"You can never wake up someone pretending to sleep.
Lu Jiahe straightened Lu Yan's clothes, seemingly unaware of the blood scent lingering on him.
He handled him delicately, fearing the bone spurs on his hands might cut Lu Yan's skin.
"Brother's going on a business trip, back in a couple of days," Lu Jiahe's voice was gentle. "Once Brother tidies up the school, you can go back to studying."
Lu Yan found himself tethered back to the bed. He was seething inside, but unable to retaliate.
Lu Jiahe closed the door. "Wait for my return."
A dark, brooding hue tinted his eyes.
Once he left, the room felt even emptier, the bloodstains on the walls more vivid.
Thirsty, Lu Yan opted for a bath. The tub was full when he entered, half-empty upon his exit.
It did alleviate his thirst somewhat.
Drying his hair with a blow dryer, he absentmindedly turned on the TV, still displaying no signal.
Apart from fashion magazines, Lu Yan's bookshelf housed only popular novels.
No internet, no calls went through.
However, a message in his inbox from a contact named 'Lin Sinan' praised Lu Yan's newly grown fish scales, expressing interest in plucking a couple if given a chance.
"..." Lu Yan couldn't resist, replying: "Who are you?"
A red exclamation mark popped up on the phone. No service meant no message sent.
Lu Yan was disturbed. Boredom, coupled with inadequate sleep, led him to doze off not long after his bath.
Waking to a pitch-black sky outside, probably due to over thirty hours without food, his stomach grumbled untimely.
Footsteps downstairs accompanied a faint call, "Lu Yan~ Miss Lu, it's time for dinner."
"If Mr. Lu knew I hadn't taken care of you, he'd be angry."
"I'm taking Mr. Lu's salary; I can't let him down, right?"
"Lu Yan, come out quickly."
The voice's gender was indiscernible, merely raspy and grating, akin to nails scraping a chalkboard.
In the dead of night, sounds of shuffling footsteps echoed. Lu Yan strained to hear, sensing someone dragging something along. Alongside that, metallic clinks reverberated against the walls.
Lu Yan felt it resembled some form of controlled weaponry.
The readings on his detection gauge spiked as this person neared, swiftly surpassing 1000 and stabilizing at 1500.
Lu Yan's current psychic threshold barely registered against this pollutant.
Swiftly, he rose to his feet and locked the door."
Lu Yan didn't know if it would make a difference, but the chains binding his feet showed no signs of loosening, confining him solely to this bedroom.
On the walls, dried crimson blood seemed to come alive, seeping through the wallpaper in a damp, continuous drip onto the floor.
This was the nanny hired by Lu Jiahe, yet Lu Yan couldn't forget the news he'd seen during the day.
Gripping the dagger, he took a deep breath and attempted to sever the iron chains, but they proved sturdier than he'd imagined. Despite the double-edged dagger, worth 500 contribution points, sparking, it left no mark on the iron locks.
Meanwhile, the nanny had arrived at the door.
At first, she tried to quietly open the door handle, but upon finding it locked by Lu Yan, she resorted to pounding forcefully.
The bedroom door, wooden but seemingly reinforced within this dream, resisted the onslaught. The knocking thundered like a drum, yet the door trembled incessantly without shattering.
"Lu Yan, why are you being so unreasonable!" The nanny's voice seethed with anger. "Open up!"
Within the room, the four eyes that had been open shut tightly. Lu Yan speculated that it meant the surveillance within the room had been severed.
He searched for any available tool in the room and calmly replied, "I'm not hungry."
"Not hungry but still need to eat. Your brother spoils you too much!" the nanny exclaimed. "I'm telling you, your brother has done so much for you. Isn't it easy for him to raise you alone? Why are you so unfilial? Can't you ease his burden a bit when he's so busy?"
This might well be how Lu Yan appeared to outsiders.
To others, the car accident involving the Lu couple seemed entirely accidental, with little direct connection to Lu Jiahe.
Perhaps Lu Yan understood this, but having lost her parents, she could only vent this indescribable pain through displaced anger.
Outside the door, the nanny raised the axe in her hand.
She was a robust woman, almost two meters tall, adorned with bright lipstick and blue eyeshadow. Her attire, a loose cotton coat and trousers, revealed a pouch on her belly like a kangaroo's pouch. Several thin, burnt-like arms extended from the pouch, incessantly searching.
That was her beloved son.
Though her son had some petty thieving habits and had gotten into trouble when he tried to sneak a peek at the employer's sister... Lu Yan hadn't killed him. He died from the fall when he attempted to escape through the window!
He was her dear baby, whom she'd fed and cared for diligently, the pillar of her life. How could she possibly go to prison?
But that cursed Lu Jiahe knew—clearly, he was a well-known lawyer in the industry. He had a stellar reputation, providing pro bono legal aid to many struggling families, often rendering criminals speechless in court, firmly advocating for the maximum penalties permitted by law to discipline every offender.
If her son were to bear all the blame, the only option would be death for murder.
So, during an argument, in a fit of rage, she pushed Lu Yan out of the window, resulting in his fatal fall.
That was her testimony.
