I looked around. This was no longer inside Thunder Peak Pagoda. It was a golden, roughly twenty-meter-wide space. Cuneiform script in gold flowed across the walls, interspersed with faint hourglass symbols.
Was I dead? Was this heaven? Shouldn't a basement-dwelling shut-in like me go to hell?
"Where were you fooling around with some other woman? Taking this long to get here. My real body is still out there bleeding drop by drop. If this takes too long, I'll actually die! You..."
Chloe was in the middle of a torrent of complaints when she felt something strange on her chest. She looked down to find a familiar perverted hand already resting on her breast.
"Huh? You're the real Chloe?"
The next second, a righteous punch exploded on the top of my skull, and I clutched my head, rolling around on the ground.
"Ow ow ow ow ow. That force, that intensity—yep, it's the real Chloe all right."
"Of all times to be such a pervert!"
"Well, I just got stabbed in the gut by a fake Chloe out there, so I needed to verify..."
"Let's keep this short. Lucas's Abandoned Object is nightmares. This is his dream space outside. You could call it a domain, a bounded field, an AT field, or Nibelungen—whatever works. The point is, we're on his turf, and once we step outside, we play by his rules."
"Nibelungen. I think we should call it Nibelungen—it sounds cooler."
"Okay, Nibelungen it is, my little shut-in. My ability lets me pull any dying competitor into my Nibelungen for shelter. That's why I could only bring you in when you were hemorrhaging and in danger. Everyone in Hangzhou outside should currently be trapped in his nightmare Nibelungen."
I thought about the zombie-like horde that had been chasing me and nodded.
"No wonder they had that purple mist around them. So that's nightmares, huh?"
"Right. But I don't recommend you going out there with your lunar treasure playing one-man army. Those are ordinary people. When this is over, I don't want to go on the run as a wanted fugitive with you."
"Now can you explain—why is there a death game like this Holy Grail War? Why is everything centered around me? What secret is the moon hiding? Why is the incantation about Osiris?"
"You've heard the theories about prehistoric civilizations and the pyramids, right? The Great Pyramid is 146 meters tall, 230 meters wide at the base. Each stone block weighs up to 15 tons, yet the gaps between them are so thin you can't even slide a knife through. How did the ancient Egyptians manage such a feat of engineering over 4,000 years ago? The answer is a prehistoric civilization. A civilization that once existed on Earth, far more advanced than our own. For certain reasons, they migrated to the moon, and that's why we have this trial. Osiris is their chief deity. Your lunar meteorite is their creation. It makes perfect sense that the incantation invokes Osiris."
"But why are they testing us? Their civilization is so advanced—they can handle whatever they need themselves. What could we possibly do that they can't?"
"In a sense, knowledge is also a curse. For missions that require courage, Earthlings are more trustworthy than lunar citizens."
"Then what does that myth you showed me hint at?"
Chloe's gaze flickered, as if hiding something. "Death is not the end. Death can mean a new beginning. I hope you'll remember that after everything is over."
I didn't press further. She must be bound by some restriction imposed by the game's orchestrator. The fact that she could say this much was already remarkable.
Chloe flicked her wrist, and a compact DV camera materialized in her hand as if by magic.
"Time flows much more slowly here than outside—roughly one day in here equals one second out there. While you were away, I walked around and gathered intelligence. All of Lucas's nightmare data is in here. Watch it first."
"Alright... Can you stop being so fierce all the time? Like some kind of wicked nun. Who's going to marry you?"
"You—!"
The video wasn't long—four nightmare segments in total, showing how Lucas went from a poor village boy to a Fortune 500 elite, and then plummeted to rock bottom as a delivery driver because of football betting.
"What do you think?" Chloe asked me.
I pondered for a moment.
"Something's off, but I can't put my finger on exactly what."
"Like what?"
"Like the fact that even after getting sixty million, he didn't use the money to go home and improve his parents' lives first. Instead, he came straight to Hangzhou to find you."
"True, the logic doesn't quite hold..."
"And he said he worked at a Fortune 500 company after graduation, then became a delivery driver after losing his job, right? But that physique of his doesn't look like a typical delivery guy. It's more like he went through some kind of specialized training—police academy? Prison? I can't say for sure."
"Also, his chin scar—why include a separate nightmare segment about a traffic accident? That detail feels oddly out of place in this sequence, don't you think?"
"Something deliberate, meant to conceal a truth."
