“Then I’ll let you see.”
Lou Shengyue only heard Mr. Narrator announce this with a faint, smiling tone. She had no time to ponder the meaning hidden in His words before, all of a sudden, a streak of gold flashed across her vision.
In the blink of an eye, it surged straight toward her, closing in, until it vanished completely.
In this lightless place, that overly brilliant color jolted Lou Shengyue’s sight awake, leaving behind a deep, indelible imprint on her retina.
After a few seconds of delayed reaction, Lou Shengyue’s breathing suddenly quickened. She recognized it,
That seemed to be…
A pair of eyes.
A pair of radiant, gilded, ice cold serpent eyes.
“Ah…”
Only then did Lou Shengyue belatedly raise her hands to cover her eyes. It was at this moment that she realized a small snake with gilded pupils had burrowed straight into her eyes!
The sensation was extraordinarily strange. There was no pain, not even the faint foreign body discomfort one would feel when an eyelash fell into the eye yet she could distinctly sense it. That snake had already fused with her retina.
The little serpent with its uncanny golden pupils swam lightly within Lou Shengyue’s eyes. Its cold, hard scales brushed past her brow bone, her frontal lobe, the nerves spread throughout her brain, as though it could continue swimming onward, endlessly onward, straight into the depths of her mind.
Goosebumps erupted across Lou Shengyue’s entire body. For a moment, all she felt was dizziness, nausea and a bone deep sense of dread.
When that bizarre sensation finally faded away completely, Lou Shengyue slowly straightened her back, lowered the hand covering her eyes and stared blankly at the scene before her.
Just as the “Narrator” had said, it seemed she truly could see now.
There was clearly no light yet every line, every contour of the objects before her was fully revealed in her vision.
To her astonishment, Lou Shengyue realized that after she had fallen asleep, her consciousness had once again arrived at the aquarium.
Only this time, the aquarium before her was silent and deserted, shrouded in total darkness, as if draped in a mysterious and dangerous black veil that inspired instinctive fear.
She stood in place for a while. As her shoulders and neck gradually began to ache yet afraid to move recklessly, Lou Shengyue cautiously asked, “Mr. Narrator… may I ask if you’re still here?”
There was no response.
Lou Shengyue recalled that ever since the little snake had appeared, she had no longer heard the dense, continuous sounds behind her, the rasping friction of scales, the stretching and shifting movements.
He was probably drawn away by something else and had finally left.
Realizing this, Lou Shengyue felt a trace of curiosity rise within her but more than that, she let out a quiet sigh of relief.
“When there’s danger, Mr. Narrator can resolve the danger. When there’s no danger… Mr. Narrator is the greatest danger of all…”
She murmured this to herself half jokingly, then took a few steps forward and began to examine the aquarium hidden in darkness. Judging from the layout, the pitch black aquarium in her dream was no different from the one in daytime, only the atmosphere had become far more eerie and terrifying.
Lou Shengyue crossed the main hall and turned into Corridor A, then suddenly halted in her tracks.
Inside the rows of tanks before her, those displayed as collections for visitors to admire were not fish at all,
They were people.
One after another, human bodies floated silently inside the tanks. Their skin had been soaked pale and wrinkled, some even grotesquely bloated. Water rippled and swayed, lifting their stiff bodies up and down. From a distance, they resembled waves of ghastly white foam.
Some were jostled by the rising and falling currents, drifting unsteadily upward until they pressed against the arched glass ceiling above Lou Shengyue. Their corpse pale faces were smashed tightly against the glass, features distorted, eyelids rolled back, like water ghosts clinging overhead, staring straight down at her.
Suppressing the scream that surged to her throat, Lou Shengyue stumbled backward several steps without realizing it.
She had been frightened too many times that night. After surpassing her psychological threshold, she felt strangely numb now, driven only by a primal urge to escape.
Why… were people being exhibited?
Lou Shengyue still remembered everything from before she fell asleep. She was certain that she was inside a dream, perhaps one that did not belong to her at all.
Could it be… that the owner of this dream believed that what deserved to be displayed were not fish but humans?
What kind of twisted mind would conceive something like this?
The first suspect that flashed through Lou Shengyue’s mind was naturally the non-human being she was most familiar with, Mr. Narrator, yet she quickly dismissed that guess.
Although the vast disparity in race and ability sometimes led Mr. The narrator did things that filled her with fear… Lou Shengyue believed that His attitude toward humans was still relatively friendly. Otherwise, He wouldn’t have bothered conversing with players from different instances through the medium of a phone.
Mr. Narrator likely wouldn’t imagine such a strange scene within a dream.
Placing humans into fish tanks and exhibiting them in an aquarium…
After pondering for a moment, Lou Shengyue tasted a hint of cathartic fury in this act.