Yet, the nanny hadn't anticipated one thing.
Lu Jiahe, a believer in the legal system, staunchly believed that only the law held the authority to punish the guilty, even when the statutes might seem inappropriate.
This person, who chose vigilante justice, spent a month tracking her son's movements and routines. One night, he surreptitiously took him away.
He imprisoned him in the basement, castrated him, and slowly mutilated him, finally setting him ablaze, turning him into ashes.
After committing such an atrocious crime, this murderer vanished from the world, without a trace. There was no legal retribution! Only her son, tragically wandering alone in the underworld.
She had been utterly inconsolable over this.
In this world, nannies can put sons back into their mother's bellies and give birth again.
The nanny raised a bloodied axe and slammed it against the door. The blade emerged from the other side, the wooden door yielding to the heavy blows, splintering into many pieces.
"Miss Lu Yan, no use hiding. Come out for dinner," she said with a smile. "Don't hide, my son really misses you."
Reaching out, the nanny groped until she found the doorknob. Meanwhile, Lu Yan hid under the bed, fishing out his phone, still devoid of any signal. He found his brother's chat and sent a desperate message: "Save me."
- Apocalypse Forum -
Topic: A-level contamination zone in the suburbs of K City and M City: 'Dream Eater' and the collective 'Wall of Resentment.' Over 12 Harbingers and 110 supporting troops dispatched for investigation, none returned. Tentatively classified as an orange contamination zone, A-level contamination incident.
1L: None returned??? This is too terrifying. Any updates?
2L: My house is right there, damn, K City, M City, all neighboring areas. It's been peaceful until now. Even the C-level contamination with the parasitic fish happened in K City a few days ago.
3L: Earth, take your medicine.
4L: The recent surge in anomalies is way more pronounced than the last decade. Contamination diseases and news about Harbingers are out in the open now... hope this doesn’t cause more chaos.
5L: What's happening overseas? 'Divine Country' in the red contamination zone actually wiped out a small island nation. There's no point in keeping this under wraps. Everyone will find out sooner or later. The PR department has been working overtime for years, deleting posts online. Let them take a break.
6L: Too weak, no power JPEG. I want two cheese sandwiches. (smoking)
...
73L: Latest news, the tyrant and his henchmen are dealing with the 'Wall of Resentment.' It appeared overseas last time, now it's in M City, and he seems to have entered.
74L: The tyrant went in?? But it's been four days, why no news at all?
75L: 'Dream Eater's Nightmare Territory and the Wall of Resentment combined, who knows how many small instances are inside... give them some time, okay?
"The college entrance exam will start in 15 minutes. Supervising teachers, please organize the students to enter the examination room..."
The broadcast carried an eerie tone. Tang Xun'an stood in the corridor, leaning against the balcony, smoking, watching the pollutants passing by.
These grotesque and malicious mutated beings eyed Tang Xun'an, saliva almost dripping from their mouths. "Want a taste?" Tang Xun'an's tone was insolent, a bit nonchalant. "Come over."
But these pollutants dared not disobey; the exam was about to start. Violating exam room rules meant being torn to shreds by the supervising teachers.
Tang Xun'an put out his military-grade sedative, sighing, "Never thought, even after so many years, I'd still have nightmares about the college entrance exam."
The staircase trembled, and in the dark corridor, a pair of crimson eyes lit up like lamps. A hot, putrid wind blew—the stench nauseating.
A double-headed giant wolf, as tall as a floor, emerged from the stairs. This was the invigilator for this exam.
Mutation: Enlargement, animalization.
"Why aren’t you entering the exam room?" gasped the giant wolf.
Tang Xun'an's hand rested on the Tang Blade at his waist, entirely black and bearing a unique name, "Yellow Dust."
"Of course, waiting for you," Tang Xun'an drew the blade, casually smiling. Unlike his somewhat carefree demeanor, his features were icy, like late winter's heavy snowfall. So when he smiled, it inevitably evoked the trickle of a stream beneath an icy surface in early spring.
Tang Xun'an was swift with his blade, quicker with its retrieval. The wolfman in front was split in half, blood spraying, wetting his shoes.
Yet, the transformation of this corpse didn’t halt; the wolf's deep black fur turned grey, aging rapidly, its body shriveling. In a few breaths, it resembled dried-up cured meat, rapidly dehydrating and weathering.
There were two ways to break a dream: either slay the most powerful pollutant within or awaken the dreamer. For the sake of time, Tang Xun'an always opted for the former.
He checked his pocket watch, reading the value: 972. A value that would make the headquarters of the Contamination Prevention Center nervous to the point of fainting.
The one perk of dreams was that while the pain was real, the contamination value and injuries were essentially false. As long as you didn't die or turn into a pollutant, it wasn't much of an issue.
Space before him twisted, rearranged, ultimately transforming into another dream.
Before Tang Xun'an appeared a road leading somewhere unknown. Faint sulfur wafted in the air. On the roadside, a few charred corpses struggled occasionally, crawling a step or two forward.
"Contamination over ten thousand, finally..." Tang Xun'an's gaze shifted towards the distant city. "Can I clock out now?"
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