Was he only targeting Wang Yizhi and the others? Impossible. Had something already happened in the other rooms? That possibility couldn't be ruled out. If so, things would get troublesome. Schemes to drive a wedge between people... among classmates, they were simply impossible to guard against.
Zhang Chen began to grow restless. If that was the case, then whether they left tomorrow would be entirely under someone else's control.
Jia Xin is healing his injuries. I don't know whether he made preparations in the dorms across the way for those people from No. 1 High. Tomorrow morning, I'll test Er Wa and Tan Fei first. I'll leave the No. 1 High people alone for now. So much has already happened on the first day. Better sleep and restore my energy.
Zhang Chen fell asleep as soon as he closed his eyes.
Zhang Chen drove an old-fashioned European sedan. Beside him sat a beautiful young foreign woman who looked remarkably similar to the middle-aged woman in the ballet dress he had seen in the hall that evening. An elderly man well past fifty sat in the back seat.
The car traveled through the fields, and the fertile farmland and dense woods around them clearly caught both his and the beautiful woman's attention. So, they drove into a country farmhouse.
He walked into a farmhouse courtyard. A stout middle-aged man in the yard seemed to be negotiating something with him. Before long, many people rushed out from the other side's yard, their faces filled with anger as they pointed at him in displeasure.
Yet he seemed utterly unconcerned by their words and behavior. He called the stout man into a separate room, then took bundles of banknotes from his bag and handed them to the middle-aged man.
The stout man first checked whether the door was shut. After putting up a token refusal, he finally accepted the banknotes. After he went outside, Zhang Chen had no idea what he said to the people there, but the crowd blocking the courtyard gradually dispersed.
He then drove the woman, the elderly man, and the stout man to the edge of a forest. At that moment, Zhang Chen recognized the forest at once. It was the very place where they had gotten off the bus.
After he exchanged a few words with the stout man, a number of workers carrying axes arrived behind him and entered the forest. Naturally, the fat man received quite a few more banknotes from him.
Several days later, he led the elderly man and the woman into the forest, following the exact path Zhang Chen and Er Wa had taken at noon.
Before long, they arrived at a clearing. Beyond it lay a massive lake. The beautiful woman behind him seemed to like the place very much and kissed his cheek. The elderly man also nodded in admiration at the natural scenery. If Zhang Chen had guessed correctly, this old man was either his father or the woman's father.
To his left, quite a few workers were felling trees with logging axes. He walked over, spoke to one of the supervisors, and slipped a considerable number of banknotes into his hand. The man's eyes lit up at the sight of the money. He patted his chest with his right hand, seemingly promising him something.
A few days later, that supervisor brought a whole truckload of people to the clearing and began constructing a house. They kept working regardless of wind or rain. Before long, the villa Zhang Chen was currently living in had been completed.
He looked at the finished villa and nodded in satisfaction before leading his wife and the elderly man inside. Every part of its interior was exactly the same as it was now.
That afternoon, quite a few people arrived and stood neatly in front of his villa. The first was the Black man holding a shovel whom Zhang Chen had seen in the painting on the wall when he first entered the villa. His name seemed to be Fichtek Salo.
The second was a middle-aged foreign man wearing a tall hat and sporting a curled mustache. He looked like an artist at a glance. Zhang Chen seemed to have seen him in the hall, though the impression had not been deep.
The third was a white-haired old man with a large belly, dressed in a chef's uniform. He was clearly the private chef, and Zhang Chen had also seen this man's portrait in the hall.
The rest were foreign women dressed as maids. They were likely servants.
Every day was warm and peaceful. He lived on the third floor, and it seemed he had deliberately instructed the workers to make the overall height of the third floor lower than the first and second floors. The entire third floor was a love nest for him and the young woman. Their relationship as husband and wife had clearly been established.
On the first morning, he went down to the painting studio on the first floor. The artist in the tall hat spent an entire morning painting a huge portrait of him. After it was framed, it was hung in the center of the first-floor hall. That confirmed that he was Auguste Rodin, the owner of Rodin Villa.
Lunch was held in that very dining room. The white-bearded chef brought one luxurious, delicious dish after another to the enormous long table. Zhang Chen noticed that every dish before him was exactly the same as the food they had eaten when they arrived that afternoon.
After lunch, he would go hunting in the woods with the Black man and plant vegetation around the courtyard. He would also accompany the elderly man fishing by the lake behind the villa. Meanwhile, his young wife would dance her favorite ballet in the dance studio.
Every day was full and happy.
Gradually, his wife's stomach began to swell slightly. The whole family, including himself, was delighted. They even held a gathering and invited some farmers from the nearby village to attend a banquet at the villa.
Their entire life appeared utterly perfect.
"Was it this kind of Dreamscape again?" Morning sunlight streamed into Zhang Chen's bedroom, causing him to open his eyes from sleep.
"But this time, I wasn't reliving the past as an observer. I was reliving it as the owner of this villa. Still, I didn't seem to gain any useful information. Those people in the dream, though, deserve some careful attention."
Zhang Chen recalled the painter in the tall hat and the old chef with the white beard.
He checked the time. It was already nearly nine o'clock. After changing into a comfortable T-shirt and shorts and washing up, Zhang Chen opened the dormitory door and walked out.
He knocked on the doors of his classmates' rooms. It seemed they were already awake.
