Lighting the Fireplace

Staggering out of the study, Zhou Kai pressed his back against the cold hallway wall, his heart hammering wildly.

He stared fixedly at the small square window behind the bookshelf. There was nothing there, as if nothing had happened.

Yet the corner of his eye kept twitching uncontrollably, and every hair on the back of his neck stood on end, as though that pale, swollen face were still pressed against the glass, staring at him with lifeless eyes.

That definitely hadn't been an illusion.

The numbness in his body had yet to fade completely. Recalling his momentary daze, Zhou Kai felt a chill shoot from his tailbone straight to the top of his head.

If [Comprehensive Combat] hadn't risen to Level 2, giving him a massive boost in strength and bringing his control over his body to a whole new level, allowing him to break free of that bizarre restraint...

Just now, he probably would have truly become a puppet on strings, walking step by step to the window and personally opening the door for that monster to enter his "home"...

"It... probably can't get in, right?"

Zhou Kai's heart sank as that so-called residence permit prompt appeared before his eyes again.

[A notarized residence permit will force other residents not to easily invade your territory.]

Looking at it now, this short sentence was simply filled with traps.

Zhou Kai sneered inwardly.

"Easily"?

In other words, it only needed to put in a little effort.

"Residents"?

Did that thing outside the window count as a "resident"?

It seemed that the protection a so-called home could provide in a Nightmare was only so much.

He picked up the door panel he had smashed into, its sharp wooden splinters still sticking out, and barely managed to wedge it across the study doorway. Then he walked over to the oil lamp and turned the flame down to its lowest setting.

In an instant, the shadows inside the house became darker and deeper, as though they could swallow every trace of light.

Danger lurked everywhere here...

This house was far less safe than he had imagined.

Unless he searched every inch of it, he would never know which corner hid an unsealed window.

And outside those windows, was there perhaps a pale, blank face like a lump of fermented dough, forever Peeping at him from the darkness?

"I hope it didn't get in."

Zhou Kai moved almost silently, keeping close to the walls as he quickly searched the first floor.

Every time he checked a corner, he would sharply turn around, terrified that the moment he did, he would come face-to-face with that face.

The result of his search was nothing.

There was no information whatsoever about fuel.

Zhou Kai had already spent more than half an hour in the dream. The cold seeped into his body through every pore like steel needles.

His joints had frozen stiff. With every step he took, he seemed able to hear the rough scraping of bone against bone.

He had no choice but to abandon the idea of exploring the dark corridor ahead.

The other end of the corridor should have led to the basement.

He retreated to the fireplace. This was the place on the entire first floor most likely to contain clues.

[Brave souls who actively enter a Nightmare may leave at any time...]

[Cowards who passively enter a Nightmare must erect a tombstone... or possess flames strong enough to keep watch through the night...]

Characters slowly surfaced on the fireplace's cold stone, as if urging him to leave.

"Erect a tombstone means I have to die once before I can leave..."

"Flames to keep watch through the night?"

Zhou Kai had no idea, but the good news was that he had entered voluntarily.

But soon, his eyes narrowed. "No... I can't leave yet!"

In a Nightmare, despair fermented.

The longer it dragged on, the more unimaginable the horror he would have to face in the end.

Before he was passively pulled into the dream a few days later, he had to solve the urgent problem of keeping warm.

"But... what exactly is fuel?"

Irritation flared in his heart like a spark.

At that moment, his gaze drifted past the cold firebox and landed on the... monster's corpse in the corner, its outline horrifying beneath the faint oil lamp light.

He remembered the stark white bones amid the ashes, apart from the broken wood.

He remembered the inexplicable word "confession" on the letter paper.

A mad yet utterly reasonable thought exploded in his mind.

Zhou Kai did not hesitate in the slightest. He sprang to his feet, and his axe cut through the air with a dull roar before viciously cleaving into the corpse's shoulder blade.

After a heavy, wet sound of flesh being struck, he dragged the thing toward the fireplace as if hauling a bag of heavy trash, leaving behind a broad, sticky dark-red smear across the floor.

A home should look like a home.

[A warm fireplace will accompany you through the long night.]

A chat box appeared amid the flickering firelight.

The fireplace had finally been lit.

The flames reflected brightly in Zhou Kai's eyes.

Inside the firebox, crackling together with the wood, were one of the monster's legs and one of its arms.

"Confession? Was it because Lan Ze and his brother burned the Outlander?"

Remembering the contents of the letter paper, Zhou Kai finally understood.

