Inside the dreamscape, the pink-hued hot spring hotel had morphed into Tang Monk's makeshift lecture hall.

  Two blurry figures—clearly dragged in as forced labor—were frantically setting up a sound system that looked like an antique on a giant tatami mat. One had a hairy face and a thunder-god beak, the other had a pig’s head and massive ears.

  "Master, the speakers are rigged! Mic check... testing, testing? One, two, three. Who's the best on the Journey to the West?"

  Zhu Bajie (Pigsy) huffed and puffed as he handed a glittering golden microphone to Tang Monk. Immediately after, he used his massive ears to plug his head, backing away with a look of sheer terror on his face.

  "Big Brother, run! The Master is winding up his Ult! This 'Tightening Spell 2.0' isn't a joke!"

  Next to him, Sun Wukong (Monkey King) was even more decisive. He somersaulted onto a cloud, hovering in mid-air, and pressed his palms together in a mocking bow to Tang Monk:

  "Master, Old Sun just remembered that Daoist Oddity bought a new batch of peach-flavored sunflower seeds. I’m gonna go help him taste-test! You take your time chanting, don’t strain yourself! Pigsy, let's bounce!"

  With a swish, the two top-tier guardians vanished like cats whose tails had been stepped on, turning into two streaks of golden light that pierced the dream barrier and fled the scene.

  Leaving John all alone, sandwiched between Tang Monk and a horde of predatory electronic succubi, holding an unsigned organ donation form with a look of utter bewilderment on his face.

  "They ran?!" John was dumbfounded. "Aren't they your bodyguards? How could they just dump you here?"

  Tang Monk looked at John with a benevolent gaze, the kind one uses when looking at a wild monkey that hasn't been domesticated yet.

  "Do not blame them, Donor. Although Wukong and Bajie possess great magical powers, their 'Spiritual Bandwidth' is somewhat lacking. They cannot comprehend the beauty of Mahayana Buddhism, so they can only do menial labor in places that don't require brains—like Oddity's place."

  He cleared his throat and blew into the microphone.

  SCREECH—

  A piercing feedback loop nearly shattered John's eardrums.

  The surrounding succubi weren't scared off. The OL Secretary was enraged; the data-fog behind her surged, turning into countless tentacles attempting to encircle Tang Monk.

  "You dead bald donkey! You dare ruin my business?" she shrieked. "Get him! Tear his mouth off!"

  "Amitabha."

  Tang Monk smiled faintly. It was a holy smile that somehow caused one's Sanity Points to plummet. He slammed his gavel (which was actually a bar of dream-soap) down.

  "Music! Hit it!"

  The background music kicked in. It wasn't solemn Sanskrit chanting, but a rhythmic, high-tempo track that sounded like a club remix of the Great Compassion Mantra.

  Tang Monk raised the microphone and activated his God-tier Passive Skill: [Infinite Nagging].

  Round 1: VS. Predatory Loans (The OL Secretary)

  Countless loan contracts shot toward Tang Monk like flying knives.

  Tang Monk didn't even move. He simply opened his mouth, and his speech speed instantly ramped up to twenty words per second.

  "Female Donor, you are fixated on appearances. The Diamond Sutra says: 'All composed things are like a dream, a phantom, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.' This so-called 'whole world' of yours is nothing but a pile of data waiting to be formatted. Your so-called 'interest' is a delusional desire to suck marrow from bones!"

  "Look at this contract of yours. The font is too small, the formatting is non-standard, and you use so much jargon to cover up the essence of predatory loan sharking. In Buddhist law, this is called 'False Speech,' punishable by the Hell of Tongue-Ripping! And your interest rate algorithm is wrong. It violates not only the Laws of Heaven but also basic mathematical logic. I feel ashamed on behalf of the programmer who wrote your code..."

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  With Tang Monk's Gatling-gun delivery amplified by the sound system, the golden scriptures materialized into physical characters, smashing into the flying contracts like bricks.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  The contracts were pulverized into paper confetti in mid-air, then spontaneously combusted.

  The OL Secretary screamed, clutching her head and retreating. "Aaaah! What is this noise?! My logic modules are throwing errors!"

  Round 2: VS. Lust Traps (The Nurse Succubus)

  Seeing physical attacks fail, the Succubus in the nurse outfit immediately switched strategies. She swayed her hips, splitting into a dozen clones, attempting to interfere with Tang Monk via visual pollution.

  "Holy Brother Look at my legs, look at my waist..."

  The dozen succubi danced a sultry routine around Tang Monk, practically drowning him in a pink atmosphere.

  Tang Monk still didn't even lift an eyelid.

  "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Female Donor, this is not affection; this is 'Hormonal Phishing Fraud'."

