Bang!

Qin Shen was startled awake by a dull thud. He sat up abruptly.

Brilliant sunlight seeped through the gap in the curtains—it was already morning. Xie Qing had fallen to the ground beside the corpse of the Fog Ghost.

“What is this?”

Xie Qing looked dazed, an expression rarely seen on his face. There was an unexpected innocence to it, almost unfitting for his age.

The Fog Ghost’s body was snapped in half at the waist, no longer resembling a person. All Xie Qing could see was a lump of something wrapped in a black robe.

He tried to get up for a closer look but barely made it halfway before sinking back down.

His lower legs had lost all strength.

Qin Shen strode over in two quick steps.

“Don’t move.”

He found it strange—Xie Qing, usually so agile that he could dislocate someone’s jaw in an instant, had actually tripped over a corpse?

Xie Qing noticed Qin Shen’s unspoken confusion. Instinctively, he touched his abdomen, which had been aching intensely since the morning, and explained, “I was starving. My energy bar hit zero, so I couldn’t use any skills.”

Qin Shen handed him an energy bar. Xie Qing accepted it with a grin. “How many of these do you even have?”

“As many as you need.”

While tending to Xie Qing’s injuries, Qin Shen recounted what had happened the previous night.

Xie Qing had fallen asleep the moment he closed his eyes, unaware that he had kicked a high-level NPC to death in his dreams. He immediately checked the system notifications in the Nightmare Invasion app.

The information was mostly the same as what Qin Shen had told him, except for two extra rewards—a new title and a red lucky bag.

[Intermediate Title: Dream Slayer]

[What kind of person kills in their sleep? Just thinking about it makes the system shudder in fear. This achievement is a testament to how ruthless and terrifying you truly are. Hopefully, earning this title will inspire you to turn over a new leaf and be a good person. Players who equip this title gain a deterrent effect against Fog Ghosts.]

Xie Qing: “…”

This was a shameless slander against a delicate and frail patient like him!

“Ruthless? Terrifying? Pure fabrication!”

Qin Shen remained silent. He actually thought the system’s assessment wasn’t entirely wrong.

[Would you like to equip the title now?]

Xie Qing selected yes without hesitation. A deterrent effect was always useful—it could even function as an NPC detector. Simply put, anyone afraid of him was likely a Fog Ghost.

Next, he opened the red lucky bag.

[Red Lucky Bag: Drop rate 0.03%. Extremely rare item. Chance to obtain Awakening Moment. Would you like to open it now?]

Xie Qing frowned. “What is Awakening Moment?”

“It’s the ultimate nightmare clearance pass,” Qin Shen explained, his expression turning strange. “If you have it, you’ll never fall into a nightmare again.”

Xie Qing raised an eyebrow. “So you’re saying… I just pulled the jackpot?”

Qin Shen looked even more surprised. “Red Lucky Bags have an extremely low drop rate. Even I haven’t gotten many. Your luck is incredible.”

Xie Qing let out a dry laugh. Yeah… I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

At the Children’s Day fair, the best prize Xie Qing had ever won was an eraser. His luck in gacha games was always bottom-tier, and he had never even won five bucks from a lottery ticket.

So, with no expectations, he casually tore open the lucky bag. A dazzling burst of golden light and celebratory confetti exploded in front of him as the system enthusiastically blared through a tiny trumpet:

[Congratulations, player Xie Qing! You have obtained an S-tier item: Love Potion. Upon consumption, you will temporarily fall in love with any person or object of your choosing for one minute. Even if it’s a powerless remote control, you will still experience a passionate and sincere affection for it.]

Xie Qing’s face turned as green as a thriving pot of cat grass.

What kind of cursed prize was this?! A Love Potion that made you fall for a remote control?! This thing was even worse than an eraser!

Was the damn system messing with him on purpose?

He grabbed the lucky bag and, ignoring its silent protests, forcibly shoved the Love Potion back inside. His expression darkened as he threatened, “Give me something actually useful.”

