Chapter 1 The Start

Hao Ren used the streetlights to find a tuft of black wolf fur on the ground. He felt cold sweat pouring down his forehead, wave after wave. Luckily, he had encountered quite a few strange things in the past two days, and his nerves had somewhat toughened up. He didn't panic in the face of this bizarre situation. After calming down, the first thing he did was to make sure there were no suspicious "abnormalities" nearby—this was something he had learned after spending two days with Lily and Vivian. When "different species" were active, they would be accompanied by obvious abnormalities, such as Lily's beastly oppressive aura and Vivian's blood-colored cold wind. He felt that the situation he had just experienced, which was hard to describe as a dream or something else, might also be related to different species (after all, he had been running into this kind of thing these past two days). But after searching around, he didn't find anything unusual, and his usually super-sensitive sixth sense wasn't reacting either.

"Landlord?" Lily blinked her eyes, her unusually bright pupils slightly eerie in the night. "What's wrong?"

"Do you think there's anything... weird around here?" Hao Ren suddenly remembered that wolves were a species that was quite sensitive to danger. He also remembered the terrifying scene of the pack of wolves pouncing on him before he was awakened by the nightmare, but he shook his head and threw the second thought aside. "Like other 'different species' or something."

Lily twitched her nose and sniffed carefully on the ground under Hao Ren's speechless gaze before standing up and shaking her head. "No, it's all familiar smells. No strangers have been here. Landlord, did you run into something?"

"We'll talk about it when we get back." Hao Ren clenched the fur in his hand and strode towards home. Lily followed behind, somewhat confused, but she didn't forget to carry the deckchair back with her—she really was a good guard dog.

In the living room, Hao Ren sat solemnly on the sofa, facing the bewildered Lily and the curious Vivian. "Roll" was sitting next to them, making the "family of four" complete. Because the coffee table at home had been casually destroyed by the two superwomen, a slightly old-fashioned low table was now placed in front of everyone as a replacement. Hao Ren put the tuft of black wolf fur on the table and looked into Vivian's eyes. "I encountered something strange."

Next, he recounted the strange dream he had had as clearly and concisely as possible, especially focusing on describing the endless prairie and the two silver moons in the sky in the "dream." Finally, he pointed to the wolf fur on the table. "I woke up with this in my hand. Do you think I just had a high-speed, low-cost version of time travel, or did I accidentally master the ability to distort reality with my imagination?"

Vivian frowned her beautiful eyebrows, ignoring Hao Ren's flippant teasing. She pinched a few strands of wolf fur and smelled it under her nose. "The scent of a wild animal, and no traces of black magic. This thing was definitely taken from a natural animal. Big dog over there, your nose works better. Come and smell this."

Lily oh-ed and took a deep breath of the wolf fur under her nose. "It doesn't seem quite like the wolf scent I'm familiar with, and it does have a... scent different from this city. There's a kind of earthy, grassy smell mixed in. Only werewolves can distinguish such subtle things." After a while, she finally reacted and slapped the table. "Wait, who did you just call a big dog?!"

"Hey, easy!" Hao Ren looked at his broken table with heartache. Fortunately, Lily was in human form now and hadn't really exerted herself, so the table wouldn't be scrapped like the coffee table. Then he looked at Vivian. "So what do you think is going on? Is this so-called magic?"

"A simple dream is easy to explain. All kinds of illusions and hypnotism can achieve the same effect," Vivian said, still frowning. "I can weave a big enough dream to put hundreds of people to sleep together, and they definitely won't realize they're dreaming until they wake up. If you replace it with someone with a rich imagination, they'll definitely think they've traveled through time. But you brought something out of the dream... that's unexplainable. Anyway, there's no magic that I know of that can do that. Of course, it may not be magic. The dark side of the world is very complex, and I only know so much."

"Actually, it could be like this," Lily suddenly interjected, looking excited. "First, use illusions or hypnotism to give the landlord a nightmare, set the content of the nightmare, and then sneak over and put these wolf furs in his hand while he's sleeping..."

