Mid-July

"On the fifteenth of the seventh month, we set the flower altar,

King Yama gathers the graves and dons a face."

Scarlet moonlight filtered through the willow trees, whose branches had been stripped bare, casting countless menacing ghostly shadows across the rugged, muddy mountain road.

Beyond the shadows, at the end of the mountain road, children sang a nursery rhyme. Their voices echoed through the desolate village halfway up the mountain, where white candles filled the streets beneath a sky of shifting clouds.

Beside the mountain road, a nine-foot-wide river flowed slowly toward the desolate village. Its surging spray shimmered in the night with the red glow unique to the full moon.

A bamboo raft made of a hundred stalks drifted unsteadily down the river, entirely out of place.

Eleven people in an assortment of clothes lay asleep on the raft, their sleepwear soaked through at the back.

Unconsciously, the raft carried them slowly into the village.

The village's weathered signboard was impossible to read in the eerie red night. It dangled precariously six feet above their heads.

A three-eyed crow curiously perched on one corner of the signboard. A gust of wind blew past.

The crow cawed and took flight from the mountainside.

With a clang, the black signboard fell to the ground.

The part that remained aboveground read: ...jia Village.

Behind the signboard, the desolate village was covered in cobwebs. Yellow joss paper fluttered through the webs and scattered across the village in the wind.

Every door and window stood half open, creaking in the mountainside breeze to create a symphony.

At first glance, it seemed as if the entire village was inhabited.

At the Rooster's first crow, the red moon vanished, and the children's voices scattered.

At the Rooster's second crow, the slanting light of the rising sun fell on the willow trees. Ghostly shadows appeared alongside them, and tender shoots sprouted from the withered yellow branches.

At the Rooster's three crows, the black signboard rose six feet above the ground again. The bright flames of the white candles died out.

The raft, carrying eleven people, bobbed back and forth, repeatedly knocking against the bank.

The splashing water roused the person nearest the shore in time.

A young man with short hair cut straight across his forehead wore a black, one-piece, lightweight Toothless pajama suit. The uneven teeth on the hood dangled over his forehead.

He sleepily rubbed his gritty eyes. The damp chill of the river instantly swept away his drowsiness.

At the same time, the others on the raft slowly woke as well, propping themselves up and wincing at their discomfort.

Everyone looked around in confusion and disbelief, then glanced at the strangers beside them.

It seemed no one had escaped this fate: they had all ended up here in an unknown state.

A young woman named Zheng Wuyou, her messy Brown Ear-Length Hair framing her face, sat in the middle of the raft. She sleepily surveyed the people and surroundings as the raft rose and fell beneath her.

She felt like she was getting seasick.

"Welcome, first batch of Nightmare Experience Officers, to the Nightmare Countdown. This is the Countdown Nightmare."

On the bank, facing the eleven people, a man had appeared at some point. He wore a grayish-white straw rain cape over a black suit and crouched on one knee.

At first glance, he looked like a white ox with four horns, though his body was human-shaped.

The two horns on either side of his head were sharp, each thick base branching into four prongs.

His narrow eyes had no pupils, only whites.

Yet the eleven people could still feel his gaze upon them.

His nearly eight-inch-long ears twitched from time to time, picking up every sound in this world.

"Who... are you?" A middle-aged man in cropped pants steadied himself on the swaying raft. His still-foggy mind wouldn't let him think clearly.

He could only ask the most basic questions.

A muscular man with a shaved head and bare chest was the first to recover. He staggered to his feet on the raft and tried to rush forward and grab the man by his suit collar. But the man swiftly stood and twisted his arm behind his back.

"What kind of cosplay is this?"

"Let me go! Do you know who I am?"

"You'll regret this if you lay a hand on me!" The bare-chested man's hands were twisted behind his back. The veins bulged on his arms, but the man holding him didn't budge.

The bare-chested man could only thrash in agony, bellowing incoherently.

"I know you all have questions, so I'll give you a brief introduction to this world." The man spoke evenly, without a hint of disturbance over the brief commotion caused by the bare-chested man.

The man stood a full six and a half feet tall. Even the bare-chested man, who looked about five foot eleven, seemed small beside him.

Too noisy...

Zheng Wuyou shook her muddled head. A little girl beside her, dressed in SpongeBob pajamas, clung tightly to her.

She knew she wasn't suffering from dementia. One thing was certain: she had been asleep in her dormitory just moments ago.

But this place was clearly nothing like her dorm.

"I'm the opening NPC for the Countdown Nightmare. As the name suggests, to clear the Countdown Nightmare, you'll need to earn enough of the required points during the game, or complete your task before the countdown ends."

Zheng Wuyou helplessly turned toward the suited man on the bank, who was still holding the bare-chested man. She couldn't tell if she'd been kidnapped in the middle of the night and brought to an immersive escape room.

Or if Old Yuan had somehow dragged her off to some other bizarre place again.

The bamboo raft she'd only just gotten comfortable on kept getting splashed by the icy river water.

"Different rules have different scoring systems, and every Nightmare has its own system. You'll have to figure it out yourselves..."

"This is illegal kidnapping! If you don't want serious consequences, you'd better let us go!" A woman with heavy bangs, standing at the very front of the raft, shouted furiously at the man not far from her.

She didn't notice him tilt his head slightly, as if puzzled.

"Are you idiots? Get him together! What are you standing around for?"

Seeing him let his guard down for a moment, the bare-chested man kicked at his towering body with both feet, trying to seize the chance to break free of the rain-caped man's hold.

The man in the rain cape and suit seemed immune to pain. He mechanically turned his head toward the bare-chested man on his right.

"Since you're our esteemed first batch of Nightmare Experience Officers, here's a friendly tip: fail to clear the game and you'll die. Your death will carry over into reality."

As he went about his assigned task, he opened his mouth toward the bare-chested man, looking pleased, as if rewarding himself.

The bare-chested man facing him was held by the neck in one hand. His eyes widened and his feet stopped moving.

A warm liquid ran from his crotch and dripped onto the soft earth.

The mouth in front of him instantly grew as large as a washbasin, revealing layer upon layer of bloodstained fangs.

A foul stench of rot poured from it.

Everyone on the raft stared in disbelief as the rain-caped man turned his face sideways, his eerie cheek splitting open. They watched him bite down with a crunch and swallow the bare-chested man's head.

When his face returned to normal, a headless corpse remained, red liquid gushing from its severed neck.

It splattered across his hair, though his expression never changed.

"The countdown begins. I hope you... enjoy yourselves. I'm your opening NPC, Ao Ye." He paused as he spoke, as if he wanted them to remember him well, and deliberately emphasized his name.

Zheng Wuyou, meeting his gaze, knew she hadn't imagined it. As the rain-caped man callously dropped the headless corpse, his pupil-less eyes had rested on her for a moment.

Late night... Ao Ye...

"Chi Ao Chi Yin enjoys eating people."