Chloe waved her hand, opening a section of the Nibelungen. Where the golden glow faded, a person-sized opening appeared. Through it, I immediately recognized a smog-shrouded Beijing.
"The game's rules work like this: four layers of nightmares, each containing a key held by an ordinary person possessed by a version of Lucas. Find the host, retrieve the key, and you can proceed to the next dream layer. Collect all four, and the Nibelungen collapses. We need to pierce the root of his nightmare."
I glanced at my spirited ex-girlfriend and felt a little flustered. As I walked toward the exit, I babbled:
"Look, after this is over, we'll both have money. I won't have to wash dishes in Japan anymore. Maybe we could consider..."
"Let's talk about getting back together after we win." Chloe smiled faintly and kicked me in the rear.
"So there IS something to talk about..."
"Talk about my foot!"
---
The moment we stepped out, Chloe and I immediately spotted four college students by the road.
They reeked of alcohol, stumbling along, clearly headed back to their dorm from a late-night food stall.
"I'm not wasted, seriously, I'm fine. Hey, Luke, you're starting at a Fortune 500 company tomorrow, you're the real deal! You're the most successful guy in our whole dorm!" A thin, small guy was clearly the drunkest, rambling incoherently.
A chubby guy beside him chimed in: "Me too, me too. Luke, when you make it big, remember us. Don't forget your bros when you're rolling in it."
The third guy hadn't drunk much. He had a cool demeanor and only glanced at Lucas mildly. "Take care. Call if you need anything."
Lucas, in a sharp suit, was clearly the standout among the four. He was clean-shaven then, a handsome young man with a refined look, wearing thin silver-framed glasses. He supported the chubby guy with one arm and the thin guy with the other, chatting as they walked toward the campus gate of Renmin University. Just ahead was the entrance. He turned back and, seemingly by chance, cast a cold glance toward the alley where Chloe and I were hiding.
In an instant, both Chloe and I sensed a faint trace of Abandoned Object energy.
"Looks like the first layer is an easy level. We just follow them in, knock out that Lucas, and the key's bound to be on him!" I was raring to go, but Chloe grabbed my arm.
"No rush. Each layer has its own traps. I'll go to the university archives to dig up Lucas's records. You follow them and get their dorm number. Don't make a move until I get back."
I crouched and shadowed them as they entered the military cadet dormitory building.
It was late enough that the dorm auntie couldn't be bothered with a thorough check. I slipped in behind some students returning from a late-night internet session, laughing and chatting.
I'd barely reached the door of Room 602 when I saw the chubby guy and the thin guy barfing into separate buckets. Lucas and the sober guy were boiling water to take care of them.
"The project at work is pushing hard. I'm moving out tomorrow. You guys need to find good jobs too. Let's try to get together at least once a year," Lucas said as he helped the chubby guy out of his jacket and onto his bed.
"We're not as lucky as you... we'll take it slow."
"Things will get better... I know about your family situation too. If you don't mind..."
"I can handle it myself. Don't worry about me."
Silence. Suffocating silence.
Lucas seemed eager to break the awkwardness. After a few seconds, he said:
"I'm going out for a smoke. Get some air."
Perfect opportunity!
The moment Lucas stepped out of the dorm and reached the stairwell corner, I delivered a single chop to the back of his neck, knocked him out, dragged him into the shadows, and started searching him.
Just then, my phone rang with Chloe's call.
"Marcus, I found Lucas's records."
"No worries. I'm just about done on my end too."
"There's something fishy. This Lucas isn't from a rural area at all. He's from Chaoyang District in Beijing. Both parents have Beijing household registrations. His file shows he's about to be transferred to a Fortune 500 multinational—completely inconsistent with the scenes in this dream."
I stopped searching, a bead of cold sweat forming on my forehead.
"What are you saying?"
"There are four people in his dorm. Zhao Yupcn from Langfang, Hebei. Ma Yunfei from Yantai, Shandong. Lucas from Chaoyang, Beijing. And..."
"And what?"
"There's ANOTHER Lucas—from an impoverished village in Luoyang, Henan Province! He applied for financial aid and student loans multiple times over his four years of college. He failed several courses, has multiple disciplinary records for fighting, and might not even get his degree!"
I felt that bead of cold sweat fall silently to the floor. A shadow had crept up behind me without my noticing.
I turned around. The quiet, taciturn young man was standing less than a meter behind me.
The chubby guy and the thin guy stood behind him in an unnatural, stiff posture, like zombies.
His hands were wreathed in that familiar purple mist.