Am I really hallucinating?

Chapter 337 The Ruthless City

I saw the tower below.

The man hung up the communication sent through the Tower of Insight and took a few deep breaths.

"Bidoc, how many have you contacted? Is there any hope?" A voice came from behind, and a man staggered over and asked.

Biddock turned around, frowning, and said, "Your body is starting to give out, so it's best not to move around too much. I contacted Tickman before, and he said his connections might be able to offer some help, but it was hard to say exactly what. Now the help he mentioned has arrived. They've bypassed the Bureau's blockade and infiltrated our territory. Although we're not sure what kind of help they'll provide, the methods they've used to do this must be quite sophisticated, and it could provide another breakthrough."

The person walking behind me was horribly pale, thin as skin and bones, and sweating profusely, panting heavily, as if he might die at any moment.

“Tickman…he finally got rid of so much trouble,” his companion behind him said.

Upon hearing this, Biddock sighed deeply: "The Longevity Society is too well-prepared. We don't have many opportunities to contact each other, and we've severed most of our networks during these years of infiltration. He's the only one I can trust."

He also felt very guilty. It was because of Tickman that he had asked Tickman to act with him. Later, he took good care of his wife and children. Now that Tickman had finally returned, he had vowed to keep Tickman away from trouble, but when the time came, he had to ask him for help.

"The Longevity Society accurately predicted Dadu's response and coordinated it perfectly with the earthquake impact. Dadu couldn't easily guess the Longevity Society's scheme, but their usual arrogance prevented them from taking the Longevity Society seriously... Damn it." The weakened companion couldn't help but curse.

"How many of us do we have left?" Biddock could only ask in a muffled voice.

"The initial assault decimated half our forces, and when the Ancestor seized the earthquake-stricken inhabitants, he brought back many of our people. Now, as the pressure mounts, people are constantly going missing—they might have been captured, or they might simply be unable to hold on..."

Upon hearing his companion's report, Biddock coughed violently several times, spitting out blood.

The blood he spat out quickly congealed into a jelly-like substance on the ground, wriggling and changing with tentacles, but soon lost its activity due to the silvery-gray substance spreading in the blood, turning back into ordinary blood.

The two sat there leaning against each other beneath the Tower of Insight, their silence as still as death.

His companion looked up at the gloomy sky shrouded in blood mist, his eyes unfocused: "Bidoc, tell me, what is the point of us doing this?"

"significance?"

"No one will thank us, no one knows what we did, or even that we exist. It's like we accomplished nothing. We're misunderstood, ostracized, and in the end, all we'll do is become a pile of rotten flesh..." Tears welled up in his companion's eyes, but he tilted his head back and didn't let them fall.

Biddock remained silent, or rather, he had nothing to say about the facts.

"We wanted to help Dadu, but Dadu became the last straw that broke our backs. What a cold and heartless city."

“This city has always been like this. Who told this damned place to hold our important things…” Bidock said in a low voice, suppressing his voice. He noticed that his flesh and blood had begun to writhe abnormally again. He took out a vial of reagent and plunged it straight into his carotid artery.

The silvery-gray liquid flowed into his blood vessels, and the substance could be seen flowing and spreading through his increasingly pale skin. At the same time, the flesh and blood vessels in that area showed obvious signs of ulceration.

He forcefully pulled out the syringe, his body trembling, his lips quivering as he gasped for breath.

After catching his breath, he staggered to his feet and picked up a bag: "Don't feel like you've made a sacrifice, Yang Qian."

"After making a sacrifice, people start to think about its meaning, and compare their own worth with rewards that won't come to them. Don't do that. True sacrificers don't think about these things... We do it for ourselves, just to drag these disgusting things down to hell with us."

After saying that, he took a few more breaths and said, "It should be about time. I should go meet Yang Qian... Yang Qian?" He suddenly froze and turned to look at his side.

His last companion had died silently, and silvery-gray liquid flowed over a mass of festering flesh. The flesh writhed, trying to grow and move spontaneously after the loss of consciousness, but was strangled by the liquid and then vanished.

He stared blankly for a moment, then sniffed the snot running down his face, covered his reddened eyes, nodded silently, and turned to leave.

……

Doris saw Bitok walking unsteadily from the foot of the Tower of Insight.

"Are you poisoned?" Doris frowned as soon as she saw Biddock's appearance and described his current condition.

"Without the poison weakening its life force, this body would have been in an unknown state long ago due to the current situation." Bidok's tone remained calm and composed, without wavering.

He turned to look at Doris, somewhat surprised: "You just came in from the outside like that?"

Doris was so clean that there was no sign of a fight, and there were no unusual reactions on her body.

Moreover, it's clear from various details that she was quite confident and completely unaffected by the strange environment.

It seems to be very reliable. Whether directly or indirectly, it's always good to have strong support.

Did Tickman send you?

“Mr. Tickman has helped us a lot, so it’s only natural that we should lend a hand with this small request,” Doris said.

"Small request, do you still think the same way about the current situation here?" Biddock's lips twitched stiffly.

"Hmm." Doris remained unmoved.

"Alright, let's get straight to the point." Without further pleasantries, Biddock got straight to the point: "The Immortal Realm is an illusion, known as the 'Ancestor.' It uses flesh and blood as bait to replace human flesh and blood, and in this process of exchange and mutual nourishment, it grows continuously. After years of accumulation, it has reached an extremely terrifying level."

The ground shook and trembled, and their gazes turned to the colossal beast covered in blood and flesh in the distance: "It had previously expended a great deal of its life force to cooperate with Agui, and now it was going to take back Bendeli Land as well. The formation of the illusionary world and the arrival of the earthquake had cost it a huge proportion of its life force. Combined with the other illusion in the hands of the Ashes that manifested as paper power, it was like a large-scale sacrificial ritual."

Upon hearing this, Doris suddenly realized: "So that's the source of the paper and blood smells that preceded the earthquake."

Humans are a benchmark for illusions and even multiple worlds, just as Stanley Street has fewer overlaps than other neighborhoods due to its low population density.

Zheng Fan knew that those papers were used to blur the boundaries of the world, which was probably the main cause of the impact. They were like a "shield" that weakened the reality of the capital.

Then, relying on the ancestor's illusion, the mimicry attraction using immense life force serves as an excellent boost to the illusionary world and the earthquake world.

In addition, the existence of a core that Agui had long suspected existed, and the mysterious hallucination of panic, further enhanced the concept of earthquakes.

Multiple factors combined to create this grand disaster in Dadu.

(End of this chapter)