The red lucky bag struggled desperately in his grip, but under Xie Qing’s merciless tyranny, it had no choice but to gulp the bottle back down. A gurgling sound came from within, followed by a dramatic flop as the bag fell over, its red drawstring opening wide like a withering trumpet flower.

“Pfft!”

The tiny Love Potion bottle was spat right back into Xie Qing’s hands.

Xie Qing: “…”

The lucky bag stuck out its tongue at Xie Qing with a cheeky “Bleh~”, then went completely limp in his hand, pretending to be dead.

Xie Qing’s face darkened further. He held the bag’s drawstring between three fingers, looking like he was about to strangle it.

Qin Shen’s gaze held a trace of sympathy. Not knowing how to comfort him, he could only say, “Try not to think too much about it.”

The bag remained motionless, fully committed to playing dead.

Xie Qing let out a cold chuckle and stared it down. “From now on, whenever I come across cockroaches, corpses, rotten meat, or broken bones in a dungeon, I’ll use you to store them. You wouldn’t mind, would you?”

The bag trembled slightly in his grasp, as if it had understood the threat.

Satisfied, Xie Qing snorted, stuffed it into his pocket, and turned his gloomy gaze toward the first monster he had ever killed.

The Fog Ghost’s skin was waxy and yellow, its features indistinguishable from an ordinary person. It didn’t resemble any of the hotel staff he had encountered before. But Xie Qing knew exactly who it was.

“He was the manager.”

Qin Shen frowned. “Are you sure?”

Xie Qing had mentioned before that he had a keen eye for faces. But this creature bore no resemblance to the manager whatsoever. Could he really recognize it that easily?

“Mhm,” Xie Qing responded. Seeing Qin Shen’s doubt, he added, “I have my ways.”

Qin Shen nodded and didn’t press further. Everyone had their own secrets. However, a suspicion was starting to take root in his mind—could Xie Qing be the special patient from the Fifth Research Institute?

After finishing his examination, Qin Shen carefully lowered Xie Qing’s pant leg.

“You have a fracture. We need to head to the medical room on the sixth floor.”

His initial diagnosis was firm. But before he could help Xie Qing up, he turned and saw him tugging at the Fog Ghost’s clothes.

“…What are you doing?”

Qin Shen had a strong and stable mental state, but that didn’t mean he was completely unfazed by bizarre scenes like this.

Xie Qing struggled to yank open the Fog Ghost’s collar, then roughly grabbed its hair and lifted its head to expose the red circular mark on its back.

The symbol looked like a grotesque fusion of a human, a goat, and an octopus—something that should have never existed.

Qin Shen frowned. “What is that?”

“The top part is a human-faced, goat-bodied creature with eyes under its armpits. That’s Taotie, the symbol of greed.”

That perfectly matched the description of the Mist Ghost—forever starving.

“But this Taotie doesn’t just have goat legs—it also has octopus tentacles.” Xie Qing shook the Fog Ghost’s head mockingly. “Did the dragon give birth to a new species beyond its nine sons?”

Qin Shen shook his head. He wasn’t well-versed in mythology.

Xie Qing pulled out his phone and snapped a picture of the strange tattoo. With a sneer, he said, “The monster encyclopedia hypes these Fog Ghosts up like they’re some unbeatable horror, but killing one only rewards twenty points? Trash game.”

Qin Shen glanced at the corpse on the ground.

It wasn’t that the Fog Ghost wasn’t strong—it was just that Xie Qing didn’t play by the rules. No one could have predicted that a high-level NPC with an unbeatable ability would be taken out in his sleep by a single kick.

Xie Qing put away his phone and cast a glance behind him.

That feeling of being watched was back.

He gestured for Qin Shen to help him up.

Seeing the frown on his face, Qin Shen asked, “What’s wrong?”

Xie Qing pondered for a moment before speaking slowly, “In a hotel dominated by supernatural forces, there shouldn’t be a need to install hidden cameras to monitor guests… right?”

Qin Shen’s expression didn’t change. “Not necessarily. But I already checked this room yesterday—there aren’t any hidden cameras.”

“Hmm—” Xie Qing dragged out the sound, rubbing his chin. “Then why do I keep feeling like someone’s watching me?”

