Strange game designer.

Chapter 789 Lift
Pain, pain surging from all parts of the body, overwhelmed Gao Ming.

Then a light seemed to appear before his eyes, a light he had never seen in the dark shrine. Gao Ming was enveloped by it, and his mind kept retreating in a certain direction.

The dream demon invaded the shrine, but what descended upon it was not its true form, but rather nine-tenths of its will and soul.

Gao Ming's self-destruction in the deep pool of the underground water network ignited nine-tenths of his accumulated power.

Everything in the dark shrine was ignited, and the remaining consciousness awoke in the main shrine of the dream. Gao Ming had never been so weak.

The blood in the torture chamber faded, and the flesh-and-blood demon was also severely injured. At this moment, he was no longer as majestic as before. He was even shorter than Gao Ming, and only two of his eight arms remained. His four ghost faces became blurred, and his lower body was a bloody mess.

Neither the human nor the ghost had the strength to move, so they could only hide in the main shrine of the dream to seek refuge and slowly recover.

After a long time, with blood mist billowing out, Gao Ming finally re-established his connection with the flesh and blood demon. His heart began to beat, and he finally had a sense that he was still alive.

"If I don't take down the Dark Shrine this time, I won't even be able to go back to the Vast Ocean like this. The Dream Demon from the Investigation Bureau will definitely come after me."

The power of flesh and blood, the spirit and the demon, slowly repaired Gao Ming's will. He opened his eyes, and the two of them worked together to secretly open a crack in the torture chamber.

At this moment, they were still in the passage between reality and the new Blood City of Shanghai. Darkness separated the two worlds, but the originally dense darkness had now turned one-third blood-red.

"We can only wait." Gao Ming never imagined that he would be the first dream ghost to be eliminated before he arrived.

He and the Blood Immortal dared not leave the torture chamber easily, as their injuries could not be healed in a short time; they were lucky to be able to stay alive.

The wait was long and agonizing. After an unknown amount of time, the flesh and blood demon god re-condensed an eyeball, and the torture chamber suddenly trembled. A birthday cake placed in the corner began to melt, and the birthday candles shattered one by one until only one candle remained intact.

Gao Ming's consciousness touched the candle, and some lingering thoughts carrying information flooded into Gao Ming's mind.

"The Dark Shrine is damaged, the city is plunged into eternal night, there is no more daylight, the forbidden zone and reality overlap in many places, several cracks appear in the sky leading to the outside world, the dark rules have been broken, and outsiders can use more power."

"The municipal council has reached a temporary consensus to mobilize all its resources to completely suppress the Tzu Chi Foundation and designate it as a cult."

"The First Forbidden Zone aroused the hatred accumulated by countless citizens underground in the city. They entered the Black Mountain Forbidden Zone of the Thirteenth District through the abandoned tunnel, and consumed all their willpower to perish together with the 'flesh and blood of the gods'."

The dream demons that emerge from the vast ocean are all reckless. Following Gao Ming, Gui Yuan also adopted the same "tactic," destroying the flesh and blood of the gods on the territory of the municipal council hall.

The clash of two forbidden zones is thrilling to think about, but unfortunately Gao Ming didn't see it. After digesting the information from the candle, he looked out through the crack in the torture chamber and saw that half of the darkness of the isolation passage had been dyed red.

The sacrifice of the two Dream Demons brought the strength of both sides to the same level. Before the Blood City of Vast Ocean was re-established, a single Dream Demon was completely subject to the rules of the shrine, making hunting shrines extremely difficult.

Gao Ming carefully placed the candle on his heart, knowing that Gui Yuan would also need a long time to recover.

The sinful thoughts within the torture chamber were absorbed by the flesh-and-blood demon, which was extracting the power of flesh and blood from the monsters imprisoned by Gao Ming. Gong Xi's face gradually became clearer. Compared to the flesh-and-blood demon's "diligence," Gao Ming couldn't calm down at all, his eyes fixed on the passageway.

The darkness and the crimson were locked in a stalemate. Gao Ming waited for several days, until the flesh and blood demons had reassembled an arm, before the crimson finally expanded once more.

At the same time, the chains in the torture chamber rattled softly, and the old-fashioned glasses placed next to the flesh-melting furnace exploded into powder. Yan Xizhi, with her gray hair, emerged from the dust made up of the debris, her soul now just a faint phantom.

Although it was still tragic, it was much better than Takamichi and Kien, who perished together with the enemy.

"Principal Yan!" Gao Ming practically crawled on one hand on the ground as he approached Yan Xizhi: "How's the situation in the shrine world?"

Shaking his head slightly, Yan Xizhi opened his mouth, and Gao Ming then saw that Yan Xizhi's soul body had been hollowed out, his tongue and internal organs were all gone, and what appeared in front of him was just a thin "skin".

An old hand grasped Gao Ming's, and Yan Xizhi's will collided with Gao Ming's. The old man's voice resounded directly in Gao Ming's mind.

"My soul and dreams were completely unable to blend into the darkness. The moment I descended, I was discovered by the master of the shrine. It used most of the dark rules on me, tormenting me with all the pain and despair that have ever existed in the world. Until recently, those dark rules began to weaken. It seems that it wants to withdraw from the dark rules to do something very urgent."

"It must be because I blew up its dark shrine," Gao Ming interjected smugly. In front of Principal Yan, he was just a child.

"I don't know what it wants to do, but I won't let it have its way. I burned my soul and consumed most of the dark rules, and after being weakened to the extreme, I was forced out of the shrine by a force." Yan Xizhi spoke casually, but in reality, she was the one who suffered the most pain. She was discovered as soon as she arrived, and Gao Ming couldn't even imagine how the shrine's master would torture Yan Xizhi.

The outsiders were able to succeed so smoothly in the early stages largely because the old lady Yan Xizhi acted as a "meat shield," absorbing most of the damage and restraining most of the dark rules.

Blood-red gradually filled two-thirds of the passage, and the darkness was constantly compressed, but the number of wounded people in the torture chamber was also increasing.

Before descending, everyone stores a wisp of their remnant soul and will in the torture chamber, so that after dying in the Dark Shrine world, the remaining consciousness will be guided back to the torture chamber.

After Yan Xizhi was squeezed out of the shrine world, the rate of death of outsiders accelerated significantly. Through the lingering thoughts of the crowd, Gao Ming also roughly learned what was happening in that dark city.

The Tzu Chi Foundation's top leaders were either dead or had fled, and its most loyal followers were wiped out. The city council won a resounding victory, but opposition within the city grew stronger. Gangs from different neighborhoods formed alliances to deal with the out-of-control restricted areas, and several neighborhoods openly defied the city council. The dark city descended into utter chaos, and its dark order and rules collapsed.

A few more days passed, and the four faces of the flesh-and-blood demon were carved with facial features, and the crimson color in the passage expanded once again.

Simultaneously with this change came the return of an outsider—Jingtuo Shen.

His eyes were filled with resentment, yet he was helpless.

Under Gao Ming's persistent questioning, Jing Tuo finally spoke, revealing that he had descended into the body of a councilor's child, killed other competitors after the councilor's death, and successfully inherited the councilor's position.

(End of this chapter)