The dream’s owner seemed to be angry, venting their rage toward humanity through these images but why?
Where had this fury come from and why had it erupted? And what connection did it have to the aquarium?
Unable to make sense of it for the moment, Lou Shengyue set the question aside and continued forward. She soon crossed the long corridor and arrived near the staff only area.
As she passed a white wall, Lou Shengyue suddenly let out a soft “Huh?” and bent down to take a closer look.
Several lines of crooked writing were scrawled there, as though written stroke by stroke by a young child gripping a pen clumsily yet when Lou Shengyue examined them carefully, she realized that this script did not belong to any civilization she had ever encountered.
…And yet she could read it perfectly.
Through this unknown language as a medium, the meaning flowed smoothly into her eyes, effortlessly comprehensible.
There was no need to guess, the credit clearly belonged to that little snake bestowed by the “Narrator.”
With lingering unease, Lou Shengyue reached up to touch her forehead, then slowly deciphered the lines of text:
“Mother told me to remain here and wait… for her return. I will do so…”
“The three hundredth day of waiting for Mother. Some sisters and brothers have begun to betray the vow and leave this place. Some companions have died at the hands of Mother’s enemies.”
“And I am still here. I will remain here forever, forever waiting for Mother’s return…”
“Could this be the child mentioned in the system task, the one separated from their mother?”
Lou Shengyue’s eyes softened with pity. “Usually, in situations like this, it means the mother has either abandoned the child… or suffered some kind of accident and can no longer return to keep her promise.”
No matter which possibility it was, Lou Shengyue felt it far more likely that this mother would never come back.
Letting out a quiet sigh, she was just about to continue exploring when she suddenly felt the earth shake violently.
A terrifying hiss, half roar, half shriek, echoed throughout the entire aquarium, stabbing into her eardrums like a thousand needles.
The ground split apart, the walls began to melt, the world inverted itself. The entire dreamscape teetered on the brink of collapse, as though it had been seized and torn apart by some overwhelming force, unable to endure the strain and shattering into fragments.
As the unfortunate witness to this catastrophe, Lou Shengyue felt as though she had been thrown into a gigantic washing machine set to its highest spin, spinning, spinning, until she was violently flung out of the dream.
In the final instant before her consciousness completely blurred, Lou Shengyue glimpsed, from afar, a colossal body vast as a mountain range. Countless ferocious serpent heads were intertwined with one another and among silver white, snow like scales, gilded pupils flickered ominously…
That single distant glance was enough to strike her mind like a crushing hammer. Her eyes burned, her spirit felt torn apart, her brain screamed in agony.
She felt as though she must be screaming too yet she realized she could not even open her mouth. Extreme pain seized her like a giant invisible hand, clenching tighter and tighter, tighter and tighter…
By the end, she could no longer tell, had her vision gone black because she was being expelled from the dream or had she simply fainted under the sheer terror of that dreadful silhouette?
The only thing she could be certain of was this: that fleeting glimpse of gilded eyes would remain branded into her memory like a scorching mark, an impression she would never forget for as long as she lived.
✦ ✧ ✦
Nycreth
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
The translator has been bribed with exactly zero coffees so far. Fix this. 😭
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