His gaze swept past Qin Shen’s sharp profile, landing on a specific point in the empty air. His blue-gray eyes focused as if there really was a hidden camera there.

—

【WARNING! WARNING!】

【NIGHTMARE INVASION DETECTED!】

【IMMEDIATE OBSERVER REPLACEMENT REQUIRED!】

Observer #172 sat frozen in front of the screen, his eyes vacant. He stared directly into the blue-gray gaze on the monitor, his nightmare invasion percentage skyrocketing from 14% to 93% within mere seconds.

Inside the observation room, the monitoring data surged past the danger threshold, and the online viewers of Nightmare Livestream #0723 plummeted to nearly zero.

Observer #009 stormed into Observation Room #0723 within a minute. The moment his eyes landed on the screen, the nightmare invasion percentage began steadily dropping.

93%… 90%… 85%…

It finally stopped at 18%.

Blood dripped from Observer #172’s eyes, nose, and mouth. His expression was dazed, his lips murmuring in an incomprehensible tongue.

He had gone completely insane.

His hair grew wildly, long damp strands dripping with a mixture of blood-scented and sulfuric-smelling liquid. The ends of his hair twisted into writhing tentacles, lashing against the control panel with sharp, wet slaps.

In mere moments, Observer #172’s facial features—his eyes, nose, and ears—blurred and flattened, leaving behind a smooth, almost featureless surface. Only his lips remained, stretching unnaturally wide in a blood-red grin.

It was hard to say how much of #172 was still human.

Medical personnel rushed in, shoving the twisted observer into an isolation capsule before carrying him away.

Observer #009 took his seat. The chair was still warm. He adjusted the height slightly before settling in.

His face appeared in the bottom right corner of the livestream feed, and the number of viewers in Nightmare Livestream #0723 skyrocketed back up.

The audience, who had been scared stiff by the sudden nightmare invasion, quickly recovered and began discussing the horrifying incident.

[Who the hell is Xie Qing? I’ve never heard of a player who can detect when they’re being observed—let alone one who can trigger a nightmare invasion just by looking back. This has to be a coincidence, right?]

[We just witnessed history. The nightmare skipped both the Infection and Assimilation phases and went straight to Invasion. #172 was a veteran observer—who would’ve thought he’d go down in a damn health spa copy?]

[This copy makes no sense. It’s been online for over a decade, has a terrifyingly high death rate, yet it’s still rated E? The system must be broken!]

[Copy ratings depend on invasion levels. Sure, a lot of people die here, but the invasion level has always been low. The system isn’t completely brainless.]

[‘The invasion level has always been low’—you mean when it suddenly jumped from single digits to 93%? Sooo low, yeah. System bootlickers never fail to crack me up.]

—

Observer #009 adjusted the controls, zooming in on the footage. The camera focused until he could see every intricate detail of Xie Qing’s blue-gray irises.

His gaze moved down, scanning every feature—starting from the smooth arch of Xie Qing’s brows, trailing over his nose, down to his lips.

It was as if his eyes were mapping out a 3D model, intent on storing every detail into permanent memory.

On-screen, Xie Qing casually scratched his fair cheek.

“I feel like someone is staring at me really intently.”

Xie Qing had always maintained a cautious skepticism about whether he was a pervert, but he had never been fond of other perverts. His slender fingers brushed across his lightly flushed lips.

“They’re staring at my mouth. Kinda disgusting.”

…Was that really the part to be disgusted by?

Qin Shen’s expression stiffened. Without a word, he grabbed Xie Qing’s wrist and yanked his hand away.

“You just touched a corpse.”

Xie Qing: “!”

He hopped into the bathroom on one foot, aggressively scrubbing his hands and lips with soap. His lips, unable to withstand such rough treatment, turned a deep, swollen red—plump and flushed.

009 kept the camera fixed on Xie Qing, his expression subtly shifting.

A frown creased his brows. His fingers unconsciously traced the screen, following the contours of Xie Qing’s face as if drawn in by some indescribable pull.

