You can never wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

Lu Jiahe acted as if he couldn’t smell the stench of blood on Lu Yan, carefully straightening his collar. His movements were delicate, terrified that the bone spurs erupting from his hands might scratch Lu Yan’s skin.

“Big Brother has to go on a business trip, I’ll be back in two days,” Lu Jiahe said softly. “Once Big Brother cleans up the school, you can go back to class.”

Lu Yan was chained back to the headboard. He was boiling with internal rage, but since he couldn’t beat him, he had to endure it. Lu Jiahe shut the door behind him. “Wait for me to come back.” There was a layer of gloomy, blood-red darkness in the depths of his eyes.

After he left, the room felt even emptier, the bloodstains on the walls turning a brighter, more vivid shade of crimson. Because he was so thirsty, Lu Yan decided to take a bath. The tub was full when he got in; it was half empty by the time he got out. But the feeling of parched thirst had indeed eased significantly.

Lu Yan blow-dried his hair and absentmindedly turned on the TV; it still had no signal. Aside from fashion magazines, Lu Yan’s bookshelf was filled with trashy romance novels. His phone had no reception and couldn’t make calls. However, in his text message inbox, the contact “Lin Sinan” had sent a message, praising the new fish scales on Lu Yan’s skin, saying they looked beautiful and that if he had the chance, he would love to pluck a couple to test them.

“…”

Lu Yan couldn’t help but reply: “Who are you?” A red exclamation point appeared on the screen. The phone was out of service, so the message couldn’t be sent.

Lu Yan was woken up by a noise. Because he was bored and hadn’t slept well, he had dozed off against the headboard shortly after his bath. He woke up to find the sky outside completely dark—it had been over 30 hours since he last ate, and his stomach was aching with unseasonal hunger.

Downstairs, the sound of a door opening echoed, accompanied by a faint, elusive calling: “Lu Yan~ Miss Lu, time to come out for dinner.”

“If Mr. Lu knew I hadn’t taken good care of you, he would be very angry.”

“Since I’m taking Mr. Lu’s salary, I naturally can’t let him down, right?”

“Lu Yan, come out.”

The voice was genderless—raspy and grating, like fingernails scratching a chalkboard. In the pitch-black night, a dragging sound began. It sounded like something heavy being hauled across the floor. Beneath that, there was the sound of metal scraping against the wall. Lu Yan listened closely; it sounded like a bladed weapon.

The reading on the detector spiked as the person approached, quickly breaking past 1000 and settling at 1500. Lu Yan’s current spiritual threshold could barely cover the rounding error of this pollutant. He jumped up immediately and locked the bedroom door. He didn’t know if it would help, but since the chain on his ankle hadn’t been removed, his range of motion was strictly limited to this room.

On the walls, the dried dark-red blood seemed to come alive; it seeped out of the wallpaper, thick and damp, dripping onto the floor.

This was the nanny Lu Jiahe had hired, but Lu Yan hadn’t forgotten the news report he’d seen earlier that day. He gripped his dagger and took a deep breath, attempting to cut the chain, but the iron was sturdier than he had imagined. His 500-contribution-point dagger struck sparks against the metal without leaving a single scratch.

The nanny had reached the door. At first, she tried to turn the knob silently, but upon finding it locked, she began to pound on it with brutal force. The bedroom door was just wood, but it seemed to have been reinforced by the dream. The knocking sounded like a war drum, yet the door only shuddered violently rather than shattering.

“Lu Yan, why are you being so difficult!” the nanny shouted, filled with rage. “Open the door!”

In the room, the four eyes that had been wide open until now suddenly clamped shut. Lu Yan deduced that this meant the monitoring in the room had been cut. Lu Yan searched for any useful tools in the room, then replied calmly: “I’m not hungry.”

“Eat whether you’re hungry or not. Your brother spoils you too much!” the nanny snapped. “I’m just saying—where did your brother ever wrong you? I’ve never seen a sister like you! Do you know how hard it was for him to raise you? How can you be so unfilial? Your brother is so busy with work; can’t you just make things easier for him?”

This was likely how Lu Yan was perceived by the outside world. To others, the death of the Lu couple was a tragic accident; it was hard to link it directly to Lu Jiahe. Lu Yan perhaps knew this too, but in her grief, she could only lash out at the person closest to her to vent the agony.

Outside the door, the nanny raised a heavy axe high. She was a robust woman, nearly two meters tall, wearing vibrant lipstick and blue eyeshadow. Her cotton-padded jacket hung open, revealing a pouch on her belly like a kangaroo’s—a few emaciated, charred arms poked out from it, groping blindly.

It was her darling son.

Her son had some petty habits; he’d been stealing, and because he’d run into the employer’s sister, he’d had some crooked thoughts… but she truly believed her son hadn’t killed Lu Yan! Lu Yan had jumped out the window to escape and fallen to her death! This was her precious baby, whom she’d fed spoonful by spoonful, the pride of the Wang family, her only pillar of support. How could he go to prison?

But that damned Lu Jiahe—the nanny knew he was a famous lawyer. He was highly regarded, providing pro bono legal aid to struggling families, consistently silencing criminals in court, and relentlessly pursuing the maximum legal punishment for every offender. If her son took the fall, it was death row for sure.

So, in her version of events: Lu Yan had been pushed out the window during an argument, and she had fallen to her death. That was her testimony.