Vivian listened in a daze, and couldn't help but twitch her lips. "Can you stop ruining the atmosphere?"

Hao Ren thought Lily's explanation made a lot of sense. Apart from being a pain in the ass, it could perfectly solve the current problem. How should he put it? Idiots have an idiot's worldview, and it's usually simple, crude, and exceptionally useful...

However, Lily had also confirmed that there were no traces of strangers left at the scene, so this painful guess wasn't very convincing.

"In short, it's certain that what I encountered wasn't normal. Anyway, the natural environment definitely can't let me have a dream that erodes reality," Hao Ren sighed. "I'm more or less resigned to my fate. When you have too many lice, you don't feel itchy; when you have too much debt, you don't worry. Let any evil thing come—but before that, I have to think of a way to survive safely. Being with you super-creatures... it's going to kill someone!"

Vivian and Lily both knew about Hao Ren's labor contract with a woman who called herself a god, which had bound him to a pirate ship, so this time they didn't mention any nonsense about taking the initiative to leave. Instead, they began to think seriously. Vivian was a very smart girl (at least smarter than Lily). She could see that although Hao Ren was a small-time citizen, an ordinary person, and a lazy youth who was afraid of trouble, his courage and acceptance were surprisingly strong. Every time he encountered something that was enough to destroy his worldview, he would only be surprised for ten seconds before seriously analyzing and looking for a way out. This time was the same. This was a very rare quality. But even if his courage and acceptance were strong, Hao Ren was still just an ordinary person. Vivian really didn't know how to make an ordinary person become powerful in an instant.

"Didn't that Raven 12345 give you a golden finger or something?" Lily asked curiously, lying on the table. "That's how it is in human novels. You're working for a god, so the Space-Time Administration should at least give you some protective equipment, right?"

"She might have forgotten, and I didn't ask," Hao Ren thought. "I'll ask her in person next time I see her. That cell phone number of hers can't be reached. To find her, I guess I can only go to that ghostly place again... I always feel like the Space-Time Administration is getting more and more unreliable."

"Distant water can't quench immediate thirst. You've already had a strange dream once, and you didn't solve the source in the dream. According to the pattern of general illusions, this dream will definitely continue to take effect. You can't just not sleep, can you?" Vivian said, slowly transforming into a vampire. "I'll make you a talisman first. No matter what kind of illusion or something you're under, it will dissipate quickly as long as it's suppressed."

Hao Ren immediately remembered Vivian's body full of "talismans" and subconsciously asked, "Are those trinkets of yours reliable?"

"Who said anything about my treasures?" Vivian frowned slightly. "I'm talking about the power of a high-level bloodkin!"

As soon as she finished speaking, Vivian bit her finger without hesitation, and a drop of blood with a strange golden-red halo emerged from her fingertip. "Come here, let me smear this drop of blood on the back of your hand. It should be enough to suppress that nightmare—if it really is an illusion."

Hao Ren hesitated and reached out, watching Vivian smear the drop of blood with a strange glow on his hand, and couldn't help but mutter, "I remember that in the legends, vampires can use their blood to turn ordinary people into vampires too. You don't think I'm going to mutate, do you?"

"Don't think about it, that's just bluffing," Vivian sneered. "I've heard your human legends, something about adding a subordinate with one bite... If bloodkin reproduction was really that easy, what would be left for you humans? We would have covered Asia, Africa, and Europe by the Bronze Age, and we wouldn't have been forced to such a miserable state by demon hunters and the church together, would we?"

She spoke of the history of vampires being forced to the edge by humans, but she had no hostility towards Hao Ren, who was a human. It was quite interesting.

"Eh? How could this be?"

Vivian exclaimed in surprise: the moment her blood touched Hao Ren's skin, it quickly disappeared!

It was as if it was being absorbed, and at an astonishing speed.