As the twin horns of the Nightmare Beast tore through the boundary between reality and illusion, the Blue Planet fell into a state of silent riot.
Within this absolute "Dark Night" of divine power, billions of humans simultaneously plunged into a chasm known as The Primordial.
This was not a physical mutation, but a total collapse of cognition.
In the wilderness of the dream, humans discovered with horror that their prideful language, logic, and morality were melting like midsummer snow. In their place rose a viscous, scorching instinct.
The Nightmare Beast's antlers acted as a precision lens, extracting and inflating the Greed, Anger, Ignorance, and Lust buried beneath the shell of civilization. It is specifically targeted at "hypocrites" in reality.
The dreamscapes were pathologically vibrant:
On the African Savannah: A group of suit-clad "elites" found themselves as hyenas lurking in the dry grass.
They no longer discussed stocks; instead, their eyes glowed green with predatory hunger as they fixated on a wildebeest in labor.
They didn't just eat; they toyed with the weakened mother and her newborn—actions born not of animal survival, but of human cruelty.
In the Depths of the Pacific: Once-pampered socialites became tiny fish pursued by great sharks.
The crushing water pressure and the despair of being mere "entertainment" for a predator turned into silent, underwater screams.
This was the first mass "Empathy Synesthesia" bestowed by the Beast God, forcing the powerful to experience the vulnerability of the weak.
Meanwhile, in an island of soft light:
"New Sato" stood in the living room he had dreamed of a thousand times.
The air smelled of sunlight and warm strawberry crackers—the only anchor that had kept his consciousness from dissolving in the sterile, chemical stench of the laboratory.
"Zhizhi, come here," Tian Shuangxin called with a smile.
Zhizhi tried to run to her, to scurry between her fingers as he once did.
But he was trapped in Sato's heavy, clumsy, blood-scented human shell. Every step of his expensive leather shoes on the wooden floor sounded gratingly loud.
As his fingertips were about to touch her warmth, the vision distorted.
The woman's smile froze.
Her eyes, once full of tenderness, became cold mirrors reflecting the face of a monster—Sato's face. The face of the Grim Reaper who had watched the little beasts struggle in agony.
"Who are you?"
She recoiled as if electrocuted. The cracker fell and shattered into dust. Her eyes filled with visceral loathing and terror. "Stay away from me! You bastard!"
"No... Master, it's me! I'm Zhizhi!"
He opened his mouth to scream, but because the soul and the skin rejected each other so violently, only Sato's raspy, heavy breathing emerged.
The world dissolved. The warm yellow walls curled like burning paper, revealing a bottomless void. Darkness rushed in to swallow the only person who had ever loved him.
"Don't go! Don't leave me!"
Zhizhi clawed at the air as a divine force dragged him from the dream.
But in the final second before the dark took him, his right hand underwent a strange transformation—the five fingers shortened and grew fine fur, turning back into the tiny, powerful paw of a rat.
In that void, suspended in mid-air, "he" seemed to have grasped something incredibly tiny, slender, and glowing.
"I can't let go... absolutely, I must not let go."
This was the final thought echoing in his mind before all light and shadow collapsed into silence.
Back in the reality of the hotel room, Zhizhi bolted upright.
His chest heaved violently, and he was drenched in a cold sweat. He gasped for air like a fish out of water, desperately lunging for oxygen.
In his state of extreme tension, his fingers clawed into the bedsheets so hard that the high-thread-count fabric let out a faint, tearing sound as the fibers snapped.
He quickly raised his right hand, inspecting it repeatedly under the dim moonlight. His palm was clean—no crumbs of strawberry crackers, no glowing object.
"Was it just a dream..." he murmured, his voice hollow with a loneliness that seeped into his marrow.
He couldn't remember exactly what he had caught, only the terrifying sensation of almost being abandoned by the entire world once again.
Above the void, the sea of stars hung low.
The Nightmare Beast stood silently by the side of the Beast God. Its heterochromatic horns pulsed with alternating light and shadow, while the orbs upon Its wings greedily devoured the fear and obsession rising from the Blue Planet.
"What thou seest is but the craving of the heart," the Beast God spoke, standing with Her hands behind Her back, Her gaze cold and profound. "And—that which is feared."
"Verily, the Dream is My final mercy unto thee, yet it is the blade that dissects thy soul without pity." She exhaled softly.
Under the weaving of the Nightmare Beast, the dreams became a magnifying glass for all souls: desires were distorted to the point of perversion, terror was stretched to the point of suffocation, and obsessions buried deep within the heart transformed into iron chains imprisoning the spirit.
Her gaze pierced through the cloud layers, ignoring the souls shattering within their dreams, and cast itself toward a more distant rift in the void.
There, a force carrying the stench of civilizational decay stirred uneasily due to this judgment, attempting to slip away in silence.
"Vile creature... how long canst thou hide?" Her voice was whisper-light, carrying the ruthless chill of a cat toying with a mouse.
Divine power rippled outward; flowers, grass, temples, and the Divine Throne rose from the void.
This was the Divine Realm, the sanctuary belonging to the Beast God. Though Her domain lacked ornate pavilions or extravagant jade towers, the drifting seven-colored clouds and the celestial flora at Her feet exuded a nobility that reigned supreme over all existence.
A new ripple surged. The countless silhouettes of beasts stepped, flew, and swam out from the void, blotting out the sun and temples.
In unison, they bowed their heads toward that singular back, their kneeling voices shaking the universe:
"We come at Thy call! Hail to The Great One!"
For the Beast God, the struggles of humanity were merely the inevitable result of karma. What She awaited was the true "Source"—the one who had lurked behind the veil of history for eons.
And She, possessing endless ages, could afford to wait.
At this moment, the Blue Planet was enduring the darkest hour before the dawn. The world had split completely into two extremes.
The vast majority collapsed within their dreams. Some indulged in the ecstasy of being "predators", tearing and biting frantically within the urban jungles, only to wake with bloodshot eyes and a twisted curve at the corners of their mouths.
Others exhausted their spirits in a never-ending flight, remaining curled in corners upon waking, their throats hoarse and voiceless.
However, there were a very few.
Their dreams were as tranquil as a lake at dawn. Amidst the background of bloody slaughter, wild creatures quietly drew near. Foxes, elk, stray disabled kittens... they no longer fled, but instead gently nudged the palms of these few, lying peacefully at their feet.
It was as if an invisible wall had risen, blocking out the blood-crazed lunatics and the splattering gore of the outside world. Inside that wall, it was quiet—no conflict, no schemes—a peace so profound it brought tears to the eyes, making one long to sink forever into this serene world.
In that instant, there was no deception or hierarchy, only an instinct that spanned billions of years of evolution, nearly forgotten by civilization—
Trust.
These tiny glimmers of light scattered across the pitch-black Blue Planet like fireflies.
Although they were not bright, they stubbornly refused to be extinguished, holding their ground just to wait for that breath of wind that would blow toward a new era.