Chapter 15

Chapter 015

You can never wake someone who is pretending to be asleep.

Lu Jiahe acted as if he couldn't smell the blood on him, gently smoothing the collar of his shirt. His movements were cautious, careful not to let the bone spurs growing from the back of his hand scratch Lu Yan's skin.

"Big brother has to go on a business trip. I'll be back in a couple of days." Lu Jiahe's voice was soft. "Once I've cleaned up the school, you can go back."

Lu Yan found himself chained to the bedpost again. A wave of pure frustration boiled inside him, but with no way to fight back, he could only swallow it down.

Lu Jiahe closed the door. "Wait for me."

A shadow of bloody gloom lingered in his eyes.

After he left, the room felt emptier, more hollow. The bloodstains on the wall seemed to glow a brighter, fresher red.

Driven by a thirst that clawed at his throat, Lu Yan ran a bath. The tub was full when he got in. By the time he climbed out, the water level had dropped by half. The dry, parched feeling had eased, though.

He toweled his hair, flipping on the TV with the other hand. Still no signal.

Lu Yan's bookshelf held nothing but fashion magazines and a few popular novels. His phone had no service, couldn't make calls.

But in his text messages, a contact named "Lin Sinan" had sent a new one, complimenting the fish scales Lu Yan had recently grown. Said he liked them. Would love to pluck a couple to try sometime, given the chance.

"..."

Lu Yan couldn't help himself. He typed back, "Who is this?"

A red exclamation mark appeared. Out of service area. No messages going out.

*

He was woken by noise. Boredom and genuine exhaustion had pulled him under not long after his bath, slumped against the headboard.

Outside the window, full dark had fallen. Maybe it was the thirty-plus hours without food, but an untimely hunger gnawed at his gut.

Downstairs, a door creaked open. A voice floated up, faint and teasing. "Lu Yan~ Miss Lu. Time to come out and eat."

"Mr. Lu would be so upset if he knew I wasn't taking proper care of you."

"I'm on his payroll, after all. Can't let him down. Right?"

"Lu Yan. Come out."

The voice was genderless, raspy and grating, like fingernails on a chalkboard.

In the black silence of the night, footsteps began. A dragging, scraping sound. Something heavy being pulled. And beneath that, a metallic clang… clang… tapping against the walls.

Lu Yan listened. It sounded like a blade. A big one.

The numbers on his detection meter skyrocketed as the thing approached, blasting past 1000 before settling at a steady 1500.

Lu Yan's current spiritual power threshold barely scraped a fraction of that.

He moved instantly, locking the bedroom door.

He didn't know if it would help. The chain on his ankle hadn't loosened. His world was this room.

On the wall, the dried, dark bloodstains seemed to stir. They seeped through the wallpaper, wet and glistening, dripping onto the floorboards.

This was the nanny Lu Jiahe had hired. But Lu Yan hadn't forgotten the news report from that morning.

He gripped the dagger, took a steadying breath, and tried to saw through the chain. The metal was tougher than he expected. The double-edged blade, worth 500 contribution points, sparked against the links but left no mark.

The nanny had reached the door.

At first, she tried the handle, gently. Finding it locked, the gentle touch became a violent pounding.

The bedroom door was just wood, but it seemed reinforced here in this dreamscape. The blows came like war drums, shaking the frame, but the door held, shuddering, not shattering.

"Lu Yan, you're so disobedient!" The nanny's voice was thick with rage. "Open this door!"

Inside the room, the four ever-watchful eyes on the walls squeezed tightly shut. Lu Yan guessed that meant the surveillance was down.

He scanned the room for anything usable, his voice calm. "I'm not hungry."

"You eat even if you're not hungry! Your brother spoils you rotten!" she scolded. "Let me tell you, what has your brother ever done to wrong you? I've never seen a sister like you! Was it easy for him, raising you all by himself? So ungrateful. He works so hard. Can't you just give him some peace?"

That was probably Lu Yan's image to the outside world.

To outsiders, the car accident that killed the Lu parents was just that—an accident. Hard to pin directly on Lu Jiahe.

Maybe Lu Yan knew that too. But orphaned and grieving, she had nowhere to aim her inexpressible pain except at him.

Outside the door, the nanny raised her axe high.

She was a hulking woman, nearly two meters tall. Bright red lipstick, garish blue eyeshadow. A padded jacket and trousers, left unbuttoned. A kangaroo-like pouch bulged on her stomach, and from it protruded several thin, charred-black arms, twitching and grasping at the air.

Her dear sons.

Her boys had some bad habits, petty theft mostly. And yes, one of them had gotten… ideas… when he'd run into his employer's sister during a job. But Lu Yan wasn't killed by her son! Lu Yan fell to her death trying to escape out the window!

These were her precious babies. Fed with her own hands, her own milk. The hope of the Wang family line. Her reason for living. How could they go to prison?

But that damned Lu Jiahe. She knew his reputation. A famous lawyer. Well-respected. Provided free legal aid to struggling families. Made criminals speechless in court. Always pushed for the maximum sentence the law allowed.

If her son took the blame for murder, the only outcome would be execution.

So, in her official statement, Lu Yan died during an argument. Shoved out the window in a fit of rage.

That was her story.

But the nanny hadn't accounted for one thing.

Lu Jiahe believed in the law. Firmly held that only the legal system had the right to punish the guilty, even when the code felt insufficient.

A man like that… chose vigilante justice.

For a month, Lu Jiahe tracked her son's routines. Learned his habits. Then, one night, he vanished the boy without a trace.

