Curse Reply: I'm going to fight the Myriad Corpse Immortal, the highest level one!

"Command: Rational Responder, Target: Xiu Yi."

"Command: Deep Mental Healing, Target: Xiuyi."

"Are you feeling better, Shuichi?"

Xia Jie walked towards Xiuyi under the fearful yet wary gaze of Tong Hui.

"Don't come any closer! I'll shout for help! Uncle Suzuki and Ms. Kobayashi's house is nearby! Do you want to be surrounded by the townspeople?!"

The matter involved her own safety and that of Shuichi, and given the current bizarre situation, Kirie immediately exhaled in shock.

"You're not from this town, so how did you recognize Shuichi the moment we met? What's wrong with Shuichi right now?"

"What exactly is this 'instruction' you're talking about? Tell me now!"

Xia Jie stopped in his tracks with a calm expression. He could have easily taken the time to explain clearly, or spent a few minutes editing a knowledge package that contained the complete current situation.

But there's no need. Just tag Junji Ito and let him explain to the male and female protagonists he created.

If it is clearly explained that the tragedy did not arise from the comic, but was a coincidence under infinite exhaustive possibilities, the comic artist Jun Ryo should not have incurred the combined wrath of Kirie and Shuichi.

"You agree, right, the crossover network?"

"No, this varies from person to person. After the four conquered worlds merged, Gen Urobuchi, the writer of *Puella Magi Madoka Magica*—the Warrior of Love—was met with hostility and a beating from the magical girl Homura Akemi."

"Ah...that's easy, bro, easy. I reckon when the Type-Moon universe merges in the future, even more creators around the world will suffer."

"But to be fair, Type-Moon's unofficial histories are truly outlandish. I wonder what kind of sparks will fly when the female versions of Heroic Spirits meet historical figures."

Anyway, please @ me first.

"@Junji Ito, would you be interested in visiting the world you created?"

"Don't worry, you don't need to feel guilty. Just like everything remained the same after you modified the comic, this world didn't exist because of you, so come and take a look."

Chapter 132 Purple Sun

Agree/Disagree

In the limited-edition Red King Burger shop in the metaverse, a cartoonist who was tagged pushed up his decorative glasses, carefully read the invitation, then smiled and clicked "decline."

"Refusing the invitation from 'Memory' is certainly not good, but accepting it would bring immense opportunities, but..."

"That's the mindset of a useless person!"

He's currently at Red King Burger, a restaurant that only produces a hundred burgers a day. What could be more important than personally tasting the deluxe monster burger meal made by Red King himself?

There's absolutely none!

In any case, there's more than one "he" in the multiverse, so let's just let the other "he"s accept the invitation.

A fundamentalist battlefield.

The counterpart, who was simultaneously fighting and dating a Vitrumian with a supermodel hand chop, rejected the invitation without a second thought, guided by the wisdom of the super-dimensional planet.

At this moment, all that remained in his heart was endless battle and glory. For him, who had found the most primal meaning of life in his pounding heart and boiling blood, victory was everything.

If we cannot fight, we should die.

The battle was exhilarating!

He's going to fight until he pulls down the flag!

The price of defeat was being beaten to his knees by the female Vitrum on the other side and dragged back to serve as a Star Fury for ten years.

At the 40K theme park, the counterpart who was cosplaying as Astartes and had already gotten carried away fighting with the alien players also refused Xia Jie's invitation.

For citizens of the metaverse, immense power is no longer the primary pursuit in life; after all, if the sky were to fall, there would truly be tall people to hold it up.

In fact, there are quite a few of them.

Tall, upright people are as common in the metaverse as Pikachu on the roadside.

The invitation message continued to flash.

Using a normal human's interface to do stratospheric no-rope, no-umbrella bungee jumping; participating in the SBR competition of "Bakusou no Yarou"?; running a horror amusement park; taking a stroll on Hell Star; having a romance with a benevolent, fallen Tomie; cultivating immortality and attaining enlightenment on a fairy planet; returning to one's original profession as a manga artist to continue one's creative career...

After seeing that the invitation only required "one self", most of the prisoners promptly passed the invitation on to other selves. Within half a second, the invitation started from the person closest to the original individual and instantly circulated tens of thousands of times in every corner of the universe.

They do not reject the birth of others, and even actively apply for "personal timeline differentiation" to allow themselves to move towards different futures. They are a group of citizens with a relatively large number of parallel individuals in the diverse metaverse, apart from those who seek the "true great Luo Dao".

2.233 seconds after Xia Jie extended the invitation, in the desolate city of "Arminos," a city known for its foul language, on the edge of the metaverse, an ordinary isomorph who was traveling around the universe and was not good at fighting accepted the invitation.

"So... I'll travel beyond the metaverse and see one otherworldly landscape after another that is highly similar to my past creations?"

"Don't make me get too excited!"

"I accept the invitation from the web network. I can register for the Cosmic Swearing Contest again next year, but I may only receive an invitation from the cyber legend 'Lock Mustard' once in my life."

"I absolutely have to go!"

Lao Run gently rotated the silver metal ring on his thumb, taking in the various strange and wonderful pets and personal service robot maids surrounding him into the small world contained within the ring, and then pushed open the light gate leading to another world.

"See you later, Randolph Carter."

After greeting his investigator friend, who was born from the Inner Universe, Lao Run disappeared into the radiant gate.

Black Vortex Town, on the street.

Like a miracle performed by God, a large amount of dazzling but not glaring gentle light suddenly appeared between Xia Jie, who had stopped, and Tong Hui, who was breathing heavily.

