Amid the thunderstorm, a thought flashed through Si Yehan's mind.
He would meet force with force and deal with whatever came his way.
Anxiety was useless. He only needed to consider every aspect and focus on improving himself.
Si Yehan raised a finger and brushed it across the floor-to-ceiling window, then returned to his room and began exercising.
Physical fitness played a significant role in instances, so he could not afford to neglect it.
Despite the intensity of his workout, his body did not pour with sweat as it had in the past. It was even a little cold. Si Yehan's expression remained unchanged as his muscles flexed slightly.
He did one-handed push-ups, deliberately holding back his strength rather than letting it show, so the entire workout would not become too easy.
Time slipped by as he exercised.
Great Xia, Nanchuan City.
On the top floor of a building that towered into the clouds, a room lay in darkness. Flashes from the thunderstorm outside occasionally illuminated patches of shadow.
Behind the desk, a recliner faced away from the door, toward a huge floor-to-ceiling window.
The door opened gently, and a slender man walked in. He wore a silver-white suit, its collar adorned with intricate patterns that formed the image of a snow fox.
His skin was deathly pale, and a faint aura of death lingered around him. With a mild expression and gentle eyes, he walked to the desk before stopping.
The man in the recliner did not turn around. His voice was utterly flat. "Little Dong, what do you have to report?"
The mild expression of the man in the silver-white suit darkened slightly, and his voice grew somewhat grave. "Boss, Shen Jing is dead. It happened an hour ago. Shen Jing jumped to her death in North Yuan City. Our people arrived at the scene immediately."
The voice of the man in the recliner gained some inflection. "Shen Jing was not only a veteran of the game, but also one of the founding members of Han Shu. She survived six instances, only to die in a beginner instance that wasn't even particularly difficult. It's truly..."
By this point, the identity of the man in the recliner was clear. He was Jiang Shanghan.
Deathly energy poured from the man in the silver-white suit, and his face darkened. "It's inconceivable. Boss, I request permission to leave for North Yuan City immediately and use the ability to look back and investigate Shen Jing's memories."
The recliner turned around, and Jiang Shanghan stood up. He wore a white trench coat over a deep-blue long shirt. His long hair, half black and half blue, drifted lightly around his handsome face, and his eyes held a calm confidence. "There's no need. Shen Jing most likely died at someone's hands. Since she was outmatched, there's nothing to say about it. But..."
He paused, his tone becoming more commanding. "Dong Tianjun, I still want you to go to North Yuan City! Bring Shen Jing's body back and bury her in Jingchun Garden alongside the other deceased members of the organization. As for the person who killed her, if he doesn't die along the way, he'll run into us sooner or later. There's no need to know who he is or why he killed her. We'll just kill him like anyone else who gets in our way."
Dong Tianjun lowered his head, putting away his dark expression. "But boss," he asked quietly, "what if the person who killed Shen Jing joins our organization?"
Jiang Shanghan's gaze turned slightly cold. "Then we'll have turned an enemy into a friend. An exceptional living person is far more useful than a dead one. Besides, Shen Jing most likely mentioned us, and that person won't be interested in joining the organization. If he joins with ulterior motives, then the Tianjing Building will become his burial ground."
With that, he sat back down in the recliner and watched the thunderstorm outside.
Dong Tianjun silently withdrew from the room. Jiang Shanghan tapped his fingers lightly on the armrest of the recliner.
"Three months left until the eleventh instance."
His voice echoed around the room as Jiang Shanghan slowly closed his eyes. His expression remained calm, and wisps of frigid wind spilled from between his fingers. Ice slowly formed on the floor, followed by the sound of it breaking.
More than three thousand li away in Cangyun City, Si Yehan sat cross-legged on the sofa with his eyes closed, resting. The television in front of him was displaying information about people reported dead between midnight and one in the morning that day.
He heard three familiar names among them: Shen Jing, Xie Ran, and Chen Yong. There were no others.
