Glorious God Throne

Chapter 52

[Painting Spirit [Green] Friendliness: 100]

[Painting Spirit [Blue] Friendliness: 100]

[Painting Spirit [Gold] Friendliness: 100]

…

[Painting Spirit [White] Friendliness: 100]

[All Painting Spirit friendliness levels have reached 100, side quest three [Establish Harmony in One Building] has been completed.]

After dealing with the Painting Spirit-Red, the system, as expected, issued side quest three.

From roommates to neighbors to residents of an entire building, the three side quests progressed in layers, with increasing difficulty.

Fortunately, Bai Yi always adhered to the hardcore principle of making friends with a cleaver, and with the assistance of the bewitching skill, even though there were some minor setbacks, after experiencing two cycles, he still successfully completed the task in the third cycle.

At this moment, a message suddenly refreshed on the system.

[Achievement system has been updated…]

[You have achieved the “Social Little Expert” achievement.]

[Description: Fraud, bewitchment, violent threats, swindling and deception, you are proficient in various social skills. With a useless body that should have been incompatible with art, you gained the “favor” of a group of Painting Spirits, making you an undisputed social little expert.]

[You have achieved the “Mutual Love One Building” achievement.]

[Description: You successfully tamed Painting Spirits of various forms, building a harmonious neighborhood relationship between humans and Painting Spirits.]

[You have achieved the “Conquest Master, King of the Sea” achievement.]

[Description: Through unconventional means, you successfully conquered all attributes of Painting Spirits in this realm. In terms of conquest, the Nightmare Game system is willing to call you the strongest.]

“Don’t all these achievements mean the same thing?” Looking at the achievement information refreshed on the panel, Bai Yi shook his head. “The system’s language library still needs to be more diverse.”

Since he had already gained the “favor” of all attribute Painting Spirits, elevating him from useless to genius, logically, he only needed to practice his painting skills diligently, convert his talent into proficiency and experience, continuously upgrade and add points to his painting skills until there was nothing left to upgrade. At that point, he would naturally have the confidence to obtain the title of “Painting God”.

With the assistance of so many Painting Spirits, he believed that practicing and improving painting skills would not be difficult.

However, this body had another problem, which was severe color blindness. Except for black and white, he often confused other colors, making it difficult to distinguish them. Not to mention being able to mix colors to his satisfaction while painting.

When Bai Yi first entered this character, he had only heard about the color blindness but didn’t have a clear sensation of it himself. But after three cycles, the feeling of color blindness became too obvious.

If in previous worlds, in Bai Yi’s eyes possessing the Rhythm of All Things, everything already looked like an overturned palette, with various messy colors spreading from near to far without any pattern, making people nauseous and dizzy just by looking at it. Now, he could no longer distinguish these red, white, blue, purple, and chaotic colors.

Unless he painted black and white ink paintings, trying to paint anything else would result in a scene too horrible to look at.

In the words of the Nightmare Game system: [Even with the help of Painting Spirits, you can only achieve this level. Your painting talent is not worth mentioning. Except for the already perfected Dark Cuisine skill, no other skill can “surpass” it.]

Oh ho! It even started to be sarcastic.

In response, Bai Yi protested. “It’s not me who lacks talent, it’s this color-blind character. His uselessness severely lowers my level. Could it be that you, the system, are deliberately manipulating things behind the scenes, using this peculiar character to hold me back?”

System: …

[Each Nightmare Fragment instance is randomly chosen by the player. The character after entering the Nightmare Fragment instance is also chosen by the Nightmare Fragment itself. The system cannot choose the instance in advance, let alone choose the character for the player.]

[The system has always been just an auxiliary tool for the Nightmare Game. It is the player who decides how to play the game.]

“Randomly entered Nightmare Fragment instances?” Bai Yi narrowed his eyes. “It’s indeed as I guessed before.”

“The system is just an auxiliary tool, it’s the player who decides how to play the game…” He repeated this sentence, suddenly smiling, “Oh my, it feels like I’ve flushed out quite a few remarkable clues.”

He stroked his chin, saying word by word.

“Before the system appeared, I could randomly enter Nightmare Fragments. After the system appeared, I still randomly enter Nightmare Fragments. The only difference is that after the system appeared, I changed from being forced to being proactive. I can choose whether to enter Nightmare Fragments on my own and can gain benefits from them…”

“Then, can we assume that Nightmare Fragments have nothing to do with the system, and the person truly related to those nightmares is me? Perhaps I inherently possess the ability to enter Nightmare Fragments, but just like the Rhythm of All Things, I can only passively accept it and cannot choose to refuse…”

“…System, does your appearance mean that you further developed my talent for entering dreams, adding a switch that allows me to refuse entering dreams, as well as the ability to benefit from dreams?”

What responded to Bai Yi was silence.

It seemed that the Nightmare Game system either didn’t know the answer to this question or knew but didn’t intend to answer.