He was certain that he had never seen Xie Qing before today.

And yet, the feeling of familiarity was so overwhelming it was impossible to ignore.

It didn’t feel like a first encounter.

It felt like a reunion.

—

On-screen, Qin Shen followed Xie Qing into the bathroom and handed him a clean towel.

Xie Qing dried his fingers slowly, deliberately, then ran his tongue across his lips, licking away the lingering water droplets.

His gaze lifted slightly, locking onto a seemingly empty point in the air.

Then, in an unhurried, matter-of-fact tone, he stated:

“I think we’re being livestreamed.”

—

The moment the words left his mouth, a mechanical chime rang in his ears.

【Congratulations, Player Xie Qing, for discovering the livestream! The Shop has been unlocked. Customer Service is now available. Your Independent Livestream Room has been activated.】

A live stream interface suddenly appeared in front of Xie Qing. In the top left corner, his personal live stream room initially displayed zero viewers, but the number quickly surged, climbing to nearly five thousand before stabilizing.

The chat flooded with comments almost instantly.

“He actually discovered the live stream room?! Holy shit!”

“Is Xie Qing the first player to realize there’s a live stream room during the newbie phase?”

“There’s one more… look, standing right next to Xie Qing.”

“But Xie Qing’s independent stream doesn’t have an observer. That’s really risky. He’s too much of a troublemaker—I wouldn’t dare to keep watching his stream. What if I get invaded by a nightmare?”

“+1”

Xie Qing keenly picked up on the key terms from the chat.

“Observer, live stream room, nightmare invasion… System, what does this mean?”

【System: Insufficient permissions. Unable to answer your question at this time.】

Xie Qing hung the towel on the rack, reached out to steady himself on Qin Chen’s shoulder, and let out a cold laugh.

“You don’t have to tell me—I can guess,” Xie Qing said. “Nightmares can invade the real world, but observation stabilizes them, preventing them from crossing over. It’s like the observer effect in quantum mechanics. The so-called ‘observers’ are strong observers, whose stabilizing effect is greater than that of regular viewers.”

“When players are unaware of the live stream room, we’re still being watched—but those streams are observer-led, meaning the observer acts as the director. Once I became aware of the live stream’s existence, my personal live stream room opened. Unlike the observer-led streams, my personal stream has no observer. That means, for ordinary viewers, without a strong observer, they’re more vulnerable to nightmare invasion.”

Qin Chen was at a loss for words.

Xie Qing glanced up at him. “Did I guess wrong?”

No—it was because he guessed too accurately that Qin Chen was momentarily speechless.

Xie Qing’s words hit the audience like a bombshell, instantly igniting a wildfire of discussion.

“This is terrifying—he actually figured out the nature of the live stream room. This guy is scary as hell.”

“I officially declare myself a Xie Qing die-hard fan from now on.”

“Wait, does he get an extra reward for discovering this on his own?”

If there were an extra reward—well, there actually was.

【The audience has gifted you 507 hearts. You can now use hearts to purchase items in the store.】

【Player Xie Qing has independently discovered the live stream room and has been rewarded with a Red Lucky Bag. Open it now?】

Xie Qing: “…”

Did he guess too correctly, and now the system was retaliating out of embarrassment? Why another lucky bag?! Couldn’t it just give him something straightforward—points, hearts, or even two energy bars?

The lucky bag squirmed in his pocket. Xie Qing pulled it out, glaring at it with a terrifying expression. The bag visibly shrank back, its drawstring tightening in fear.

Xie Qing’s mouth twitched.

His facial expression remained cold as he said, “Open it.”

A burst of golden light and fireworks exploded in the air. The system gleefully sounded its tiny trumpet:

【Congratulations, Player Xie Qing! You have drawn an SSS+ level item: Love Potion. Upon drinking, you will fall in love with any person or object of your choice, for a random duration. Even if it’s a used napkin, you will experience an overwhelming, sincere love for it.】

Xie Qing: “…”

Enough. Seriously.

---

TN:

I love horror novels <⁠(⁠￣⁠︶⁠￣⁠)⁠>