192 Welcome to the Nightmare Wonder

“Ladies and gentlemen, let us present to you the Nightmare Man, are you ready for the horror of your life?” Since Gu Jun’s eyes were fixed to stare forward, he could not tell who the host was but based on what was happening, he understood that the reason the black merchant bought him from the Zoogs was to make money off of him as a spectacle. Inside this strange theatre, there were seated about 300 to 400 audience in strange dressing, many of them wore an expression of suspicion.

“How is this a nightmare wonder?” A male audience in a round hat grumbled noisily, “This is more like a freakshow!”

“That is one hell of an ugly man.” A female audience in purple robe complained to her friend. “And how come his face is destroyed like that? I know someone who had fallen into hot water when he was young, but even he did not look as disfigured as this.”

“Beautiful lady, this is the sign of the nightmare’s corruption!” The host claimed loudly. “We will now instigate the pain, please look into his eyes, you will be granted visions of the nightmare.” Gu Jun could see from the corner of his eyes that a black-robed man was walking towards him with a glittering silver needle. ‘Stop!’ His heart was shaking with nervousness, anger and some fear. ‘Don’t you do anything stupid.’ However he could not make any sound. The black-robed man stopped beside him and poked the needle into his right eye without any warning. The man was very fast and highly technical. He aimed for Gu Jun’s musculus orbicularis oculi, it did not cause any damage to his eyeball but did bring upon a hell of pain. He poked Gu Jun’s right eye and then his left.

‘Ah…’ Gu Jun screamed in his mind. The pain instantly triggered the chaos in his mind, the power of the corruption was unleashed!

He knew that if he did not survive this, once his consciousness was wiped out, he would be turned into a nightmare machine. He’d become a puppet that would only respond to pain and nothing else. These black merchants knew that very well so they did not converse with him at all, for them, Gu Jun was never a human being to begin with…

At the same time, illusions danced around the theatre and the audience broke out in shrieks. The people who were voicing their suspicion earlier instantly had their faces frozen in fear. They saw maggots, broken fingers, plague, guillotine, fresh blood, wilted faces and open graves… Joy was a need, so was horror.

‘I’ve been focusing on ‘cleansing’ but the goal of the abyssal mission is to ‘deplete’ the corruption so digesting it should work as well. Is this an opportunity to complete the mission?’ Gu Jun heard the host announce in good cheer that the next nightmare wonder would be happening at the same time tomorrow. Gu Jun calculated in his mind, ‘The larger the audience, the faster the digestion. This time the audience was only half full, if the theatre was completely seated, the corruption rate might lower for 0.2 to 0.3 percent. If the show operates for 10 times a day, then wouldn’t I be able to digest 2 to 3 percent in one day?! Then depleting the 10 percent corruption rate in a week should not be a problem!’

Surrounded by the audience’s agitated screaming, Gu Jun heard the wheelchair that he was propped on being rolled to backstage.

‘These people are banking on my human consciousness dying so that I’ll be turned into a nightmarish spectacle for them.’ Gu Jun contemplated as he came to the decision. ‘I mustn’t let them know that ‘I’ still exists! I have to pretend that my consciousness has faded away and will not cause them any harm. I have supposedly become an empty shell after ingesting the nightmarish energy, that way they would hawk me out as the nightmare man without any hesitation…’

Right then, he saw the black cloth move and his consciousness immediately flitted back into the sweet dream bubble.

The group of black-robed people studied him and all they saw were the emptiness in Gu Jun’s pair of eyes. The black cloth returned. Sensing this situation, after hiding out for a bit longer in the sweet dream, Gu Jun slipped out from the bubble. ‘Yes, this is indeed my chance. The larger the audience, the greater the digestion. I probably will be able to move again in less than a month.’

Gu Jun rejoiced. The cunning of the Zoogs and the heartlessness of the black merchants had given him a second chance at life. But there was still another problem, could the five sweet dream bubbles sustain him for that long?

They did not remove the machine from his eyes. He could not close his eyes, making sleep impossible. He thus stared at the blackness of the cloth and meditated to recover his mental power. Time seemed to slow down.

The next day, the nightmare wonder show arrived as expected. He was once again wheeled out of the darkness. Gu Jun could hear more noises coming from the audience. It was still the same host based on the recognizability of the voice. “Is it that scary? Or as some of you claim, it was our fake promotion? Is this really something Dylath-Leen has not seen before? Well, see yourself. I bring to you the nightmare man!”

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The scarier the nightmare, the larger the audience. Only by becoming a hotspot at the city would Gu Jun be able to digest the corruption faster. He tried to focus on death scenes, darkening his mood and emotion. When the black cloth was lifted off, he slipped into the sweet dream bubble. He could feel through the bubble, around 70 percent wide-eyed people sitting in the audience, this was almost double the amount of visitors compared to yesterday.