Chapter 167 — Courting Death

Gao Yang tried to make this talkative cultist volunteer the portion of the situation he knew—the causes and consequences of Gao Yang Cecil's voyage to the Sea of Eternal Darkness all those years ago. Yet the middle-aged man before him suddenly shut his mouth, and only after several seconds did he speak with a half-smile: "Yes, of course I know you will not cooperate with me, and I know you will not answer any of my questions. You are the great hero of seven hundred years ago—how could you, merely because a cultist exchanged a few words with you, calmly trust him and tell him your secrets?

"By the same logic, why do you think I would sit here talking with you, answering your questions one after another?"

As the middle-aged man's words fell, all the scenery around Gao Yang suddenly began to shake violently. The cities of the ancient Gondor Empire started to collapse, the magical dome in the sky split apart, and wave after wave of noise surged into his mental world!

He finally understood where the true crisis lay. He finally understood why a cunning cultist would voluntarily reveal so much information while conversing with him. Though he had been suspecting and guarding against some scheme from the start, only now did he realize what that scheme was.

Something was invading his consciousness! Something was peering into his memories!

"In the dreams of the Eternal Sleeper, even dragons will gradually sink," the middle-aged man stood up, and the round table bearing tea and refreshments dissolved before him into a writhing mass of starlight that gradually faded away. "Mind and consciousness are truly wondrous things. A person relies on them to be a person, yet a person can scarcely control their operation. In a person's subconscious, almost everything runs automatically. Even a legendary figure will expose his greatest flaw here."

Gao Yang felt his memories begin to loosen. An external "reader" was searching for the entry points into those memories. He struggled to control his own thoughts and the memory fragments that began surfacing in his mind like slides, and this control imposed enormous mental strain, so that he could no longer even speak—he could only stare fixedly into the middle-aged man's eyes.

"By talking with me here, you are gradually opening the gates of your memory. Whether you answer or ask, this 'conversation' itself is establishing a connection. Even now—you listen to my voice, you receive the information I transmit—in this process, your walls of will are constantly crumbling. And regrettably, you can scarcely stop this process..." The middle-aged man's smile grew ever brighter, clearly convinced victory was in his grasp. "Ah, your resistance is indeed stubborn, quite befitting your identity as a great hero. But don't you know? The Eternal Sleeper's greatest power is not illusion or psychic attack—it is stealing others' memories and refining them into new power for oneself... and also turning such 'memory paths' into springboards. You will forget this meeting, and after I finish reading your memories, I will leave a teleportation pathway in your subconscious, so that my will may at any time 'descend' into your body... Yes, yes, the image of that pitiful mercenary just surfaced in your mind. Yes, exactly like that springboard. The Eternal Sleeper walks through the world of dreams and thought by relying on such springboards..."

Gao Yang silently organized his memory fragments in his mind, not responding at all to the cultist's provocations. At last, before the clamorous noise in his mind intensified beyond endurance, he completed the final arrangement.

Under the astonished gaze of the white-robed middle-aged man, Gao Yang raised his head, a smile he had concealed for so long on his face. "Are you sure... you want to look at my memories?"

The middle-aged man was taken aback. "You..."

Gao Yang completely released the limits on his mind.

"If every person's world of consciousness has a wall of memory, then my wall is not meant to protect myself—it is meant to protect reckless peepers like you."

Gao Yang stood fully upright, quietly watching the middle-aged man's eyes slowly widen in extreme terror, watching him begin to emit frenzied shrieks, watching his face melt away like wax, watching his body twist and collapse—and even after collapsing into a puddle of blood and flesh, the shrieks still came from empty air.

"You dared to look at a surveillance archive with a minimum of several hundred thousand years of data—do you want your skull or not?"