Darkness

Some unknown changes were taking place in a little wooden cabin outside the city, in an area resembling the suburbs of a bygone era.

If anyone had looked toward the cabin at that moment, they would have seen the air warping in waves, rather like blocks of colored pixels intruding into an otherwise normal view. They looked jarringly out of place.

The things in the darkness also turned toward the nearly derelict cabin, seemingly curious about what exactly was happening inside.

Until the cabin returned to normal.

Xu Le slowly opened his eyes. Even this simple action seemed difficult for him at the moment.

His rather thin eyelids felt extraordinarily heavy.

"Am I... dead?"

Several ceiling panels were missing from the roof, and a hot night wind howled outside the door.

Aside from the reasonably bright moonlight and the occasional flash of ghostly green beyond the window, there was almost no light here.

The pain of sweat soaking into his wound made Xu Le bare his teeth.

"Hiss!"

Turning his stiff neck, Xu Le managed to look around.

A shabby room, the occasional chirp of an insect, blood on his body, and someone lying on the floor in blood-soaked clothes.

"All right. Looks like I'm not dead."

Something's wrong with this place. Is that guy on the floor dead?

The pain made Xu Le pull his gaze away. He stared at the ceiling and took several deep breaths to ease the pain in his chest a little.

Even if most of the relief was only psychological.

Just as he was about to brush aside the hair that was so damp it obscured his vision, the wall at the edge of his sight suddenly began to warp.

Crooked letters appeared on the wall.

[Current light level in the building: 2. State: dark. A level 1 anomaly will appear in 9 minutes, 01 seconds.]

"What?"

The wall continued to twist and shift. The wooden boards moved like individual pixels, and the protruding section gradually took the shape of a little girl.

The wall's transformation came without warning. Even though Xu Le was reasonably strong-nerved, his scalp still prickled.

Before him was a girl lying in the arms of a black sheep, but Xu Le could not make out her face.

It looked as though several overlapping blocks of color covered her face. The effect was so utterly jarring that someone with OCD might have suffocated at the sight.

She stared at Xu Le and pointed at the wall.

[Current light level in the building: 2. State: dark. A level 1 anomaly will appear in 8 minutes, 45 seconds.]

"Huh?"

Xu Le's eyebrows twitched as he read the information. Instinctively, he reached out to touch the little girl before him.

But before his fingers could reach her cheek, those unreal things vanished again.

Like blocks of pixels scraped away in an instant.

The walls were still the same drafty stone bricks, and the ceiling was still the same damp wooden boards.

Everything was as it had been.

Xu Le carefully felt the wall, but no more words appeared.

"What was that thing just now?"

A hallucination? But could something that real be a hallucination?

He was puzzled, but he had no leads to pursue.

Besides, his surroundings left him no room to investigate further. Someone was still lying on the floor, and he did not know whether the man was alive or dead.

His first priority was to establish where he was and whether he was safe.

As for the person on the floor...

"Hiss!"

The pain made Xu Le clutch his chest again.

Something about his surroundings felt strange. Drafts leaked into the room from every direction, and the temperature did not feel particularly high.

Yet he still felt intensely hot and stifled, like the oppressive air before a summer rainstorm that made it hard to breathe.

The heat made him sweat more and more, and every time the sweat soaked into his wound, fierce pain followed.

He could endure the pain, but it also distracted him, so Xu Le decided he needed to treat the wound on his chest as soon as possible.

He lifted his shirt and carefully peeled away the flesh stuck to the fabric.

A huge, flared-open wound came into view.

"Holy crap. How did I survive a wound like this?"

It was large, a full child's fist across, and he had no idea what had caused it.

Still, it was no longer bleeding. That was the only thing Xu Le could be thankful for.

He looked at the person on the floor, considered for a few seconds, then finally shook his head.

"I don't even know what this person has to do with me."

After sitting up, Xu Le first checked his immediate surroundings.

Beside his backside lay a long, fairly sharp-looking dagger, its blade notched and covered in blood.

Next to the dagger was a strange-looking iron frame with a wheel and a triangular stone mounted on it.

The label told Xu Le that this thing was a lighter.

And that stone was probably a piece of flint.

"403 Lifeng Lighter. Whoa. First time I've seen a lighter the size of half a brick."

