Dream Ghost

Lin Ye suddenly opened his eyes.

His chest heaved violently, and cold sweat soaked through his entire T-shirt. He instinctively reached for the bedside lamp—click, the warm yellow CD player dispelled the darkness in the room.

It's that dream again.

No, that's not right. He took a deep breath, his fingers still trembling slightly. This dream was different. Before, it was always a blurry fragment, impossible to catch, impossible to see clearly, impossible to wake up from. But this time—

He got a clear look at the thing's face.

Or rather, that face that is "not a face".

Lin Ye threw off the covers and got out of bed, his bare feet touching the cold floor as he walked towards the bathroom. His reflection in the mirror showed a deathly pale face and dark circles under his eyes, making him look like he hadn't slept for three days. In fact, he hadn't slept well for three days.

Since last week, that dream has become increasingly clear.

At first, it was just a faint feeling of being watched, like something was lurking in the shadows, observing him. Then came footsteps, light and slow, but definitely there. In the last three days, that thing began to appear—a shapeless mass of darkness, like a tear from the depths of the night, inside which something was writhing, staring, and…smiling.

Lin Ye turned on the tap and washed his face with cold water.

"It was just a nightmare," he said to himself in the mirror. "You studied psychology; you know better than anyone that dreams are just projections of the subconscious. Too much stress, lack of sleep—the brain is trying to regulate itself—"

Before he could finish speaking, the lights went out.

It wasn't a power outage. The streetlights outside the window were still on, and the neon lights of the distant buildings were still flashing. Only the light in his rented room was off.

Lin Ye pressed the switch twice, but there was no response.

Then he heard that voice.

Very light. Very slow.

It came from the end of the corridor, like something was dragging on the floor. A soft, rustling sound, getting closer and closer.

Lin Ye moved very quietly. He slowly retreated into the bedroom and pulled a utility knife from under his pillow. He knew this thing was useless against any real threat, but holding it in his hand at least slowed his heartbeat.

A rustling sound reached outside the door.

Lin Ye held his breath.

Things outside the door stopped.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds—

The door handle started to turn.

Very slowly. Very slowly. As if deliberately letting him hear, deliberately instilling fear in him. The metal handle was pressed down at an increasingly steep angle, and a strange smell seeped in from the crack in the door—not rot, not blood, but a deeper, more ingrained smell, a smell that made every cell scream "Run!"

The door opened.

The corridor was pitch black, like an abyss where no light could penetrate. And in the center of this darkness stood something...

It was humanoid, but the proportions were off. The shoulders were too broad, the arms too long, and the head was tilted to one side in an impossible posture. Its surface was not skin, not fabric, but some kind of flowing, ever-changing black substance, like a liquid shadow.

It has no face.

But it was "watching" Lin Ye.

In that instant, a thought flashed through Lin Ye's mind—this wasn't a dream. This was real. The conclusion was so absurd, so absurd that he almost laughed out loud. But he didn't laugh, because he saw the thing's "expression."

It wasn't seen with the eyes. It was the brain that directly told it: It's happy. It has finally found you. It has been looking for you all along.

Then it moved.

Without a sound or warning, the humanoid darkness instantly crossed the three-meter distance, and a hand—if it could even be called a hand—reached for Lin Ye's face.

Lin Ye stepped back, his back hitting the wall.

There was no way to retreat.

Just as that "hand" was less than ten centimeters from his face, a voice exploded in Lin Ye's mind.

It wasn't a sound heard with the ears. It was a sound that appeared directly in the consciousness, like someone speaking in the head, or like something that had been dormant for a long time finally awakening.

[Dream Invader Detected - Level: Fragment Level]

[Host's subconscious defense mechanism is being activated...]

[The "Dream Devouring" ability awakens—]

[Should we devour the target?]

Lin Ye didn't have time to think about "what the hell is this thing?" His body reacted faster than his brain—he reached out and grabbed the dark "hand".

The sensation was strange. It wasn't cold, nor hot, but rather "empty." It felt like he had grasped something, yet also like he hadn't grasped anything at all. But the instant he grasped it, that dark substance began to surge wildly into his body.

It didn't rush into my arm. It rushed into my consciousness.

He "saw" fragmented images—a basement, dimly lit, several people in black robes kneeling on the ground, chanting incomprehensible incantations. A photograph lay on the altar.

The person in the photo is him.

[Devouring—]

[Rule analysis in progress—]

[WARNING: The target is a man-made product of unknown origin.]

The sound vanished. The dark matter disappeared too. The corridor lights came back on, as if they had never been turned off. If it weren't for the utility knife still clutched in his hand, and his back still pressed against the cold wall, Lin Ye would have almost thought that everything that had just happened was an illusion.

He raised his right hand and opened his palm.

There was nothing there. But he felt a strange sensation in his palm. It was as if a "switch" had appeared, a switch that hadn't existed before but was now truly present within his body. He tried to flip that switch—

The scene before my eyes has changed.

He saw a rat that had been dead for three days inside the closed closet at the end of the corridor. He saw the man in his neighbor's room looking at his phone; the screen displayed a messaging app. He saw… it was too far away; he could only see everything within a range of about ten meters, but every detail was incredibly clear.

This is not visual.

This is "perception".

Lin Ye turned off the "switch," and the world returned to normal. He stood there, panting heavily, his heart pounding.

He studied psychology. He knew what hallucinations were, what delusions were, and what the brain's self-protective mechanisms under extreme stress were. But he couldn't find any psychological theory to explain what had just happened.

He looked down at his right palm.

There, there was a faint, almost invisible mark. Like a symbol, or perhaps a line of text, it automatically translated into a message he could understand the instant he gazed upon it:

[Rule Fragment - Page: Fear Hunter (Already Consumed)]

[Ability Acquired: Extended Perception (within a 10-meter range, ignoring physical obstacles)]

Lin Ye stared at his palm for a long time.

Then he heard a knock on the door.

It wasn't the door at the end of the corridor. It was his door. Three knocks, rhythmic, not like someone coming to cause trouble in the middle of the night.

2:42 AM.

Lin Ye walked to the door and looked out through the peephole.

A woman stood in the corridor. She was about twenty-three or twenty-four years old, with long hair, wearing a white dress, and looked like a heroine straight out of an art film. She tilted her head slightly, seemingly waiting for Lin Ye to open the door.

She knocked three more times.

"Lin Ye?" Her voice was pleasant, but her tone was calm. "I know you're inside. Open the door, I have something to tell you."

Lin Ye didn't move.

The woman seemed to have anticipated his reaction. She sighed, took a small ID card from her pocket, and held it up to the peephole. The ID card bore a symbol he had never seen before—an eye, its pupil reflecting a crescent moon.

"Nightmare Hunter Association, Su Wanning," she said. "Did you just see a dark shadow and then... absorb it?"

Lin Ye's fingers tightened slightly.

"Don't be nervous." Su Wanning's tone softened slightly, but remained as calm as if stating a fact. "You're not the first. And you won't be the last. Open the door, I'll buy you a coffee, and while I'm at it, I'll tell you—what exactly you've become."

Outside the door, the woman's shadow stretched long under the corridor lights.

And at the edge of her shadow, something was wriggling slightly, as if it were alive.