The Temple

Bang.

Enduring the indescribable stench, Lynch forcefully slammed shut the icy doors of the temple.

The clamor outside ceased abruptly, as though the inside and outside were severed into two different worlds.

The impact he had anticipated never came, but Lynch still pressed his back against the ice door, waiting quietly for a moment.

Looks like I misjudged. Sure enough, nothing in the occult world is ever simple. But where did I go wrong?

Sifting through the occult knowledge he had learned once more, Lynch realized that while he had applied the three elements of dreams right away, he had overlooked another rule:

The dream instability principle.

Because the consciousness of living beings fluctuates and forms associations, their dreams inevitably display unstable characteristics. In practice, this means dreams undergo periodic or non-periodic changes that persist from start to finish, regardless of duration.

This was one of the necessary criteria for identifying dream events. If the facts violated the dream instability principle, it meant the current event was not a dream—or at least, not entirely a dream of a living being.

Damn it, getting it wrong on my very first test—is this the tragedy of a slacker student?

Still, Lynch wasn't particularly disappointed. It was only reasonable to make mistakes, and he had analyzed an alternative solution beforehand:

Replicating Maya's previous actions.

Maya had previously ventured into the depths of the temple and subsequently woken up with a start. Although according to the outcome uncertainty principle, an imitator could never perfectly duplicate every detail of a model, causing deviations that functioned much like the butterfly effect of his homeland and potentially leading to vastly different results, that was only a possibility. There was still at least a sixty-five percent chance of reproducing the model's outcome.

Such odds were well worth a try.

Thus, from the very beginning, Lynch had prepared a backup plan; the temple had always been his retreat.

Only, this retreat was truly hard to describe.

Bone-chilling cold, accompanied by a choking, foul stench.

Eerie, terrifying murmurs echoed unceasingly from the depths of the temple, while flickering green flames cast countless twisted, hideous silhouettes across the surrounding walls.

This place was as abhorrent as a nightmare.

“Neighbor, I won't end up poisoned or frozen to death in here, right?”

【Usually not.】

Don't be so technically precise next time; it's freaking me out.

Lynch sighed, pulling his back away from the icy door.

It seemed the temple was forbidden ground to the monsters. The problem was, this might not necessarily be good news; he felt like he was receiving the standard treatment reserved for horror movie protagonists.

Laughing at himself, Lynch reloaded his gun, raised his cane, and cautiously made his way inside.

The temple corridor was completely empty, cold, and dry. The surrounding ice walls were carved with murals. Lynch plucked up the courage to examine them, finding they were not bizarre mystery visions, but normal murals depicting the city's funeral rituals.

Whenever anyone died in this city, whether an outsider or a resident, their corpse would be brought to this temple. After being prepared by the priests, it would be placed on an altar deep within the temple to be devoured by a deity slumbering in its depths, serving as the god's sustenance. The inhabitants believed that offering corpses to the god would cleanse all the sins of their mortal lives. Therefore, stealing corpses or preventing a resident's death was the ultimate sacrilege, incurring the harshest punishment from the priests.

Looks like this so-called god is Mordiggian. Antiseptic cold, diseases forbidden from being cured, and eventual death—so that's where its three authorities come from.

【Mm.】

Lynch nodded, continuing along the dark corridor. As he progressed deeper, the murals on either side grew increasingly bizarre, detailing the entire process of the deceased from entering the doors to ending up in the god's belly.

Just the first step—the preparation of the corpses—made Lynch's stomach heave with nausea, prompting him to avert his gaze entirely.

The eerie murmurs grew increasingly erratic, drifting from ahead one moment and behind the next, swelling louder and louder like tens of thousands of voices chanting Mordiggian's name in unison. It threw Lynch's thoughts into ever-greater disarray. Even covering his ears did nothing to block the intrusive voices, as if sound didn't require the actual physical act of hearing at all.

It was practically a soul attack.

【Mm.】

It really is a soul attack?

Hearing this, Lynch dared not dawdle any longer, picking up his pace while remaining as cautious as possible.

The passageways of the temple corridor all sloped downward, flanked by identical ice walls that seemed to lead straight into the bowels of the earth.

Lynch had no idea how long he had walked, feeling as though time had lost all meaning, when the scenery around him finally changed.

Appearing at the end of the passage was a vast hall. In the center of the hall lay a massive pit more than ten meters wide. The pit was unfathomably deep, seemingly plunging straight into the bottomless depths of hell. A stench of decay and death wafted up from the chasm, coalescing into rising plumes of green mist that penetrated the walls and drifted outside the temple.

Directly above the giant pit hung a colossal platform, suspended precariously in midair by several iron chains and connected to the outer perimeter by suspension bridges.

The entire platform was covered in layers of crusted, dried blood that coated its surface, dyeing it a bizarre purplish-black. At the center of the platform stood a bed-like altar, its purplish-black surface suffused with dark crimson—a sight that induced revulsion even from afar.

Lying on the altar was a figure. Though the distance made it hard to discern her features clearly, her clothing made it obvious that it was the female reporter, Maya. She lay flat on her back, motionless, wearing the clothes she had changed into before going to sleep. There were no visible wounds on her body; she looked simply as if she were asleep.

Hiss... another Maya?

Lynch realized that this was likely the core area of this space—whether it was truly a dream or not. Do I need to wake her up here?

Yet looking at the platform suspended over the abyss, Lynch felt his legs grow weak. Below was a pitch-black, bottomless void. Falling in would mean certain death, regardless of what lay at the bottom. Moreover, this was...

Looking closely into the pit, Lynch felt his chest tighten. It wasn't an empty, deep, dark cavern at all; it was a cavern filled with darkness.

The darkness wasn't mere absence of light; it was like boiling water, continuously churning and surging, rapidly welling upward.

“I followed a long black shadow deep into the temple, and then saw a massive...”

So her description wasn't abstract imagery, but literal reality. Damn it, I get it now. Coming in here didn't just wake her from the dream—she was being contaminated and was beginning to transform into a ghoul!

I definitely don't want to replicate that part.

Run! No, wait, I have to wake her first—or at least carry her out. But how do I wake her up?

Lynch's mind was in turmoil. Seeing the speed at which the darkness was rising, he gritted his teeth, intending to rush onto the swaying platform and carry the female reporter down first.

【Read.】

Hm? Lynch froze. This isn't a mystery relic's memory—can I still read it?

But with no time to think, Lynch instinctively chose to trust his neighbor. He emptied his mind immediately, using his soul to perceive everything around him.

It happened in an instant; almost immediately, he received a response from the mystery:

【Use light to fight darkness, use warmth to fight cold, embrace death with blazing flames.】

Lynch's heart stirred. Slipping on the ring without hesitation, he transformed into a burst of flame and charged onto the platform.

The next instant, a piercing scream abruptly erupted beside his ear:

“Ahhh—”