Bai Yi, however, didn’t care about its response.

Sometimes, silence already provided an answer.

“I see, I pretty much understand now!” He seemed to have obtained an answer, just pondered for a while stroking his chin, as if he had comprehended some astonishing secret. He no longer dwelled on this question, but instead started laughing “hehe,” saying, “I understand, I pretty much understand it all!”

“…If I already possessed some kind of dream-entering ability, and activating the system was just an enhancement of this ability, then who’s to say the system is definitely a system and not an enhanced version of my ability? I know myself better than anyone!” At this point, Bai Yi’s laughter had become almost reckless. “Hehe, it must be like this!”

In his excitement, he began to gesticulate wildly.

“…Even without the system appearing, my control and exploration of dreams would surely strengthen gradually through daily dream entries. Undoubtedly, someday in the future, evolving from only being able to passively enter dreams to actively choosing whether to enter dreams, from only being able to loop endlessly in dreams to being able to harvest nightmares after clearing them, this would be an inevitable trend.”

He paced back and forth a few times, speaking with a certain tone.

“—Now, it’s just that future skills have appeared in advance in the form of a system, the only variable is myself!”

“—And you, system, should be a product of my fully developed skills in the future. If even nightmares can be turned from false to real, time travel might not be impossible. If nightmares are truly a game, you’re not the creator or operator, but rather a cheat that has seized some GM privileges!”

After making these judgments, Bai Yi smirked again, the corners of his lips curling up high. “Making a cheat to send to my past self, and almost fooling even myself, hehe, as expected of me!”

After a few seconds of silence, lines of text appeared floating in the air.

[—Everything is as you wish.]

[—Your thoughts and desires will surely become reality.]

“Oh my, I’ve suddenly upgraded from player to GM! Although I’m a GM who can’t control the game or choose tasks…” At this point, Bai Yi’s excitement suddenly deflated, “…so, what use is this?”

It seemed that he still had to continue doing the tasks he was supposed to do.

Bai Yi’s face fell again.

Especially when he thought about how the body he was currently using was color-blind, yet the final goal was to become a painting god…

…This was really putting him in a difficult position.

Color blindness was something that even the Painting Spirits couldn’t change.

They could only provide the painter with the keenest talent, making it easier for the painter to capture that spark of inspiration while painting, but ultimately they couldn’t replace the painter themselves, couldn’t hold their hand to paint…

Wait, replace the painter themselves?

…It seemed that it might not be impossible after all.

Bai Yi suddenly remembered the ink from when [Painting Spirit-Ink] was shattered earlier, how it could paint a little boy with just a light stroke in the air…

If he treated the [Painting Spirits] as a summoner’s summons, with the summoner formulating battle plans and commanding the summons to fight. And if he drew the line draft and then commanded the [Painting Spirits] to freely apply layers of color, wouldn’t that be reasonable and flawless?

With the [Painting Spirits]’ aesthetic sense, shouldn’t they be able to easily judge how to paint a picture to achieve the best result?

Perhaps, when the time came, Bai Yi wouldn’t even need to think about the line draft. He could just pick up the brush and use the “Xia Ji Eight Strokes” skill, while the Painting Spirits, acting as summoned little sprites, would use their innate sensitivity to painting to help him outline and color… It would be like how traditional mages still need to hold a staff and chant to summon magical elements, while the great magician Bai Yi would just hold the staff for show, and the elemental spirits would actively help him capture the magical elements, completing the automatic release of magic :).

This move was the legendary “lying down to win”!

…Hehehe.

Immersed in the joy of this mental image, Bai Yi now single-mindedly wanted to find Painting Spirits to practice a few times, temporarily putting other matters aside.

For instance, whether his guess about the system was true, and if it was true, how his future self had achieved this, and why he had decided to deploy the system to the present???

If Bai Yi only needed to follow the process step by step, someday in the future his dream-entering skill would inevitably improve, and he would clear nightmares with his own ability, harvesting nightmare crystals and character cards from the nightmares… Then, why did his future self traverse time and space to deliver the system? Was it merely to let him master in advance the abilities he was supposed to master in the future?

—Given Bai Yi’s own personality, he wouldn’t like such actions of cheating in advance and ruining the fun of the game. He was the kind of weirdo who, even if given the chance to be reborn at a past point in time, wouldn’t want to change the past at all.

—Unless he had no choice but to do so.

Some thoughts just flashed through his mind momentarily. Bai Yi concealed the brief ripple in his eyes and looked at the surrounding Painting Spirits with a smile, extending a sincere invitation to them. “As harmonious and loving good neighbors, good friends, and good roommates, you surely wouldn’t have the heart to refuse my small request, right?”

He let out a long, melancholic sigh, filled with the vicissitudes and disappointment of years of unfulfilled dream-chasing.

“This is a young man pursuing his dream, making his last struggle on the path towards his dream!”

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