Chapter 5

Night.

Moonlight veiled everything like gauze.

Lin Sheng still lay in bed.

His whole body was rigid, and he couldn't move. The tendons in his hands and feet felt frozen stiff, hard as stone.

The only parts he could just barely move were his fingers and head. He'd been working at it for days.

Tap, tap, tap.

The footsteps came again.

Lin Sheng kept his expression calm and tried to empty his mind.

After so many nightmares, he knew all too well that he couldn't go on like this.

Two weeks of severely inadequate sleep had left his daily routine and physical condition in an utterly dismal state.

"Lin Sheng."

Suddenly, it seemed as though something was calling to him.

Lin Sheng's expression stiffened.

"Lin Sheng."

The voice seemed to drift over from a distant, empty place, filled with inexplicable sorrow.

But this was clearly just a bedroom, an ordinary room less than six square meters in size.

"Lin Sheng."

The voice came again.

Lin Sheng clenched his teeth, trying to steady his heart as it began to beat faster and faster.

After so many experiences, he'd noticed a pattern.

Whenever he panicked in a dream, the footsteps would grow faster and draw closer. His control over his body would also get worse and worse.

Don't be afraid.

Lin Sheng turned his face and glanced at the girl in the white dress sitting at the desk to his left.

Then he closed his eyes.

He took a deep breath.

He opened his eyes.

Whoosh!!

A ghastly pale woman's face was right in front of him, nearly touching the tip of his nose.

They were less than a hand's breadth apart.

The woman's terrified eyes were wide open, as if she'd seen something utterly horrifying.

But the scene suddenly blurred. When Lin Sheng looked again, the woman's face had vanished.

The girl in the white dress was still sitting at the desk with her back to him, perfectly motionless.

He trembled all over, struggling to control his body after the sudden fright.

Tap, tap, tap.

The footsteps drew closer and closer.

"Lin Sheng." The voice calling his name was drawing closer, too.

Click.

Suddenly, the bedroom door slowly opened.

Lin Sheng tried to control his body and keep his emotions in check.

Tap, tap, tap.

The footsteps drew closer, slowly entered the room, and stopped at the foot of his bed.

Lin Sheng could clearly feel the other person watching him, wearing some mysterious smile and radiating a cold, lifeless feeling.

For no reason, he suddenly sensed that the person was reaching out, slowly moving a hand toward his blanket.

Little by little.

Closer and closer.

"Lin Sheng!!"

A scream suddenly rang in Lin Sheng's ear, making his whole body go numb.

"If I'm going to die, then we'll die together!!"

With no time to think, his face twisted into a grimace as he summoned every ounce of strength and hurled the blanket aside.

Thump!!

Amid a muffled impact, Lin Sheng sat up and reached for the person at the foot of the bed.

Aaaaaah!!!!

A piercing scream rang out.

Lin Sheng's vision blurred. The world spun around him, and he could no longer make anything out.

Thud.

He seemed to have hit something, though it also seemed he'd grabbed nothing at all.

Huff. Huff. Huff.

After an unknown amount of time, Lin Sheng slowly panted as his vision gradually cleared.

At some point, he had gotten out of bed and was now standing in front of the desk, his right hand gripping the white-dressed woman's right shoulder.

Pfft.

In an instant, the woman with her back to him deflated like a punctured skin bag, leaving only a dress that fell onto the chair.

Lin Sheng's hand closed on empty air. He froze, standing there in a daze.

He lowered his head to inspect the dress, but it was like melting white wax. Within seconds, it melted away and evaporated without a trace.

"Did I... did I do it?" A strange sense of relief welled up in Lin Sheng's heart.

He panted heavily as he looked around.

He was still in the bedroom, but something about it was off.

The details in some corners were blurry, but most of the room—the desk, bed, floor, ceiling, and chandelier—was crystal clear.

Lin Sheng reached out and touched the chair, but felt nothing. It was as if a thick glove covered his hand. He tried touching other things.

"Am I still dreaming?" he suddenly realized.

According to the information he'd looked up before, there was one way to tell whether you were dreaming: observe the details.

He thought for a moment, then bent down to examine the patterns in the wooden chair.

The patterns on the black chair were a series of curves. They looked nothing like wood grain, but more like a simplified drawing of some strange animal.

The patterns belonged to an animal Lin Sheng found familiar, though he couldn't name it.

"So I really am dreaming." A strange excitement stirred in Lin Sheng's heart.

The fear from a moment ago had vanished without a trace.

He tried moving around and found he could move freely.

The bedroom was exactly like the one in real life.

A bookcase, a bed, a desk, and a wooden chair.

Only the details in some corners were still blurry, like they'd been pixelated beyond recognition.

Lin Sheng steadied his emotions, then slowly looked toward the foot of the bed.

The person who should have been making the footsteps was nowhere to be seen.

The bedroom door stood half open. Through the gap lay a long, narrow hallway bathed in a dark red glow.

Lin Sheng paused, then slowly moved toward it. He opened the door and stepped outside, one slow step at a time.

Each step felt like walking on cotton—heavy, yet without any sensation.

After leaving the bedroom, Lin Sheng slowly walked down the hallway.

It was clearly the hallway in his own home, yet it felt as though he were walking on a soft carpet.

He turned his head and looked out the glass window on the left side of the hallway.

Outside was a sea of shifting dark red.

It looked like some thick fluid, moving slowly and silently.

He reached out and touched the window, but still felt nothing.

"This must be a peculiarity of dreams. I remember that when I used to dream, I couldn't feel things I touched, either."

The thought crossed Lin Sheng's mind. He didn't stop, though. He withdrew his hand and continued down the hallway.

The home in the dream was exactly like the one in reality, with the same layout and structure.

The hallway was only about a dozen meters long. At the end, the kitchen was on the left and the living room on the right.

Lin Sheng walked to the space between the living room and the kitchen, then peered into each.

"Which way should I go?" His awareness wasn't very clear in the dream. It felt hazy, as if a layer of fog lay between him and everything else.

He also had the sense that he had to concentrate to stay in the dream. If he let his guard down, he might wake up at any moment and leave it for good.

After hesitating for a few seconds, Lin Sheng headed left, toward the kitchen.

He wanted to see whether the kitchen still had the dishes, food, and plates they'd left after eating during the day.

They left any food they couldn't finish on the table, covered with a mesh food cover to keep out flies.

Lin Sheng gently pushed open the kitchen door, and his eyes widened slightly.

The sink, dining table, and cutting board were all neatly in their usual places. The white tiles on the walls were spotless, and black-and-white checkered tiles covered the floor. A corner of the floor held the vegetables they'd bought that day.

A few bright-red carrots poked out of a bag. Tiny droplets of water clung to a bundle of deep-green napa cabbage, and two round tomatoes looked like apples. Supposedly, they were a new variety with more nutrients.

"These are all just like in reality. But what's this?" Lin Sheng stared blankly past the familiar things, his gaze falling on a crack in the wall to the right of the kitchen.

There shouldn't have been a crack there.

But now, a pitch-black fissure more than a meter high and half a meter wide split the wall on the right side of the kitchen.

Black mist churned faintly inside, deep and dark like a passageway.