One wall apart, two beds.
On the bed to the west, Li Sanjiang’s brows were tightly knit. He muttered in his sleep, limbs jerking erratically.
Despite all this, he couldn’t wake from the nightmare.
It felt as if something unseen was pressing down on him.
It was heavy—so heavy it smothered his chest, nearly choking the breath from him.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t push it away.
Even Li Sanjiang himself hadn’t expected that, after a lifetime of retrieving corpses, he would one day be pinned in place by a ghost in his sleep.
Yet even amid the frantic dread, he managed to comfort himself with one thought:
“Looks like Little Yuanhou’s calamity has successfully been transferred to me. The Transference Array for Calamity worked!”
On the bed to the east, Li Zhuiyuan lay quietly.There was no pain on his face, and his breathing was steady—he still seemed fast asleep.
But within the dream, Li Zhuiyuan opened his eyes.
He sat up, at first thinking he’d woken up. But one glance outside showed complete darkness.
He realized he was still dreaming. The bedroom’s gauzy curtains should’ve let in at least some moonlight—there was no way it could be this black.
Looking around, he found that the only thing he could see was the bed he sat on.
It was an old wooden bed, worn by time. Much of its detail had faded, but if you felt around carefully, you could still find signs of intricate carving.
He pulled the quilt off himself, knelt down, and crawled toward the edge, stretching out a hand to touch the void beyond.
After all, this was a dream.
Earlier that day, Liu Manting had asked him if life in the countryside was boring.
He’d said there was plenty of fun here.
And there really was.
For years, he hadn’t understood why the word “study” was so often preceded by “painstaking.”
Wasn’t studying just reading concepts, theories, formulas, and then doing a few simple problems?
It wasn’t until later that he realized some people genuinely found studying painful.
He envied them.
At his young age, he had little life experience. He’d spent most of his time in classrooms. As a student:
If you couldn’t feel frustration from difficult questions, couldn’t feel joy from solving them—no pressure, no effort—then there’d be no sense of reward.
Endless practice problems felt like dull scribbles in a grid notebook.
Especially when he tried reporting his grades to his mother, hoping for a word of praise, only to be met with increasingly cold eyes.
As if he’d done something wrong—and was only getting further from what was right.
So, studying brought him no emotion—only numbness.
The change came the moment he fell into the water and saw Little Oriole.
He felt pressure. Pain. And when he saw the bearded man and his son sink into the fish pond, when he watched Little Oriole's final dance on the water’s surface, he felt reward.
Great-grandpa had seen him dazed afterward and told him to think of something happy—like eating at a banquet.
But he hadn’t told Great-grandpa…
What he felt then was exhilaration.
A brand-new door had cracked open before him.
He liked this feeling of the unknown and the eerie.
For the first time, he experienced ignorance and uncertainty. That sense of helplessness and lack of control sparked a strange pleasure in him.
He thought Grandma’s use of a needle to call his soul back and placing a bowl of water by the bed was amazing.
He looked at Liu Jinxia and Li Sanjiang—and found them even more amazing.
They understood so many concepts. Knew so many formulas. They could solve problems.
And he…
He was just a failing student.
Li Zhuiyuan extended his hand past the bed’s edge. He seemed to feel a breeze—faint, so faint he wasn’t sure if it was real or just in his head.
What’s more, he couldn’t see his outstretched hand anymore.
He pulled it back and looked. Yes, it was still there.
Then he reached out again, this time downward.
There was a slight chill—still faint, but at least enough to confirm a tactile difference.
Just beyond the height of the bed’s edge, in the unseen darkness, there were two different kinds of textures.
Li Zhuiyuan closed his eyes. He concentrated, trying to sense everything more clearly. His dangling hand began to swing gently, fingers wiggling erratically.
A little more real. A little more delicate. Keep going.
The last two dreams—one was of Little Oriole at his house, the other of the hunchbacked old man carrying his wife.
So this one couldn’t just be plain blackness.
Finally, he felt it—something thin had brushed past his fingertips.
He quickly lay down flat on the bed, stretching his arm further down.
Soon, that same feeling came again—more frequently this time.
Was it…waterweed?
He immediately thought of the black waterweed he’d seen before. Or was it hair?
It kept brushing past, drifting across his fingers and forearm. He pinched it—there was a fine, wiry texture.
It really did feel like hair.
Pa.
Li Zhuiyuan’s eyes lit up. Just now, something had gently tapped his palm—not the soft swish of hair, but something else entirely.
He waited.
And waited…
Pa.
A second time.
What was it? What did it feel like?
He began to compare it to every similar sensation in his memory.
Pa.
The force was stronger this time, but still not enough.
He began swinging his arm more broadly. Back and forth…
And finally—
Pa!
With a clear, resonant vibration. He even heard a sharp sound by his ear.
Like standing still with your arm raised—and someone walking by, giving you a high five.
As Li Zhuiyuan’s discoveries piled up, the dense darkness beyond the bed began to lighten.
At the same time, the sensations from below became sharper and more defined.
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