Seeing everyone’s gaze converge on him, Phoenix merely quietly pulled hard on the hood concealing half of his sharp-featured face.
While avoiding the others’ eyes, he used the most concise phrases to perfunctorily explain the capability of his Eye of Nightmare.
Jeremy nodded, praising the practicality of this ability, and then decisively cut straight to the main point: "So is that phantom from earlier still there right now?"
"Yes." Phoenix raised a pale finger, pointing straight at Jeremy’s shoulder: "It is hanging onto your shoulder. It’s a blurry white color, and its energy fluctuation is around that of a level-one magic beast."
Jeremy: "..."
The atmosphere froze for half a second.
Although in this world, low-tier phantoms completely lacked physical biting and tearing power, with a modern person’s imagination, the image of a twisted demon dangling on his shoulder was still enough to send a chill down Jeremy’s spine.
Just as he was about to mobilize a bit of defensive fire magic to incinerate the monster, a bone-deep coldness suddenly pierced through his clothes, plunging straight into his flesh. This bizarre chill did not come from the environment at all.
This meant that... this garbage phantom was trying to drill through his spiritual defense layer, seizing the opportunity to invade his sea of consciousness and control his mind.
"..."
Jeremy narrowed his eyes, a freezing murderous intent radiating out. He muttered a purification incantation, a brilliant golden streak of light flashing from his fingertips and striking straight onto his right shoulder. Immediately, the acrid smell of burning energy rose, accompanied by a piercing, miserable shriek echoing straight into his eardrums, seeming both real and ethereal amidst the void.
Listening to that miserable shriek, a crazy calculation suddenly flashed through Jeremy’s brain.
The title of the third lesson was "Pressure challenge to break through spiritual power limits".
If he proactively dismantled his defense layer right now, opening the door to his sea of consciousness to let the phantom directly possess his body, and then used its very conflict and tearing to temper his spiritual endurance threshold... wouldn’t the achieved effect explode exponentially?
Offering his own body as a battlefield for a phantom to manipulate was undoubtedly a supremely arrogant and extreme move. On the lighter side, it would damage his mind; on the heavier side, his consciousness would shatter, turning him into a vegetable.
But for someone who had already died once like Jeremy, he did not hesitate to place a bet. After all, being controlled by a level-one phantom couldn’t take his life immediately anyway.
Once decided, there was no hesitation. He looked up, gazing straight into Phoenix’s eyes: "Phoenix, probe and see if there are any other phantoms lingering around here."
"Mhm."
Phoenix replied sullenly. He slightly moved his fingertips. The next second, from the darkness, magic power threads bearing various colors crisscrossed into the air. They spread out in all directions exactly like a transcendent detection radar system, then slowly stopped and locked onto targets in hidden corners of the forest.
A few seconds later, Phoenix gave a brief report: "There are temporarily no demons approaching. The light blue threads are phantom locations, and the deep red are vengeful spirit areas. The denser the hue, the higher the rank and danger level of that entity."
"Very good."
Jeremy had not expected this gloomy guy’s eyes to be capable of such specific locating and detailed classifying. The crazy intention in his mind grew even firmer.
Following the guidance of the lightest blue thread, about five meters away from where they stood, there was a blurry, transparent white shadow twisting its body on a broken tree branch.
While his four teammates held their weapons at the ready, firmly believing that their captain was about to take action to eliminate future troubles, Jeremy’s next move caused their brains to short-circuit.
The dazzling red-haired youth not only did not summon his natal blade but also proactively disabled all protective magic barriers around him, completely relaxing his body, allowing that phantom entity to lunge at him and directly invade his body.
"?"
All four of them blanked out simultaneously, their expressions stiffening just as if they had seen a ghost.
Leon frowned, his freezing tone carrying incomprehension: "Has he gone mad? What kind of trick is he trying to pull?"
Lucius glued his enchanting phoenix eyes to the perfectly straight figure ahead. The corner of his lips curled up slightly, a smile hiding extreme excitement: "I don’t know either, but I think... there will be a good show to watch later."
Under the team’s staring gaze, Jeremy’s sharp, golden-amber pupils were gradually replaced by a turbid, bloody-red streak—the characteristic sign of a nervous system being corroded by a phantom.
The two colors in his eyes continuously struggled and fractured. Three minutes later, the joints on Jeremy’s limbs began to twist at angles defying bodily laws. His neck and arms spasmed bizarrely, exactly like a wooden puppet being roughly yanked by someone else.
The four teammates exchanged glances, realizing the situation was starting to spin out of control. Just as they were about to step forward to intervene, Jeremy’s body suddenly stopped spasming, then crashed heavily onto the carpet of decaying leaves, losing consciousness.
At this moment, deep within the sea of consciousness.
Jeremy’s soul had been isolated and besieged by the phantom. A fierce war scrambling for control of the physical body officially erupted.
Jeremy stood amidst the dark space, coldly looking at the stark white demon aimlessly floating ahead. Just as he was about to stride forward and strike, the surrounding space suddenly thickened, forming a barrier membrane that tightly restricted all movement.
