Nightmare Syndrome

Inside the mall.

The morning crowd mingled with members of Falcon Wing Boxing Gym.

With a small trick, Zhou Kai made his follower mistake someone else for him.

The voice-activated lights in the fire exit had long been broken. With Light Footwork, it was easy for Zhou Kai to hide himself without a trace.

The follower had clearly underestimated a college student. After a string of careless mistakes, he stepped into Zhou Kai's carefully laid trap.

Zhou Kai locked his arm tightly around the man's neck from behind, turning his face liver-purple.

The man desperately slapped at Zhou Kai's arm.

Zhou Kai's gaze swept over the surveillance camera in the corner. His voice was calm and flat. "The security guards will need at least five minutes to get here. But in fifteen seconds, your brain will suffer irreversible damage from oxygen deprivation."

"Talk. Who are you, and why are you following me?"

The man made wheezing, leaking sounds in his throat. Before Zhou Kai, who had Comprehensive Combat Level 2, all his struggling was futile.

He squeezed out a few difficult words. "We... mean no harm... We just... want to talk..."

Zhou Kai's eyes were cold, and the muscles in his arm tightened further.

The man's struggles immediately weakened, his body going limp like a puddle of mud.

Only after confirming that he posed no threat for the time being did Zhou Kai let go as if tossing away garbage.

Air...

Cough, cough!

The man lay on his back, greedily sucking in the stale air of the stairwell. Amid violent coughing, some color finally returned to his purplish-red face.

Stars swam before his eyes. He felt as if he had been stuffed into a washing machine and spun at high speed for ten minutes, with the whole world whirling around him.

Zhou Kai crouched down expressionlessly, removed the tiny earpiece from the man's ear, and put it on himself. An anxious voice was calling out from within.

Then he asked, "Talk. What's your purpose?"

The man wore simple casual clothes, his beard neatly trimmed. In his thirties, he was exactly the sort of mature man girls who liked the older type would find irresistible.

Unfortunately, he was all looks and no substance. He was not very strong and had clearly received no professional training.

His voice trembled as he spoke a name that made Zhou Kai's pupils contract slightly. "We contacted you before... We're..."

"Dreamless."

The moment he heard those two words, Zhou Kai turned and left.

As if merely being associated with that organization would bring bad luck.

"I already told you people, I'm not who you're looking for. Get lost."

"If you follow me again, it won't be your breathing that gets cut off next time. It'll be your neck."

He took off the earpiece. Listening to the futile shouts coming from it, he curled his fingers and crushed it. The plastic casing cracked sharply, and he casually tossed the remains into the trash bin by the wall.

Zhou Kai yanked open the fire exit door and strode away.

A security guard shouted behind him, but he had already blended into the mall crowd like a drop of water into the sea, vanishing in an instant.

Knowing things had gone badly, the man dragged his weak legs upstairs and shakily climbed to the second floor to meet up with his teammates.

"Old Huang!"

A young man quickly caught Huang Zhang, his face full of shock. "Who did this to you?"

"That college kid?"

"Aren't you a private detective?"

"What about your family martial arts?"

Huang Zhang gave a bitter smile and waved his hand. "Damn it, don't mention it. He's a tough one. Let's pull out first."

Inside the boxing gym.

Lu Yan watched as a young man stood beside Zhou Kai and smiled in satisfaction.

"My little brother has a friend now. Good. I won't bother him today."

The young man beside Zhou Kai was about the same height and build as him, though he looked a little more mature, with a slightly protruding lower jaw.

His name was Ma Yifan.

"Bro, that was awesome. Did that guy run into some trouble?"

Ma Yifan stared at Zhou Kai in amazement, his eyes brimming with curiosity.

Of course, he had not gone to wait in the fire exit for no reason. He had gone there solely because Zhou Kai had talked him into it.

Zhou Kai's explanation had been simple and blunt.

"My ex-girlfriend's brother insists that I pay a bride price of two hundred thousand. I just graduated—where am I supposed to get that kind of money? Bro, can you cover for me while I find a chance to run?"

Ma Yifan was warmhearted. Upon hearing that, he figured there was no real danger and pounded his chest as he agreed.

Faced with his questioning, Zhou Kai merely shook his head with a profound expression. "You can never know what's in someone's heart. Who knows?"

"Oh, right. Thanks for today. I'll treat you to a meal another day."

Ma Yifan grinned. "Eh, it was nothing..."

Before long, the day's training began, with Chen Ping still serving as the instructor.

During a break between sets, Chen Ping suddenly walked over to Zhou Kai. His face was stern, but his voice carried a hint of approval. "Not bad."

"Since you've managed to stick with it for five days, keep it up from now on."

"Martial arts are a lifelong pursuit. Skill comes from diligence and is wasted by idleness. If you train one day and slack off the next two, you'll never amount to anything."

Zhou Kai thought, If I didn't have the panel, that would really be true.

He did not argue, merely nodding seriously.

"I understand, Coach Chen."

Chen Ping nodded. "Before the lunch break, I'll personally take you through the movements a few times."

"Thank you, Coach!"

Under the envious and jealous gazes of the surrounding members, Zhou Kai gave Chen Ping a slight bow.

Aside from becoming familiar with fighting techniques, strength gains always produced the most visible results for beginners.

After three sets of bench presses, Zhou Kai stared blankly at the hook loaded with eighty kilograms of weight plates.

He was 184 centimeters tall and weighed 73 kilograms. When he first came here, his maximum bench press had only been sixty kilograms. It had only been a few days, yet it had increased by a full third?

Zhou Kai understood that this rocket-like progress could not have happened without both the increase in his combat skill level and the cleansing of the Fireplace's flames.

After resting for several minutes, Zhou Kai continued.

As sweat soaked through his tank top, information about Dreamless, that "charitable organization," surfaced from the depths of his memory.

After dying three times in dreams and finding his body growing weaker and weaker, Zhou Kai finally took the matter seriously and began searching online for entries about Nightmare.

In the end, he found a website with a detailed description of Nightmare Syndrome.

Dying continuously in the same dream caused the physical body in reality to weaken in tandem. Within five to nine days, the victim would ultimately die of multiple organ failure, cardiac arrest, or brain death.

Although the medical community did not recognize it, to those who had watched family and friends die from Nightmare Syndrome, that life-harvesting illness, like the Grim Reaper itself, truly existed.

Dreamless was a charitable organization active on that website, claiming that it would help Nightmare Syndrome patients handle their funeral arrangements free of charge.

Judging by that mission alone, Zhou Kai had held a fairly favorable impression of them.

That was until he woke after entering the dream for the fourth time and suddenly received a series of messages from Dreamless.

Those bastards had actually traced his IP address through the internet and dug up his personal information.

How the hell could they be good people?

Zhou Kai immediately stated that he had only happened to come across the information and had nothing whatsoever to do with Nightmare Syndrome.

Yet they... still would not let it go. Today, they had even come directly to his door and followed him!

Zhou Kai's eyes turned cold, nearly identical to when he faced that mutated monster.

Bang!

The equipment was put back in place.

Zhou Kai panted heavily, his chest heaving violently more than a dozen times before he slowly sat up and left the bench.

For now, he could only wait and see regarding Dreamless.

As long as he survived nine days, or even longer, they should give up once they realized it was hopeless.

Only two things mattered now...

To survive, to live better—make money and grow stronger!