Courtyard House: My Long and Hard Body Makes Me Play with All the Women in the Courtyard

The words on the drawing paper slowly changed:

"Brother, the door is open."

He looked up sharply.

At the edge of nothingness, a door is slowly emerging. A faint light shines through the crack in the door, like a window on a clear morning.

A faint, familiar sound came from behind the door.

It was the sound of raindrops falling on the tin roof.

It was the crackling sound of an old-fashioned electric light.

It's... the sound of a little girl flipping through a picture book.

Holding the picture book, Su Ting walked step by step toward the door.

Just as the hand was about to touch the doorknob—

"Wait a minute." Xiaoyue's voice came from the painting, tinged with laughter, "Are you really ready... to see me in 'reality'?"

He stopped, his fingers trembling slightly.

"What if... what if the real you is no longer here?"

The picture book turns a page gently.

A new scene emerges: a hospital room, sunlight slanting in, an open sketchbook on the bedside table, depicting a boy standing in an observatory, gazing at the starry sky.

On the hospital bed, the little girl had her eyes closed and was breathing weakly, but there was a smile on her lips.

A voice-over softly begins:

"But I dreamt about you."

Chapter 1262 The Streets at Dawn

Su Ting's fingers froze at the doorknob, his fingertips barely an inch from the faint light, yet it felt like an insurmountable galaxy. His throat tightened, as if countless thin threads were tugging at his vocal cords, preventing him from uttering a single syllable.

Xiaoyue gently turned a page in the picture book. The scene in the ward faded away and was replaced by a street in the early morning—a wet stone road with water droplets hanging on the sycamore leaves by the roadside. A red ball slowly rolled across a puddle and stopped in front of a mottled iron gate.

The door opened a crack.

A small hand reached out, picked up the ball, and then suddenly looked up—

It was a face exactly like Xiaoyue's in the dream, only thinner, with sunken cheeks, but with surprisingly bright eyes.

"Brother?" The girl in the painting tilted her head, her voice as soft as a feather falling to the ground. "Is that you?"

Su Ting was startled and took a step back, almost dropping the picture book.

"This...is not a dream?" he murmured. "She...is still alive?"

"I've always been here." Xiaoyue's voice drifted from the picture book, carrying the morning dew, "It's just that you've never dared to go all the way to the end."

Su Ting's voice suddenly rang in his mind, faint yet clear: "Su Ting, the end of a dream is not the end point, but an **interface**. You have opened the channel between dreams and reality... but whether you can cross it depends on whether you can accept it—she is not data, not a symbol, but a child who can get a fever, feel pain, and fall asleep and never open her eyes again."

Su Ting looked down at the pair of eyes in the picture book.

Those were not light spots generated by the program, nor were they projections faked by the system.

That was Lin Xiaoyue, his younger sister, six years younger than him. When she was seven, she was put into a long-term coma due to a rare neurodegenerative disease, and the doctors said she might never wake up again.

To prevent her from being alone in the darkness, he taught himself neural mapping, broke into the observatory, and forcibly accessed her dream.

Three whole years.

“I…I thought you were already…” Su Ting’s voice was hoarse, “The system said you had been deactivated, your consciousness had dissipated…I couldn’t even detect your breathing anymore…”

The album pages turn, revealing a new page: the observation station's monitoring room, the screen a blank gray, signifying "death to life." But in the corner, an old tape recorder still runs, the cassette slowly turning, labeled—**A Dream for My Brother, Day 327**.

“They cut off all signals,” Xiaoyue said softly. “But my dreams can still be sent out. It’s just that no one receives them… except you.”

Su Ting's tears fell onto the drawing paper, spreading ink stains.

So...you've been waiting for me all this time?

“Hmm.” Xiaoyue smiled. “I dreamt that you turned into a star, I dreamt that you fought with the clock tower, I dreamt that you cried while holding my sketchbook… I know you are looking for me. So I dare not sleep too deeply, I am afraid that when you come, I will not be able to hear you.”

Su Ting suddenly looked up and gazed at the door again.

The light filtering through the crack in the door became brighter.

The sounds of rain, lights, and page turning intertwine to create a familiar background ambiance.

He raised his hand, trembling.

"Wait a minute," Xiaoyue spoke again, this time with a mischievous smile, "Do you remember... what I promised you in my last dream?"