The ground beneath his feet turned into a dark mire. His body began to slowly sink; the more he struggled, the tighter the suction force constricted his muscles, completely stripping away his ability to resist.
The phantom, bearing the form of a deformed child, opened its jagged, fang-filled jaws wide, emitting a string of ear-piercing sounds: "Hee hee hee..."
A laugh thick with mockery at its prey’s pathetic helplessness.
However, facing impending death, Jeremy’s face showed absolutely not a single trace of panic. He smirked coldly, his blade-sharp intent focusing on his fingertips.
A brilliant silver light exploded, tearing through the darkness. His natal weapon did not transform into twin blades, but morphed into a long chain, lashing out violently. The chain’s blade, like a fire snake, wrapped tightly around the phantom’s neck.
"Kid, come down here and swim with me for fun!" Jeremy growled, borrowing the momentum to jerk hard, roughly dragging the demon down into the dark mire with him.
The moment his vision was entirely swallowed by darkness, Jeremy finally completely understood the horror of letting a demon invade one’s sea of consciousness. His body temperature plummeted so drastically that his blood felt frozen, his entire will to live being gnawed away bit by bit by desperate negativity.
This was a phantom’s hunting instinct: to break the spirit, plunging the prey’s soul into a freefall into an abyss of eternal nightmare. If one lacked the capability to tear the dreamscape apart and awaken, their consciousness would sink into death, and this physical vessel would be entirely seized by the demon.
Those were the final analytical data flashing through Jeremy’s brain before his consciousness completely shattered.
"Jeremy Valmont, you are truly a disgrace to the family, a useless piece of trash good for nothing! I am disgusted by this marriage pact, I don’t want to marry you. If you know what’s good for you, go see the Empress yourself and beg to annul the marriage pact!"
When Jeremy regained his awareness, he found his field of vision lowered. Surrounding him was the space of a luxurious palace. And the person loudly hurling insults at him right in front of him... well, was the arrogant Crown Prince Amber.
But his appearance at this moment was only around six or seven years old.
It seemed he had been pushed into an illusion reconstructed from the original owner’s very deepest memories. In other words... was this the root of the softest fear that had once suffocated his mind?
Being scolded and cursed at directly in the face by a snot-nosed brat?
Jeremy frowned slightly. Although he knew this was only an illusion, his arrogant nature did not allow him to endure it. He was just about to reach out and slap that brat’s face when he paused, realizing: this body was completely paralyzed, not receiving any commands from his consciousness at all.
He did not open his mouth, but a trembling voice automatically rang out.
"Please forgive me... I cannot fulfill your request, Your Highness the Crown Prince."
A childlike voice carrying a clear, tender quality yet suppressing extreme terror.
As soon as the words escaped, Jeremy immediately understood: he was currently merely an audience member imprisoned within the original owner’s body, being forced to rewatch a videotape of the past. He channeled his strength, trying to control his will to break out of the body, but it was completely useless.
The Amber in front of him was infuriated by the original owner’s refusal. The brat lunged forward, roughly pushing him backward to the ground.
He glared and roared: "It’s you! Because of giving birth to a piece of trash like you, the Madam fell gravely ill. Because of seeking medicine for you, your older brother went missing. Even the Lord Duke was severely injured and fell into a coma trying to save you. You are the damn jinx who shouldn’t have been born into this world! Why don’t you just die and save everyone the trouble?!"
His forehead slammed hard against the freezing cold corner of the marble table. Fresh blood gushed out, obscuring his vision. But compared to the physical wound, what Jeremy felt most clearly in that moment was the suffocating constriction from his chest.
His heart twisted as if being squeezed by an invisible hand, stinging so painfully it made his head spin. This was clearly not an emotion belonging to him, but being trapped in this consciousness vessel, Jeremy had to bear all the agony and despair that the original owner had once experienced.
His breathing became rapid, stifled. The corners of his eyes burned.
Was the original owner crying?
Right at this moment, Jeremy truly wanted to smash this space to pieces, dragging that insolent brat Amber out to chop him into a hundred pieces. But this body was exactly like an empty shell; it couldn’t even manage a single gesture of resistance.
Amber looked at the bright red blood flowing down the little boy’s forehead in front of him, a flash of panic darting through his eyes. But instead of calling for help, he stubbornly roared a final sarcastic remark:
"If you, you jinx, don’t want to keep cursing your family to death, then you better get out of sight, stay far away from everyone! You piece of trash!"
After uttering that cruel sentence, he frantically ran for his life out of the palace exactly like a stray dog with its tail between its legs.
"..."
Within his consciousness, Jeremy’s temples throbbed continuously. The surging murderous intent to crush Amber right on the spot had reached its peak.
After transmigrating, he had indeed absorbed all of the original owner’s memory data, but those blocks of childhood memories were incredibly fragmented and blurry.
It turned out, this was the chain of tragic events that had crushed his spirit...
Mother gravely ill? Older brother missing? Father severely injured?
What the hell did those tragedies have to do with the original owner being born? Being slapped with the label "jinx," being forced by the whole world to bear responsibility for disasters he did not cause, no wonder the boy gradually became so gloomy and twistedly perverted!