CH 119

Chapter 119: The Dream of the Holy Nun (IX)

After seeing the Lord, the four people stayed in the Lord’s castle, waiting for the night of the new moon to come.

From the Lord’s mouth, they learned some information about the new moon: from a certain year, every night of the new moon, the residents in the Holy City had to fall asleep before midnight, whether they fell asleep naturally or relied on sleeping draughts. If someone didn’t fall asleep before the clock struck zero, or woke up before dawn, the person would disappear, vanishing forever.

The residents in the Holy City called it “the disaster of the new moon”.

The cause of the disaster of the new moon was still unclear. Many people had explored this strange monthly phenomenon with curiosity. Some even deliberately stayed awake after midnight, and then left some creepy notes…

In the castle’s library, according to the requirements given by Qi Leren and others, the attendants collected the data about the night of the new moon together, and the group sat at the table to peruse the data separately. Even Ning Zhou’s big black bird stopped to comb its feathers honestly without making any noise.

Su He looked through a note and said, “This diary is interesting. You can have a look.”

Qi Leren took the notebook handed by Su He. Fortunately, the lingua franca of the Nightmare World was Chinese (although he didn’t know whether this came from automatic translation by the system), so he could read the Nightmare World’s words. For some time now, he had become accustomed to the NPCs who looked like Westerners speaking Chinese skillfully.

“…I have prepared everything I need, such as paper, pen, oil lamp, stick, and cloak, and told my parents that I have drunk my sleeping draught and can sleep through the night. It’s twenty-three o'clock in the evening, with one hour left before midnight. I am very excited and uneasy because I don’t know what I will see in an hour. If everything is normal after midnight, I will put on my cloak and go out for a night tour. If something is wrong… I have locked the doors and windows anyway, and there will be no danger.”

After reading this, Qi Leren had already seen the unfortunate ending.

Dr. Lu also leaned over and said, “He’s dead.”

Qi Leren turned the notebook to the next page, and the handwriting on parchment became hastily messy:

“The zero hour is here! God, I actually stayed up after zero on the night of the new moon. Now I’m a little nervous. But everything around me is normal. Just now, I stood by the window and looked down. The Holy City is dark, and even the kerosene street lamps on the main road have gone out. This is normal. After all, no one needs street lamps on this night. It’s so quiet, there’s no sound around, only the rustle of the quill pen writing on paper, and I can already hear my heart beat faster and faster. Is this the disaster of the new moon? It’s not the same as I imagined.

"I seem to hear footsteps outside… An illusion? (A splotch of ink) Just now I walked softly to the door and listened carefully. There were really footsteps!!! There’s something on the stairs?! There was the sound of the floorboard creaking, a strange loud noise which must have been made by stepping on the loose board on the stairs! Oh, my God. Did something sneak into my house?! Mom and Dad are asleep in the master bedroom. They can’t hear me. God, what should I do? What to do!! Will it come in? God, what should I do? What should I do?”

The owner of the notebook had been completely panicked, and he was becoming more and more untidy and messy.

“Will it see the light of my room through the door? I’d better blow out the oil lamp, yes, blow it out, and then drink the sleeping draught. I must sleep.”

The image of a terrified young man appeared in Qi Leren’s mind. He imagined how he was horrified to notice the strange footsteps of an unknown monster wandering outside the door. He had lost his innocent curiosity to fear, but fear itself did not let him go.

Qi Leren turned the page. A line of words full of fear and despair occupied most of parchment, and the last half word was even written outside the lines. It was untidy, distorted and collapsed, and the fear of the unknown completely defeated the young man who wrote the last sentence in the dark.

“It’s knocking at the door.”

This notebook was only a few hundred words, but it was unnerving. From curiosity to panic to despair, he was like a frightened bird in the dark, and the sudden knock on the door had completely defeated him…

Su He waited patiently for them to finish reading this note, and then said: “From the content of the text, there will be some incredible changes after midnight on the night of the new moon.”

Qi Leren closed the notebook and returned it to Su He: “Maybe it’s a demon?”

He knew more than them, because he had experienced the night of the new moon in the Nightmare Game. In the game, he got the task inexplicably and walked into the Holy City. However, the NPCs didn’t show curiosity towards him and he wasn’t taken to see the Lord. Instead, he spent the night in a pub in the Holy City and learned the story of the disaster of the new moon through the guests in the pub. Naturally, he chose to stay up late when the night the new moon arrived, and walked into the streets of the Holy City after the zero hour.

And then he died in an ordinary way to a demon’s attack.

“It’s most likely demons. Maybe the demons appear on the night of the new moon, and then attack any humans who haven’t fallen asleep. But why does this happen only on the new moon? Where do these demons usually lurk? Why attack people who have not fallen asleep?” Su He raised several questions in one breath.

Qi Leren was speechless to these questions and peeked at Ning Zhou, who was reading the documents: “This question is handed over to the professional exorcist of the Holy See to answer.”

Ning Zhou raised his head to Su He’s slightly smiling eyes, the two people looked at each other for three seconds, and then their eyes turned away.

“Wait until the night of the moon,” Ning Zhou said and continued to read the stack of data.

Su He smiled silently and said faintly, “All right.”

That’s it? Don’t you want to continue analyzing it? Qi Leren looked at their busy Ning Zhou and Su He blankly, and was suddenly pulled aside by Dr. Lu. Qi Leren thought that he’d found some clues. Instead, Dr. Lu just dragged him to the corner and asked mysteriously: “Do you think that Su He and your good-friend-who-lives-with-you-but-still-has-a-purely-platonic-relationship-with-you are a little angry?”

Wasn’t this too long of a descriptor? Qi Leren suddenly felt the malice from his friend: “It’s okay. Ning Zhou just doesn’t like to talk very much. He doesn’t talk to you much either.”

Dr. Lu said definitively: “No, this is totally different, the aura, there is a subtle aura between them.”

“What aura?” Qi Leren was not ashamed to ask.

Dr. Lu said seriously: “Asura’s field*.”

*{E/N: A situation of dispute between a present and past lover}

“What?” Qi Leren remembered that this seemed to mean describing a tragic battlefield, but it was obviously not appropriate to use it here.

“Forget it, I’m going to the bathroom.” Dr. Lu gave him a supercilious look as he walked out of the library with his hands in his pockets.

Qi Leren, who didn’t get an answer, was still thinking about what “Asura’s field” meant. He suddenly heard Ning Zhou and Su He call his name at the same time: “Leren, look at this." "Qi Leren, here.”

The two men, each occupying one side of the table, looked at each other then both looked at the Qi Leren by the door.

In a moment’s lightning strike, Qi Leren learned something without need for a teacher.

Was this what Asura’s field meant? When two good friends put forward the same request at the same time and it wasn’t clear which side should be prioritized; this subtle, strange, and even slightly embarrassing atmosphere. This is what it meant.

It was really confusing, but he didn’t know what he was panicking about.

“I… I need to go to the bathroom, you can exchange what you’ve found with each other first.” At the same time, Qi Leren learned a little skill of how to deal with this scene without need for a teacher, and pretended to walk out of the library calmly.

Anyway, go to the bathroom first.