Su Ting was stunned.

Memories surged—it was the night he first successfully entered a dream. Seven-year-old Lin Xiaoyue sat by the Milky Way, swinging her toes, and said, "Brother, when you find me, I want you to take me to the beach. I want to hear the sound of the waves, I want to walk on the sand, and I want to leave my footprints in the sunlight."

Chapter 1263 I Promise You

“I promised you.” Su Ting choked up. “I swore an oath.”

The picture book suddenly flipped to the last page, and all 327 children in the starry sea painting looked up at him.

The lights in their hands all pointed behind the door.

"So now..." Xiaoyue's voice rang out from all directions, trembling with anticipation, "**Dare you take me to see the sea?**"

Su Ting took a deep breath and finally gripped the doorknob.

A soft light shimmered, and the door slowly opened.

Behind the door is not a ward, not a hospital, not an observation station.

It is a beach.

Golden grains of sand shimmered in the morning light, waves gently lapped against the shore, and seagulls soared across the horizon in the distance.

The wheelchair was quietly parked beside the tide line, and a petite girl sat in it, wearing a white dress, with a blanket covering her legs, and holding a picture book in her hands.

She slowly opened her eyes.

"Brother," she said softly, a smile playing on her lips, "you're late."

Su Ting knelt on the beach, reached out, and touched her fingertips with trembling hands.

Warm.

it is true.

“I’m sorry…” he choked up, “I’m too late.”

Xiaoyue shook her head and handed him the picture book.

Turning to the first page, one sees Su Ting kneeling and weeping in front of the clock tower; the second page shows him holding a star-studded pen, confronting the Heart of Light; the third page shows him pushing open the door and walking towards her.

The last page is blank.

"I'll leave it for you to draw," she said with a smile. "The place we're going to hasn't happened yet."

Su Ting looked up at the rising sun over the sea, his throat bobbing.

"where do you want to go?"

Xiaoyue tilted her face up, the wind ruffling her hair. She gazed at the horizon and whispered:

"Let's go see the aurora first, brother."

Before Su Ting could remove his hand from the picture book, a series of hurried footsteps suddenly came from afar.

Sand grains flew as they were trampled, and a dark shadow rapidly approached.

"Don't move!" the man hissed, his voice as cold as iron.

Su Ting looked up abruptly and saw a man in a black combat suit emerge from the sea fog. His right arm gleamed with a metallic sheen, and a stream of pale blue data flashed in his pupils. With a wave of his hand, a semi-transparent barrier instantly appeared in the air, separating Xiaoyue and Su Ting.

"Special Operations B-17 of the Observation Bureau, codename 'Ashes'." The man's gaze locked onto Su Ting. "You have illegally activated the cross-dimensional interface and opened the dream channel of the Sleepers without authorization, which violates Article 13 of the 'Neural Mapping Management Regulations.' Now, immediately disconnect and seal the album."

Xiaoyue laughed, gently shaking the picture book in her arms: "Brother, he said 'break', but I'm not broken. I'm still awake, right?"

Su Ting slowly stood up, blocking her way, his voice surprisingly calm: "You are not human."

Ash narrowed his eyes: "What did you say?"

“You are the ‘Dream Guardian’.” Su Ting stared at the familiar mark on his right arm—the brand of the clock tower guardian. “You are not from the Observation Bureau. You are the firewall left by Su Ting, the gatekeeper of dreams. You should have intercepted me on the last floor, but you… followed me out.”

Ash was silent for a moment, then the data stream in his eyes suddenly started to jump violently.

“Correct.” He finally spoke. “I am the last line of defense. As long as someone tries to materialize the consciousness of the sleeper and project it into the real dimension, I must eliminate the threat. Lin Xiaoyue… should have stopped showing vital signs three years ago.”

"But she's not dead!" Su Ting roared. "She recorded 327 days of dreams! She was awake the whole time! It's just that nobody heard it!"

Chapter 1264 Painful Death

"So what if I hear it?" Ash's voice suddenly lowered. "Reality is a cage, dreams are freedom. Do you really think taking her out will cure her? Her nervous system has already irreversibly degenerated, and her body won't last three days. Are you saving her, or pushing her towards an even more painful death?"

At this moment, Xiaoyue gently tugged at Su Ting's sleeve: "Brother, what he said... is half true."