Putting the lighter down, Xu Le turned to the other items.

There was a canvas backpack containing some crushed bread and biscuits.

Like the dagger, the backpack had plenty of visible bloodstains, but these had already dried.

He picked up the dagger, pressed his fingernail against the notch in its edge, then looked at the man lying facedown on the floor.

"If this dagger is mine, then the person down there was..."

Xu Le briefly questioned himself. He had no idea where he was.

But having a killing on his hands was difficult to deal with anywhere. Even self-defense could be a huge hassle.

And out here in the middle of nowhere, he would have no way to explain it clearly.

He sighed. He would treat his wound first.

He took off his shirt, twisted it into a band, and tied it above the wound. That would at least block some of the sweat.

As he studied the injury on his chest, the dried blood beside his hand suddenly began to writhe.

The writhing blood gradually gathered into a row of quivering little words:

[Zion Pioneer-R35 projectile firearm wound. Diameter: 4.7 centimeters. Guyinduo. Distortion.]

The information was a jumble.

A firearm? What era still used things like that?

Is Zion the manufacturer's name?

As for the "Guyinduo" and "distortion" at the end, he could not understand what they meant at all.

Xu Le was about to touch the blood with his finger, but before he could reach the words, the blood returned to its original state.

"Another hallucination? Something's not right."

Xu Le abruptly raised his head and spoke a little louder to the man lying facedown on the floor.

"Listen, I've been brave since I was a kid. Playing dead won't work on me, understand?"

His fingers whitened around the dagger, but after a while, his grip loosened.

The person on the floor did not answer him, and the room remained quiet.

It doesn't look like he's pretending. But if he isn't... doesn't that make this even scarier?

A dead man!

Xu Le looked again at the bloodstain from earlier. He knew just how important information was.

This time, he wanted to try using that ability again.

"Subtitles, appear." No response?

Then he would try something else. Xu Le stared hard at the dagger.

"Eyes. Brain." Still no response.

After a moment's thought, Xu Le slowly spoke with a faint glimmer of hope in his eyes.

"System?"

Well, it seemed he had not received anything that powerful.

After several failed attempts, Xu Le thought back to what he had felt while examining his chest.

Seriousness, focus, careful attention, and that heat. That unusual heat!

Although he did not know whether these conditions were necessary, Xu Le decided to try again.

Enduring the pain of his wound, Xu Le gradually focused his mind, and his body grew hot again.

His eyes fixed on the dagger, but even after a long while, nothing happened.

Still, the returning heat made Xu Le feel he was on the right track.

He scanned his surroundings, searching the room for something he could observe to test the ability.

Yet that casual glance alone made the entire room warp in Xu Le's vision, as though he had eaten too many unidentified mushrooms.

This time, mentally prepared, Xu Le remained intensely focused and perfectly calm.

No words appeared in the twisting room, but a whisper reached his ears.

[Croak. Are you looking for me? Too bad. You have no offering.]

An offering? While Xu Le was still puzzling over it, words appeared again.

This time, however, they appeared directly before his eyes. Compared with their earlier softness, they were much more stiff, giving the impression of a middle-aged man going through the motions of fulfilling his marital duties:

[Building condition: dilapidated. Light level: 2. State: dark. A level 1 anomaly will appear in 6 minutes, 31 seconds.]

After the whisper ended, everything before him returned to normal.

Xu Le stayed silent for roughly five seconds.

He used those five seconds to calm down.

Then came:

"Fuck!"

Next, he needed to sort out the information that could help him.

The building was dilapidated-that much was obvious. A light level of 2 meant darkness, and then there was that level 1 anomaly!

Xu Le tightened his grip on the dagger.

He briefly imagined what might happen when that so-called level 1 anomaly appeared.

"What would a level 1 anomaly be? How strong is it? Is it dangerous?"

He had no information whatsoever. He did not even know whether he was still in his old world, leaving him feeling as though every step was a struggle.

Still, Xu Le could establish a few things from what he had learned so far.

One, he needed light, or rather, the room needed to be well lit.

Two, he had roughly six minutes to start a fire.

Three, he had a lighter!

Xu Le searched the largely empty room. The only things likely to keep burning were a pile of broken, damp pieces of wood.

But lighting that wood directly would be far too difficult. He needed a fire going first to dry it out.

