Chapter 6

Lin Sheng stood before the passageway, motionless.

The surrounding kitchen twisted from time to time within the dream, like a flowing phantom.

He did not know how much time had passed—ten seconds, perhaps twenty.

Time held no real meaning within the dream.

Lin Sheng slowly lifted his foot and took a few steps closer to the passageway.

This rift. It must be connected to the source of the nightmare that filled me with such dread before.

Lin Sheng harbored a suspicion.

The aura emanating from within feels exactly the same as what I encountered during my previous nightmares!

Merely standing before the rift made the skin on the front of his body feel cold and somewhat stiff, identical to the sensation in his earlier nightmares.

I have to go in and see.

Lin Sheng paused, his mind made up. It was just a dream, after all; he wouldn't die. At this moment, his curiosity finally overcame the trace of fear in his heart.

He calmed his emotions for a moment, then finally lifted his foot and walked into the rift, step by step.

Whoosh.

The moment his head entered the rift, Lin Sheng felt a bone-chilling cold wash over his entire body, as if he had been submerged in icy water.

Before his eyes lay pitch-black darkness, and the faint sound of wailing wind echoed on both sides.

Soon, in less than three seconds, Lin Sheng's eyes suddenly brightened.

The icy sensation on his body slowly receded; although he still felt cold, it was now bearable.

What appeared before him was a European-style living room constructed of gray-black stone.

He stood exactly at one end of this rectangular room.

To his immediate left was a fireplace—a dilapidated, brownish-red stove—topped with a bust of a solemn-faced man with curly hair.

Lin Sheng couldn't help but reach out and touch the bust; it was hard, cold, and smooth.

"!?" He was slightly startled and pulled his finger back as if electrocuted.

This tactile sensation is far clearer than before. It's as if it were real.

Thinking of this, he hurriedly turned to look behind him.

On the wall behind him, the rift he had just entered was shrinking and vanishing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The rift faintly reflected the subtle scenery of the kitchen inside.

Before Lin Sheng could react, the rift suddenly accelerated its contraction, and within a few blinks, it sealed completely.

"."

Lin Sheng stood there blankly. He could still feel that he was in a dream, but...

He lowered his head and saw wisps of black energy in the surrounding air, like threads, constantly drilling into his body and through his skin.

He felt as if he were being accepted by this place, being infected by it.

It was a strange sensation.

He seemed to feel that he could stay here for quite some time.

It was an instinct—an inexplicable instinct that had emerged.

There was a strange sense of security here.

Steadying himself, Lin Sheng looked up to survey the entire hall.

In the center of the rectangular hall sat a conspicuous dining table covered with a white cloth. The cloth was splattered with dark red stains, its color dull, tattered, and aged.

The floor, black with yellow streaks, was paved with cold, hard, unknown stone.

On the pale yellow ceiling above, a standard petal-shaped black candle holder hung, with sixteen remaining white candles—some long, some short—arranged in a petal pattern, unlit.

On either side of the hall, one side featured large rectangular windows, while the other was a pale yellow wall covered in various oil paintings.

Lin Sheng paused and walked toward the large windows first.

Reaching the window, he slowly reached out to lift the gray-black curtain and peered out through the grid-paned window.

Outside, it was gray and gloomy. Nearby, several gnarled, leafless tree shadows swayed in the wind, while beyond the wall in the distance, there was only pitch-black darkness.

Lin Sheng let the curtain fall, fell silent for a moment, and turned to walk toward the other wall.

It was covered with all sorts of oil paintings.

However, all the oil paintings were blurry at this moment; one could barely distinguish that some were portraits and others were landscapes.

It's no different from previous dreams. Once I try to focus on the details, everything becomes blurred. Lin Sheng felt slightly more at ease.

This sense of familiarity with the dreamscape helped stabilize his emotions.

He reached out to touch the surface of an oil painting; just like before, there was no tactile feedback at all, as if his hand were wrapped in thick cotton.

He was very patient, examining every single painting one by one. After a long while, he took a step back and looked toward the exit of the hall.

In one corner of the hall stood a wooden door leading to other rooms.

Lin Sheng did not stop, quickening his pace toward the wooden door. He gripped the black door handle, which was carved into the shape of a horse's head, and gave it a gentle twist.

Click.

Amidst the faint sound of the door opening, he slowly stepped into the adjacent room.

The entrance to the room was partitioned by a curtain with dark patterns, which was currently tied back in an inverted V-shape, revealing the scene inside.

Two large, dark red bookshelves faced the doorway, filled with neatly arranged volumes of all kinds.

It's a study, Lin Sheng guessed.

He paused but did not enter. Based on his past experience with dreaming, the books in a study were invariably unreadable, appearing as nothing but a blur. It would be better to wander elsewhere and see if there was anything new.

Lin Sheng turned around, retreated, and returned to the hall.

He wandered around the hall for a while and soon found another door. After entering, he discovered it was a bedroom.

After strolling through the bedroom for a bit without encountering anything novel, Lin Sheng returned to the hall once more.

Soon, he also found a basement in a corner of the living room floor, which was filled with liquor and a large, dark red wine barrel; the air was permeated with a thick, intoxicating aroma.

After wandering for a short while, he had a rough idea of the situation.

This is just an old European-style manor.

Lin Sheng returned to the hall, feeling that he was about to wake up.

When a dreamer is about to wake, they can usually sense it.

While I still have time, I should hurry and check out that study after all.

He did not delay, heading straight from the hall to the study.

He strode into the study.

The first thing Lin Sheng saw was a low mahogany table in the center of the room, upon which a stack of gray-covered books was piled.

Beside the books was a silver-gray candlestick, sitting right next to a large, half-opened tome.

Curious, he leaned in and saw that the open pages were filled with dense, tiny characters. Every single one was perfectly clear, yet unfortunately, he could not recognize a single one.

So clear? Lin Sheng was somewhat surprised.

He bypassed this book and let his gaze fall upon the other shelves.

The shelves were packed tightly with all sorts of books.

He reached out at random, pulled one out, and flipped through it. It was likewise filled with dense, tiny letters that he could not recognize at all.

It doesn't look like Celine Language; it looks more like Guren Script, Lin Sheng frowned. He had seen ancient texts of this famous script on television before.

Guren Script, along with hieroglyphs, cuneiform, and Ancient Xiguang Script, were ranked together as the four oldest writing systems in history.

He had encountered the origins of these scripts in various extracurricular books back in middle school.

Among these four ancient scripts, hieroglyphs and Guren Script were the easiest to identify due to their distinct characteristics.

That was why he recognized it at a glance.

This is ridiculous. I'm actually dreaming about Guren Script, Lin Sheng thought with a hint of amusement, carefully flipping through the book in his hand.

However, what surprised him more and more was that much of the content in the book, with its combination of graphics and text, gave him a strange sense of novelty.

Logically, things seen in a dream, even if they are unfamiliar, should still carry a sense of familiarity. But this strangeness... Lin Sheng felt something was wrong.

He was just about to carefully transcribe a passage of the text so he could look it up after waking, when a sudden, violent wave of dizziness washed over him.

Time to wake up, he realized.