Chapter 159: Mountain of Flesh

The dream’s setting was actually quite small, its boundaries blurred, and beyond those boundaries lay “nothing.” Not an infinite void, but simply absence—emptiness.

After entering the dream several times, Yu Xing had formed a deep impression of this. He was stepping into the captain’s dream, and the captain had only opened a small space for him to practice, so the place wasn’t vast—it was all visible at a glance. And at the far end...

Yu Xing had looked carefully but found it hard to describe. After much thought, he could only say it was... nothing.

It was a chaos without up or down, left or right, front or back—almost as if even dimensions had vanished.

The captain said he could turn that chaos into part of the dream since it was his own and thus under his complete control. But in practice, Yu Xing felt it wasn’t so much transforming chaos into a dream as pushing the “boundary” outward to expand the dream’s space.

Later, the captain mentioned feeling somewhat fatigued—more exhausted than before.

Watching the setting sun sink into the distance, Yu Xing thought: maintaining such a vast dream must require immense power. This was definitely beyond what Uncle Oda’s mental strength could support; only a god like Noah could do this.

This was not Uncle Oda’s dream—it was Noah’s. Being in the domain of a deity, one must naturally abide by His rules.

So neither Yu Xing nor Toregia dared to challenge Noah’s temple or Nexus. After all, this was Uncle Oda’s exam, and they didn’t even have admission tickets. If they answered prematurely, not only would Uncle Oda lose points, but their own results would likely be invalidated.

Better to focus, thoroughly investigate Uncle Oda’s situation, then swiftly escape with the intelligence.

With that in mind, Yu Xing looked around for a nearby hillside or cliff. If nothing had changed, Uncle Oda was probably still standing there as punishment. He intended to go meet—well, reunite with Uncle Oda?

As his gaze shifted behind him, Yu Xing suddenly felt his legs weaken, nearly falling from the treetop.

He thought he now roughly knew where Uncle Oda was, even though he hadn’t yet seen a trace of him.

The dizziness passed quickly. Yu Xing grasped the tree trunk, barely steadying himself. Looking up, he faced a scene that “abnormal” hardly began to describe.

What he saw was a vast expanse of writhing darkness.

It resembled a fractal image painted with a mass of excised diseased flesh, obscuring half the sky—a colossal entity spanning at least a hundred square kilometers. Layers of flesh and tumors stacked upon each other, one growing atop another. The tumor’s surface was covered with bulging blue veins, and between these veins were chaotic, jagged cracks. As the monstrous flesh pulsed rhythmically, those cracks tore open like wide, grinning mouths. With each opening and closing, thick black liquid and foam spewed forth in waves.

Perhaps this flesh-mountain hadn’t originally been black, but the black liquid flowing recklessly over its surface made it appear so.

...If this were a tabletop RPG, Yu Xing thought, he’d already have made a Willpower check—and failed. Luckily, his agility saved him from tumbling down the tree.

The scene before him was abruptly split in two: one side bathed in serene, harmonious, warm sunset light; the other a hellscape of black, rotting flesh. Clearly, this corrupted mass shouldn’t be here—unless the great god Noah had changed the exam and issued a new challenge.

That possibility was slim. More likely...

Yu Xing furrowed his brow tightly. He could guess that this creature was probably... an aberrant beast. No one knew what it had consumed after arriving on Earth, evolving into a nightmare-spawning entity within the dream, feeding on fear.

Yu Xing quickly averted his gaze, unwilling to meet the eyes of this massive heap of decay.

Just looking at the abomination sent chills deep into his soul, sparking uncontrollable revulsion and terror.

It was an emotion encoded in the genes—a grotesquely disproportionate, swollen mass of flesh that reminded one of a giant corpse, a rotting carcass. Its chaotic growth suggested death by disease or mutation. The black juices signaled decay, poison, and strong acid—indicators of sickness and death risk. Altogether, it meant inedibility; consumption would cause illness or death.

Yu Xing’s DNA metaphorically flipped through an ancestral manual and sounded a warning—

This thing is disgusting! Not food. Don’t eat!

Who would eat this?

Yu Xing was irritated. This creature seemed born solely to provoke negative emotions in any witness. It looked as disgusting as possible, intentionally.

After lingering a moment, Yu Xing calmed his mind and breath. Amid the black mass of flesh, he spotted a distinct cliff rising high. The cliff’s face was nearly vertical, catching the sunlight and reflecting a metallic sheen—smooth and clearly unclimbable.

Could this be the “high place” Uncle Oda mentioned?

Yu Xing extended his perception slowly, hoping to observe from afar. But the closer his senses drew to the flesh mountain, the harder it became to control the surging revulsion and fear. These negative emotions seemed alive, like sharks scenting blood, surging upstream toward the ocean of Yu Xing’s consciousness.

“...!”

Sensing danger, Yu Xing hurriedly reined in his mind. His ears buzzed, his forehead throbbed, and his vision blurred.

What was this? Was the flesh mountain Noah’s way of enforcing exam discipline? But he wasn’t even a candidate!

Yu Xing muttered quietly to himself. Since he couldn’t rely on mental powers to scout ahead, he’d have to measure the ground with his own feet.

Using his shadow to confirm direction, Yu Xing planned a detour around the side. He wouldn’t even try to scale that sheer cliff—without climbing skills or gear, it was impossible. Even if he managed to scramble up, the cliff was embedded in the writhing flesh mass. Yu Xing wasn’t foolish enough to expose himself climbing a cliff right in front of an enemy.

He jumped down from the tree. The solid ground beneath his feet brought a sigh of relief.

Perhaps it was just his imagination, but the forest seemed darker than before, as if the trees had doubled in density. If the canopy was dusk, then the shadows beneath were nearly night.

That was for the best—the dense canopy blocked the abominable sight that covered half the sky. Out of sight, out of mind.

So, trusting his bearings, Yu Xing pressed forward blindly. Fortunately, the frozen sun in the sky served as a reference point, allowing him to check his shadow’s direction from time to time and avoid losing his way in the forest.