Nightmare (10) - Strange

The first night's dream wasn't too difficult, especially after Zhao Yijiu found Zhou Xue and protected her.

For the next period of time, the madman kept wandering around the Fang Mansion, seemingly determined not to give up until he found them. However, when Zhao Yijiu secretly observed from the side, she could tell that the madman walked with a very calm pace, not at all as anxious as he appeared.

Calm and composed.

That word best describes the madman's current state.

He had to keep Zhou Xue with him and change locations at any time—she was far more familiar with the mansion than they were, so the idea of hiding in some corner was simply unrealistic.

Fortunately, he only needed to hide with Zhou Xue for an hour, and the night would be over.

Zhao Yijiu walked beside Zhou Xue, mentally calculating as she went.

With Zhou Xue leaving, the danger has been reduced by more than half... As for himself, since he is playing the role of Young Master Fang, he knows that he probably won't be able to leave. He will still have to deal with the perverted madman in this Fang Mansion and collect as many clues as possible.

"..."

"Smack!"

The earthenware jar shattered in front of them. Even though Zhao Yijiu sensed it beforehand and pulled Zhou Xue back a step, Zhou Xue still staggered, and her ankle was cut by a flying shard.

If Zhao Yijiu hadn't pulled her away, the earthenware pot would have smashed down on her head, leaving her with a bloody head.

She gasped involuntarily, then looked up.

This is in front of the woodshed. Before she and her "groom" came in, they looked around for a while but didn't find any trace of the madman.

But as it turns out, when a madman tries to hide, even his skilled helper, the groom, cannot detect him.

Her raised eyes met those of the madman on the roof, where the corners of his mouth were slightly upturned beneath his half-mask.

This person showed absolutely no awareness that there was anything wrong with throwing a can at someone; he even had another one in his hand. Seeing Zhou Xue look up, he chuckled, "Oh, you dodged it!"

After he finished speaking, he looked at the wary Zhao Yijiu and said, "And this one... Young Master Fang, aren't you a little too energetic today?"

Zhao Yijiu completely ignored him.

Although this way of speaking is quite likely to provoke anger, he had heard it from Yu Xing many times before and was almost used to it. A few words from this madman couldn't provoke him.

The madman lay half-reclined on the roof tiles, looking down at them. After a while, he narrowed his eyes and swung the earthenware pot in his hand at Zhou Xue's head. Zhou Xue hurriedly dodged, but before the pot could touch her, it was intercepted by Zhao Yijiu, who slashed it with his short knife and sent it flying.

"Hurry up." Zhao Yijiu glanced at the time; there were only three minutes left. He felt that as long as he protected Zhou Xue, three minutes would be a very short time.

That madman up there... seems to be mostly just playing around, not really going all out yet, otherwise what he smashed down just now wouldn't have been a clay pot, but a knife tip.

Zhao Yijiu and Zhou Xue quickly disappeared into the courtyard with a sense of urgency. The masked man was still lying on the roof, his eyes clear amber, gazing thoughtfully at their retreating figures.

"Not bad, an interesting kid." His slender fingers casually rested on his belt, one leg bent. "Unfortunately... I had to kill you, otherwise, how would I send a gift to A Xing?"

"He'll definitely like your head, won't he?"

The cold seeped into the blankets, freezing Zhou Xue awake.

She woke up relatively peacefully this time because in the last few minutes of the dream, the madman seemed to have given up chasing them, allowing her to have a relatively safe ending.

She checked the time on her phone, which was next to her pillow, and realized she had only slept for two hours.

Zhou Xue, however, felt as if she had slept for seven hours; stimulated by the dream, she was no longer sleepy at all.

She stared blankly at the ceiling, a red image flashing through her mind. The difference this time was that when she thought of red, it wasn't the madman from her previous dreams that appeared, but the groom from the Fang Mansion.

I don't know if it was because I met this kind groom in my dream today, but even though the groom seemed to have a bad temper, at least he was protecting her, which made her feel like she wasn't the only one rebelling.

At this moment, although she dreamed of getting closer to the wedding ceremony, she was actually in the most peaceful moment she had experienced in the past month.

--Only for a moment.

Feeling the endless cold, Zhou Xue had a thought: hadn't she turned on the air conditioner before going to sleep?

She propped herself up and looked around, noticing a small crack in the window through which cold air was constantly blowing in, and the air conditioner had inexplicably stopped working.

Strange things often happen in the room, but Zhou Xue has gotten used to it. To her, as long as it doesn't endanger her life, these little accidents in reality are nothing to worry about.

Anyway, worrying too much will only terrify her and cause her insomnia; it won't do her any good. She might as well relax and think about how to solve the problem.