Locked him in a basement. Castrated him. Carved him apart, inch by inch. Then set a fire, reducing him to charcoal.

After committing this atrocity, the murderer simply… disappeared. Vanished from the world. Never faced a court! Leaving her poor son to wander alone in hell.

The grief had nearly destroyed her.

But here, in this world, she could tuck her son back into her pouch. Start over. Grow him again.

The nanny raised her blood-stained axe and brought it down on the door with a sickening crunch.

The blade bit deep, its tip punching through the wood from the other side.

The door, overwhelmed, splintered into pieces.

"Miss Lu Yan… don't hide. Come out and eat…" A smile stretched across her face. "Don't hide. My sons miss you too."

A thick arm reached through the shattered opening, groping until it found the inner door handle.

Lu Yan, hidden under the bed, pulled out his phone.

Still no signal.

He found his text thread with his brother. Without hope, he typed two words and hit send.

"Save me."

*

-Apocalypse Forum-

Topic: Newly emerged pollution zones in the suburbs of K City and M City identified as a combined entity of A-Class pollutants 'Dream-Eater' and 'Wall of Grudges'. Over 12 Awakened and 110+ support troops dispatched by the K & M Pollution Control Centers for reconnaissance. No survivors. Temporarily classified as an A-Class pollution incident.

1L: No survivors??? That's terrifying. Any intel come back?

2L: I live near that area, shit. K and M are my neighbors. It was always quiet before. That C-Class 'Parasitic Fish' incident a few days ago was also in K City.

3L: Earth is done for. Sooner or later.

4L: The abnormal activity these last few years… it's more frequent, more obvious than the past decade combined. With Pollution Disease and Awakened info public now… hope it doesn't cause bigger panic.

5L: Look at the state of things abroad. The S-Class zone 'Divine Kingdom' literally wiped a small island nation off the map. Hiding it is pointless now. People will find out. The Public Sentiment Department has been working overtime for years deleting posts online. Give them a break.

6L: Too weak. No power. [smoking.jpg]

……

……

73L: Latest update. The Tyrant and his… entourage were handling the 'Wall of Grudges'. The Wall showed up overseas last time, now it's in M City. He must have followed it in.

74L: The Tyrant went in?? It's been four days. How is there zero news?

75L: Dream-Eater's Nightmare Realm + Wall of Grudge's Cycle of Resentment combo. Who knows how many sub-realms are nested in there? Give it time, okay?

*

"Fifteen minutes until the start of the national college entrance exams. Invigilators, please organize candidates to enter the examination halls…"

The broadcast voice echoed, unnervingly hollow.

Tang Xian'an leaned against a corridor balcony, smoking, watching the misshapen aberrations shuffle past. The twisted figures fixed him with venomous stares, drool dripping from their jaws to the floor.

"Want a bite?" Tang Xian'an's tone was infuriatingly casual, almost lazy. "Come and get it."

The other pollutants kept their distance. Exams were about to start. Violating testing hall discipline meant being torn to shreds by the proctors.

Tang Xian’an stubbed out his military-grade sedative, a sigh of genuine nostalgia in his voice. “To think I’ve been out of school all these years, and my nightmares still bring me back to the gaokao.”

A tremor ran through the stairwell. In the pitch-black corridor, a pair of crimson eyes ignited like warning lamps.

A wave of hot, fetid wind washed over him, reeking of rot and decay.

A two-headed wolf, a full story tall, emerged from the stairwell.

This was the proctor for this particular exam.

Mutation Path: Gigantification, Bestialization.

The giant wolf’s breath came in ragged, steaming huffs. “Why aren’t you in the examination hall?”

Tang Xian’an’s hand drifted to the long, straight sword at his waist. The blade was pure, unreflective black, bearing a peculiar name: Yellow Dust.

Beneath the three sacred mountains, yellow dust turns to clear water, a thousand years passing swift as a galloping horse.

The name wasn’t chosen at random. The people at the Research Institute had said no one was more suited to wield this ancient blade than Tang Xian’an.

“Why,” Tang Xian’an drew the sword, his smile casual, almost careless, “I was waiting for you.”

The smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. His features were too sharp, too cold—like a heavy snowfall arriving late in the depths of winter. When he smiled, it brought to mind the first trickle of meltwater beneath an early spring ice sheet.

His strike was blindingly fast. The sheathing of the blade, faster still.

A flash of light. The wolf-man before him was cleaved cleanly in two, a geyser of blood soaking the soles of his boots.

The corpse’s transformation didn’t stop. Its jet-black fur faded to a sickly grey, withering with age. The body shrank, desiccating within seconds like sun-cured jerky, then crumbling to dust.

There were two ways to break a dream. The first: slay the most powerful pollutant within it. The second: wake the dreamer.

For the sake of efficiency, Tang Xian’an always chose the first method.

He pulled out a pocket watch, glanced at the reading. 97.2. A number that would send the brass at headquarters into a dead faint.

The only upside to these nightmares was that while the pain was real, the pollution readings and the injuries were just illusions. As long as you didn’t die, as long as you didn’t turn, it was all manageable.

The space before him began to warp and twist, reassembling itself into another dream.

A road appeared, stretching into an unknown distance. The air carried a faint scent of sulfur. By the roadside, a few charred, mummified corpses occasionally twitched, dragging themselves forward an inch or two.

“Pollution reading over ten thousand…” Tang Xian’an’s gaze fixed on the distant cityscape. “Finally. Can I clock out now?”