absurd deduction game.

Grandma Pearl's almost delirious words, "The world will be destroyed tomorrow," were like a pebble thrown into stagnant water, creating a slight ripple in Yu Xing's heart.

strangeness.

Although panic was a common emotion among the townspeople, unless the cultists deliberately spread the word to certain people, revealing the possibilities after the success of tomorrow's ritual, the townspeople would not set the time of the disaster as "tomorrow." They would only think that life would get worse and worse in the next month or two.

But... it seems that Granny Pearl already knew.

Where did she hear that?
Yu Xing did not sense any aura of a Tantric practitioner from Granny Pearl, so the "dream" the old woman spoke of was probably a bit strange.

This anomaly piqued Yu Xing's interest in investigating further.

He turned his head and looked at Granny Pearl's face, which was filled with fear and anxiety.

Yu Xing showed no sympathy; the curve of her smile remained unchanged. However, an unusually calm aura, seemingly isolated from the despair around her, enveloped her.

"A dream?" he asked, his voice not gentle, yet possessing a strange, steady strength that pierced through his mother-in-law's sobs. "What did you dream about that made you so sad?"

There was no extra comfort, no empathy, just a calm, fact-based inquiry. However, it was precisely this unconventional composure that acted like a paperweight, temporarily suppressing Grandma Pearl's near-collapse.

Grandma Pearl raised her tearful eyes and looked at Yu Xing's calm, deep blue eyes.

Inside, she saw neither panic nor false reassurance, which strangely gave her chaotic thoughts a focal point to cling to.

She sniffed, trembling, as if trying to grasp this only piece of driftwood, and began to try hard to remember:
“I’ve been having nightmares every night since it started raining. The content of those dreams is pretty much the same, but at first they’re very blurry. Each time I dream about them, they become clearer.”

"I dream that I'm walking on a dirt road..."

At the beginning of her dream, Granny Pearl always walked on a dirt road.

In the depths of her dream, time and space do not exist in the usual sense; she is simply "walking" along an endlessly stretching, desolate dirt road, step by step.

Beneath her feet lay dry, cracked earth, yet it felt unusually soft and absorbed all sounds, including her own footsteps.

She felt neither tired nor purposeful; walking itself became her sole state of being, an instinct that required no thought.

Several enormous butterflies appeared silently at the edge of her field of vision and flew past her.

Their wings were a deep, dark green, as if ground from the resentment of the deep sea or from decaying emeralds, shimmering with an ominous, oily luster.

The butterflies fluttered gracefully, yet their slow movements were unsettling. They brushed past her empty eyes like guiding ghosts, and she, oblivious to their strange beauty, followed them into the "town" ahead.

That was not the Yorikef she remembered, nor could it even be called a settlement in the human sense.

The "houses" on both sides stand in a way that defies the laws of physics, like the solidified product of a living creature's painful spasm.

Some walls are covered with a substance resembling biological mucus that constantly secretes a viscous liquid; some windows are twisted into the shape of wailing human faces, with tiny tentacles wriggling in the empty eye sockets; and some buildings are tilted as a whole, supported by countless tiny black appendages that resemble insect arthropods, trembling slightly in the invisible wind and emitting a teeth-grinding friction sound.

Everything was shrouded in a dim, ambiguous light, the source of which was unclear, as if it were phosphorescence produced during the decay of the objects themselves.

The streets were empty and desolate, yet not deserted.

Countless translucent, humanoid black shadows lingered.

They have no faces, no physical form, like blank film strips stripped of all memories and emotions, drifting and wandering aimlessly, overlapping each other, and then separating indifferently.

They ignored Granny Pearl as she walked among them, and she, in turn, was unaware of their presence.

Fear, curiosity, disgust... all these emotions were a blank in her consciousness; she just walked, walked continuously and mechanically.

After countless hazy fragments of time, Granny Pearl arrived at a relatively open area, which vaguely resembled the central square of Yolikev.

It was here that she saw the only "different" being besides herself.