She quietly got out of bed, wiped away the cold sweat she had produced in her dream, and felt sticky all over. But she wasn't bold enough to go to the bathroom to take a shower in the middle of the night, so she just wiped herself with a towel and then checked what was wrong with the air conditioner.

"The plug was unplugged..." she murmured twice, plugged it back in, and turned on the air conditioner.

While waiting for the room to warm up again, she sat on the edge of the bed, touched her cool pajamas, and remembered the madman's face in her dream.

This was the only time she woke up with a clear memory of the person from her dream.

That madman was very handsome, exuding a contradictory aura.

He seemed to care a lot about his appearance, but when he committed murder, he was reckless and acted like a psychopath.

Pooh!

He's a pervert to begin with!

But he... Fang Xing from the company.

Wait, Fang Xing? Fang Mansion?

Do they look alike?

Zhou Xue's eyes widened, as if she had discovered something incredible!

Consider this: their "Nightmare" project team was only established a little over half a month ago. Before that, Fang Xing frequently visited her department because of another project. If her unusual behavior wasn't caused by visiting the graves, but rather by Fang Xing secretly doing something—

Absolutely possible!

Thinking about this, Zhou Xue recalled the comments Fang Xing made about the ghost bride's photo earlier that day.

Paper cutter, red fingernails...

The more I think about it, the more it seems to make sense.

She swallowed hard and hugged herself tightly.

"It's best to minimize contact with Fang Xing from now on. At least we need to observe him closely to see if he exhibits any unusual behavior." Although Fang Xing usually seems quite strange in every way...

The air conditioner heated up quickly, but Zhou Xue felt cold all over. Sleepiness returned to her, and soon she fell into a deep sleep, touching the white jade pendant around her neck.

I slept soundly until dawn.

As dawn broke, the sounds of elderly people exercising in the neighborhood could be heard from outside.

Right next to Zhou Xue, Yu Xing heard Zhao Ruru muttering quietly on the bed in the bedroom. She sat up from her makeshift bed on the floor, her eyelids too heavy to open.

"What are you doing?" He had felt somewhat relieved after checking Zhou Xue's room and had actually taken a good nap. His voice was hoarse and languid from just waking up. "A fortune telling?"

Zhao Ruru's legs were still covered by the blanket, and her hair was loose. Yu Xing looked over and saw that she was holding a handful of unknown beans, which she was scattering on the bed sheet and arranging them into a diagram.

"Hmm, divination, don't speak yet, shh." Zhao Ruru squinted at the pattern being scattered, and after a long while, she uttered a somewhat doubtful syllable. "Huh, is there a problem?"

"What?" Yu Xing took out his phone and glanced at it, his eyes blinded by the 6:30 display. He lay back down, pulled the blanket over his head, and his voice became muffled. "I should be able to sense if there's a problem. What happened?"

"Let me tell you, after you went to sleep last night, I was planning to keep watch," Zhao Ruru's voice came from outside the covers. "But I actually fell asleep! And slept really soundly! This is simply incomprehensible... I've never been able to sleep soundly during a deduction exercise, unless I'm influenced by a ghost."

"Ah..." Yu Xing was speechless for a moment.

So that's why he consulted the oracle, sensing something was amiss... He turned over and didn't reply.

This is one of the side effects of his immortality, which has only appeared in recent years. Anyone who is close to him at night is likely to fall into a deep sleep.

In other words, he could be described as a human-shaped, self-propelled, powerful sleeping pill.

It seems that Xiao Xuechen was also affected by this when they were in Coffin Village.

Yu Xing was under the covers. He knew that because it was pitch black, the live stream camera was probably focused on the area outside the covers, so he was likely not being watched.

Perhaps because he had just woken up and was still not fully awake, his eyes were slightly vacant, and he seemed a little dazed.

Zhao Ruru said... she has never slept well during deductions unless she is influenced by ghosts.

Influenced by ghosts...

Are his abilities really that similar to those of ghosts?

The aura emanating from his body was mistaken for a vengeful ghost by Xu Shu, who was familiar with ghosts. In the mourning hall Zhao Ruru also thought he was possessed by a ghost. In addition, there was the healing ability that even the mirror ghost feared in Alice's Hell, and Yi Qing had said that ghosts could sense each other. His perception of curses, sacrifices, and ghosts far exceeded that of ordinary diviners.

Perhaps in some sense, he really is a vengeful ghost?

This realization had never crossed his mind before, but today, for some reason, all sorts of past details surfaced, making Yu Xing unusually uncertain.

What if what those researchers from the Lingren did to him a long time ago was to turn him into a ghost?