"Damn it. If something happened to Tan Fei or Er Wa, that would be bad." Alarmed, Zhang Chen rushed down the spiral staircase from the second floor, only to collide with a dark figure climbing up.
With a bang, Zhang Chen's body was sturdy enough that the dark figure was sent flying into the glass beside the stairs.
"Brother Chen, what are you in such a hurry for? We haven't seen each other for just one night. Sister-in-law isn't going anywhere. Besides, she even made noodles for you and sent me up to call you. Look how lucky you are. Us losers have to cook for ourselves..."
Tan Fei lay on the ground, feebly grumbling without pause. Zhang Chen merely smiled faintly. It seemed Tan Fei had no major problems.
"Where's Er Wa?"
"Second Brother grabbed his precious blade after breakfast and went off into the woods to explore."
"By himself?"
"With that skinny guy from No. 1 High. Seems the two of them hit it off over drinks yesterday."
Zhang Chen frowned and went downstairs with Tan Fei. Jia Xin was already sitting in the dining room. Not even a scar remained from his injuries, as if nothing had happened last night. Shen Qiutian, the long-haired girl, sat beside him.
He suffered such serious injuries, yet he recovered without a scratch overnight. Acupuncture really is incredible.
When Zhang Chen entered the kitchen, Wang Yizhi was alone, lifting the noodles from the pot into a bowl. When she turned around, she found Zhang Chen standing behind her.
"You lazy pig, you really can sleep. You went to bed so early last night, yet you still slept until now."
"I knew Yi Zhi would make noodles for me, so I slept in. Thanks."
Seeing no one else in the kitchen, Zhang Chen gathered his courage and lightly kissed Wang Yizhi on her left cheek before taking the noodles from her hands. Then he turned and headed toward the hall.
The instant he turned around, a heavy punch landed on Zhang Chen's back. If his body had not been so strong, the bowl of noodles in his hands might have gone flying.
When he turned back, Wang Yizhi stared at him with puffed-up red cheeks, and he heard the words, "You **."
Those actions gradually eased Zhang Chen's nerves, which had been tense the entire time.
Carrying the bowl, Zhang Chen deliberately chose a seat directly opposite Jia Xin. Since everyone else had already finished breakfast, only Zhang Chen, Jia Xin, Wang Yizhi, and Shen Qiutian remained in the dining room.
Wang Yizhi did not stay beside Zhang Chen. She went out first to find Dai Xu, while Shen Qiutian beside Jia Xin left the dining room after Jia Xin gave her a meaningful look.
With a thought from Zhang Chen, the dining room doors slowly closed.
"Jia Xin, what method did you use to recover so quickly?" Zhang Chen asked as he ate his noodles.
"Traditional Chinese acupuncture."
"Pfft!" Zhang Chen nearly spat out the noodles in his mouth, but he did not feel like commenting on it any further.
"Did anything happen in your No. 1 High dormitory last night?" Zhang Chen asked seriously.
"No."
"We had a bit of a problem on our side." Zhang Chen told Jia Xin what had happened in Wang Yizhi's bedroom last night, but concealed the matter of the Blood Beetle.
"Oh, blood? Could there be a Blood Demon?"
Before Jia Xin frowned, a flicker of a look that suggested he had known about this long ago flashed through his eyes. Zhang Chen caught it.
"What is a Blood Demon?" Zhang Chen asked casually.
"A Blood Demon is a mutated ghost creature, utterly incomparable to Fierce Ghosts or Corpse Ghosts. Before death, Blood Demons were complete freaks. As humans, they enjoyed no food and spent their days feeding on human flesh and drinking human blood, with a particular fondness for children and young girls. Over their lifetimes, they ate more than a hundred people, perhaps even thousands. Their sins were monstrous."
"After death, their souls become far stronger than those of other ghost creatures, nourished for so long by human flesh and compounded by their innately evil nature."
After hearing this, Zhang Chen was deeply shocked. Yang Zi had been a twisted serial killer, and his methods had been disgusting enough, but compared to the Blood Demon Jia Xin had described, he was nothing more than a minor evil beside a great one.
"Your guess is correct. If you hadn't stopped that bloodwater in time last night, your girlfriend would already be a walking corpse. A single drop of a Blood Demon's blood can alter someone else's nature. That is what makes Blood Demons so terrifying. Furthermore, powerful Blood Demons are essentially immortal. In other words, they can be reborn from a drop of blood."
Zhang Chen had also heard the phrase "reborn from a drop of blood" in novels. Those capable of it were usually either the protagonist or the protagonist's greatest enemy.
"Then should we consider leaving this place today?" Zhang Chen immediately got to the point.
"No." Jia Xin rejected the idea outright.
"You know it yourself. Your girlfriend avoided being controlled because of you, but the same may not be true for the others. I was healing my injuries last night, so I couldn't extend my attention beyond the room."
"Besides, we can't leave. Setting aside whether we can even get out, there is definitely something wrong with the villagers outside, and you know that. More importantly, if we let this matter go unchecked and the Blood Demon returns to the world, the death toll will not be in the hundreds, but in the tens of thousands."
Zhang Chen did not consider himself a hero, nor did he want to become one. But Jia Xin's words made sense, and Zhang Chen had no way to refute them. So he said,
"Then we'll stay a while longer. If things change beyond what either of us can control, we must leave."
Jia Xin nodded, then left the room alone.
Sitting alone in the dining room, Zhang Chen muttered, "I wonder what Jia Xin is hiding."
Before you continue