The fireplace here actually used the flesh and blood of [monsters], even [people], as its basic fuel.

Without genuine [fuel], this fire could not even be lit!

Zhou Kai let out a long breath of white mist and sat down wearily beside the fireplace.

Long-lost warmth slowly spread from his side, driving away the chill that had penetrated his bones and gradually easing the exhaustion that had nearly crushed him.

A few minutes later.

Lines of text drifted across Zhou Kai's vision.

[Fatigue status has disappeared]

[Weakness status has disappeared]

[The Erosion affecting you is being dispelled]

The newly acquired fatigue status and the weakness that had plagued him for several days vanished at once. Even the four-ninths Erosion status flickered uncertainly in the firelight.

Perhaps if he warmed himself for another hour or two, the number in the denominator would decrease by one.

Wouldn't that mean one more chance to revive?

After weighing his options, leaving the corpse to burn slowly was far more worthwhile than burning it all at once.

And the benefits brought by the burning fireplace were far from limited to that.

Once Zhou Kai had recovered some of his energy, he tossed all the remaining body parts into the fireplace, trying to maximize the burn time.

A new chat box suddenly appeared above the fireplace.

[Filthy flesh and a blasphemous soul have been dissolved in the flames... You have received Lan Ze Soraka's gift.]

[You have obtained Spearmanship Experience*3, Horsemanship Experience*1, Soraka Family Swordplay Experience*1]

[You know nothing, so you have ultimately obtained: Universal Experience Points*1]

"This corpse wasn't that bald, bearded guy. It was the younger brother, Lan Ze?"

The fact that burning corpses could actually grant experience points took Zhou Kai by surprise.

But the conversion rate from all those assorted specialized experience points to Universal Experience Points made him feel as though he had been ruthlessly ripped off.

Five to one!

That was even more ruthless than capitalists!

Still, there was nothing he could do. It wasn't like he knew any of those skills, nor did he have anywhere to learn them...

Being able to convert them into Universal Experience Points was already a blessing in disguise. It was better than ending up with nothing.

In the end, Zhou Kai gradually squeezed four Universal Experience Points out of a complete corpse.

And Erosion progress -1, which was equivalent to revival chances +1.

The fireplace's remaining burn time showed one hour and forty minutes.

This meant that if Zhou Kai left now, the next time he entered, he would have a "spring" that could last for over an hour.

"So, should I keep exploring, or return to reality and recover?"

After thinking for a moment, Zhou Kai decisively chose the latter. The longer he stayed in the Nightmare, the more variables there would be.

He gathered this trip's gains, then silently said before the fireplace, "Leave."

"Xiao Kai, did you have another nightmare?"

Back in reality, the small night-light beside the bed was on.

Zhou Qing sat by the bedside, gazing gently at her younger brother.

Zhou Kai's expression stiffened. His throat was dry as he gave a slight shake of his head.

Zhou Qing explained, "My workplace is changing dorms, so I have to come home and stay for the next few days."

"You sleep in your bed." Her voice was soft, yet it seemed to come from far away. "I'll just sleep on the floor."

Zhou Kai felt the room's temperature being slowly sucked away. His sister's smile held no warmth at all, like a human face painted onto ice.

Her shadow stretched and twisted across the wall, and her stance resembled that of a baby who had only just learned to walk.

The two fell silent.

About two minutes later, Zhou Kai suddenly shuddered. His body jerked violently as he instinctively opened his eyes.

Everything before him was pitch-black.

"Just now... that was a dream too?"

He tried desperately to erase his sister's sinister face from his mind, yet a chill ran down his spine.

Struggling to prop himself up from the bed, he reached out and turned on the light.

He discovered that his entire body was soaked in cold sweat, leaving a human-shaped damp mark on the bedsheet.

His life was slipping uncontrollably into a bizarre Abyss.

Suppressing a sigh, Zhou Kai silently got up and splashed cold water on his face. Then he sat at his desk and took a laptop out of the drawer.

The Red Star Republic's technological aesthetic pursued a kind of retro futurism.

For example, this laptop insisted on being designed like an old-fashioned handicraft.

Its screen was only a finger's width thick, but its frame was sharp enough to hurt his fingers.

The body was a full two fingers thick, and typing on its keyboard produced crisp clacking sounds like a typewriter in an old movie.

Zhou Kai had bought it during his junior year. Its performance had been top-tier at the time, and even now, it was not considered terribly outdated.

He opened a webpage and typed several keywords into the search bar.

[Soraka - Soraka Town - family - The Church]