Forbidden Nightmare

Chapter 60 Painful Thorns
The raindrops hit the black umbrella, slid down the eaves, dripped onto the ground in the dark alley, merged into the stinking puddle, and created ripples.

Li Nanke put away his umbrella and looked up at the night sky outside the alley. In the distance there were tall buildings and bright neon lights, and in front of him was an old shop with its roller shutter door closed.

He looked at the piece of paper stuck on the rolling door which read "Boss is out on a blind date, come back another day to buy your dream." There were several more messages in different handwritings underneath it.

'It's been a few days, why is the door still closed?'

"Boss Li must have failed in his blind date, so he is not interested in doing business."

'Maybe he successfully found a rich woman on a blind date and is ready to change his career.'

'If you have work, open the door.'

'...'

There were two curved sheep horns drawn at the bottom of the message.

Li Nanke's eyes were a little dazed. He unlocked the door, pulled up the shutter, and walked into his shop.

“Welcome~”

The store was pitch black. The electronic lucky cat sensed someone pushing open the glass door and waved its little paws and meowed.

Turn on the lights, dust floats in the orange light, and rows of beautifully packaged artificial dreams are displayed on several rows of shelves.

He walked up the stairs to the second floor and returned to his very familiar single bedroom.

Compared with the exquisite decoration of the apartment, the single bedroom here is like a dirty doghouse.

The only thing that makes this place seem less desolate and poor is the dream synchronizer on the bedside table.

Li Nanke originally thought that he would have a feeling of nostalgia and then suddenly have the urge to lie back on the single bed and sleep for the night.

But at this moment, no such thought occurred to me at all.

Many days ago, he was seriously ill and had to lie on this bed wearing a dream synchronizer, working hard to make money and struggle to survive, but now things are completely different.

After a series of physical examinations, all his physical indicators were excellent, and his overall physical fitness was far beyond the limits of ordinary people. The complications of limb numbness and lung infection had long since disappeared.

Even neurological diseases caused by malignant gene mutations have been greatly improved with the increase of extraordinary powers.

As long as you continue to improve your extraordinary power, the terminal illness that seemed as ferocious as a tiger will be cured without medicine.

Li Nanke picked up the synchronizer and the burnt dream data disk and returned to the store on the first floor.

After waiting for a long time, the glass door was pushed open and the electronic lucky cat meowed again.

Wearing sunglasses, a mask and a gray windbreaker, his head is still wrapped tightly.

Now that two days had passed since the agreed date for delivery, Yang Tou couldn't help but ask, "Did something happen?"

"I guess so. The data disk is burned."

"Is he okay?"

"fine."

Sheep Head frowned and said, "According to the rules, you need to pay one third of the reward..."

Halfway through his speech, he glanced at the badly burned data disk, stood there in silence for a while, and sighed, "Forget it, the last offer was much higher than before, and you can't afford it even if I ask you to pay for it. It's good that the person is fine."

"I have a new job, the price is not high, 6 credit points, can you afford it?"

Li Nanke shook his head, took out the five bundles of banknotes and threw them back to Yangtou: "I've decided to quit."

Sheephead was startled: "So sudden, are you sure you have thought it through?"

Seeing Li Nanke nod, he looked him up and down for a long time, and suddenly smiled sincerely: "It seems that you have made a fortune... That's good, otherwise, something bad will happen sooner or later in this business."

After that, Yang Tou said nothing more, turned around and left, waved goodbye and said, "Live well."

Li Nanke sat alone in the store for a long time.

He tore off a piece of paper and wrote "Shop for Sale", then walked outside the store, pulled down the shutter, and covered the original message with the paper.

Li Nanke opened his umbrella and stepped into the rain, his figure gradually disappearing into the distance.

"I will live well."
-
Seven days later, Crisis Management Bureau, Research Department. A blood-red strange thorn was delivered to the study room.

It is placed in a sealed transparent glass box with three sets of cameras installed inside, and the lenses are always facing the lonely blood-red thorn.

The security guards escorting the forbidden items left. Jiang Lei flipped through the forbidden items' files and said, "Xiao Li, this is a forbidden item that the director carefully selected for you. It's low-risk, and the pheromone category is also from the flesh system."

