Chapter 1 Shadows of the Past

The light and shadows before their eyes shifted, and the floating sensation beneath their feet solidified.

When they opened their eyes again, they were back in the elevator where they had started.

With a crisp "ding," the elevator doors opened suddenly, revealing that the outside was no longer the hospital, but the 17th floor of the building they had visited before.

Jiang Cheng remembered that just a short walk away, around a corner, was Nan Huaili's office.

They... were back.

"You two," Huai Yi said, turning around with a wry smile. "I never thought we'd actually survive."

Before he could finish, Jiang Cheng's gaze was drawn to Lin Wan'er's arm, where there were two obvious puncture wounds.

As Lin Wan'er moved her arm, blood continued to seep out.

The wounds... hadn't disappeared.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his phone, which was flooded with missed calls and notifications.

The time displayed on the phone showed that a full three days had passed since they had entered that strange hospital.

They hadn't entered in a dream, the injuries sustained in the Nightmare Assault hadn't healed, and time hadn't been reset... Jiang Cheng's eyes narrowed slightly.

The rules of the Nightmare Assault had changed, becoming different from what he had experienced before, becoming... increasingly like reality.

Jiang Cheng had sensed something before when they encountered that ghost taxi, as if there was a force slowly eroding the boundary between the Nightmare Assault and reality.

Now, the appearance of the ghost hospital further confirmed this.

The middle-aged man clearly knew more than Huai Yi, but extracting information from him required equivalent exchange, while he didn't have so many restrictions when dealing with Huai Yi.

After all... they were brothers.

After seeing Lin Wan'er off, Jiang Cheng put his arm around Huai Yi's shoulder. "Brother Huai Yi," Jiang Cheng said with a smile, "mind if I come to your place for a bit?"

"No... of course not."

After getting into Huai Yi's car, they quickly arrived in front of an apartment complex. The buildings and facilities in the complex were old, making it look more like an old residential area.

"You live here?" Jiang Cheng asked as he got out of the car.

Huai Yi didn't seem like someone who lacked money, and the car he drove was decent. He had expected a seaside villa and bikini-clad women.

Huai Yi parked the car, took out the key, and got out. "This is my parents' place. They moved away, so I'm the only one living here now."

Jiang Cheng looked at him with dissatisfaction. "So the seaside villa and mature women and lolis you mentioned earlier were all just bragging?"

"How could they be?" Huai Yi widened his eyes. "But I don't usually live there. I only go there to relax when I'm not feeling weak."

Then, as if he had thought of something, he lowered his voice and said, "You know how it is, doing what we do, it's easy to make enemies. It's better to keep a low profile most of the time."

"The greatest hiding place is in plain sight. Who would know I'm hiding here?" Huai Yi chuckled. "I change my clothes in the car every time I come back, and then put on this getup. No one would recognize me, not even my parents."

Jiang Cheng looked at Huai Yi, who had changed into a different set of clothes, wearing sunglasses, a mask, and a baseball cap, and thought this guy was a bit off.

In such an old residential area with a serious aging population, driving a black Mercedes Jeep and wearing such a strange outfit...

Was he trying to be funny?

The fact that his enemies hadn't found him yet made Jiang Cheng wonder if this guy even had any enemies.

He seemed pretty smart in the Nightmare Assault, but how did he forget his intelligence when he left the Nightmare Assault?

Looking at Jiang Cheng's expression, Huai Yi scratched his head sheepishly. "Actually, it's not as scary as I made it sound. After all, the Union is in charge, so no one dares to mess around. We're not like those crazy guys from Deep Red... those... those self-sufficient and resourceful quality talents." Huai Yi stopped abruptly, then forced a recovery.

"Don't be nervous," Jiang Cheng said, shrugging indifferently. "You can say whatever you want. We at Deep Red aren't unreasonable."

"Is that so?" Huai Yi said nervously.

"Yeah, for those who don't cooperate with us, the most we'll do is tie you up and mail you home," Jiang Cheng said, looking at Huai Yi with kind eyes. "In separate pieces."

"First we'll mail the limbs, then the torso, and the head and facial features separately. If you behave well, we'll even include a tutorial with the package," Jiang Cheng explained patiently. "After your family receives the package, they can put it back together according to the tutorial, and then, with the sound of the唢呐, straight to the funeral." (Suona: A Chinese wind instrument often used in funerals.)

Hearing this, Huai Yi's legs trembled, and he almost fell to the ground. "Brother Jiang, what are you saying? Let's not talk about this. It's too stimulating. Let's... let's go to my place and sit down."

Huai Yi's home was in the third-to-last residential building in the complex. It was still the old kind, with dark green unit doors, and several of the buttons on the intercom were missing, clearly broken long ago.

The old complex had no elevator, so there were only six floors.

Huai Yi's home was on the 6th floor, 602.

According to him, the family across the hall had moved away long ago.

Huai Yi's room wasn't big, and the overall feeling wasn't like a home, but more like a rental, with things piled up everywhere, including a lot of beer bottles.

But there were no cigarette butts or ashtrays.

"I don't smoke," Huai Yi said, telling Jiang Cheng not to mind and to sit wherever he liked. He explained, "I just drink beer occasionally, not hard liquor. I can't hold my liquor."

Looking around, he didn't find anything of value. Huai Yi's life was still quite simple, except for a laptop on the desk in the bedroom.

The computer looked high-end, out of place with the surroundings.

Huai Yi noticed Jiang Cheng looking at the computer and immediately explained, "We usually take orders on the Union website."

"The Union is just a placeholder name. It's actually just a website where people post cases that need to be handled."

"Of course, they're all related to that kind of thing."

Jiang Cheng nodded. He naturally knew that Huai Yi was referring to supernatural events.

"There are all kinds of people in there, some like us, and some ordinary people with means and connections. In short, the water is very deep."

"Everyone's goal is to solve these tricky cases. The website is just a platform," Huai Yi lowered his voice. "What's really scary is the power behind the website. There's a shadow of that thing in it."

"The state," Jiang Cheng said, glancing at Huai Yi.

This was obvious. Creating such a place without alarming the state machinery was impossible. Without its tacit approval, not to mention one Union, even ten would be wiped out.

After all, disciples were still human, and no human was unafraid of 7.62mm steel-core armor-piercing bullets.

"Was this business also taken from the website?" Jiang Cheng asked, tilting his head.

"Yes."

Jiang Cheng thought for a few seconds and then said, "Pull up the information on this business. I want to see it."

Soon, a document appeared on the computer.

"Code name: Chuangrong Building Ghost Face Incident."

"Supernatural Event Level: C."

"Threat Level: ☆☆"