As long as you have the courage, fierce ghosts go on maternity leave.

A terrifying aura skyrocketed.

The natives within the cycle showed no reaction to this energy, but those who had broken free from the cycle to become enforcers looked up in surprise toward the direction where Alexander was.

"Strange! What’s going on these past couple of days?" One enforcer said, his face etched with confusion.

"Normally, it could take years or even decades for a single participant in the Mist Instance to break through and become a Ghost Emperor. But lately, they’ve been emerging one after another. How many is that now? Just today, there must have been nearly ten!"

Near the cafeteria, the Hell Warrior camp also seemed to sense the anomaly. The gates swung wide open, and squads of Hell Warriors marched out.

"A large number of participants are breaking through to become Ghost Emperors within the city. Something is amiss; investigate immediately!" A Hell Warrior leader, wielding a long sword, shouted the command.

Immediately, squads of Hell Warriors dispersed swiftly, patrolling the entire Cangshan City.

Oblivious to all of this, Alexander had just stepped out of the nightclub, preparing to enter other cycles.

Although he had reached the level of a Ghost Emperor, he was only a junior one and had much room for improvement. Ghost Crystals were naturally better in abundance.

Alexander promptly headed toward the Mingzhu Apartment from the previous cycle.

The last time he experienced the cycle, after Buou’s body from the suicide jump was taken away, several ghostly figures appeared in Mingzhu Apartment. They circled around the rooftop, accompanied by the faint sound of a woman’s agonized wailing.

Alexander remembered overhearing some older women chatting, saying that Buou had married six wives, all of whom had run off with other men, leading him to commit suicide.

However, piecing together the information Alexander had, it was easy to surmise that Buou probably hadn’t committed suicide at all. Nor had those six wives really run away.

If Alexander could repeat what he had done to Dominic on Buou, he could likely dispel the women’s lingering attachments. The rewards would certainly be more than just a single Ghost Crystal.

Yet, when Alexander arrived at Mingzhu Apartment, what he found was a pile of ruins—and among the rubble, a familiar figure with a numbered band wrapped around his forehead.

At this moment, Duplicate #1 exuded a terrifying aura, even stronger than Alexander’s Ghost Emperor vibes by a notch.

Upon seeing Alexander, Duplicate #1 excitedly rushed over.

"Boss! I knew you’d come here first after completing the Mysterious cycle! So I waited for you here after cracking this cycle. Here’s my loot, three Emperor Ghost Crystals. I’ve already used two!"

As Duplicate #1 spoke, he handed over a Ghost Crystal to Alexander.

"How did you manage to do this?" A puzzled Alexander took the Ghost Crystal, asking curiously.

Encountering Duplicate #1 here was not surprising for Alexander. That the other could crack this cycle was also within expectations. That Duplicate #1 could reach the Ghost Emperor realm and even surpass Alexander in terms of Ghost Energy fluctuations was likewise not a shock.

But when combined, these elements bewildered Alexander.

Duplicate #1 had to be among the earliest to enter the Mist Instance. His presence here, the fact that he’d cracked the cycle, and most absurdly, that his power had reached the level of a Ghost Emperor, was altogether astonishing.

According to Alexander’s reasoning, if his assumptions were correct, solving this cycle shouldn’t be difficult.

All he needed to do was use a Mist item to enter Buou’s home, where he would find the real reason behind the cycle—the women Buou had tortured to death. Fulfilling their unrequited desires by torturing Buou in turn would naturally complete the cycle and yield rewards.

However, there was a problem. This Instance had more than one Ghost Emperor. Revealing his identity could risk attacks not just from the vengeful spirits but also from the native inhabitants.

To break through the Ghost Emperor level, one would need at least two servings of Ghost Emperor-level Ghost Food. Alexander had used up all his Ghost Food, even at the Imperial level, for his research.

Acquiring Dominic’s corpse had been a unique circumstance, likely because Zoe knew he needed it.

But Duplicate #1 had entered only this cycle; even if he had allied with Buou’s six wives, their corpses would explode into Ghost Energy the moment the cycle was cracked.

So, where had Duplicate #1 acquired two Emperor-level ghost bodies?

"That’s a long story! I used an item to enter this cycle and unexpectedly encountered the scene where Buou was about to jump off the building," Duplicate #1 began explaining.

As it turned out, events were indeed as Alexander had surmised. Buou was a complete sadist, suffering from sexual dysfunction. His wives hadn’t run away; they had been imprisoned and tortured to death by him.

Upon entering the Instance, Duplicate #1 had indeed intended to sneak into Buou’s room immediately. He wasn’t aiming to break through to Ghost Emperor but rather sought the root cause behind the cycle in order to crack it.

He successfully discovered a hidden chamber in Buou’s room used for imprisoning women, and even found some female body organs that Buou had preserved in formalin.

Therefore, Duplicate #1 formulated a plan. He originally intended to seize Buou while the latter was confused by his obsessions and about to jump off the building, then torture him to death to fulfill the women’s lingering attachments.

But just when he was about to act, an idea struck him. Using a Dimensional Confinement Card, he trapped Buou in an alternate dimension.

In an instant, the six women burst out of the building in a Rampage State, aiming to attack Duplicate #1.

At that moment, Duplicate #1 used a role-playing item right in front of the six women, transforming into a native Ghost Imperial with facial moles.

Then he taunted, "I’ve saved the man; now guess who I am!" With that, he employed his spatial talent and fled.

The six women were now utterly infuriated. Their obsessions and hatred immediately transferred to Duplicate #1, but since they were mere cycle-driven attachments, they couldn’t ascertain his true identity.

Enraged, they chose the simplest method: slaughter!

The Mingzhu apartment complex had even more people than a nightclub. The six women went on a rampage inside the building, indiscriminately killing residents.

Meanwhile, Duplicate #1 trailed behind them, collecting the bodies. The harvest was plentiful.

"You’re... cunning, exceedingly resourceful," Alexander caught himself mid-sentence, realizing his words. He was talking about his duplicate, after all; to criticize him would be to criticize himself. He quickly corrected himself.

"It takes one to know one!" Duplicate #1 grinned knowingly, a shared understanding passing between them.

"What about the other ghost corpses?" Alexander inquired. He had over 1.2 million duplicates; not every one could be as fortunate as Duplicate #1. By his estimate, reaching the level of Ghost Emperor would be exceptionally rare—perhaps fewer than ten among them.

"I’ve experimented on them!" Duplicate #1 responded without hesitation, noting the change in Alexander’s expression and quickly adding,

"I haven’t wasted them; rather, I’ve been conducting tests! Our Unobstructed Social Communication Charm Syndrome talent should be fundamentally related to certain aspects of the forbidden.

If the forbidden are disordered, unconscious emotional attachments, our Charm Syndrome is their controlled, purified version. That’s why we can influence others and even quantify their affections.

So, I’ve been testing whether we can use our talent to absorb impurities from these forbidden elements and refine them into a stable form, like in a Ghost Pill."

"Did it work?" Alexander asked eagerly.

"Well, I did manage to absorb them, just a bit too thoroughly. I didn’t end up with a Ghost Pill, but I did create a ghost crystal," Duplicate #1 explained, pulling out a tiny crystal the size of a sesame seed.

Its energy content was at best equivalent to that of an evil spirit’s Ghost Energy.