"Find something flammable."

Muttering to himself, Xu Le continued looking around.

He had already used his shirt as a bandage. Surely he could not take off his pants in a situation like this.

Aside from the backpack on the floor and the man's clothes, there seemed to be nothing flammable left here.

At that thought, Xu Le could only crouch down to examine the man.

He needed to confirm whether the man was really dead.

As a former unsuccessful novelist, he had researched corpses extensively.

Once he reached the man's side, Xu Le could essentially confirm that he was dead.

"This wound!"

Finding the wound in the man's back over his heart, Xu Le froze briefly, then looked at the dagger in his hand.

"Did I kill him?"

With just over five minutes remaining, Xu Le opened the backpack on the floor.

There were still some supplies inside.

Paper-wrapped food resembling compressed biscuits, half a bottle of water, a shovel, rope, and a plastic bag containing fluorescent-colored mixed-earth powder.

Xu Le picked up the biscuits, not to eat them, of course, but to examine their paper wrapping.

The words "Lighthouse No. 7 Biscuit" were printed on the wrapper.

The packaging was rather crudely made, though, like an extremely cheap knockoff.

Something along the lines of "Spite," "Coca-Calo," or "Orea."

"Lighthouse No. 7. That biscuit name..."

After reading the writing, Xu Le did not continue examining the items in the backpack.

Instead, he tipped everything out so he could find something useful as quickly as possible.

Xu Le silently counted the time. More than a minute had already passed since the six-minute warning.

He had to light something now to get some light.

And preferably, those flammable things would ignite the wood quickly.

He felt the floor. The soil was very loose and soft.

Xu Le picked up the shovel from the ground and quickly dug a hollow to provide ventilation.

Then he arranged the damp wood in a circle, split a thick, soft piece of wood into three thin pieces, and piled them in the center.

Finally, he used a lighter to set the corpse's clothes and backpack ablaze, then stuffed them into the little pit with its air vent.

Whoosh!

Xu Le blew hard, and the flames gradually grew stronger.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle!

As the wood gave a low groan, thick white smoke rose from the blocks.

The white smoke was a mixture of steam and dust, giving off a moldy, rotten smell.

Lighting the clothes was easy, but getting the wood to catch was harder.

Fortunately, he still had time to get it right.

As the flames gradually steadied, the corners of Xu Le's mouth lifted slightly.

He focused again, and once he felt that dry heat, the flames before him twisted into a cluster of words.

[The room is in a dilapidated state. Light level: 4. Illumination status: bright. Temporarily stable.]

Looking at the rather unnatural flames before him, Xu Le finally regained some color in his face.

At least the light from the fire meant he wouldn't have to face that so-called level 1 anomaly.

"Phew! Fire really is the hope of human civilization. Things are looking up!"

Xu Le's anxiety gradually eased, and he even managed a faint smile.

Now he only needed to keep the fire burning.

Gazing at the flames, Xu Le felt safe enough to return to his old daily routine: writing!

He began scratching words into a plank with his dagger:

I suppose I've fallen ill. I feel wretched any way you look at it. Surely I've thought too much about the stories in my books, and that's brought on these hallucinations.

My head is foggy, too, and I haven't the strength to do anything. Perhaps I should take some medicine.

Never mind. Seven days with medicine, seven days without. I've always known that.

Xu Le quietly sniffed. Wonderful. One nostril was blocked, and so was the other.

At that thought, Xu Le couldn't help spitting in disgust at himself.

I'm already such a hopeless failure. Why do I still insist on being so pretentiously literary?

"Just a failure whose life is thinner than paper."

Could I really do what Lu Shuren did?

He put those thoughts aside and was about to add some firewood.

But the flames before him suddenly began turning an eerie green.

Xu Le's heart lurched, but he braced himself and kept watching until distinct words appeared within the green flames.

[There is a corpse within the safe zone. It has been dead for over 4 hours. The corpse will become a level 1 anomaly in 10 minutes.]

[The current building is dilapidated and unsealed. A level 1 anomaly will appear in 14 minutes and 56 seconds, at midnight, 00:00.]

[Current date: May 28. Countdown to the Red Moon Calamity: 2 days, 0 hours, 14 minutes, 56 seconds.]

Xu Le: ...

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