The rules said that the hidden room was the root of everything.

Mo Bai understood. Once the dream inside Room 404 was awakened, the dream instance would come to an end.

Holding the Waking Nightmare card, she pushed open the door to Room 404.

She had imagined what might be inside. She guessed that 404 was Gao Siyun's nightmare, and behind the door might be a raging fire, or her dead daughter, or the scene of her body's organs being removed, or even the moment Professor Yang took the heart and failed to save the child.

What she never expected was that behind the door of Room 404, there was actually a hint of warmth.

"Mom, I brought a friend home." The pretty little girl Mo Bai had seen outside the hospital appeared beside her, calling happily into the room.

An intellectual middle-aged woman wearing glasses stepped out from inside. She first smiled at Mo Bai in a friendly manner, then turned to the girl. "Yang Lingxi, introduce your friend to Mom."

Yang Lingxi looked at Mo Bai and tilted her head.

Mo Bai quickly said, "Aunt Gao, my name is Mo Bai."

Yang Lingxi looked surprised. "Your name is Mo Bai? I thought you were called Yang Momo."

Mo Bai's heart skipped a beat, and she didn't dare reply.

The rooms she had entered before had been completely independent of one another. No matter what happened outside, it never affected what was inside.

Yet the terrifying creatures in Room 404 actually knew the fake name Mo Bai had used earlier.

"Yang Momo?" Gao Siyun pushed up her glasses and smiled. "Same surname as our Lingxi. Looking closely, you even resemble our Old Yang a little."

"How could that be? Not at all," Mo Bai said with a smile.

Quietly, she placed the Waking Nightmare card on Yang Lingxi, but nothing changed.

Gao Siyun continued, "Not just like Old Yang. You also look a bit like me. Someone who didn't know better might think you were another daughter of Old Yang's and mine."

Mo Bai wiped the cold sweat from her forehead and said firmly, "Aunt Gao, my name is Mo Bai, not Yang Momo. And I don't look like any of you."

"Strange. I really felt your face was familiar," Gao Siyun said. "Come in and sit down. Make yourself at home."

She didn't dwell on the matter further, and Mo Bai let out a small sigh of relief.

No wonder she had heard a sigh when she'd been pretending to be Yang Momo earlier. That sigh was indeed kind and was helping her.

Yang Lingxi took her hand and led her into the study, then handed her a book. "This is the book you wanted to read. My dad said this book can't be lent out, so you'll have to read it at our house."

Mo Bai glanced at the cover. The book was titled The Curse of Death.

The book told a story called The Empire of Death. In that world, once a person died, they would be marked by the Empire of Death. No matter where they fled, the Empire of Death would hunt them down until they returned to it.

A loving mother died in an accident. When she arrived at the Empire of Death, she was branded with a mark.

The people of the Empire of Death told her that within the city was a massive vortex. All the dead had to enter the vortex and dissolve back into energy to sustain the workings of the world.

Most of the dead were dazed and unresponsive. They couldn't understand speech and couldn't move. They simply drifted aimlessly. The staff said that those people's souls had already vanished, leaving only a wisp of residual energy.

Only a few retained consciousness and obsession. But even those obsessions would soon disappear. Cases like this mother's were extremely rare.

The staff also said that some people refused to die for special reasons, and it was their job to bring them back.

The staff carried a list and were just about to go capture someone.

The mother saw her daughter's name on the list in the staff's hand. The daughter she had given her life trying to protect.

She cried out, begging to save her child, but she couldn't overcome the staff's strength and was pushed into the vortex of death.

She was swept into the mass of energy. She felt no pain, only her soul slowly disintegrating and her consciousness slowly fading.

But perhaps her will was too strong. The moment she closed her eyes, the list in the staff's hand surfaced again in her mind, her daughter's name written prominently at the top. The image kept her consciousness from disappearing.

She wanted to run, to reach her daughter's side.

Perhaps her obsession was too intense that she actually began to run.

The vortex of death tried to drag her back, extending countless straw-like tendrils that pierced into her soul, attempting to drain it dry.

But she used the force of those tendrils to drag the vortex of death along with her as she ran.

The vortex of death refused to let her go, and she refused to be absorbed. In the end, her strength prevailed. She carried the vortex of death out of the Empire of Death and back into the morgue.

Unable to absorb her power, the vortex of death simply merged into her body. Lying in the morgue, she suddenly opened her eyes, sat up, and realized she now possessed immense power.

She didn't understand this power, but she thought it might be able to save her daughter.

First, she condensed a portion of the power into her heart, hoping her husband could give that heart to their daughter.

But her husband was also struggling on the brink of death. Human selfishness led him to keep the heart for himself.

She wept hysterically. After escaping death's threat, her husband returned to her side, took her organs, and promised that he would use this power to save their daughter.

But she still saw the staff of the Empire of Death. They wanted to take her daughter away, to give her daughter's heart to someone else who was meant to survive.

She wept and pleaded everywhere, searching for help. She found a patrolling police officer and told him everything that had happened.

But the officer couldn't withstand the power of the death vortex. He went mad upon seeing her.

She begged for help everywhere, but still couldn't prevent the tragedy from unfolding.

Fortunately, her husband found their daughter in time, snatched back the heart that had been removed, and placed it back inside her body.

The daughter's life was saved.

The family planned to leave the town and move somewhere else to live.

The husband was very curious about the power that had brought them back to life, and he sought out a research institute to study it.

By this point in the story, Mo Bai's brows had twisted together like a knot.

What did this mean? Was the story false, or was the version she had heard before false? Yang Lingxi had been saved, and Professor Yang seemed completely normal. So what happened next?

