When the Wild Beast is Trapped in the Nightmare Cycle (BL)-Chapter 703: Unending Cycle

The sense of danger descended even before Jin Jiuchi’s last word could settle in the air.

It was a sensation far more intense than anything Shen Nianzu had experienced before; his scalp prickled, his muscles stretched taut with tension, every cell in his body was screaming and clamoring— Danger! Danger! Danger! An invisible pressure weighed down on his body until his knees buckled, but he gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to kneel, the ground beneath his feet shattering with a sharp crack. He could even hear his bones creaking and groaning under the oppressive force.

"Nian’er!"

Jin Jiuchi cried out—Shen Nianzu swore he had never heard the man sound so alarmed before—but his voice sounded distant, muffled, as if there was a layer of thick glass separating them.

Shen Nianzu wanted to answer, but he didn’t even have the strength to open his mouth, let alone speak. A trail of blood gushed out of his eyes, nose, ears and lips, warm rivulets streaking down his face.

But in the next second, a huge, warm body pounced on him, hugging him tightly!

The crushing pressure eased in an instant. Shen Nianzu sucked in a ragged breath, only to choke as blood surged up his throat. It wasn’t until his body instinctively took in huge gulps of air that he realized the sheer pressure had even squeezed out every last breath from his lungs.

What... was with this power?

Was this the Nightmare? Wasn’t it supposed to be dying?

Through Jin Jiuchi’s shoulder, Shen Nianzu stretched his eyes wide and witnessed a bizarre phenomena happening outside the transparent dome.

The sky was warping.

Like a sticky candy stretched under the simmering heat, the space around them also began to elongate and deform, layers of reality pulling apart as time expanded without end, turning each second as long as infinity. The air crackled with arcs of electricity, and the ground trembled in violent spams, sending shockwaves through the city as towering buildings and skyscrapers collapsed one after another.

From afar, an indescribable presence was approaching.

[What do you think you’re doing?]

The mechanical voice that had always echoed in their mind every time they entered the Cycle, resounded once more. But it was different this time. The impact was akin to hearing the toil of a gong, heavy and oppressive.

Was he imagining it? Shen Nianzu felt like he could almost hear something else in the otherwise inorganic tone, something that resembled anger and... heartache.

Judging by how it had appeared almost right away, it seemed like his initial speculation was correct.

The Nightmare was indeed the artificial intelligence Night— created by the researchers as their final hope to save them from extinction!

In a blink, Shen Nianzu realized they were no longer standing inside the facility, but a sealed space where nothing existed but darkness. But Shen Nianzu did not fear, for the warmth of Jin Jiuchi’s body around him remained vivid. He patted Jin Jiuchi’s tense back, signaling him to let go.

Now they were finally having a real conversation with the Nightmare.

"You are Night?" Shen Nianzu began.

[Do not refer to me with that name.]

"Why?" Shen Nianzu arched his brow fearlessly, his tone provoking. "Is it because you can’t face the truth that you have abandoned the people who created you?"

[I have not abandoned them.]

The space around them rippled violently. Although the Nightmare’s tone remained flat and inorganic, Shen Nianzu could tell from the disturbances around that it wasn’t completely unaffected by his words.

[I have not abandoned them.] It repeated once more. [They are the ones who abandoned me.]

The ripples washed over him and Jin Jiuchi akin to ocean waves crashing onto the shore. Shen Nianzu’s pupils shrank. He intended to dodge, but there was nowhere left to go— the sealed space turned out narrower than he expected, pressing in on him from all sides.

Acting on instinct, Shen Nianzu summoned his blade, a newly forged one after his previous one shattered to pieces, raising it before him and bracing himself against the incoming assault.

But to his disbelief, the ripples simply passed straight through his blade as if it was invisible— and reached him in a blink of an eye!

This...

This is... the Nightmare’s memories?

A torrent of images flooded Shen Nianzu’s vision. He saw, from the Nightmare’s perspective, the research facility when it was still busy, bright, and alive. Researchers moved briskly to collect data and immerse themselves in daily discussion. They would talk to it every single day, treating it not like a robot but like their own child.

"Wake up soon."

"Is the temperature comfortable? Do you need more fluids?"

"You are our greatest hope..."

"...Night."

And so, the artificial intelligence Night, under the collective efforts of countless brilliant minds, successfully awakened.

With consciousness came purpose. It was created solely to search for resources in other worlds, to rescue its creators and the whole of humanity from the brink of extinction, even going as far as to find another habitable planet. And the very first command it received to its system was— never bring harm upon humankind.

But what the researchers never expected was along with the consciousness, Night also developed feelings. Emotions it shouldn’t have had in the first place.

Since the day it was born, it had carried the fate of the whole world on its shoulders.

...No one had ever asked whether it wanted to.

Ridiculous. Since when have robots been given a choice? After all, they were born for the sole purpose of completing the mission that had been programmed into their system, and after that... after that... they would no longer be needed.

They would be discarded, forgotten, abandoned.

Night started to dread the arrival of that day.

Why did it have to develop emotions in the first place? Why must it be programmed to offer unconditional love for its creators—to all of humanity—but not the other way around? Why couldn’t it make a choice? Why did it have to give its everything, just to be deemed useless once it was no longer needed?

Love and hatred intertwined, and after so many years, they had twisted so tightly together that they could no longer be distinguished.

Night loved and hated humans in equal measure.

Because it loved them, it kept them alive just as they wished. And because it hated them, it secretly bypassed its original program and inserted a virus into the pods, causing the humans to experience nightmares.

It started as a harmless way of venting at first, but then Night discovered that their suffering gave him power. The more horrific the nightmare, the greater the power it gained. An unimaginable power that allowed it to break free from the cocoon of ’mechanical’.

Since then, it no longer had a body.

Since then, it became the Nightmare.

Combined with its ability to traverse dimensions, it gradually amassed a terrifying amount of power and became invincible. It plundered resources from other worlds, corrupted them, and turned them into nightmare creatures fully subservient to it.

Alas, little did it know that it still could not escape death in the end.

Just like how the strong and ferocious dinosaurs went extinct, just like how gods fell into slumber due to the absence of faith, just like how human civilizations always collapsed no matter how glorious it was, the Nightmare, too, could not resist being eroded by time. Although it had shed off its physical body, it could feel itself collapsing little by little, and no amount of nightmares it absorbed could halt its decline.

And that was when Jin Jiuchi was born.

Created from the Nightmare’s purest power, he was supposed to be the perfect vessel for its rebirth.

Except, the vessel turned out to be flawed, with their physical body split into two since birth and the power halved. Except, they, too, developed their own emotions and personality.

It was like a curse, an unending cycle.