It was a humanoid creature with an indistinct, blurry shape, sitting quietly on a bench in the center of the square.

Most striking is the face of the humanoid creature—it has no features, no skin, only a rough, dull-colored wooden board that fits tightly over it, like an exaggerated and unsettling mask.

Its legs were crossed, and its toes were wobbling slightly, as if it were enjoying a leisurely vacation, or as if it were waiting for someone—Grandma Pearl didn't know why she would give such an evaluation, but in her dream, she did feel that it was very relaxed the moment she saw it, as if it still retained its ability to think.

As she walked past it, the wooden-faced creature tilted its head, stood up from the bench, and stretched out a human arm to block her way.

A voice came from behind the wooden plank, its gender indiscernible and its tone flat: "Where are you going? Why don't you stop?"

Grandma Pearl stopped.

She heard her own voice answer, a voice both strange and familiar, a timbre from her long-forgotten youth, clear yet carrying a youthful strength, unlike the softness of her later years: "...I don't know. What's the point of stopping? I don't know where I should stop, so I'll keep moving forward."

The sound made her feel a slight doubt, like a bubble rising from the bottom of the water, fleeting and gone in an instant.

The wooden-faced man shook his head slightly.

Then it raised its hand and pointed upwards: "Look up at the sky, Pearl, you've forgotten many things."

Following that guidance, Granny Pearl raised her head for the first time in her dream.

The sky was a murky, dark red dome, like congealed blood.

Instead of the sun, moon, and stars, there were countless enormous eyes. These eyes varied in shape; some had cold, vertical pupils like reptiles, while others were covered with compound eye structures that shimmered with inorganic light, and still others were indescribable, fleshy organs that flowed with mucus.

They are densely embedded in the sky, slowly, regularly or randomly rotating, their cold and indifferent gazes all focused on the desolate land below, naturally also enveloping the Pearl Granny who looks up.

Beneath that dome of eyes, a colossal, incomprehensible humanoid object hangs upside down.

Its entire body was covered by a thick, constantly dripping black liquid, obscuring its exact appearance. The black liquid, like an inexhaustible waterfall, poured down from the head of the upside-down human body, crashing onto the ground, but instead of accumulating, it spread and flowed silently in all directions as if it had a life of its own.

A gigantic, soul-stirring dark green butterfly rested quietly on the chest of the upside-down human body.

Its wings are of the same origin as the butterfly that led the way, but magnified millions of times. The wings vibrate very slowly, with a kind of destructive stillness that is poised to strike.

The butterfly is fluttering its wings.

Granny Pearl gazed up at this blasphemous sight, losing all sense of time in her dream. She didn't know if she had only looked up for a moment, or if she had stood there motionless, almost eternally. The black liquid had silently flowed to her feet, overflowing her insteps.

A cold, non-physical sensation came through.

She lowered her head subconsciously.

The liquid was as black as ink, yet strangely it did not reflect any light, and she could not see her own reflection.

What she saw were two translucent, indistinct "legs" made of pure shadow, no different from the black shadows that lingered on the street.

It turns out that, without realizing it, she herself had already become a member of this eternally wandering group.

The one with a wooden board covering his face, capable of asking questions, was the only "outlier" in this place.

The wooden-faced voice rang out again: "Now you know, Pearl."

"There's nothing left ahead. What's your obsession that keeps you from stopping? Let's stop here. This is your place."

A huge, belated realization struck like a bucket of ice water, but it failed to evoke fear; instead, it brought only a deep, boundless sense of bewilderment.

Granny Pearl, or rather, the shadowy figure who thought she was still Granny Pearl, stared blankly at the wooden face and asked in a youthful voice, "What... has all happened?"

The wooden-faced man paused for a moment, seemingly pondering how to answer the question.

After a long pause, it spread its hands, and its tone surprisingly carried a nonchalant smile:

"This is the consequence of the esoteric rituals. On [date], a divine kingdom that should not exist descended. Now, this is what the world should look like after order has been completely erased. You, me, him, everyone is no longer different, there is no longer poverty or old age. Pearl, do you love this world?"