  "The Shurangama Sutra states: 'Lust is the root of life and death.' You exploit the Donor's (John's) physiological loneliness and psychological fragility to weave this pink trap. You think this is love? No, this is karmic sin that you couldn't calculate even if you fried your own CPU!"

  "Also, could you please standardize your modeling parameters next time? The leg length on your left clone doesn't match the right one; the proportions are completely off. And that face—you've smoothed it so much the facial features are gone. This is not only a blasphemy against aesthetics but disrespect to reality! Go! Go back and re-render!"

  BOOM!

  Giant characters for "FORM" and "EMPTINESS" fell from the sky, accurately smashing into the face of every clone.

  Although the succubi didn't vanish, their movements began to lag and glitch. Some were still dancing, but their limbs were desynchronized; others' facial models began to collapse, revealing the wireframes underneath.

  "My face! My parameters!" The Nurse Succubus shrieked in a meltdown.

  Meanwhile. The Real World.

  Inside the "Everything You Ask For" shop, the atmosphere was surprisingly festive.

  Oddity (Daoist Singularity) sat with his legs crossed, cracking sunflower seeds while watching a holographic surveillance feed floating in the air—a livestream of John's dream.

  Next to him, a palm-sized monkey (Wukong's avatar) squatted on the table, happily gnawing on a peach.

  Under the table, a piglet with big ears (Bajie's avatar) hugged Oddity's leg, oinking and begging for snacks.

  "I say, Old Qi," Wukong mumbled through a mouthful of peach, "isn't summoning my Master a bit too wicked? This John kid just started; can he handle the 'Tightening Spell' Deluxe Edition? Don't let the succubi survive while he goes insane first."

  "This is called 'fighting poison with poison'."

  Oddity spit out a seed shell, pushed up his sunglasses, and grinned like an old fox.

  "These electronic succubi engaging in financial fraud are experts at brainwashing. To counter brainwashing, you need stronger brainwashing. Your Master's mouth is a certified 'Causal Weapon' tested through the eighty-one tribulations of the West. Once he starts talking, forget succubi—he could talk a server motherboard into short-circuiting."

  "But..." Bajie looked up, glancing at John on the screen. The poor guy's eyes had rolled back, and he was trying to stuff the contract into his ears. "Looks like the kid is about to be ascended. Master isn't even halfway through."

  "He's fine." Oddity pulled a handful of peanuts from his pocket and threw them to Bajie. "This kid has a tough life. Besides, this is good for him. After this ordeal, no one in this world will ever be able to con him into buying wealth management products again. This is... Anti-Fraud Boot Camp."

  "Furthermore," Oddity pointed to the succubi in the corner of the screen who were still stubbornly holding on, "these filthy things aren't that easy to kill. They're backlinked to that company's core database. This is perfect—let your Master follow the network cable and chant that server to death too."

  Back in the Dream.

  The succubi, though battered by the sermon, were still putting up a fight.

  The OL Secretary gritted her teeth. The data stream behind her suddenly converged, morphing into a massive, grotesque monster—a "Capital Beast" formed of countless desires and greed.

  "I'll fight you to the death! Swallow him!"

  The giant beast opened its blood-red maw, intending to swallow Tang Monk along with his scriptures.

  Seeing this, Tang Monk didn't panic. Instead, he got excited. He stood up, ripped off his kasaya robe, revealing a T-shirt underneath printed with the words "Virtue Over Violence."

  "Good! Good! Good! Finally revealing your true form!"

  "Since you refuse to repent, this poor monk has no choice but to deploy the Dharma treasures!"

  "Great Mighty Heavenly Dragon! World-Honored Ksitigarbha! Prajna Buddhas! Prajna Ba Ma Kong!"

  "Give this poor monk—BEGONE! BEGONE! BEGONE!"

  With every "BEGONE!" (Tui!), the entire dream space shook violently. Each word transformed into a golden sonic shockwave, slamming ruthlessly into the body of the Capital Beast.

  John, caught in the middle, wished he were dead.

  He covered his ears, feeling like his brains were being scrambled into a smoothie by this philosophical noise. He looked at the succubi trying to counterattack, then at Tang Monk, who was clearly high on the rhythm, and had only one thought:

  Just destroy it all. Hurry up.

  "Master... I was wrong... I'll never click random links again... please, turn off your powers..." John crawled weakly on the floor, trying to inch away from the battlefield.

  But Tang Monk clearly hadn't had enough yet.

  "Donor! Do not flee! This is the climax! Listen well, this next section is a deep-dive analysis on the 'Trap of Consumerism'..."

  John's eyes rolled back, and he passed out completely.

  But before he blacked out, he seemed to hear a light chuckle from Oddity in his ear:

  "Young man, this is just lesson one. In this world, if you don't want to be hustled, you have to be more long-winded than the hustler."

  [Message from Singularity]

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