Chapter 496

Chapter 496: The Last Awakened One

“Ah! Captain!”

A pained groan echoed from behind Zhuang Mian. This time, she had personally led a team composed entirely of her trusted subordinates, those she had nurtured since her early days in the Clean-up Team.

It was precisely because of this bond that they held the unique privilege of still addressing her as "Captain," even as her status soared to greater heights.

Yet now, the cry of "Captain" was laced with an unbearable agony.

Zhuang Mian turned to face the young man who had been by her side since the previous year, scarcely missing a single mission:

“What’s happening?”

“My head… it’s throbbing. I don’t know why. I can’t make sense of what I’m saying…”

His eyes began to redden, and his words became fragmented and incoherent. Zhuang Mian swiftly glanced at another of her subordinates:

“Captain, there’s something inside my head…”

Before he could finish, the Clean-up Team member’s expression froze entirely, and he collapsed forward.

Zhuang Mian hurried to support him, simultaneously activating her ability to draw him into a dream, taking advantage of his disoriented state.

In the dream, Zhuang Mian encountered her subordinate, who, though weakened, had not lost his rationality:

“Ning Lu, are you feeling unwell?”

“Captain?”

The Clean-up Team member seemed startled by Zhuang Mian’s presence, yet the dreamscape made it all feel strangely natural.

“Something feels off. It’s like there’s a voice in my head, spouting nothing but negativity.”

“And now?”

“Now?”

The spiritual body of the team member paused for a moment before replying:

“Now it’s a bit garbled, maybe the signal’s weak.”

“Don’t listen to it. Just rest.”

“Oh, alright, understood, Captain. You should get some rest too.”

The team member, sensing nothing out of the ordinary, exchanged the usual pleasantries before slipping into a deep slumber.

The interaction between their consciousnesses was fleeting, and in an instant, Zhuang Mian’s awareness snapped back to reality.

She was beginning to grasp the ordeal these individuals were facing.

A consciousness had infiltrated Hope City, corrupting them from within.

According to the intelligence shared among the followers, this consciousness might be one of the Supreme Will—Lachesis, the entity that governed erosion.

Zhuang Mian swallowed hard but quickly steadied herself.

She confronted a middle-aged man charging toward her and, with a smile, shouted:

“I’ve seen through your disguise, Lachesis!”

With a powerful punch, Zhuang Mian channeled the intense pain to plunge the attacker into a deep sleep.

The painful expression quickly faded from his face.

"Just a mere consciousness, and you dare to play tricks here?"

Zhuang Mian knocked down all five of her subordinates who had come with her, while the workers around her picked up tools and rushed towards her like zombies.

Zhuang Mian found herself in a factory. Though she had not fully figured out how to combat the threat, she did not stop mocking them as she tried to escape:

“You are just one of three consciousnesses. If that can be bragging material, then I was an emperor in a dream! Shouldn’t you bow down to me?”

Although Zhuang Mian didn’t know what connection there was between the two, she understood that in a banter battle, logic came after aggression.

She climbed onto an unfinished production line, distancing herself from the surging crowd below with the help of the mechanical arms:

"However, I remember Mr. Speaker saying that you don’t understand what an emperor is, nor can you dream like humans.

"He said he once invaded your spiritual world, where there are no dreams, nothing at all, just desolation."

By knocking down several pursuers and dragging them into the dream, Zhuang Mian continued to run:

"So, you can’t dream at all; you’re just a collection of memories. I wonder if you even have a ‘self’?"

Zhuang Mian jumped onto the roof of the factory and loudly mocked the approaching crowd:

“You, are, truly, pathetic!”

The next moment, Zhuang Mian felt an unprecedented mental shock. This impact was formless and intangible, yet in the realm of the mind, it felt as heavy as a ton.

Even Zhuang Mian, whose abilities leaned toward dreams and mental strength, felt immense pressure.

She forced herself to withstand the cognitive disturbance while continuously knocking down her pursuers, starting to think of a strategy.

Her abilities did indeed provide passive resistance against the erosion, but defeating Lachesis by simply putting people into sweet dreams wasn’t fast enough to keep up with the speed of collective hysteria spreading.

Facing Lachesis’s aggressive invasion, Zhuang Mian realized she could only maintain her sanity for no more than five minutes.

She had just completed her report on this sudden incident, and Arthur and the followers would definitely respond appropriately, but Zhuang Mian believed she could play a bigger role in this situation.

Where should she start?

During her descent down the factory’s side safety ladder, Zhuang Mian began to ponder this question.

All along, she had disguised her abilities under the power of the Great Memory Restoration Technique.

Whether it was the Public Security Team or the Clean-up Team, people only knew that Zhuang Mian had a unique interrogation method, but they were completely unaware of its secrets.

Even those who speculated did so in the direction of something similar to a psychologist’s hypnosis, rarely connecting her ability with dreams.

But Zhuang Mian knew that her abilities had always been related to the realm of dreams—her chaotic dreams to gather information, her waking dreams to review memories, her suggestion to implant clues were all rooted in dreams.

Even now, the method to counter Lachesis’s erosion was to put people into dreams, rendering this consciousness that lacked relevant abilities helpless.

But the key to all this lay in one word—opportunity.

Entering a dream requires an opportunity. For psychologists, it might involve small techniques used during hypnosis, while for Zhuang Mian, it could be the strong punch when the surveillance cameras were out of power.

But anything related to dreams cannot escape the so-called "opportunity," and that’s why Zhuang Mian continuously swung her fists, creating chances for these pursuers to fall asleep and resist Lachesis.

So, what better opportunity, or a more universal one, could work with her abilities to make a larger number of people fall into deep sleep and ensure the plan’s success?

As Zhuang Mian ran, she reached a narrow corner, and only two or three pursuers remained behind her.

She began her experiment.

“Smack!”

The Clean-up Team Captain slapped a lifeless worker on the left cheek, briefly restoring clarity to his murky pupils.

Taking this chance, Zhuang Mian put him to sleep.

But this had merely simplified from a punch to a slap, and from intense pain to a momentary ache—it was still very tedious before such a large sample size.

Not enough!

“Look into my eyes!”

Zhuang Mian grabbed an enemy and forced him to lock eyes with her.

With a small-scale mental pressure, she succeeded once more, further simplifying the opportunity.

Not enough!

Zhuang Mian climbed to a higher place and looked at the fanatics chasing her. She unleashed her mental strength and abilities without reservation, creating a "domain" that many area-effect superpowered individuals could produce.

Even knowing she would end up in pieces if she failed, Zhuang Mian didn’t care—

Even if she died, her friends would learn from her death to solve this problem.

But if she succeeded, Lachesis’s assault would be thwarted!

With that thought, Zhuang Mian had no more hesitation. She gripped a nearby iron pipe to steady herself while waving her other hand at the crazed mob below as if they were her fans.

“Friends!”

She shouted, her voice bright:

“It’s time to sleep!”

The voice was an opportunity.