But the nanny had miscalculated one thing. Lu Jiahe believed in the legal system, steadfastly holding that only the law had the power to punish the guilty, even when the laws themselves felt insufficient. Yet, a man like that had chosen to commit a lynching. Lu Jiahe spent a month tracking her son’s route and behavior. One night, he snatched him away without a trace. He locked him in a basement, castrated him, carved his flesh away inch by inch with a knife, and finally set him on fire, burning him into charcoal.

After committing this heinous crime, the murderer seemed to vanish from the face of the earth, never to be found. He never even faced legal judgment! Only her tragically murdered son remained, wandering alone in hell. She had been devastated by this, but in this world, the nanny could tuck her son back into her belly and give birth to him again.

The nanny raised the blood-stained axe and brought it down heavily on the door. The blade poked through the other side. The wood, unable to bear the weight, began to splinter.

“Miss Lu Yan, stop hiding. Come out and eat…” A smile spread across her face. “Stop hiding; my son misses you very much too.”

The nanny reached out a hand, feeling around until she found the doorknob. Lu Yan hid under the bed and fished out his phone. It still had no signal. He found his chat thread with “Big Brother” and, without holding much hope, typed two characters: “Save me.”

• Apocalypse Forum –Subject: The newly appeared pollution zones in the suburbs of K City and M City are a combined entity of an A-level pollutant “Dream Eater” and an “Accumulated Grudge Wall.” The K/M City Pollution Prevention Centers have dispatched over 12 Awakened and 110 auxiliary soldiers for reconnaissance; none have survived. Tentatively classified as an A-level pollution event.

1L: No survivors??? That’s too terrifying. Has any intel been sent back?

2L: My home is right in that area. Damn, K and M cities are right next to me. It’s always been peaceful, but the C-level “Parasitic Fish” incident also happened in K City a few days ago.

3L: The world is doomed.

4L: There have been more anomalies in the last few years than in the previous ten. Now that the news of pollution diseases and Awakened is public… I hope this doesn’t cause a massive panic.

5L: Look at foreign countries. The S-level zone “Kingdom of God” really did wipe out an island nation. There’s no point in hiding it anymore. Everyone will find out eventually; the PR departments have been working overtime for years deleting posts. Let them take a break.

73L: Latest news: The “Tyrant” and his baggage are currently processing the “Accumulated Grudge Wall.” The wall was originally abroad but moved to M City; he must have followed it inside.

74L: The Tyrant went in??? It’s been four days; how is there no word?

75L: It’s a combination of a Dream Eater’s nightmare realm and an Accumulated Grudge Wall’s cycle of hatred—nobody knows how many sub-dungeons are in there… give them a break, will you?

“There are 15 minutes left before the college entrance exam begins. Please, proctors, organize the candidates to enter the exam room…”

The voice on the PA system was eerie. Tang Xun’an stood in the hallway, leaning against the balcony, smoking as he watched the pollutants pass by. These twisted, deformed humans were filled with malice, staring at the motionless Tang Xun’an with saliva nearly dripping onto the floor.

“Want to eat me?” Tang Xun’an’s tone was provocative and lazy. “Come on over.”

But these pollutants dared not approach. The exam was about to start, and violating exam rules would get them torn to shreds by the proctors. Tang Xun’an stubbed out his military-grade sedative and sighed. “I didn’t expect that even after all these years of graduating, I’d still be having nightmares about the college entrance exam.”

The stairs vibrated. From the pitch-black corridor, a pair of crimson eyes lit up like lanterns. A steaming, bloody wind blew in, carrying a nauseating stench of decay. A two-headed giant wolf, a full story tall, emerged from the staircase.

It was the proctor for this exam. Mutation direction: Gigantism, Bestialization.

The giant wolf panted heavily and asked, “Why aren’t you entering the exam room?”

Tang Xun’an’s hand rested on the Tang sword at his waist. The sword was pitch black and had a very special name: “Yellow Dust” (Huang Chen).

Yellow dust clears beneath the three mountains, passing a thousand years like a galloping horse.

The name wasn’t chosen randomly. The researchers at the Institute said that no one was more suited to this ancient blade than Tang Xun’an.

“Naturally, it’s because I’m waiting for you,” Tang Xun’an drew his blade with a nonchalant smile. Contrary to his breezy, unrestrained demeanor, his eyes were freezing cold, like snow falling late in the deep of winter. When he smiled, it couldn’t help but remind people of the trickling stream beneath the ice in early spring.

Tang Xun’an’s strike was fast, but his sheathing was faster. A blade of light flashed; the werewolf in front of him was split straight down the middle. Blood gushed out, soaking his shoes. The corpse continued to change; its dark fur turned gray, aging instantly, the body shrinking rapidly in seconds until it resembled dried-out, withered jerky.

There were two ways to break a dream: first, kill the pollutant with the highest combat power in the dream; second, wake the dreamer. For the sake of saving time, Tang Xun’an always used the first method. He pulled out his pocket watch and checked the reading: 97.2. It was a value that would make the Prevention Center’s headquarters faint from stress.

The only upside to a dream was that while the pain was real, the pollution values and injuries were actually fake. As long as you didn’t die and turn into a pollutant, it was no big deal.

The space before him began to twist and reorganize, eventually turning into another dreamscape. A road appeared before Tang Xun’an, leading to nowhere. The air smelled of faint sulfur. On the side of the road, charred corpses struggled to crawl forward an inch or two.

“Pollution degree over ten thousand… finally…” Tang Xun’an looked toward the distant city. “Can I clock out now?”