Chapter 4

Chapter 4

“Qiao Moyu, I’ve been calling you for ages and you didn’t even react. Get ready to come downstairs for dinner.”

Jiang Haoyan pushed the door open and walked right in. Seeing me standing on the balcony in a daze, he walked over and gave my arm a playful nudge with a grin.

“What are you doing? Peeping at the lamas in the temple next door?”

“Holy crap, is that a hand? Someone fell into the well! Hurry, we have to save them!”

Jiang Haoyan rubbed his eyes, his expression shifting instantly. He spun around and sprinted downstairs. I chased after him, a sense of surreal absurdity gnawing at my mind.

The temple bells began to toll. Jiang Haoyan and I ran into the backyard, but the well was empty. Lama Danjia barked at us sternly, stopping us in our tracks.

“The temple is closed to tourists after seven o’clock. Please leave.”

Danjia’s mouth opened and closed, exactly as it had in my dream just moments ago.

I felt completely dazed. The sunlight before my eyes dissolved into a series of shimmering halos, and cold sweat beaded on my forehead.

“Jiang Haoyan, I am asking both of you to leave immediately.”

Danjia’s tone sharpened. I walked up to him and delivered a sharp slap right across his face.

With a crisp *crack*, Danjia clutched his cheek, staring at me in stunned silence.

Jiang Haoyan was horrified. “Qiao Moyu, what are you doing? Why did you hit Master Danjia?”

I looked down at my hand.

“Strange. It doesn’t hurt. Am I still dreaming?”

Danjia was fuming. “You hit someone else, why would you feel pain? If you want to know if you’re dreaming, shouldn’t you hit yourself?”

I nodded.

“You have a point, but I can’t bring myself to hit myself. Since forces come in pairs, hitting you serves the same purpose.”

With that, I drove a powerful punch straight into Danjia’s stomach.

I used so much force that my hand sank directly into his belly. His body thinned into a cloud of mist before abruptly scattering and vanishing. A moment later, he reappeared about five meters away, his face twisted into a grotesque, mocking grin.

“I really didn’t expect this. As expected of an Earth Master, to have discovered the truth so soon.”

I withdrew my hand and looked at Danjia with a solemn expression.

“I didn’t expect it either. To think a small place like Linzhi would be hiding a Nightmare Demon.”

A Nightmare Demon was a spirit born from dreams. It could weave dreamscapes, trapping a person’s soul within them until they died, never able to leave.

Sometimes people experience sleep paralysis-waking up during sleep but being unable to speak or move.

In those moments, one has encountered a Nightmare Beast, the primary form of a Nightmare Demon. Most Nightmare Beasts have no offensive capabilities; at most, they can trap a person for a few minutes before naturally dissipating into the world.

But a Nightmare Demon was different. There was a folk saying: “Nine Demons, One Nightmare Fiend.” Nine powerful demons were not as dangerous as a single Nightmare Demon.

The conditions for a Nightmare Demon to form were extremely harsh: first, there must be a large-scale loss of life; second, the corpses must remain intact; and third, the victims’ birth charts and the Four Pillars of Destiny must be entirely Yin.

To refine a Nightmare Demon, I couldn’t imagine how many people must have died nearby.

“Heh heh heh-you guessed it. Unfortunately, even if you’ve realized the truth, you cannot escape. In this dream, I am the supreme god!”

Danjia raised both hands high. His body remained a mass of thick fog, his upper half obscured within it, making him look a bit like the genie from Aladdin’s lamp-no, a lamp spirit.

He was right; a Nightmare Demon was indeed formidable, but it wasn’t without weaknesses.

I let out a cold sneer. “Do you know why I figured you out so easily?”

“Because there is no way I wouldn’t hear someone calling me for dinner!”

Nothing was more important than food. Jiang Haoyan saying he’d been calling me for ages without a response was the biggest flaw in the illusion. Now that I knew I was inside a Nightmare Demon’s dream, breaking out was far simpler than being caught unawares.

I glanced toward the well on the left. From the very beginning, the dream had centered around it.

The more a place frightened the demon, the more likely it was to be the exit.

I leaped to the left, diving straight down into the mouth of the well.

With a loud *thud*, my head slammed against a headboard. The pain was sharp and clear. I clutched my head and sat up, dazed.

Looking around, I was still in the guest room of the guesthouse. The sun had completely set, and the sky was pitch black.

I reached out and switched on the desk lamp. The warm orange glow dispelled the darkness in the room.

I felt a wave of confusion. A Nightmare Demon… that was it?

I got out of bed and pushed the door open. Instantly, my scalp went numb.

The guesthouse wasn’t large; the upstairs was just a single hallway connecting two rooms on the east and west. But now, the hallway stretched out with countless rooms lining both sides, extending so far I couldn’t see the end.

The rooms had no doors-just pitch-black openings. Combined with the deathly pale lights on the ceiling, the sight was enough to make my skin crawl.