CH 86

[Entombed in deathless silence, the elegiac town was devoid of life.

There was no one on the street, and a chill breeze blew through, lifting up a tattered piece of newspaper that was pinned to a worn-down wall.

Some of the horrifying headlines on that flap of paper included:

“The demon of dreams! Who exactly is he?!”

“Bizarre deaths while sleeping; heart attacks or a demonic curse?”

Not far away, billboards on some high-rise condos were displaying even older news.

“Holy Sect ranked first in the world’s A-list!” [1]

Beneath this was a notice in big red letters that seemed to be closely related.

The point of view zoomed out to refocus on the street.

Behind a dirty shop window, the news played on a snowflakey television in black and white. [2]

Hair akimbo and panda-eyed, the anchor shouted: “Citizens, don’t sleep! He’ll invade your dreams!”

“The Global Alliance has united the major religions to hold a great ceremony! We will end the demon!”

Schhhhhhh—the TV nearly broke after releasing a large crackling sound.

“Second … we … schhh…Planet Clay … the biggest crisis…”

After a bit, white smoke curled around the back of the TV, and the screen went out for good.

A gorgeous-looking Karina in full combat suit stood on a deserted road with a walkie-talkie.

She glanced first at the TV then the desolate scene before her, rosy lips shaking a little. “Morris, you should stop…”

All of this, why did it have to happen?】

——From《Nightmare 2》

“Ahhhhh!!”

“Help!!!”

“Don’t—oohhhhh, agkkk!!!”

Pushing the half-open door wider, Zhou Yi got slightly dizzy and grimaced at the sudden onset of sound.

The screams were piercing his eardrums.

He’d been pretty sure that screaming was absent from the villa before he crossed the threshold.

Such sharp wailing—if not for a moment ago, he wouldn’t have believed it.

Stood between the outside and the inside, he had seemed briefly entrenched in a different space, a space of endless fear and suffering.

Even stranger, the room in front of him was empty of people.

Zhou Yu looked up and studied the area after walking inside the hushed building.

Luxurious and elegant crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, with a beautifully classic, three-story spiral staircase off to the side.

The furniture in the foyer was also very well put-together; televisions, sofas, and coffee tables were strewn around in an exquisite design.

A fashionable carpet spread over the floor, soft and smooth, with the texture of silk. Its width was large enough to cover half of the hall, and its exquisite embroidery gave Zhou Yu a rising feeling of nervousness over possibly stepping on it.

At that moment, Zhou Yu jiggled his—until just recently—sprained ankle and wondered what was going on.

His injuries suddenly healed without warning, like he’d never gotten wounded in the first place.

Shink—

The gruesome scene of an amputated and broken arm flashed in front of Zhou Yu like lightning, and then disappeared just as quickly.

“That just…”

Zhou Yu quickly stared at the place where the image had appeared.

All he saw was an embroidered rug.

Was it just his imagination?

Zhou Yu stepped to the center of the foyer and looked up.

The ceiling above was carved into extremely gorgeous reliefs.

There were engravings about Samael’s fall from heaven to hell—no, that’s wrong, the story told by these reliefs was a lot different from the description in his book about the gods’ origins…

Zhou Yu inferred from the reliefs that after being expelled by the God of Light, Samael landed on Clay for the benefit of mankind-instead of falling into hell and becoming the lord of demons and revenge.

The figure of Samael in the relief was much uglier and more abstract than what the teen had drawn.

Only the scythe, the symbol of the Grim Reaper, and the pair of flame-blackened wings behind them remained unchanged.

As he always looked up at the engravings, Zhou Yu got dizzy again, so much so that his vision even seemed to double

“Ah-monster!”

Who? Who’s screaming?

Boom—

Voices floated in and out of his cognition, ethereal and intangible, past the cottony feeling in Zhou Yu’s ears.

Frowning, the teen narrowed his emerald eyes and stared at the relief above his head again.

Intuition told him there was something…wrong, with it.

It was just that he wasn’t getting any warning signs… instead, he felt a little relieved?

The chiseled eyes of the Samael on the relief rotated and met his gaze with an appearance of sympathy.

Zhou Yu’s eyes once again glowed a faint blue as he ogled the carving in stunned silence.

Then the world began to shatter like a mirror.

Craccckkk—

Fractures spiderwebbed and spread before crumpling down and letting Zhou Yu finally see the vile scene he had previously only caught a glimpse of.

In the center of the foyer was a trampled corpse.

The ground next to the corpse was covered in fragments of crystal. If one inadvertently stepped on them, they would end up with bloody footsteps—looking at those extremely unevenly distributed fragments and the pool of blood formed nearby, Zhou Yi had a conjecture.

He figured that many people had run through without even heeding the possible danger of glass in their heels.

The originally clean carpet had been stained red with the blood from torn off limbs.

A suit had been shredded and thrown around, sporting a rather obvious bloodstain.

A lady’s purse was set near the coffee table and full to bulging; all Zhou Yu could see was blonde strings hanging out.

The youth looked away. He had a feeling he already knew the bag’s contents.

He blinked his clear, emerald green eyes with a look of understanding.

This was a dream.

Zhou Yu knew that Morris possessed the power to manipulate others dreams, but he didn’t expect it to feel so real…

His injured leg and forehead had returned to their original state in this dreamscape, and even his reinforced body had reverted to his normal, weak self—he honestly felt a little bitter about it.

