Wind roamed through the empty wilderness, blowing across the flames to make them flicker and stretching Si Yehan's shadow.
His pitch-black pupils reflected the raging fire, his cold and handsome face revealing a sense of detachment, making him look like an unrelated spectator, yet his eyes held a faint trace of amusement, and his hands rested in the outer pockets of his trench coat with a lazy posture.
People were struggling within the flames, numbering more than twenty.
The two deepest inside had their faces somewhat obscured by the fire, revealing only their brows and eyes, yet they bore some resemblance to Si Yehan.
The smell of burning spread, blackened bones exposed amid mangled flesh, and screams intertwined and echoed, stretching continuously into the distance.
All colors around were being encroached upon by a bloody hue, and Si Yehan was long since accustomed to it. He spoke in a flat tone, muttering to himself, "This is the third time having this dream."
The people struggling in the fire crawled out, one carbon-roasted palm after another reaching toward Si Yehan and gripping the hem of his clothes as if attempting to drag him into the boundless flames.
Abruptly, the fire changed, turning into boundless darkness.
Under the forced transition, Si Yehan felt not the slightest discomfort, fragmented sounds became clear bit by bit, and the darkness dissipated.
This was the precursor to the dream's impending collapse. Si Yehan stood all alone in the darkness, indifferent and silent. The moment the dream dissolved, he once again beheld the scene that had appeared in the dream for the third time: countless vicious ghosts were bobbing up and down in the water-like torrent of gushing darkness, their faces ferocious and terrifying, roaring!
Si Yehan sat up from the bed, his chest rising and falling slightly with his breath. He turned to prop the pillow up behind him and leaned against it in the darkness.
Si Yehan remained silent, deep in thought.
The process of waking from the dream was exceptionally abrupt, without an ending, which was consistent with ordinary dreams and no different. The only distinction was that in this dream his mind was clear and he could remember it distinctly.
It was perhaps because the frequency of his hunts had been slightly higher recently, and amid a pleasant mood, even people belonging to old pasts had somehow appeared in his dream.
As for the dead turning into vengeful ghosts to demand lives, Si Yehan had always sneered at such matters. Wastes who possessed no ability to resist in life, turning into vicious ghosts after death by relying on the helpless anger and resentment of their own incompetence—how laughable was that?
It was nothing more than a self-deceiving fantasy. If ghosts truly existed, they ought to be executioners of slaughter who entirely disregarded what humans called good and evil, obeying either rules or no logic at all.
After picking up his clothes and putting them on, Si Yehan turned on the phone placed on the bedside table to charge. The screen lit up, appearing particularly glaring in the darkness, and the time of four in the morning caught his eye.
He had indeed woken up a bit early today, Si Yehan thought to himself as he put on his slippers, got out of bed, and walked out of the bedroom.
While passing through the darkness of the living room, Si Yehan suddenly felt as though someone were staring at him, but he lived alone, so where would a second person come from?
The gaze he felt seemed never to have shifted away—a straight-on gaze mixed with a bloodthirsty appetite, without the slightest bit of concealment.
Si Yehan kept his guard up, walked into the kitchen, and took an iced drink out of the refrigerator to drink some, causing his sleepiness to subside.
After finishing it, he threw the bottle into the trash can.
When Si Yehan returned to the bedroom, he still felt that the gaze behind him had not vanished. Opening the surveillance software on his phone, he had set up invisible cameras outside the door and on the mural directly facing the entrance; if someone really broke in, it would undoubtedly be captured clearly.
Yet after flipping through all the recordings from recent days, there were only the footage of himself constantly entering and leaving.
Could it really have been an illusion?
Suddenly, a knocking sound rang out, every single strike as dull as a life-taking drumbeat.
The sound originated from the main door rather than the bedroom door.
Si Yehan looked at the surveillance footage on his phone, where the outside was clearly completely empty, yet the knocking never stopped and seemed to grow even more urgent.
As the knocking continued, an invitation card on the floor was also gradually taking shape. Through the surveillance, only its bright golden front could be seen, possessing an otherworldly temperament.
Things were growing increasingly bizarre. Si Yehan took a three-inch-long sharp knife out of the bedside table, which gleamed with a cold light in the darkness.
Just as Si Yehan pushed open the bedroom door and walked step by step toward the main door, the knocking vanished.
Only the feeling of pins and needles on his back grew increasingly intense. Sitting ducks and waiting for death was not his style; this time he had truly likely encountered a supernatural event, and disaster could not be avoided. Since that was the case, the only option was to take the initiative.
Si Yehan opened the door. The outside was completely empty, exactly the same as in the surveillance, and the invitation card lay on the ground.
The hallway was brightly lit, while the room was pitch black.
The instant he bent down to pick up the invitation card, Si Yehan perceived that the gaze watching him from the dark had vanished—that was his acute intuition after hunting more than twenty prey, and it would definitely not be wrong.
The invitation card bore the four characters "Weird Game". The front was white-gold, embroidered with a deity entirely shrouded in white light. He looked down upon the mortal world, and even though Si Yehan was the one looking down to read at this moment, he felt himself to be the party being looked down upon, yet his heart remained without a ripple.
Turning it over, the back of the invitation card was colored black and red, as if sealing thousands of vicious ghosts within. The face of every single vicious ghost looked as though it had been drawn with blood in the boundless darkness, and a fierce, murderous aura rolled outward.
Si Yehan found it very exquisite. After he unpacked it, the contents within met his eyes; this invitation card had neither a signature nor a time and place.
[Dear player, welcome to the Weird Game! It will open punctually at midnight. There is no need to refuse, because refusal is useless, and only acceptance remains!
Please successfully clear the instance under the ghost's hunt, at which point you will gain a rebirth. Failing to clear will usher in death ahead of schedule. There is no need to attempt to seek help, because non-participants cannot know of the Weird Game's existence, nor can they see this invitation card. This is a game overlooked by the gods from a high dimension; please please the deities with an exceptionally brilliant performance!]
Behind the scarlet font was also drawn a terrifying smile, seemingly mocking the recipient of this invitation card with a sarcastic attitude, or perhaps appreciating the posture of despair and terror.
It was only a pity that Si Yehan's expression remained consistently cold from beginning to end, holding the invitation card in one hand with his eyelids drooped slightly and his gaze indifferent.
The wind reached in from the hallway window, fluttering the hem of Si Yehan's black long robe. After he finished reading the invitation card, the invitation card disappeared, turning into ashes that drifted down bit by bit, leaving no form or shadow the moment they touched the ground.
A smile unfolded upon Si Yehan's cold face, revealing a lazy banter, and his eyes faintly held an extra trace of pleasure. Although he had encountered a supernatural event, it at least brought a lot of meaning into his life.
He was also somewhat interested in the "rebirth" mentioned in the invitation card.
Si Yehan put away the three-inch sharp knife in his hand and turned to return inside the house, the light no longer able to infiltrate the interior.
The curtains were drawn tightly shut, and the room was pitch black inside, but Si Yehan's night vision had always been quite good, and coupled with his thorough familiarity with all the furnishings in the room, naturally he would not fail to recognize the way.
When he reviewed the surveillance again, Si Yehan found that the time period concerning the invitation card had become very clean, just like every other night, without the slightest difference.
If not for the fact that the experience just now had been so real, he might have thought he was dreaming.