Lin Qiye was genuinely exhausted.
Mentally and physically both.
He truly hadn't expected all this on his first day at a new school—running into monsters, being abandoned by his classmates, a life-or-death struggle, inexplicably opening his eyes, an inexplicable superhuman uncle leaping out of nowhere, sneaking away...
Lin Qiye was no fool. He knew that what he'd been through tonight touched the hidden face of this world: face-eating monsters, the golden light that had burst from his own body, and a man who could single-handedly flatten one of those creatures.
That man was no ordinary person. And judging by the way he'd reported in over a walkie-talkie, there had to be an enormous organization behind him—one that likely hid itself from the world, dedicated to handling exactly this kind of uncanny incident.
The man had seen the light pouring off him—maybe even seen him solo-kill a monster. That was probably why he wanted to recruit him...
To say Lin Qiye wasn't the least bit curious about the hidden world would be a lie. He wanted to know what he'd actually run into tonight, and what exactly had happened to his own body. But he had no intention of letting curiosity drag him into that whirlpool.
Some secrets, once known, can never be walked away from.
He didn't want to be some hero guarding humanity. What he wanted to guard...
was only this family of his.
Before long, he sank into sleep.
...
The familiar mist descended once more.
The Lin Qiye inside the dream looked around and sighed in resignation. "Still won't let me off, huh? Fighting monsters while awake, knocking on doors while asleep... what a rotten lot in life..."
Lin Qiye walked a couple of practiced steps, and soon the outline of a mental asylum rose before his eyes.
On the ancient plaque hanging to the right, a line of large characters was engraved.
—Mental Asylum of the Gods.
Lin Qiye walked up to the great gate and reached back for the ring. The instant his fingertips brushed it, the whole ground trembled faintly!
The mist around him suddenly began to churn.
Lin Qiye clutched the ring, utterly dumbfounded.
What the hell? I haven't even knocked yet—why is it already shaking?
It never did that before, did it?
Suddenly, a thought flashed through his mind like lightning.
Could it be because... today, he had opened his eyes?
Lin Qiye looked down at this dream-body of his, and his eyes slowly began to shine.
In the past, his body in the dream had been half-transparent—fragile as drifting mist.
But tonight it had visibly solidified. Still not flesh, but no longer see-through.
He snapped his head up, staring at the great gate that had barred him for five years, his gaze burning hotter and hotter.
Today... it might actually work!
He drew in a deep breath, gripped the ring tight, and slammed it against the gate!
"CLANG—!"
The sound of an ancient bell rolled out from inside the asylum, several times louder than ever before. Fortunately, the Lin Qiye of this moment had no true body, or his eardrums would have been throbbing.
The instant the bell rang, the entire asylum began to shudder violently!
There's a chance! Lin Qiye's eyes lit up.
"CLANG—!"
"CLANG—!!"
"CLANG—!!!"
Lin Qiye didn't pause, hammering the ring three more times in a row. The asylum swayed as if caught in an earthquake!
At last, after the final knock, a tremendous crash sounded within the asylum—and then everything sank back into silence...
Just as Lin Qiye was about to knock once more, the great gate before him gave a low, grinding creak and slowly began to move.
The door had opened.
"WHUMM—THOOM!"
When the gate had swung fully open, an ancient, dim corridor lay revealed before Lin Qiye.
The corridor's floor was made of some unknown material that gave off a faint phosphorescence, and burning orbs of light hung on the walls around it—mysterious and eerie.
Lin Qiye walked forward along the corridor, and soon came to a fork—above which hung a road sign of thoroughly modern design.
"Wards to the left, recreation area to the right..." Lin Qiye murmured, reading the sign. "This layout... why is it identical to the asylum I stayed in back then?"
Lin Qiye hesitated a moment, then went into the recreation area first.
It didn't have many rooms, but everything you'd expect was there: a multimedia room for watching TV and movies, a lounge for chess and games, a study for reading... There was even a circular open-air lawn deep inside the building, dotted with exercise equipment of every kind.
"Exactly the same, sure enough. What a bizarre dream." Lin Qiye frowned, shaking his head in puzzlement.
Once he'd finished touring the recreation area, he turned back toward the ward wing on the other side.
At the entrance to the ward wing, Lin Qiye suddenly stopped.
"This part... is different." Lin Qiye murmured, looking down the gloomy, monotonous corridor before him.
He remembered clearly: back at Sunshine Mental Asylum, the wards had occupied several floors, and while the facilities weren't exactly high-end, they were at least clean and tidy.
But the ward wing in front of him had only one floor—and only six rooms.
The doors of those six rooms were covered edge to edge in strange symbols and diagrams, dense beyond counting, like some kind of seal. A single glance left Lin Qiye dizzy, his vision swimming.
Lin Qiye wrenched his gaze off the doors, steadied his mind, and looked elsewhere.
Above and to the right of each ward hung an ancient door plaque, and on every plaque was a symbol—each one different.
Ward One, where Lin Qiye now stood, bore a plaque painted with a single great black circle.
Ward Two's plaque showed something that might have been a staff, or perhaps a pen.
Lin Qiye walked deeper along the corridor, all the way to the sixth and final ward, and still could make nothing of the plaques.
He stared at the eerie doors before him and sank into thought.
In this dream-asylum, only the ward wing differed from the Sunshine Mental Asylum in his memory.
So—did these wards actually house patients?
Or, as the asylum's name declared, was what lived inside them... gods?
Lin Qiye hesitated a moment, then slowly reached for the handle of the sixth ward's door.
It wasn't recklessness. For one thing, this was his own dream; even if something went wrong, it shouldn't be able to do him much real harm. For another, he had knocked on that gate day after day for five years to get inside this asylum—he was not about to leave with nothing but fog in his head.
And somewhere in his gut, he felt that this asylum might hold some secret tied to himself.
Why else would its layout be identical to the Sunshine Mental Asylum where he'd once lived?
Lin Qiye's hand drew closer. His fingertips brushed the door handle, and a faint coolness seeped through.
There was no repelling force, no stab of pain—his hand simply settled onto the handle, as naturally as anything.
Lin Qiye heaved with all his strength!
The door didn't budge.
He planted his feet, threw his whole body into it, and heaved again!
Still nothing.
Lin Qiye gave up on that door and moved to the fifth ward, hauling on its door.
It wouldn't open either.
The fourth. The third. The second...
Lin Qiye tried them one by one, and not a single door would open—until, at the last, he stood before the door of Ward One.
Fully braced for another failure, Lin Qiye gave the first ward's door a hard pull.
"CRACK—!"
A soft snap sounded from the handle. The intricate patterns and diagrams engraved across the door abruptly fractured, then dissolved bit by bit into the air.
Lin Qiye flinched back several steps, staring dead ahead!
The door had opened.