Extra's Death: I Am the Son of Hades - Chapter 790

Chapter 790: Hallucinations
“A bear, huh?”

Neo muttered the words under his breath.

He let out a small sigh and nodded to himself.

“Alright, thank you for your help,” he said.

The boy nodded back.

He didn’t ask for anything in return for rescuing Neo, and Neo stepped out of the hut.

Outside, the village looked the same as the hut.

The place was in poor condition.

Most houses were mud huts with thin roofs and cracked walls.

Neo walked forward and noticed several people staring at him.

Some looked at him directly.

Others peeked at him from inside their homes.

He could hear their whispers even from far away.

“Is he a cultivator?”

“The area where he was rescued from was completely devastated. If he survived a battle like that, he must be one.”

“What if he’s a martial artist?”

“Shh! Don’t say something so ominous.”

They spoke like they thought Neo couldn’t hear them.

No one tried to stop him or approach him.

They only stole small glances as he passed by.

Neo kept walking toward the village exit.

Just as he reached the edge of the houses, the tiny girl appeared again.

She ran up to him and stopped right in front of him.

“Are you leaving, uncle?” she asked.

Neo’s lips twitched.

Being called an uncle hurt his pride a little.

His current appearance was young, at least in his opinion.

Still, he held back the complaint.

“Yes,” he said with a calm tone.

“What?! You should stay!” she said. “We helped you! So you should help us—”

That was when it happened.

Neo blinked.

His eyes opened and shut in a natural rhythm.

But the world changed in that one blink.

The shift was so sudden that he froze.

The sky was no longer blue.

It had turned red and torn, like giant claws had ripped the sky open.

A pungent smell hit him.

Rotting flesh. Blood.

The scent was thick and heavy.

Wails and screams echoed across the air.

They sounded like ghosts crying in agony.

Neo’s body stiffened.

Confusion washed over him.

The village around him no longer looked poor.

It looked abandoned.

Completely dead.

The huts were broken and dark.

Grass had grown through the floors.

It looked like no one had lived here for centuries.

But that was not the worst part.

Every person he had seen earlier…

They were now half-rotted husks.

Pieces of flesh hung off their bones.

Blood fell from their bodies like an endless stream.

Maggots crawled across their skin.

Insects were eating them alive.

Even the little girl standing in front of him had changed.

She wore a deep red gown.

Half her face had melted away.

Neo’s heart pounded.

He could see the empty sockets where her eye had been.

Despite being obvious corpses, they were all moving.

Their limbs dragged.

Their heads twitched.

Suddenly, they all stopped.

Every single corpse turned to him.

Silence spread through the air.

Then, their mouths opened wide.

“The Dao is corrupt!”

Their voices came out rough and broken.

“The Dao is corrupt!”

More joined.

“The Dao is corrupt!”

Some spoke gently.

Some screamed at the top of their lungs.

Some cried while chanting the same line.

A deep fear rose inside Neo.

He didn’t understand why the fear was so strong.

But the words shook him to the core.

His skin crawled.

Goosebumps ran up his arms.

‘The Dao is corrupt!’

The words echoed again in his mind.

Neo gasped softly.

His breath stumbled.

He took a step back and lost his balance.

He fell onto the ground, hands scraping the dirt.

Then he froze.

He looked down at himself.

His breath caught in his throat.

He was also a corpse.

His arms were rotted.

His skin peeled away like dried bark.

His right leg was missing.

The injury looked like a beast had torn it off.

His mouth moved on its own.

“The Dao is corrupt!”

Neo tried to shut his mouth.

He tried to fight it.

But the words kept coming.

“The Dao is corrupt!”

“The Dao is corrupt!”

His voice mixed with the voices of the villagers.

Fear gripped his heart harder.

He tried pushing away from the ground.

But the blood around him spread.

The red liquid grew deeper and started to swallow him.

It pulled him down.

He felt like he was drowning in it.

The villagers closed in. They surrounded him.

The girl stepped forward, her rotten face expressionless.

“The Dao is corrupt!”

“The Dao is corrupt!”

“The Dao is corrupt!”

“The Dao is corrupt!”

The chant grew louder.

It pressed against Neo’s ears.

It swallowed every thought.

He felt his body sinking deeper.

He could barely breathe.

Then—

Everything changed again.

Neo blinked once more.

This time, the world returned.

The sky was clear and blue again.

The cold air brushed against his skin.

The huts looked poor but not abandoned.

He was lying on the ground at the edge of the village.

The girl knelt beside him, looking worried.

The villagers stood where they had been before.

They looked confused but concerned.

“What happened, uncle? You suddenly fell,” the girl said.

“Suddenly fell?” Neo repeated.

“Yes,” the girl said with a nod. “You just collapsed.”

Neo rubbed his forehead.

“It… it was nothing,” he said.

He stood up slowly.

He patted his clothes, dusting off the dirt.

Then he turned toward the north forest.

The villagers didn’t stop him.

They only watched him walk away.

Neo entered the forest while trying to calm his thoughts.

His steps were steady, but his mind was anything but.

He searched for the bear.

At the same time, his mind kept circling back to what he saw.

“It seemed I was the only one who saw that.”

“But what was it?”

He tried to think logically.

“A hallucination?”

That made no sense.

His willpower was too strong.

Even a world with strange laws couldn’t just make him hallucinate and see illusions.

No ordinary illusion could affect him like that.

Even if it worked, he should have been able to tell it was fake.

“So what I saw was real?” he whispered.

That felt even stranger.

Real?

How could something like that be real?

“What did they mean by ‘The Dao is corrupt’?”

Even thinking the phrase made him shiver.

A deep, cold shiver from his spine to his chest.

It felt like someone had told him a truth he should never hear.

A truth that broke something fundamental.

Neo shook his head.

“This place is too strange,” he said.

He stepped over a tree root.

The forest around him was quiet except for the sound of birds.

But he couldn’t relax.

“The hallucination is already weird,” he continued. “But the boy saying there are multiple cultivators here is even stranger.”

Neo lowered his hand to the ground, checking for traces of the bear.

He kept walking.

His senses spread out to search for danger.

He forced himself to focus.

“This place is the Hope Elemental World. It’s called the True Blessed Lands,” he said softly.

He thought of the Celestial Worthy who created this Cosmos.

If that person existed, they must have been a Heavenbreaker like Neo.

So why wasn’t this person doing anything?

Neo, Apollyon, Hades, Daniel, Prime Evil, Mother of Horrors, Eternals…

All of them had caused destruction.

Yet no one had intervened.