What if he's the only one who mistakenly believes that he is still human?

Xu Shu is an exceptionally skilled diviner in the Xu family, possessing the strongest affinity for ghosts. Would the other party really come to test him just because they misjudged him at first glance? If it were him, he would only do so if he was extremely confident.

It was too stuffy under the covers, but Yu Xing could bear it. When he came to his senses, he realized that he was overthinking things.

At this point, does it matter whether he's a human, a ghost, or a monster?

It doesn't matter anymore.

As long as he does what he's supposed to do, it doesn't matter what his final fate is—whether he breaks free from the twisted rules and returns to dust, or is called a mentally deficient ghost, whether he receives redemption or more sins.

He just needs to do what he's supposed to do.

"Ugh, unbelievable! No matter how I calculate it, it tells me there's no harm or disaster. Could it be that I really couldn't resist falling asleep?" Zhao Ruru calculated several more times, finally getting impatient, throwing off the covers, "Alright, I'm getting up!"

Because they were live-streaming, both of them only took off their coats while sleeping. After Zhao Ruru got up, she tried to pull Yu Xing was sleeping on the floor, up, but was sternly refused.

"Get up, boss!"

"No."

"Wow, you're amazing for sleeping in during a simulation!"

"Thank you for the compliment."

"I'll make you breakfast? Get up and eat when I'm done."

"I don't want to eat, don't bother me."

Since Yu Xing insisted that he would not get up until eight o'clock, Zhao Ruru did not dare to really bother him, so she could only mutter to herself as she went to wash up and make breakfast.

Just as they had safely passed their first night, the viewers dispersed to other people's live streams.

Due to the flow of time, the fact that the team is still in the first stage of the mission allows the audience to pass the time when there is no plot, thus avoiding fatigue.

It wasn't until nearly noon, almost time for Zhao Ruru and Zhou Xue to go to the cemetery as agreed, that the audience finally returned in droves.

I admire Xing's mental fortitude.

[Huh? It's 11 o'clock already, did you just wake up?]

[He didn't just wake up; he's been writing and drawing ever since he got up. It's hard to see what he's writing without zooming in, but I know he's incredibly focused when he's drawing—he's a true animator.]

[Maybe he's a painter in real life; I can tell he has a very artistic air about him.]

[New guy upstairs? What you see might not be what Xing actually looks like.]

[It's not as good as Cold Wine's place. I don't know what the deduction system was thinking. Here, we still have time to sleep, while Cold Wine's place is a battleground that lasts for hours. It's so unfair.]

[The Cold Wine and that NPC, or rather the boss, shouldn't still be fighting each other, right?]

[Surprised? I really haven't had much rest. I always felt something was off; that NPC's stamina was much better than Cold Wine's, even though they were both ghosts.]

[Otherwise, why would it be called a boss? I suspect the difficulty and death point of this stage is that everyone enters the dream together and plays a survival game with that Master, while also having to carry Zhou Xue, this burden.]

[That's just how it is with protective missions, good luck.]

[All teams have finished the first stage. Wow, Zhao Yanran actually had a big outburst after losing her boyfriend! Her team and the other two teams entered the meeting room almost at the same time.]

Wouldn't that long table time be very lively?

[The progress is gradually catching up]

The members of the Three Great Families are indeed elites among the deducers. In the Death Parallel Line, they are often able to reduce the mortality rate by virtue of their superior intelligence or talent.

The first phase has ended, and apart from the non-family members in Zhao Yanran's group, all 26 remaining members have survived.

While the groups behind them were frantically catching up by taking advantage of the time difference, Zhao Ruru had already packed up and left with Zhou Xue.

The cemetery is far from the city center, located in the suburbs, and is not accessible by high-speed rail. So the two decided to take the high-speed rail to the nearest station first, and then take a taxi there. After all... it's not really worth driving your own car there. If something happens, and the person survives but the car is destroyed, Zhou Xue will feel heartbroken.

Watching the two girls leave through the window, Yu Xing leisurely poured himself a glass of water and slowly organized what he had written that morning.

Of course, I'm not drawing original artwork.

How could he possibly waste time on pointless acting when he has so many clues to sort out?

After tidying up, Yu Xing stuffed the papers into her desk drawer, got up, and left the room.

He put on his coat, hailed a taxi, and gave them the location of the cemetery.

Zhao Ruru kept updating him on her journey via her phone; it seemed the two girls would arrive first.

Yu Xing held her phone, facing the window to look at the scenery, occasionally responding to the driver's casual conversation, until finally at a certain moment—

Zhao Ruru stopped replying to him.

He seemed to have vanished without a trace, disappearing without a trace.