When Si Yehan heard the information about Shen Jing, he slowly opened his eyes. "North Yuan City? That's not too far from me. Han Shu really is a problem. With supernatural powers at their disposal, whether they can trace this back to me remains to be seen."
A streak of blue-black light flashed deep in his dark eyes. Black mist eroded the walls around him as he slowly rose from the sofa.
The light around him slowly faded, and Si Yehan decided to return to his room to sleep.
For twenty-one years, sleep had been an instinctive habit second only to killing. Even if he did not sleep for long, he always slept for a while.
Whether it was the magnificent splendor of dreams or the profound, eternal night of slumber, Si Yehan found both deeply comforting.
Sleep had become his keenest intuition, capable to some extent of reflecting the past and present, and even the future.
He glanced down at the time on his phone. [1:55]
After returning to his room, Si Yehan changed out of his clothes, took a shower, and put on a fresh set of the same style before settling down to sleep.
His consciousness gradually sank, and the darkness slowly turned sea-blue.
Si Yehan's mind was somewhat hazy. A sea breeze swept across the deck, and beneath the desolate night sky, the ocean looked vast and dark.
The cruise ship's searchlights illuminated only the surrounding area, unable to reach into the distance. The waves rolled, and the longer he stared, the more terrifying the sea seemed, inspiring an instinctive fear.
Colorful lights shone inside the cabin, where the voices of reveling men and women rang out together! Then they turned into piercing screams.
Si Yehan stepped into the cabin, his awareness slowly returning. Because it was a dream, there was no pungent smell. All he saw were corpses reduced to indistinct masses of mashed flesh and broken bones.
Strange creatures with tiger faces and fish bodies lay atop the corpses. Their fins swayed, and dense rows of coarse, sharp teeth filled their mouths, layer upon layer. They sucked at the mashed flesh and broken bones.
They fed greedily, oblivious to Si Yehan entering the cabin. The sight before him was pleasing, untainted by even a trace of a fishy stench.
Their feeding seemed to have been deliberately stretched out without end! Only when the waves grew stronger did the sounds gradually blur in his ears, and the scene before Si Yehan began to turn upside down.
No dizziness came over him. He turned to look through a window and saw that a wave had capsized the cruise ship.
As it sank to the seabed, the strange tiger-faced, fish-bodied creatures receded like the tide. Everything around him seemed so abrupt that Si Yehan suddenly remembered a book, a combination of an art book and a setting guide. The strange creatures before him belonged to that book.
His recollection suddenly stopped.
These dreams were too closely connected to his past memories, and had grown frequent because of the Weird Game.
The dream seemed to pass in an instant, but several hours had gone by in reality. His screen lit up. [5:22]
Si Yehan did not go back to sleep. He sat up and rubbed his hair as memories of the past welled up. The book he had recalled in his dream had come from a male classmate in his youth.
That person had been reclusive and quiet, somewhat similar to Si Yehan, yet different in essence. He loved creating all kinds of bizarre, twisted, deformed creatures and drawing them. No one else could understand it, and some were almost disgusted.
Only Si Yehan had shown a little interest. From then on, the boy followed him around all day at school, abandoning his quiet nature to chatter endlessly about the books he had bound himself.
He was so annoying that he wore away what little interest Si Yehan had, so Si Yehan strangled him with his own hands.
The laws had not yet changed at the time. Si Yehan's parents put in a little effort and settled the matter smoothly, then chose a school with fewer students and transferred him there.
The boy had not been favored at home, and both his parents had illegitimate children elsewhere. They did not dare pursue the matter too far. Si Yehan's grandfather had not yet retired at the time and was at the height of his power throughout Hedong Province. The boy's parents did not dare give vent to what little anger they had, for fear of bringing ruin upon their businesses and the families behind them.
In any case, many of the concepts in that art book had indeed been ingenious, making them excellent material for dreams. Perhaps someday he could make its creator appear in the world as a Ghost Slave.