At this moment, the dream reached a breathtaking climax, a fusion of beauty and terror, where everything was both absurd and psychedelic.

She shook her head, shook her head, and kept shaking her head, expressing her resistance to the wooden-faced man.

"I don't love this world, it's just... it's just..."

“That’s a pity.” The wooden-faced man lowered his hand, “gazing” at her with a hint of pity.

“You must love this world, Pearl. You must love it before you become a complete, muddled shadow. It’s too cruel for you to still be conscious. Just become a madman, otherwise… you will become the only ‘person’ who can feel pain, and then all kinds of pain will press down on you.”

"You will be crushed."

As soon as the words were spoken, the giant butterfly in the sky suddenly spread its wings.

Like a folding fan opening, it suddenly attracted Grandma Pearl's attention.

It dropped specks of phosphorescent powder, and the thick, dark green of its wings filled her entire field of vision. Then she was enveloped, and a suffocating feeling, along with belated fear, overwhelmed her nostrils.

—At this time, Grandma Pearl would wake up from her dream.

She looked at Yu Xing and recounted the entire dream, her emotions gradually calming down.

“Before, the dream was very vague. Not long after I woke up, the content of the dream would be forgotten by my aging brain. I only knew that I had a nightmare and that I felt very sad in the dream.”

"But last night, the dream was clearer than ever before. My child, I remember all the details, and I know it was a picture of the world after its destruction."

Grandma Pearl gave a somewhat sad smile. She supported herself and slowly walked forward, taking Yu Xing's hand in hers.

"I remembered the time the strange wooden figure in my dream mentioned... and then I realized that it was tomorrow."

"Tomorrow, our world will be destroyed, and I will only have time to make a few small loaves of bread to sell to hungry children like you."

She noticed that Yu Xing remained calm after hearing everything, and a surge of joy welled up within her.

"This dream isn't real, is it?"

“Of course.” Yu Xing patted Pearl Granny’s hand in return. He touched Pearl Granny’s old and loose skin, which was cold and had no temperature. He also felt a little like the texture of a rusty iron door.

It was as if this old woman wasn't a living person, but a rusty humanoid object.

She may have been caught in the chaotic rain a few days ago.

Yu Xing smiled and reassured her, "The atmosphere in town has been too tense lately, and you're just affected by it. You're just having these thoughts in your dreams. The world won't end, and your bakery will be open for a very long time."

Feeling that Granny Pearl's tense body seemed to be slowly relaxing, he instructed, "The supply of various ingredients should gradually recover in a couple of days. Remember to make more bread. No one in Yolikev Town can match your skills."

“Okay, okay.” Granny Pearl wiped her eyes. “Now that you say that, I can rest assured… Thank you, Mr. Investigator, you are such a gentleman and a kind person.”

As Yu Xing left the bakery, she touched her cheek with the tip of her tongue, feeling a little regretful.

[Side quest triggered: You have discovered the Rusty Man (unique)]

Just moments before Yu Xing noticed something amiss, a system notification popped up.

The system describes this monster as follows: The Twilight Heart Rustman is a unique variant of the "Corpse Heart" that mutated in the Chaos Rain. It does not constitute a population. It has lost the "Corpse Heart's" desire for the heart of a living person because it is old and has chosen eternal silence.

Like a rusty old object, it will enter a state of perpetual unchangingness under the cover of rust. It is content with the status quo, and as long as it can live a monotonous life, it poses no danger to humans.

and so……

Yu Xing thought that in that "precognitive dream" that appeared for some unknown reason, which was a prediction of the success of the esoteric ritual, Granny Pearl became a ghost, but still retained her ability to think.

Because the rust "protected" her.

It also ruined her life.

Another very intriguing aspect of this dream is the wooden-faced woman who gave Granny Pearl a warning in the "divine kingdom"...

Wasn't that the "Faceless One" he had seen before, the one who roamed the nights in Yorikef? (End of Chapter)