Chapter Sixty-Four: The Mysterious Orange Cat and the Little Girl

Walking up to Hollis, watching as he scribbled a long string of formulas on the ground, the one-eyed man cautiously asked, “What are you doing?”

Hollis ignored him, busy with his work. Only after a long while did he finally stop. Noticing the one-eyed man behind him, Hollis turned to look. The moment he saw him, his whole body began trembling.

“Cycle... It’s all a cycle! The whole world keeps repeating!”

He tore at his hair frantically, his expression twisted, muttering the same words over and over.

“Cycle? What cycle?”

“It’s all a cycle! The Red Moon... the Deep Sea... the Gods...”

Hollis’s tone was feverish, and then he suddenly bolted in one direction. He ran so fast that he crashed into a wall. The one-eyed man, shocked, walked over and found Hollis stone dead.

“Damn, are you poisoned or something? Can’t we just not do this? If you know something, say it before you die!”

The one-eyed man was near collapse—what kind of absurd behavior was this?

Meanwhile, on Xiao Zi’s side, as he stepped through the Gate of the Haunted Realm, he found himself amid a sea of flowers.

Everywhere were flowers of every kind, each with a strange, indescribable aura. Using the Eye of the Blood Fiend to inspect them, Xiao Zi was stunned. Every flower beneath his feet brimmed with enormous anomalous biological energy. Looking closer, he realized that the entire Haunted Realm was saturated with the terrifying emotions of humanity, forming a vast ocean of fear.

Just as he prepared to absorb the energy, he discovered a serious problem: his own energy was locked, unable to absorb these emotions.

Seeing this abundance of terror so close yet unable to harvest it left Xiao Zi deeply frustrated.

But he was never one to let a bargain slip by. Observing carefully, he found that the flowers here constantly absorbed the atmosphere of fear, converting it into energy within themselves.

Yet, these flowers lacked any vital essence.

In other words, despite their colossal stores of anomalous energy, they were merely emotionless reservoirs, incapable of fighting.

This naturally reminded him of his Forbidden Domain.

His Forbidden Domain required storing anomalous creatures to harness their internal energy. However, perhaps because his domain was so powerful, he’d barely used it when several stored creatures had already been drained to death.

But what if he replaced those creatures with these strange flowers...

It could work!

With that thought, he opened his anomalous domain, released the creatures inside, then plucked a flower and placed it within.

The moment the flower entered, the domain’s energy multiplied several times over, far surpassing the previous creatures.

Those released creatures bolted away like wild horses, probably terrified of Xiao Zi.

He didn’t mind; instead, he used the flowers to fill every available spot in his domain.

Still, he was not satisfied.

He glanced at his remaining terror points—more than 1.8 million—and then at his domain.

Steeling himself, he nodded. “Maximizing profits is always the most satisfying.”

When he acquired the domain, the system had told him he could use terror points to upgrade it: for every ten thousand points, the domain’s area increased by two square meters, and one more creature slot was added.

At first, he’d thought the system was cheating him. Ten thousand terror points could have upgraded a skill to LV4, but only expanded the domain by such a small bit.

Now, he thought differently. Once his influence in this plane reached a certain level, ten thousand points were almost trivial.

Looking at the sea of flowers beneath him, he decided to upgrade the domain fully.

After a frenzy of upgrades, his domain could now expand to nearly four hundred square meters, with a hundred and ninety-one slots for anomalous creatures.

Then he began harvesting the flowers madly.

There were endless flowers in this sea; he gathered all he needed in minutes. Still unsatisfied, he planned to collect every single flower and store them in the system.

But as he busied himself harvesting, he sensed something ahead.

Looking up, he saw a little girl holding a fat orange tabby cat, stroking it continuously.

This startled Xiao Zi; his ultra-sensitive perception skill had failed for the first time—he hadn’t sensed their presence at all.

He instinctively used the Eye of the Blood Fiend, but as soon as he activated it, the energy in his eyes went wild, causing him intense pain.

“Who are you?”

He knew the girl could be anything, except human.

Why? Simply intuition.

“Probably the same as you,” the little girl replied, her eyelids drooping, utterly unconcerned.

“Are you an anomalous creature?”

“That’s not something you need to know, meow~”

“Wait, the cat can talk?”

The orange tabby in her arms looked at him with disdain. “Why is a vengeful spirit surprised that a cat can speak? Meow~”

With that, it strutted up to Xiao Zi, sniffed him, and said, “We weren’t planning to show ourselves, but you’re just too greedy, so we came to warn you. These flowers are tied to the lifeblood of the Haunted Realm. Don’t pick too many, or it’ll affect the revival of the Red Moon, meow~”

Then, with a leap, the cat perched on the girl’s neck. “We’re leaving. Don’t let us down, meow~”

Their figures blurred, then vanished completely.

Xiao Zi was bewildered throughout.

What did they mean by not letting them down?

The phrase intrigued him; it probably related to why he had come to this world, and it was likely that the orange cat and the little girl’s group had brought him here.

So the question arose: why choose him?

And what was their purpose?

He shook his head hard, deciding not to overthink. Whatever the case, he was satisfied with his current situation.

If they were the ones who brought him to this world, he was quite grateful.

But since those two said not to pick more flowers, though he felt a pang of regret, he remembered the system’s quest required the awakening of the Red Moon.

If he released the Haunted Realm’s energy and the Red Moon wasn’t awakened, it would be awkward.

Besides, he had gathered enough flowers to use without restraint.

Thinking this, he put down his work and turned his gaze to a blood-red pillar.

He’d noticed this pillar long ago; through the Eye of the Blood Fiend, he could see every flower here constantly channeling energy into it.

It stood in the center of the space, with a floating red gem above it, wound around by black threads.

According to the system’s guidance, this was the source power of the Haunted Realm. All he needed to do was shatter it outside to release its energy.