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ChaptersChapter 1 · Mysterious letterChapter 2 · Divine MessagesChapter 3 · Gamer ForumChapter 4 · Invitation from GodChapter 5 · JudgeChapter 6 · TerminalChapter 7 · Destruction of recordsChapter 8 · Whale Bone Aquarium (1)Chapter 9 · Whale Bone Aquarium (2)Chapter 10 · Whale Bone Aquarium (3)Chapter 11 · Whale Bone Aquarium (4)Chapter 12 · Whale Bone Aquarium (5)Chapter 13 · Whale Bone Aquarium (6)Chapter 14 · Whale Bone Aquarium (7)Chapter 15 · Whale Bone Aquarium (8)Chapter 16 · Whale Bone Aquarium (9)Chapter 17 · Whale Bone Aquarium (10)Chapter 18 · Whale Bone Aquarium (11)Chapter 19 Part 1 · Whale Bone Aquarium (12)Chapter 19 Part 2 · Whale Bone Aquarium (12)Chapter 20 · Interlude: His ApostlesChapter 21 · Echoes in the pupa (1)Chapter 22 · Echoes in the pupa (2)Chapter 23 · Echoes in the Pupa (3)Chapter 24 · Echoes in the Pupa (4)Chapter 25 · Echoes in the Pupa (5)Chapter 26 · Echoes in the Pupa (6)Chapter 27 · Echoes in the Pupa (7)Chapter 28 · Echoes in the Pupa (8)Chapter 29 · Echoes in the Pupa (9)Chapter 30 · Echoes in the Pupa (10)Chapter 31 · Echoes in the Pupa (11)Chapter 32 · Echoes in the Pupa (12)Chapter 33 · Echoes in the Pupa (13)Chapter 34 · Interlude: Investigation by the Bureau of Extraordinary Affairs (1)Chapter 35 · Interlude: Investigation by the Bureau of Extraordinary Affairs (2)Chapter 36 · Interlude: Investigation by the Bureau of Extraordinary Affairs (3)Chapter 37 · Small World: God’s Chessboard (1)Chapter 38 · Small World: God’s Chessboard (2)Chapter 39 · Small World: God’s Chessboard (3)Chapter 40 · Small World: God’s Chessboard (4)Chapter 41 · Advertisement Coming Soon (1)Chapter 42 · Advertisement Coming Soon (2)Chapter 43 · Advertisement Coming Soon (3)Chapter 44 · Advertisement Coming Soon (4)Chapter 45 · Advertisement Coming Soon (5)Chapter 46 · Advertisement Coming Soon (6)Chapter 47 · Advertisement Coming Soon (7)Chapter 48 · Advertisement Coming Soon (8)Chapter 49 · Advertisement Coming Soon (9)Chapter 50 · Advertisement Coming Soon (10)Chapter 51 · Advertisement Coming Soon (11)Chapter 52 · Advertisement Coming Soon (12)Chapter 53 · Advertisement Coming Soon to EndChapter 54 · Interlude – Tonight No One Sleeps (1)Chapter 55 · Interlude – Tonight No One Sleeps (2)Chapter 56 · Interlude – Tonight No One Sleeps (3)Chapter 57 · Interlude – Tonight No One Sleeps (4)Chapter 58 · Childhood Ghost Stories (1)Chapter 59 · Childhood Ghost Stories (2)Chapter 60 · Childhood Ghost Stories (3)Chapter 61 · Childhood Ghost Stories (4)Chapter 62 · Childhood Ghost Stories (5)Chapter 63 · Childhood Ghost Stories (6)Chapter 64 · Childhood Ghost Stories (7)Chapter 65 · Childhood Ghost Stories (8)Chapter 66 · Childhood Ghost Stories (9)Chapter 67 · Childhood Ghost Stories (10)Chapter 68 · Childhood Ghost Stories (11)Chapter 69 · Childhood Ghost Stories (12)Chapter 70 · Childhood Ghost Stories (13)Chapter 71 · Childhood Ghost Stories (14)Chapter 72 · Childhood Ghost Stories (15)Chapter 73 · Childhood Ghost Stories (16)Chapter 74 · Childhood Ghost Stories (17)Chapter 75 · Childhood Ghost Stories (18)Chapter 76 · Childhood Ghost Stories (19)Chapter 77 · Childhood Ghost Stories (20)Chapter 78 · Childhood Ghost Stories (Complete)Chapter 79 · Interlude: His Kingdom (1)Chapter 80 · Interlude: His Kingdom (2)Chapter 81 · Interlude: An Epic of Faith (1)Chapter 82 · Interlude: An Epic of Faith (2)Chapter 83 · Interlude: An Epic of Faith (3)Chapter 84 · Interlude: An Epic of Faith (4)Chapter 85 · Interlude: An Epic of Faith (5)Chapter 86 · Interlude: An Epic of Faith (Complete)Chapter 87 · Fate casually rolls the dice (1)Chapter 88 · Fate Casually rolls the dice (2)Chapter 89 · Fate Casually rolls the dice (3)Chapter 90 · Fate Casually rolls the dice (4)Chapter 91 · Fate casually tosses the dice (5)Chapter 92 · Fate casually tosses the dice (6)Chapter 93 · Fate casually tosses the dice (7)Chapter 94 · Fate casually tosses the dice (8)Chapter 95 · Fate casually tosses the dice (9)Chapter 96 · Fate casually tosses the dice (10)Chapter 97 · Fate Casually tosses the dice (11)Chapter 98 · Fate casually tosses the dice (12)Chapter 99 · Fate casually tosses the dice (13)Chapter 100 · Fate casually tosses the dice (14)Chapter 101 · Fate casually tosses the dice (15)Chapter 102 · Fate casually tosses the dice (16)Chapter 103 · Fate casually tosses the dice (17)Chapter 104 · Fate casually tosses the dice (18)Chapter 105 · Fate casually tosses the dice (19)Chapter 106 · Fate casually tosses the dice (20)Chapter 107 · Fate casually tosses the dice (21)Chapter 108 · Fate casually tosses the dice (The End)Chapter 109 · Interlude