Fortunately, Morris didn’t pop in on his dream that time…

Zhou Yu flushed as he remembered the snowball fight dream from a few days ago, and then blanched to the complete opposite side of the spectrum.

His pale, thin fingers twitched and curled; he couldn’t tell what he was feeling at the moment.

That dream was an insult to Morris…

If he knew about it, he would punish me with nightmares forever!

Trying to stow away his tangled guilt, Zhou Yu slowly walked to the stairs.

The buff man who kidnapped him hadn’t been taken care of, but he’d been pulled into an illusion, which didn’t bode well.

If he woke up and found that his body had been split in half by that man, it would spell a tragic end!

Therefore, an anxious Zhou Yu tried several well-known methods, all of which ended in failure.

Neither slapping himself or shouting with closed eyes freed him from the dreamscape.

The youth helplessly set out to discover another way

The dark-haired and green-eyed boy stood still and looked at the room around him. After analyzing it for a while, he finally looked at the bloodstained staircase before him.

Flesh, blood, and tissue from numerous unknown beings were strewn over the steps. Zhou Yu was just a high school student, and he couldn’t tell what they belonged to.

He blankly set his foot on the first step.

Climbing over blood and viscera wasn’t pleasant in the slightest. The youth sped up in order to find Morris as soon as possible.

Inexplicably, from the moment he entered this illusion, he felt relieved, in fact, if his reason wasn’t urging him to push forward, he would even be adverse to staying a bit longer.

It was as if this place was a safe haven for him.

Although this strange feeling was very unrealistic, he just had a very clear sense that Morris was here…somewhere.

And Morris was without a doubt the person he trusted most in the entire world.

He was sure that as  long as he found Morris, he could leave this place.

Quickly hiking up to the second floor, Zhou Yu finally felt relieved.

Perhaps it was because he knew that this was just a dream. Any fear that most people would have when seeing death was completely absent from his mindset. He just felt a little nauseous and was wary of touching anything.

In fact, this was another problem that was similar to his disassociation.

This was what he was used to. Once in physical contact with others, even if everything seemed fine on the surface, he always felt a little squeamish.

Only Morris was an exception.

He never resisted Morris’s approach, he eventually even expected something more…

What a pervert. [1]

Twitching his lips in derision at himself, the youth coldly glanced at the body parts covering his shoes.

“Don’t move!”

The scope of a familiar-looking heavy laser gun centered on Zhou Yu’s forehead.

Zhou Yu silently stared at the red-haired girl coming out of a room a little farther down the hallway.

Coincidentally, he saw this exact same, strange gun for the second time in a row— one from the man before, and then now.

The red-haired girl furrowed her brows and berated, “You fool, you’re in the second round. You don’t even know how to hide! How dare you shout!”

“Come with me. If you still want to survive, you’d better not make a sound!”

Milo eyed the pasty little white face in front of her with disgust.

Sure enough, these useless small world natives were no more than waste products, it made people feel like just exterminating them!

Such a stupid creatures were simply tarnishing the “human” race.

The dark-haired and green-eyed boy raised his hands and easily surrendered with a clear gaze.

Although Zhou Yu wasn’t afraid of them attacking in this dream, a vision had flashed when he first saw the girl, leading him to believe that it would be best to listen to their demands for a bit.

Milo pushed the dark-haired boy into the room she came from, then closed the door and cast a spell to conceal the presences of the people in the room.

“Captain, I’ve completed the mission.”

Milo lowered the heavy laser gun in her hand and gave the white-haired man sitting on the sofa a sweet smile.

The white-haired man, also known as Al, nodded, and praised, “Good, you worked hard, Milo.”

“Now matter what, as long as it’s Captain’s order, Milo will absolutely obey~ Hee hee!” Milo smoothed her hair and smiled lightly.

Al looked at the dark-haired boy standing on the side with a smile. “Hello, you look familiar.”

When he’d given the mission to Warren yesterday, he had seen this face—Zhou Yu, cannon-fodder supporting character.

Well, judging from the current situation, Warren must have run into some trouble.

Zhou Yu digested the information the vision showed him before looking at the white-haired man not far away.

This was a guest room. Although it was small, it was tastefully decorated. [2]

A dim little night light lit up the room, with curtains drawn, shielding the light from outside discovery.

Zhou Yu could only see two calm men sitting nearby and four other figures not far away—the red-haired girl among them.

The room wasn’t very spacious, and the close quarters meant crowded people and strange atmospheres.

The reason why they would rather crowd together than not must have something to do with the destruction downstairs.

Or to be more specific, it has something to do with Morris.

As the images in Zhou Yu’s mind continued to ebb and flow, he also got more information about Morris.

The pictures were like a movie, describing every aspect of Morris’s revenge. But Zhou Yu had a feeling that the Morris he saw in the images wasn’t the actual Morris.

The real Morris didn’t like death, and he didn’t kill people. 

What’s more, many of the people who “died” in here were still alive and well.

As Morris’s friend, he could tell that these scenes weren’t so much recountings of Morris’s actions and fate, but rather, possibilities.

However, Morris was very kind, so kind that he would help anybody in deep trouble, even if they had insulted him previously.

So it was simply just a possibility.

Al felt uneasy as he looked at the plot character in front of him. The way he acted was inconsistent with the plot.

This Zhou Yu wasn’t as timid as he was in the original plot, nor did he have such a gloomy attitude.

So, would he end up with the same fate as the plot’s Zhou Yu?