"Cough, cough, cough—"
Luan Xin was like a drowning man, coughing violently as he greedily gulped in fresh air. Relief at having survived shone in his eyes. When he opened them and saw the dim candlelight inside the tent, the taut string of his nerves finally slackened, and his heart settled back into place. The commotion on his side startled Gongyang Yongye and the other man. "Lord Luan, what happened?"
A nightmare shouldn't cause a reaction like that, should it?
Luan Xin wiped his forehead and found his palm slick with cold sweat. "Just now, some scoundrel trapped me in a nightmare. I nearly lost my life there, but luckily I made it out alive. I'm fine now."
"What? How could this happen?"
Luo San was both shocked and furious. He asked Gongyang Yongye with a look.
The latter gave a slight shake of his head, indicating that he hadn't noticed anything either.
At once, both old men's expressions darkened.
They had never imagined someone could cause trouble right under their noses. What was that if not a slap in the face? Their old faces were on the line, and they urgently needed to save face. "Lord Luan, could you tell us exactly what happened?"
Luan Xin left out irrelevant details and picked out the essentials. He remembered that after killing himself in the dream, he hadn't woken up right away. As the dream and reality shifted back and forth, he had felt something crowding in. An unfamiliar force had tried to drag his consciousness in the opposite direction. "...I suspect that might be 'Soul Possession'?"
Or perhaps it was the hand behind the tricks in his dream.
Whatever the case, the enemy had clearly come for him.
Luo San said, "This place is no longer safe. We need to