Just as Mo Bai was about to turn the page, she heard Yang Lingxi beside her going crunch, crunch, eating something. It sounded quite crisp.

After being busy for so long, Mo Bai was getting a little hungry too. She couldn't help but glance at Yang Lingxi, only to see the girl stuffing a finger into her mouth.

Mo Bai: "…What are you eating?"

"Finger biscuits. Want one?" Yang Lingxi held the finger biscuit out to her. Fresh blood was still smeared on it.

Mo Bai forced a smile. "No thanks, I'm not hungry."

"Oh." Yang Lingxi glanced at Mo Bai's left hand and said with a face full of regret, "Why don't you take better care of yourself? You're missing a finger."

To kill Li Ming, Mo Bai had sacrificed her little finger. It had been reduced to ashes in the lightning strike, leaving her with only four fingers on her left hand.

Yang Lingxi's expression read clearly: Now I only have nine finger biscuits left to eat.

So this really was a nightmare.

Mo Bai used Waking Nightmare on Yang Lingxi again, but it still had no effect. She had no idea where the true root of fear in this dream lay.

She could only keep searching for answers in the book.

The book then went on to describe the husband's research findings.

The husband discovered that the power within them was strange, a power with two sides. It was both death and rebirth.

This power was conserved. It only transferred, never disappearing. It could change form, but its total amount remained constant.

When applied to a life or object that possessed the attribute of being alive, it would grant that life or object unimaginable vitality and abilities.

But when applied to a lost life or a destroyed object, it would amplify the attribute of death, spreading death outward.

The husband was a living person. Under this power, he gave birth to another half of life with extremely strong vitality.

But the daughter had already died, so she could only spread death.

As for the story's heroine, she seemed able to suppress this power. She could neither be reborn nor die.

But abnormalities began to appear in the daughter. Living creatures that stayed around her too long would die, and objects she used for too long would weather away into nothing.

Gradually, the town they had moved to began to fill with disease and death. Even corpse-like blotches began to appear on the daughter's body.

The heroine was deeply anxious. One night, she heard a crunch, crunch chewing sound coming from inside the house.

It was coming from her daughter's room.

She quietly approached the daughter's room and looked inside, only to see her daughter eating a bloody, mangled mass of flesh. At the girl's feet lay a small schoolbag.

It belonged to her daughter's classmate. That very afternoon, her daughter had brought a friend home to play, and that classmate had been carrying just such a schoolbag. The heroine had been busy cooking at the time. By the time dinner was ready, the classmate was already gone. Her daughter said that the classmate had left, and she hadn't thought much of it.

She never expected to witness such a scene in the middle of the night.

Hearing the sound at the door, the daughter turned around, and her eyes were no longer human. In a cold voice, she said, "Mom, don't worry. My blood's just gone cold. I need some warm blood to heat my body. Besides, this person is on the death list. I'm just helping the staff with their work."

Behind her daughter, the heroine saw the staff member who had once tried to capture the girl.

He was dressed in a black suit and wore a top hat. When he noticed that the heroine could see him, he removed his hat and greeted her politely.

From that day on, every night, the crunch, crunch sound came from the daughter's room.

The heroine finally realized the truth. Her attempt to defy fate, the countless prices she had paid, didn't save her innocent and kind daughter. What she brought back was a monster.

The man in the black suit told her that she herself had survived through sheer willpower, while her daughter had lived only because of the power of the death vortex.

The daughter fused with the death vortex and took on a new mission. She had to create enough death to become the new death vortex. Once everyone in this town was dead, she would move on to the next town and create new death.

The heroine wept and asked her daughter if she could stop.

The daughter shook her head. "I crave convergence."

It wasn't just the daughter who craved convergence. The husband craved convergence too.

Influenced by the power of the death vortex, the husband longed to obtain the complete death vortex. He continuously strengthened the monstrous entity he had split off from himself. Once it became whole, he would return and devour his daughter.

Likewise, the daughter would do the same. Once she had created enough death to grow strong enough, she would seek out her father and merge with him.

The power the heroine had brought back from the Empire of Death would inevitably grow stronger and ultimately return to the Empire of Death.

In the end, the husband acted first.

He took his daughter away, separating her heart from her body. He buried the heart in a garden and placed the body somewhere else.

This time, the heroine did not stop her husband, nor did she insist on reviving her daughter anymore.

She found her daughter's body and, carrying it with her, fell into slumber in the town where they had once lived.

She hoped that by sleeping, she could stop her daughter from continuing to spread death, and also prevent her husband from finding them.

She commanded the town to forbid the existence of "husband" and "father," using the power of her domain to prevent the two forces from converging.

But even so, she couldn't resist the pull of the death vortex.

The husband had died, and all those who had once been his experimental subjects, those who had gained the power of the death vortex, came to this town.

Convergence was inevitable.

The only way to prevent the death vortex from forming was for a living person to inherit this power. Only then would the power no longer represent death, but rebirth.

Now, that person had already arrived in the town.

Please stop the birth of the Empire of Death.

That was where the book The Empire of Death came to an end.

Mo Bai: "…"

Was Gao Siyun telling her that as long as she replaced Yang Lingxi as an Ultra-Star Rank monster, this instance could be cleared?

Gao Siyun had even thoughtfully revealed the location of Yang Lingxi's heart.

Once she found the heart, she'd probably be able to trace clues to the body too.

Did anyone consider her feelings? She had no interest in becoming an Ultra-Star Rank monster!

As Mo Bai frowned at The Empire of Death, Yang Lingxi's small hand rested on hers. Drooling, the girl said, "Big sister, you smell so good. Can I take a bite of you?"