Chapter 527

Chapter 527: corruption and Dissipation

To be honest, Lucretia’s mind went blank in that instant – it stayed blank for nearly two or three seconds before she slowly regained the ability to think and understood what was happening in front of her.

More terrifying than falling into a nightmare corrupted by the Sunspawn was suddenly seeing, deep in that nightmare, her father who had returned from Subspace. And even more terrifying than that was that the scythe in her own hands was chopping down toward her father’s neck.

Right now, the scythe had already slipped out of her control. Dim green flame spread along its black blade and long haft. It was as if the weapon had entered another dimension and could no longer be controlled by her. Lucretia stiffly and uselessly kept her hands in the position of gripping the scythe. After holding it in for a long moment, she finally squeezed out one sentence: “Your… your scythe is really something…”

“ Do you always say whatever pops into your head whenever you get nervous?” Duncan finally let go. The ghost?green flame faded as he did. “What exactly is going on here?”

As the fire died away, Lucretia finally felt that the scythe, formed from the power of the dream and the curse, had come back under her control. She hurriedly gripped it, took half a step back, and was about to answer her father’s question when, in the very next second, a wave of danger suddenly surged at her from close by.

The Sunspawn’s “lesser offspring” had finally reacted, and they clearly were not going to give their enemies time to stand around and chat. In the flickering dance of light and shadow within the sunlight, several shadows lunged toward Lucretia’s back.

Lucretia had almost no time to think. She spun around, and the scythe in her hand turned into a long whip entwined with thorns. Yet just as she was about to crack the whip with all her strength, the shadows that had been pouncing at her suddenly froze in midair, revealed their true forms, and dropped to the ground as if they had lost their source of power, thrashing and struggling violently.

At the same time, Heidi, who was barely holding on by controlling several Personality Splits, suddenly felt the pressure around her ease.

She shifted her “self” from one dying personality avatar form into another that was still in decent shape. Then she stared in shock as the black?clad figures around her all collapsed one by one, flopping weakly on the ground like fish being seared by a blazing sun and struggling through their last moments.

The depths of their black coats, made of some unknown material, kept swelling and writhing. Their horrible limbs began to rot and fall apart at high speed. With sickening noises, a foul stench and filthy pus slowly spread out from under their bodies.

Even as a professionally trained psychiatrist, Heidi could not help backing up two steps in the face of this scene. Then she seemed to sense something and instinctively raised her head, wanting to look at the sky – but the instant she started to look up, she forced herself to stop.

The horror she had felt the last time she looked up and saw the Sunspawn was still carved deep into her mind, keeping her from checking her guess.

Just then, she heard the stranger who had suddenly appeared in front of Lucretia say to her: “It is all right. The sky is safe now.”

For some reason, that sentence seemed to carry a powerful force. Even though she had no reason at all to believe it, a strong impression still rose in Heidi’s heart at once: the sky was safe now.

She slowly lifted her head and looked at the “Sun” hanging high above the forest, shining and burning.

That “thing” was still quietly floating above the trees. Countless twisted tentacles and pale eyes piled together like a clump of flesh that had grown however it pleased. Its light was like blazing flame, rising and burning across the surface of that grotesque mass. Yet in the depths of that fire, a faint green slowly spread and quickly covered the surface of the whole entity.

At the moment she saw those twisted tentacles and pale eyes, fear surged uncontrollably in Heidi’s heart. But very soon she realized that her mind had not suffered any corruption from seeing it this time.

The Sunspawn’s corruption seemed to be blocked by the spreading ghostly green light – or rather, that light was corrupting and assimilating the corruption, making it harmless.

The dying struggles and screams of the “lesser offspring” clawed at Lucretia’s eardrums. Those black, almost?human inhuman things were dying quickly under the altered sunlight, dissolving as if they were soaking in strong acid. Confused, she watched this scene and turned to Duncan: “What is happening?”

“ I corrupted their temporary Sun,” Duncan said calmly. “Now, this sunlight is ‘poisonous’ to them. This is something I learned from the ‘Black Sun incident’ in Pland – this kind of residue can only survive under a specific kind of sunlight.”

Duncan spoke with a calm expression, then lifted his head and turned his gaze on the twisted being still floating above the forest.

He thought of the Black Sun he had once glimpsed through the Golden Sun Mask, and of that pale Elder God dying under the burning of the corona. Compared to the Black Sun he had seen back then, the thing now hanging over this dreamscape was clearly much smaller and far weaker.

