The Last Gentleman-Chapter 294: Falling into a Nightmare

“Hey! Although we agreed to meet in the afternoon, you didn’t have to come at the very last minute, right? Never mind, let’s not dwell on that… Hurry up and get into bed, there are only 10 minutes left before the game starts.”

Facing Catherine’s cordial invitation, Yi Chen merely took slow steps forward, showing no intention to approach the bed.

Just as Catherine had said, with ten minutes—not ten seconds—left, there was still time to lounge, and he began to wander around the bedroom.

His fingers brushed across the tabletop, gliding over one exquisite item after another,

A music box, a carousel box, a clown riding a unicycle, a jewellery box, peculiar paper cuts, novels, and mirrors of three different sizes framed in pink plastic, wood, and metal, respectively.

Soon, Yi Chen identified a problem,

The items, though feminine, corresponded to markedly different age groups.

Moreover, Catherine frequently used ‘we’ to refer to herself, resorting to ‘I’ on only a few occasions, a series of signs that hinted Catherine might be a composite of multiple women, not a single entity.

“What? Are you interested in my toys?

Right! You must never open the locked drawer on the right side of the desk, the third one down. It contains my private toys. Although the lock’s code is written on the cover of the first book, don’t let your curiosity get the better of you.”

“Oh… then I won’t open it.”

Yi Chen turned directly to the other side of the room, with no intention whatsoever of opening the drawer.

Of course, he reserved a portion of his peripheral vision for Catherine, noticing her puffing her cheeks, visibly unhappy.

But Catherine remained in bed, covered up to her upper body with the bedding, with no sign of getting up. Such behavior made Yi Chen think of the once Mister Li, as if she were bound and fused to the bed.

On the other wall of the bedroom, there were many posters, with some even overlapping each other.

Most of the posters were inconsequential,

but Yi Chen still noticed a clue, uncovering several layers to reveal a black-and-white realistic circus poster—an advertisement for recruitment, to be precise.

Focused at the center was the circus’s grand entrance, a herringbone door that, upon prolonged staring, seemed to exert a suction force as if to drag Yi Chen inside.

The slogan beneath the poster was rather bizarre.

≮This circus attempts to recruit female employees, age unrestricted, with no experience necessary. Pass the interview, and become one of us, enjoying three meals a day, a comfortable resting place, and the safety provided by the circus.≯

This kind of recruitment advertisement was clearly problematic,

yet given the current plight of humanity, those with nowhere left to turn, even unable to secure the most basic necessities of life, facing imminent starvation, would cast aside any doubts upon seeing this ad. They might even see this job as a lifesaver, the sole glimmer of hope within their darkened futures.

“Catherine, ‘have you’ ever been to this circus?”

As Yi Chen asked the question, Catherine, who had been relatively ‘friendly’ up until then, underwent an instant, grotesque distortion of her face—a fleeting moment, yet still captured in Yi Chen’s comprehensive vision.

In that instant,

Catherine’s cheeks became lined with multiple wrinkles, the sides of her face seemed to reflect other faces, her eyeballs suddenly sprouted several pupils, tentacles seemed to squirm in her mouth, and a bit of black liquid oozed out from her nostrils.

By the time Yi Chen looked back again, the bed was empty.

Now, only the final minute remained before the game’s scheduled time.

“It seems Catherine’s, and possibly even the nightmare’s, genesis is indeed connected to the circus. These ten minutes were well spent~ Successfully shaking her state of mind, thus introducing ‘variables’ into play.”

Yi Chen did not hesitate;he quickly lay down on the bed.

With the Black Insane Brain, Yi Chen could easily manipulate his brain, plunging himself swiftly into sleep.

Just as he manipulated his brain nerves to enter the sleep state, the bed suddenly caved in, stripping the clothes from Yi Chen’s body, dropping him naked into the abyss known as nightmare.

The act of ‘falling’ brought him directly to the deepest part of the nightmare, with no need to create stairways layer by layer or consume nightmare substances to delve deeper, as was necessary in the power station.

Guided by Catherine, he reached the deepest part directly.

Crack!

His body fell onto the cold ground, but the intensity of the impact did not seem like it was from a high fall, instead, it was more like sliding off a bed.

A brand-new white candle was burning beside him,

The ground around was paved with cold black and white checkered tiles,

Yi Chen quickly got up, picked up the candle, and did not care about his naked appearance;his first priority was to check his physical state and ability to use his powers,

Feeling the normal operation of his Madness Brain and the uniform movement of iron chains throughout his body, as well as the little grape temporarily sleeping in his brain, he then relaxed.

“Speaking of which, is this the center of the nightmare?”

As Yi Chen held the candle above his chest, he saw numerous steel wires hanging down from above, suspending women of various ages.

Some as young as eight, others up to thirty years old.

Their binding resembled marionettes, with the wires wrapped around them, even piercing into the women’s joints, tightening around their necks, hanging them in the air in poses that transcended the limits of their joints.

Their heads were all covered with burlap sacks, each painted with an exaggerated smiley face.

There were so many that the limited illumination from the candle made it impossible to see the end.

“Did I break Catherine’s defense by calling her out? Why hasn’t she shown up to explain the game’s rules yet?”

Yi Chen tried walking in a straight line in one direction, passing suspended women all the way, all of whom were in a state of rigor mortis.

Combining it with the circus poster he saw earlier, he immediately assumed that these women could very well have been applicants for the circus in the past.

After walking for about ten minutes,

Yi Chen frowned and studied the figure approaching with a candle in the distance.

On closer inspection, it turned out to be a giant mirror forming the boundary wall.

“Have we reached the edge? What do I need to do next?”

Just as Yi Chen stretched out his hand to touch the immense mirror without boundaries in front of him, the scene reflected inside suddenly took on a sinister twist—the suspended women began to contort their bodies.

Crack~

One by one, the steel wires snapped.

The hanging twisted bodies of the women fell to the ground one after another, making the same sound as when Yi Chen fell.

Immediately after, the women with smiley face sacks began to twist and crawl on the ground, swarming towards Yi Chen standing before the mirror like a tide.

In the face of such a scene, Yi Chen just stood still, without even turning his head.

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Hundreds of women piled up behind him, with tentacles sticking out from the burlap sacks, intertwining with each other, combining, kneading, compressing, and reconstructing.

Each woman became a small part of the physical whole, ultimately taking on the appearance of ‘Catherine.’

She stood on tiptoe, swept her hands over Yi Chen’s shoulders, and hugged him from behind.

Yi Chen watched Catherine’s crossed hands in front of him and could even see distinct female structures on the fingers, with each knuckle corresponding to two or three embracing women.

“I see, is this your true form?”

“Nope~ What we show you is just a part, if you want to understand us deeper, come inside the body. We’ve already voted, and 73% of us like you quite a lot.”

“Find me some clothes, and let’s start the game right away… If we delay any longer, the gentlemen may come down here, don’t underestimate the strength of the predecessors.”