“Hello?”
Zhou Kai frowned and rapped twice on the counter.
“Oh, oh, oh! I’m here!”
The young woman jolted awake. Her hands went weak, and her upper body nearly toppled forward.
Her cheeks flushed crimson as she said awkwardly, “You’re paying, right… Which table?”
Zhou Kai said evenly, “B6.”
“Don’t you get off at eleven-thirty? It’s only a little past ten. How are you already this sleepy…”
Pinned to the young woman’s chest was a stainless-steel name badge. Her name was Chu Siwen.
Chu Siwen looked thoroughly embarrassed. “Sorry, sorry… I’m just too sleepy.”
“Please don’t file a complaint against me… I’m really sorry!”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the supervisor standing not far away. Frightened, she clasped her hands together and bowed repeatedly to Zhou Kai.
Of course Zhou Kai wouldn’t do something like that. He nodded and said, “I won’t. Just ring me up.”
“Okay… B6, two hundred and nineteen in total. Cash or scan?”
“Scan.”
With a beep, Zhou Kai paid, then turned to look for Lu Yan.
Just then, a figure brushed past him, and the floral scent of gardenias drifted into his face.
Zhou Kai subconsciously took another look.
That woman was looking at him as well.
Through her delicate half-rim glasses, their gazes collided in midair.
Zhou Kai was certain she was a stranger. He was briefly stunned by that flawless face, then quickly looked away.
But that woman—
She didn’t leave. Instead, she leaned idly against the back of a chair, her fingertips tapping a rhythm against her arm, her gaze fixed on Zhou Kai like a cat watching a clumsy hamster.
With his mind clear, Zhou Kai’s senses were sharp. The woman’s gaze seemed almost tangible, making the hairs on his back stand on end.
“Xiao Kai… Xiao Kai.”
Lu Yan suddenly hugged Zhou Kai’s arm from behind and mumbled indistinctly, “This lousy restaurant has the air-conditioning on like it’s an icehouse. I’m freezing to death. Let’s go home.”
Zhou Kai knew she couldn’t walk on her own, so he let her hang off him.
“Fine. I’ll get a cab and take you back.”
“Don’t throw up on me.”
Zhou Kai warned her.
Lu Yan whined, “How much is that crappy outfit of yours worth? If I dirty it, I’ll pay…”
The two leaned against each other and passed by that woman again.
This time, the woman did not cast another probing look over. She only lowered her head and looked at her nails.
Supporting Lu Yan, Zhou Kai pressed the elevator button to go downstairs.
Behind the half-open fire door to the emergency stairwell, a few fragmented words drifted out.
One of the voices belonged to the front desk girl named Chu Siwen.
Her tone was full of grievance. “…I’m starting to suspect someone’s sticking needles into a voodoo doll of me…”
“Two days in a row. The exact same nightmare.”
“I can’t sleep well at night, and during the day I’m so sleepy I could die. What am I supposed to do…”
Zhou Kai’s expression froze instantly.
He turned back by instinct.
Half the face of the woman in half-rim glasses was facing him through the lenses.
“It’s Dreamless.”
Zhou Kai’s pupils contracted sharply.
In that instant, he understood everything.
“Hurry up and leave, before it latches on.”
……
What exactly was the purpose of the Dreamless organization?
Someone else who was suspected to be chased by nightmares had also been targeted by Dreamless?
Zhou Kai increasingly felt that reality was like a net tightening around him.
After going downstairs, he hailed a taxi.
Zhou Kai said softly,
“Driver, Anzhuo Residential Complex.”
A little over ten minutes later, the taxi stopped at the east gate of an old residential complex in the city center.
The middle-aged driver, whose hairline was in worrying condition, glanced through the rearview mirror, whistled, and teased greasily, “Young man, this girl looks real nice.”
Zhou Kai’s gaze turned cold. Too lazy to waste words, he said, “Get lost!”
For a dazed instant, the driver only felt an abnormal, icy aura rising from Zhou Kai.
He gave an awkward laugh, stepped on the accelerator, and the car shot away.
Zhou Kai carried Lu Yan upstairs.
It seemed that starting a few months ago, his sister had stopped living with Lu Yan.
Now Lu Yan lived alone.
As before, Lu Yan herself might forget the password to her door lock, but the Zhou siblings absolutely remembered it.
He opened the door, tossed Lu Yan onto the sofa, and pulled over a thin blanket to cover her.
Zhou Kai sat directly on the cold floor and closed his eyes to meditate.
It was just past eleven now. There was still a little time before he entered the Nightmare.
And he was already very tired, so he didn’t plan on doing anything extra… meaning skill practice, of course.
……
Less than an hour quickly passed. The phone alarm vibrated with a faint electric shock sensation, and Zhou Kai opened his eyes.
It was said that this kind of electric shock would affect the lifespan of a phone’s keyboard, but a few brands stubbornly insisted on using it.
The one Zhou Kai used was one of them.
He glanced from the corner of his eye at Lu Yan, who was sleeping soundly, and said softly,
“Load into the Nightmare.”
Compared to the few times at home, the process of entering the Nightmare this time was especially painful.
His consciousness was violently dragged out of his body, like it had been hooked onto an anchor and was being whipped again and again through a thick fog as viscous as asphalt.
Every time he was about to land, an invisible force yanked him back up into the sky.
Heaven and earth spun.
This dizzying process lasted for a long time before warmth spread across Zhou Kai’s back, and he sensed the familiar firelight of the hearth.
While his eyes were open, he opened them again.
The thick fog around him dispersed with a roar.
【Welcome back. The Moonlight Orchid is sprouting new shoots in the nursery.】
The nursery’s dialogue box pierced through several meters of soil and floated to Zhou Kai’s side.
Under the glow of the firelight and the mysterious, faint silver radiance, Zhou Kai’s fatigue and discomfort began to be slowly cleansed away.
The fuel in the hearth still had thirty-seven minutes of durability left.
This time, Zhou Kai did not intend to use it all in one go…
During tomorrow night’s forced conscription, ten or twenty minutes of light might prove tremendously useful.
Five minutes later, Zhou Kai had more or less recovered.
There was no change in the erosion progress. It seemed that after regaining one life, if he wanted to replenish it further, he would need something stronger.
An uneasy aura seeped from the study window. Zhou Kai did not rashly approach it.
The second floor and the areas above were still not places he should explore right now.
Zhou Kai went down to the basement to take a look.
That red door had not appeared. The basement was terrifyingly quiet.
The Moonlight Orchid sprout, emitting a faint silver glow, was slowly growing in the soil.
From the looks of it, it would still be a long time before it matured.
There was nothing unusual about the hole in the ground blocked by miscellaneous objects. At least for now, nothing would crawl out of there.
“Tomorrow night… I must survive!”
Zhou Kai clenched his fist and returned to the hearth.
“Leave the Nightmare!”
……
However, the instant Zhou Kai returned to reality… he suffocated.
Something was clamping tightly around his neck!!
His throat bones creaked, and the feeling of suffocation was lethal enough.
Zhou Kai’s expression twisted for an instant, but in the next second, he used all his strength to wedge both hands fiercely into the gap between his neck and those iron pincers.
Crack!
A crisp sound rang out.
Zhou Kai abruptly opened his eyes.
He was standing in an extremely awkward posture, looking down at Lu Yan on the sofa.
And those hands, at some unknown point, had already lifted, suspended in midair.