong recovered from his shock, thrilled beyond measure. *Mr. Huang must be a Rank 3 dream expeller!*
Though he did not know how Huang Tian, a native of Qingyang City, had suddenly become such a terrifyingly powerful Rank 3 dream expeller, that no longer mattered. What mattered was that every single nightmare in Qingyang City had been completely eradicated!
With a heavy stone lifted from his chest, Zhou Zhenhong said solemnly, "Mr. Huang, thank you! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything you've done for the hundreds of thousands of citizens in Qingyang!"
"It was merely a trivial effort."
"To you, it may be a trivial effort, but to the citizens of Qingyang, it has removed the sword hanging over their heads..."
After expressing his heartfelt gratitude, Zhou Zhenhong suddenly remembered something and turned to look at the spot where the nightmare core had been killed. Seeing no dream relic, he thought to himself, *It must have been taken by Mr. Huang.*
The brilliant glare unleashed by that miniature sun had blinded him for quite some time, so he had not seen whether Huang Tian picked up the dream relic. But since there was no relic in sight, Huang Tian had naturally taken it.
Although a Xie-rank dream relic was of immense value, he had no intention of vying for it. Not to mention that his own strength paled in comparison to Huang Tian's, this nightmare had been handled entirely by Huang Tian alone—how could he possibly have the cheek to demand a share of the spoils?
Since he did not bring up the matter of the dream relic, the members of the emergency squad certainly wouldn't mention it either. Meanwhile, Huang Tian quietly felt the additional surge of pure spiritual energy within his body, feeling satisfied inwardly:
*The potency of a Xie-rank nightmare is indeed extraordinary. Once I refine it later, I can step into the late Dao Foundation stage...*
According to his estimates, as long as he "devoured" one more—at most two—Xie-rank nightmares, he would be able to return to the Golden Core Celestial Being realm!
When that time came, his name would inspire resonance, his divine awareness responding to all directions, sweeping away every demon and monster in the world!
Chapter 168