When the Evil Eye on the pedestal opened, time seemed to stand still.
In an instant, Chu Weiwei, Zhang Yu, and the young man with the head of a Wolf all felt as if they were on the verge of a mental breakdown.
At the moment they looked into the Evil Eye, unimaginable amounts of taboo knowledge and maniacal thoughts poured directly into their brains. It was as if the sluice gates had been opened to release floodwaters.
Multitudes of terrifying ravings and deranged thoughts reverberated in their ears and in their brains.
Zhang Yu was the first to crumble.
In less than one second, his body started to become deformed.
Masses of flesh and blood started peeling off his body.
Watching this horror, Chu Weiwei and the young man wearing the Wolf's head had to see piles of flesh fall to the ground and start wriggling as if they were still alive.
Strange mouths opened up in the masses of flesh.
They were singing an eerie, yet magnificent, carol.
This carol was being chanted in a language that could not be understood or recognized.
However, just by listening to it, Chu Weiwei felt as if countless ants were crawling between her skin and her flesh.
Her skin, flesh, and bones started pulsating listening to this carol.
Chu Weiwei had a feeling that her own skin, flesh, and bones wanted to join Zhang Yu's piles of flesh and sing praises along with them.
And she soon knew that her feeling was correct.
Because the flesh and blood of the youth with the head of the Wolf also began to peel off.
In the same manner, odd-looking mouths grew on his flesh that had fallen to the ground, wriggling as they chanted the hymn that was peculiar yet full of grandeur.
Like the friction between metals, like the echoes of a nightmare...
As she listened to it, Chu Weiwei could hardly restrain the madness of her body.
Her skin began to tear.
Her flesh started squirming.
Her bones and internal organs were thumping frantically.
Each of her cells was screaming in madness about their desire to join this choir of insanity.
This completely annihilated Chu Weiwei's spirit.
Then, at the moment when she was about to crumble, a sachet that hung at her waist fell off due of the vigorous shaking of her body.
A note slipped out of the sachet.
"Clack, clack…" The Evil Eye on the pedestal abruptly dimmed.
The cloud of unknown mist turned into something like an arm and held up the piece of paper.
The Evil Eye lowered its gaze slightly and saw the text on the note.
Ling PingAn, ID: ling.
...
Opening the door of the fridge, Ling PingAn grabbed a few chilled sardines, placed them on a small clean plate, and brought them to the kitten.
He comforted the kitten to soothe her emotions while urging her softly, "Have a bite! Good kitty!"
Under his comforting words and touch, the kitten gradually calmed down.
But she didn't seem to like sardines very much. After smelling them and probing them with her paws, finally, under Ling PingAn's repeated urgings, she carefully stuck out her pink tongue, licked the sardines on the plate, and then carefully put them into her mouth and nibbled.
It was apparent that the kitten obviously didn't want to eat the fish.
It was as if the sardines tasted awful, and she was only eating them reluctantly for Ling PingAn's sake.
Ling PingAn scratched his head as he looked at her.
"I've actually found a kitten who doesn't like fish?" He said, "I'll buy you some cat food later then."
As the kitten listened to him, the speed of her munching on the fish evidently hastened.
This made Ling PingAn happy, "Good girl!"
"I'll get you the best cat food."
Staying with the kitten until she'd finished the sardines on the plate, Ling PingAn picked up the little fella and turned her around to really look at her.
It was only now that he realized that this kitten was really beautiful.
Her black coat was soft and smooth, very comfortable to the touch.
Her tiny head was as adorable as those pets in cartoons. And her pair of big amber eyes were shining with an unparalleled glow.
More important, this little fella seemed to be very shy.
When Ling PingAn reached out his hand to tickle her chin, she actually tried to avoid his hands.
"Ha, ha!" Looking at this adorable kitten, he couldn't contain his desire to have some fun with her. He carried her over to the sofa and began teasing her.
After teasing her for a while, Ling PingAn remembered something, "Oh, yeah!"
"I haven't given you a name yet."
He grabbed the kitten's two front paws and tickled them. He stared at her and immediately had an idea. "How about I give you a foreign name?"
Recalling the piece of news he'd stumbled upon last night, he held the kitten up in front of his face. "I'll call you Bastet."
"Cat goddess Bastet."
The foreign national treasure mentioned in the news that had been stolen was a statue of a goddess with a human body and a cat's head.
Ling PingAn felt that the image and temperament of this kitten seemed identical to her.
Suddenly, the kitten he was holding meowed very spiritedly. "Meow!"
Ling PingAn smiled immediately. "All right! It is decided then."
...
In the capital city of Beizhou, in the Xin'an Prefecture, the rolling Xi'an River was rushing forward.
In a skyscraper that was situated by the river's banks, Chu Weiwei opened her eyes abruptly.
She panted in horror and slumped from her chair to the ground.
Memories returned to her bit by bit.
An unfamiliar place, a strange log cabin, Tiger Demon Zhang Yu, Wolf-headed youth, the so-called Realm of Nightmare.
And…
The unknown cold of smoky fog, the spooky door on the stone pedestal that raised up in the room of the log cabin, and the Evil Eye that opened on the door...
"Did I…?" Chu Weiwei tried to remember.
In the end, her spirit had collapsed, and both her mind and her body had been distorted by madness.
But now…
She looked at her hands as she felt her own body.
Nothing felt strange at all.
"Was it a dream?" Chu Weiwei wondered.
She stood up cautiously and looked at the desk in front of her and the phone on the desk.
On the phone screen, the link that she had tapped on had disappeared.
However, on the phone screen, there was a new app that had appeared.
An eerie Evil Eye that was closed.
There were some words underneath the Evil Eye: Legend of Nightmare.
Chu Weiwei was so scared that she backed away from her phone and was about to call the guards.
All of a sudden, lines of text appeared on her retina: Warning! Warning! 1,433, you are trying to violate the rules of the Realm of Nightmare...
These texts suddenly distorted and turned into scrambled codes.
It was as if somebody had been rubbing them off with an eraser.
The characters vanished one after another.
Then a new line of text emerged on her retina.
"The Great One has descended into the Realm of Nightmare.
"Because of the Great One, rules of the Realm of Nightmare and the Nightmare Worlds will be adjusted:
"1: All participants in the Nightmare Worlds will now acquire a brand-new and unique Mark of Nightmare. This mark will replace your number, become the method for you to contact the Realm of Nightmare, and provide you certain auxiliary functions when you are having an adventure in a Nightmare World.
"2: Increased mission types in Nightmare Worlds. From now on, the Realm of Nightmare will establish main mission lines in all Nightmare Worlds. Completing main mission lines will grant you massive amounts of Point Certificates.
"3: In some unique Nightmare Worlds, there will be special missions and characters.
"4: From now on, the punishment of execution for revealing the existence of the Realm of Nightmare and Nightmare Worlds has been abolished. However, every word concerning the Realm of Nightmare and the Nightmare Worlds that you try to reveal to the outer world will be blocked by the Great One.
"5: The Great One will forever be loyal to corrupted character, corrupted character, corrupted character, corrupted character…"