So… this must be the “Sunspawn” those mad cultists kept talking about.

Now, this Sunspawn was being quickly devoured by the flames of corruption. The light and heat it gave off were being transformed into something that could burn it away. Yet this eerie, terrifying “creature” showed not the slightest reaction of pain. It only hung high in the sky, quiet and silent, as if it did not have emotions like pain or fear at all.

It simply shone and gave off heat, just like… a real Sun.

Yet when Duncan gazed at its pale eyes with his gaze, he still felt that the thing had thoughts. It was thinking. It was watching. It had a purpose and a will. It was not like the dying Black Sun, which had only wanted to extinguish itself, nor like the mad cultists, who only wanted to destroy the entire world.

What was this “creature” thinking right now?

“ What are you thinking?” Duncan could not help asking in his heart.

“ May I go back now?” In the blurred message that came back along the ghostly flames, he heard a voice, calm and gentle. “There is nothing here that I want.”

Duncan’s eyes widened slightly for a moment.

In the next instant, just as he tried to establish more contact with the Sunspawn, a hollow boom suddenly came from the sky. The burning mass of fire seemed to collapse inward, shrinking at once into a small point. A heartbeat later, the ghostly flames that had lost their target burst apart and scattered.

The “false Sun” that had been overlooking the forest vanished.

A dim, faintly reddish light took the place of the bright “sunlight” that had filled the sky a moment before, and the whole forest sank into a dusk?like gloom.

Lucretia’s surprised voice came from the side: “Did you destroy it?”

“ No.” Duncan shook his head slightly and shared the information he had sensed just now. “It left. That was not its true body, only a projection formed by a Sunspawn inside the dream, like a tendril used for sensing. Now it has pulled that tendril back out of the dream.”

Lucretia nodded thoughtfully, but soon she suddenly realized something else: “Wait, what about that Annihilator just now?!”

“ He ran,” Duncan said casually. “While those ‘lesser offspring’ were dying, he was constantly lowering his own presence. Then, when that false Sun in the sky collapsed and faded, he slipped away in the chaos.”

At this, Lucretia immediately frowned and instinctively scanned the forest, now dim as dusk. “Damn… I actually let my attention get dragged away. I should have left a curse on him…”

“ It is fine,” Duncan just waved his hand. “Let him run for a while.”

Lucretia was stunned for a moment when she heard this and lifted her head to look at Duncan: “You… let him go on purpose?”

Duncan did not answer her directly. He narrowed his eyes slightly as if sensing something, then smiled and shook his head. “Either way, he has already seen me.”

He did not pay any mind to the brief change on Lucretia’s face. Instead, he turned toward Heidi, who was standing tens of meters away, nervous and trying her best to make herself less noticeable.

He walked up to Miss Psychiatrist – or rather, to the whole crowd of Heidis – and first checked her condition.

About seven or eight Heidis were covered in wounds of all sizes. Three of them were horribly injured, lying on the ground and flopping like dying fish. Their personality parts had clearly withdrawn, leaving only a few last reflexive spasms. Two Heidis still looked to be in decent shape. One of those stood there with a blank expression, while the other nervously avoided Duncan’s gaze.

Duncan swept his eyes over the “large crowd of Heidis” without changing his expression, and silently sighed to himself. The psychiatrists of this world had truly taken a wild path. When they split their minds, it was even more “split” than actual schizophrenia. Then he walked right past the “Heidi” whose face was tense and whose eyes were dodging, and stopped in front of the blank?faced Miss Psychiatrist.

“ Are you all right?”

The blank “personality avatar form” jolted, and vivid expression suddenly came back to her face: “How did you know…”

By now she had, of course, guessed who this tall, imposing figure was, the one who made people feel endless pressure. She had been nervous to the point of breaking, planning to hide behind a personality avatar form to avoid having to face this terrifying Subspace Shadow directly. She had not expected her trick to fool him for even a second.

“ You use Personality Splits to protect yourself when you are nervous,” Duncan said with a friendly smile. “Although I really did not expect your Personality Splits to be this… impressive. Now I am very impressed.”

“ Sometimes… patients with schizophrenia can be hard to deal with. If you do not split enough, you cannot beat them…” Heidi explained without thinking, then suddenly realized something. “Wait, how did you kno…”

Duncan smiled and raised a hand, pointing at the purple crystal pendant on Heidi’s chest.

“ Strictly speaking, I am the one who gave you that pendant.”