Li Nanke was silent: "It's the meat system again..."

Jiang Lei had an expression that said, "Xiao Li, you don't understand the director's good intentions." "We all know about the Wanxiang system. Although we can absorb other types of pheromones, we should absorb as little as possible."

"If there is a choice, the director will definitely pick the extraordinary category you have already mastered and choose the corresponding pheromone... Look how good the director is to you."

Li Nanke really wanted to say: Don’t worry about what type it is, it’s better to have a set of pheromones of all kinds, and don’t care about my feelings. You are not a fish, so how can you understand the joy of a fish?

He took the file handed over by Jiang Lei and began to browse the information about forbidden objects.

[Project number: 5-792]

[Project alias: Painful Thorns]

[Danger level: warning level]

[Containment location: ████████████]

[Containment Measures: Place in a transparent sealed container, keep a safe distance of 4.87 meters from the taboo object, and set up an "observer" to observe it 24 hours a day. ]

【项目描述：2122年9月13日，5—792号禁忌物‘痛苦荆棘’首次于荒野E36流民聚落出现，并引发相关人员死亡。】

[This taboo object is similar to a deciduous shrub of the Rhamnaceae family, with a single blood-red, sharp, thorny thorn.]

[This taboo object does not have chlorophyll and does not need to carry out photosynthesis. It can still survive without water, minerals and carbon dioxide. ]

[If an intelligent individual directly touches this forbidden object with his/her flesh, he/she will immediately feel extremely severe pain.]

[Using trigeminal neuralgia as level 1, the pain level of this pain is level 13, which is enough to cause shock, fainting, dementia, and long-term exposure can even lead to loss of consciousness. ]

【According to research and experiments, after the contact person receives a local anesthetic injection, the contacted limb will also experience severe pain. Even after the contact person's related pain nerves are blocked, the severe pain cannot be blocked.】

[Without an 'Observer', if a creature falls asleep near this forbidden object (within a 4.87-meter area with the forbidden object as the center), 'black thorns' that feed on flesh and blood will grow in the creature's body, accompanied by continuous pain.]

[Even if the host wakes up, it cannot stop the growth and spread of the 'black thorns'. The 'black thorns' will not stop growing until the host loses all vital signs and turns into a half-living, half-plant form entangled with thorns. ]

[With an 'Observer', as long as there is no direct contact with the forbidden object, even falling asleep will not have any effect. ]

[Note: The definition of "observer" refers to whether it is simple observation with the naked eye or filming with an image recording device (camera, video recorder, etc.). ]

[Note: 'Black Thorn' is a derivative of this forbidden item and will lose all its properties after the host dies.]

【…】

[Project log: …]

After reading the file, Li Nanke said, "In other words, as long as you don't come into direct contact with the forbidden object and there is always an 'observer', you will be safe. It doesn't matter if you fall asleep. Even if you accidentally touch the forbidden object, you will only feel pain... No wonder the rating is only 'warning level'."

Jiang Lei shook his head and said, "Xiao Li, it's more than just a pain. Do you know how painful trigeminal neuralgia is?"

"Although pain is a subjective feeling, scientific research always likes to find some data to support it."

"There's something called VAS, the visual analogue scale for pain, which consists essentially of a 10-centimeter line with '0' at one end meaning 'no pain at all' and '10' at the other end meaning 'the worst pain imaginable'."

"The test subjects were asked to mark a horizontal line based on their own feelings to indicate the degree of pain they felt. Guess what level labor and testicular pain would be."

Li Nanke thought for a moment and said, "They should all be level 10, right?"

Jiang Lei said: "The pain in the early stages of labor is level 2-3, and the most painful time is level 7-10. Testicular pain is also at this level, but trigeminal neuralgia is generally recognized as level 10."

"And the pain caused by this taboo is 13 times that of trigeminal neuralgia."

Li Nanke: “…”

He has a synchronization rate that exceeds the limit. In dreams, all senses will be amplified, including pain.

After hearing Jiang Lei's explanation, Li Nanke felt a vague pain in his balls even before entering the forbidden dream.

(End of this chapter)