Without any special effects, the radiant light instantly coalesced into a gate shape, from which Lao Run, dressed in a magnificent alien gown, slowly emerged.

As one of the portal effects designed for the web series, the "Gate of Glory" effect is designed to look sacred and pretentious, but it has absolutely no practical use.

"What is this...?"

With his mind and reason restored under the instructions, Xiu Yi had just let go of the hands that were holding his head when he looked up and saw Xia Jie, who had already restrained his humanity, and—the Yuan Universe Lao Run who walked out of the light gate.

Good news: Lao Run is not as abnormal as Xia Jie, so he won't have to face the ancient god directly.

The bad news is still heavyweight.

In Xiuyi's eyes, Run was like a huge walking mosaic, making Xiuyi feel as if his eyes had been hit by strong alkali.

"Oh?"

Lao Run raised an eyebrow, clearly noticing Xiu Yi's unusual spiritual vision. He tried to suppress his own spiritual energy, transforming the completely unreadable gibberish into an abstract painting by Picasso.

After a few more seconds, he returned to normal with Xia Jie's help.

In fact, Shuichi, the character he created, was simply an ordinary person who was more perceptive and clear-headed. He never thought about the existence of Rei-shi High when he was drawing him.

It can only be said that if an incredibly absurd story can happen in a real world that is willing to follow basic logic, then that story almost certainly contains a sufficiently rigorous internal logic to support its wildly imaginative plot framework.

This bizarre multiverse is the kind of world that doesn't follow much logic, but still has some logic to it.

"Can you see me normally now, Shuichi?"

If it were said that Lao Jun, who had already elevated his memory to the level of photographic memory, would not immediately recognize Shuichi and Kirie when he first saw them, he would not be able to recognize them immediately due to the difference between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds.

After observing the ubiquitous vortex phenomenon, even the slow-witted author knew his location and guessed the identities and names of the two people in front of him.

Upon hearing Lao Run's words, Tong Hui, who had just witnessed the miracle of the radiant manifestation, dared not exhale loudly anymore.

After all, she wasn't like Hakimi, whose brain was attacked by code and whose stress replaced thinking; she didn't know when to shut up and back down.

He wasn't some scoundrel in the ninja world. Even knowing that bullying Gaara might lead to his death, he still didn't back down and persisted in bullying him.

She was at least a self-aware, normal person who knew how to conduct herself in front of a powerful person whose personality was unknown.

"Excuse me, are you esteemed deities?"

This time, it wasn't just the wording; Kirie's tone was so soft it was almost as if she were holding it in.

'Wow, such a clear survival instinct; looks like he's not emotionally affected at all.'

Lao Run did not answer, but turned to look at Xia Jie. He had only come by invitation; the one who truly made the decisions here was Xia Jie, the Goddess of Memory.

"Hmm, let me think... You'll be in charge of explaining our origins to them. There's nothing to hide in our background, so you can speak freely. After you're done explaining, you can go back anytime, or you can stay in this world and do whatever you want."

Xia Jie had no intention of telling Tong Hui, "I still prefer your rebellious side." After explaining her arrangements, she turned and left this little encounter behind, heading towards the center of Black Vortex Town, the origin and end of the Vortex Curse—

Dragonfly Pond.

Chapter 133 Entering the Dream of the Vanishing City

The source of the "vortex" curse lies in the underground ruins deep beneath the Dragonfly Pool, a city filled with spirals.

The remaining idealistic power coalesced into transcendental intuition, revealing the essence of the city to Xia Jie in a flash of insight:

"Luoyan City?"

The City of R'lyeh is the name given to the city in Type-Moon, and R'lyeh is the sleeping place of the "Great Old Ones," or, to put it more bluntly, "the great old veterans"—"Cthulhu."

"Wow, awesome, how is it related to the Cthulhu Mythos?"

"Speaking of which, Hellstar is actually quite similar to the Judgment Star, the Great Alarm Clock, and the Outer God Gherros from the Cthulhu Mythos."

The moment Xia Jie thought of the name "Luoyan City," she immediately thought of many more things.

In the special episode "Galaxy" of "Uzumaki", Shuichi discovers the existence of a "spiral galaxy" with a special shape using an astronomical telescope.

Moreover, this galaxy cannot be observed with a telescope outside the town.

Moreover, the location of the spiral galaxy is extremely obvious, but before Shuichi discovered it, no astronomy enthusiast in the town had observed it.

This means it appeared suddenly and was of a magnitude greater than Hellstar.

Furthermore, the series of stories belonging to "Uzumaki" only began to unfold after the Galaxy Saga.

Furthermore, the spiral ruins beneath Dragonfly Pond have a clear cycle of awakening, peak, and dormancy. Every time it "comes to its appointed time," the people living on this land suffer once.

The case is solved! The case is solved!

To put it in more succinct terms, it would be: "Whenever the stars reach the right position, the ruins of the vortex will gradually awaken, swallowing up the entire town on the ground, and then fall into a long slumber, long enough for people to forget the legend of the vortex, at which point the vortex will awaken again."

The seaside, the city of Luoyan, and the starry sky—while not a complete set of elements, it certainly has clear elements of the "King" element.

Just as R'lyeh is the place where Cthulhu dreams, the compatibility between the City of the Dead and the Long Dream should be quite good.

After turning several streets, Xia Jie sat cross-legged by the Dragonfly Pond, took out a long dream crystal the size of her little finger from her pocket, and then—

"Awoo."