"Hello?"
Zhou Kai frowned and tapped the counter twice.
"Oh, oh, oh! I'm here!"
The young woman jolted awake, her hands going limp as her upper body nearly toppled forward.
Her cheeks flushed red. "Sorry, you're paying, right...? Which table?"
"B6," Zhou Kai replied flatly.
"Don't you close at eleven thirty? It's only a little after ten. How are you this tired..."
The young woman wore a stainless steel name badge on her chest. It read Chu Siwen.
Chu Siwen looked mortified. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry... I'm just so tired."
"Please don't complain about me... I'm really sorry!"
She caught sight of her supervisor out of the corner of her eye and clasped her hands together in fright, bowing repeatedly to Zhou Kai.
Zhou Kai would never do something like that. He nodded. "I won't. Just ring me up."
"Okay... B6, that'll be 219. Cash or scan to pay?"
"Scan."
With a beep, Zhou Kai paid, then turned to look for Lu Yan.
Just then, someone brushed past him, bringing the fragrance of gardenias.
Zhou Kai instinctively glanced over.
The woman was looking at him, too.
Through their delicate half-rimmed glasses, their gazes met in midair.
Zhou Kai was sure he'd never seen her before. He was struck for a moment by her flawless face, then quickly looked away.
But the woman didn't leave.
Instead, she lounged against the back of her chair, tapping a rhythm against her arm with one fingertip. She watched Zhou Kai like a cat watching a clumsy hamster.
With his mind clear, Zhou Kai's senses were sharp. The woman's gaze seemed to have weight, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
"Xiao Kai... Xiao Kai."
Lu Yan suddenly wrapped herself around his arm from behind and mumbled indistinctly, "This lousy restaurant's air-conditioning is on like it's a freezer. I'm freezing to death. Let's go home."
Zhou Kai knew she couldn't walk by herself, so he let her hang on him.
"Sure. I'll get a cab and take you home."
"Don't throw up on me."
Zhou Kai warned her.
Lu Yan grumbled, "How much is that lousy shirt of yours worth? If I get it dirty, I'll pay you back..."
The two of them walked past the woman again, leaning against each other.
This time, the woman didn't give them another curious glance. She simply lowered her head and examined her nails.
Supporting Lu Yan, Zhou Kai pressed the button for the elevator downstairs.
A few broken snatches of conversation drifted through the half-open fire door to the emergency stairwell.
One of the voices belonged to Chu Siwen, the young woman at the front desk.
She sounded aggrieved. "...I'm starting to wonder if someone's been sticking pins in a doll of me..."
"Two nights in a row, the exact same nightmare."
"I can't sleep well at night, and I'm dead tired during the day. What should I do..."
Zhou Kai's expression froze.
He instinctively looked back.
The half-rimmed-glasses woman was staring at him through her lenses, half her face visible.
"It's Dreamless."
Zhou Kai's pupils contracted.
He understood everything in an instant.
"Let's hurry. We don't want it latching onto us."
What was the Dreamless organization after?
Had someone who seemed to be pursued by a Nightmare also caught Dreamless's attention?
Zhou Kai increasingly felt that reality was like a net drawing tighter and tighter around him.
He went downstairs and hailed a cab.
"Driver, take us to the Android Residential Complex," Zhou Kai said softly.
A little over ten minutes later, the cab stopped at the east gate of an old residential complex in the city center.
The middle-aged driver, whose hairline was in dire straits, glanced at them in the rearview mirror. Whistling, he made a sleazy joke. "Young man, that girl looks real juicy."
Zhou Kai's eyes turned cold. He couldn't be bothered to say more. "Get lost!"
For a moment, the driver felt an oddly cold aura rise from Zhou Kai.
He gave an awkward laugh, floored the accelerator, and shot off.
Zhou Kai carried Lu Yan upstairs.
It seemed his older sister had stopped living with Lu Yan a few months ago.
Lu Yan lived alone now.
As before, Lu Yan might have forgotten the password to her door, but the Zhou siblings definitely remembered it.
He opened the door, dropped Lu Yan onto the sofa, then pulled a thin blanket over her.
Zhou Kai sat directly on the cold floor and closed his eyes to meditate.
It was just after eleven. There was still a little time before he entered the Nightmare.
He was already exhausted, so he didn't plan to do anything else... By that, of course, he meant practicing his skills.
Less than an hour passed before his phone alarm began vibrating with a faint electric shock. Zhou Kai opened his eyes.
They said the electric shock could shorten a phone's keyboard lifespan, but a few brands insisted on using it anyway.
The one Zhou Kai used was one of them.
He glanced at Lu Yan, sleeping soundly, and spoke softly.
"Load Nightmare."
Compared with the times he'd entered at home, the process was especially painful this time.
His consciousness was roughly yanked out of his body, as if it were hanging from a ship's anchor and being whipped back and forth through fog as thick and sticky as tar.
Each time it seemed about to hit the ground, an invisible force dragged it skyward again.
The world spun around him.
The dizzying ordeal dragged on for a long time. Then warmth spread across Zhou Kai's back, and he felt the familiar glow of the fireplace.
With his eyes already open, he opened them again.
The thick fog around him dispersed with a roar.
[Welcome back. The Moonlight Orchid is sprouting new buds in the Nursery.]
The Nursery's dialogue box passed through several meters of soil and floated over to Zhou Kai.
Bathed in the firelight and the faint, ghostly silver radiance, Zhou Kai's fatigue and discomfort slowly began to fade.
The fuel in the fireplace had thirty-seven minutes of durability left.
This time, Zhou Kai didn't plan to use it all...
During the forced summons tomorrow night, ten or twenty minutes of light might prove incredibly useful.
Five minutes later, Zhou Kai had more or less recovered.
The Erosion progress hadn't changed much. It seemed that after he'd replenished one life, he'd need something stronger to replenish more.
An uneasy feeling emanated from the study window, so Zhou Kai didn't approach it rashly.
It wasn't time to explore the second floor or above yet.
Zhou Kai went down to the basement to take a look.
The red Gate hadn't appeared, and the basement was terrifyingly quiet.
The sprout of the Moonlight Orchid, glowing with a faint silver light, was slowly growing in the soil.
It looked like it would be a long time before it matured.
The cave-in blocked by junk showed no signs of anything unusual. At least for now, nothing would crawl out of it.
"Tomorrow night... I have to survive!"
Zhou Kai clenched his fists and returned to the fireplace.
"Exit Nightmare!"
But the moment Zhou Kai returned to reality... he was suffocating.
Something was clamped tightly around his neck!!
His throat crackled, and the choking sensation was deadly.
Zhou Kai's expression twisted for an instant, but the next second, he summoned all his strength and drove both hands into the gap between his neck and the iron grip.
Crack!
A sharp snap rang out.
Zhou Kai's eyes flew open.
He was standing in an extremely awkward position, looking down at Lu Yan on the sofa.
And at some point, his hands had risen and were suspended in midair.
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