Infinite Nightmares

Bidding farewell to his past self, Zhang Wenda turned and walked toward his companions.

For some reason, he felt much better. It was as if a weight had been lifted from his body, and even the rules didn’t seem so hard to accept anymore.

As soon as he returned, Zhang Wenda said to Auntie, "Was your information accurate or not? I saved my past self, and no time paradox happened."

"Oh, get lost." Auntie couldn’t be bothered with Zhang Wenda. Instead, she placed a hand on Song Jianguo’s shoulder, patting it gently and comforting her in a low voice.

Zhang Wenda looked over and saw that the usually carefree Song Jianguo was actually crying.

"What’s wrong? You can actually get sad? That’s a rare sight."

"My cats are dead! Several of them died!" Song Jianguo choked out. Only then did Zhang Wenda notice the corpses of several Black Cats on the ground, emitting black smoke.

Clearly, the Black Cats couldn’t withstand the intensity of the previous battle.

Zhang Wenda gently patted Song Jianguo’s shoulder. "Alright, alright, don’t cry."

Seeing that she was still down, Zhang Wenda thought for a moment before stuffing the flattened enamel tin into her arms. "Didn’t you want this? Here, take it."

"I don’t want this!"

Normally, Zhang Wenda wouldn’t have indulged her foul temper, but since she’d been willing to come out and help him, her "brat" label could be set aside. Now, she was a brat with a sense of loyalty—one worth coaxing.

After comforting Song Jianguo for a while until she had calmed down a bit, Zhang Wenda prepared to pack up and head home.

The whole day had been a chaotic mess spent here. He was mentally and physically exhausted. No matter what came next, he needed to rest and recuperate before making any plans.

In any case, he would have to get some proper rest today or tomorrow before anything else.

But just as Zhang Wenda was about to head for the end of the flea market, he saw two figures crawling out from within the split-open body of Yang Yongxin.

Zhang Wenda suddenly recalled the writhing things he had seen in Yang Yongxin’s wounds before. ’There was something inside the corpse!’

In the span of just a few breaths, the two figures grew larger and larger, eventually standing before Zhang Wenda like a towering wall.

The two were covered in black holes, their joints twisted. A malformed slab of flesh on their backs connected them, like conjoined twins.

Their facial features were blank voids, and their limbs were covered in blood-soaked scythes. They looked down on the two of them like towering door gods.

The moment Zhang Wenda recognized them, his breath seemed to stop. He knew these scythe pseudohumans; they were the cause of all the torment he had suffered on his journey!

But before, it had been one scythe pseudohuman. Now there were two.

The moment he saw the two of them crawl out of Yang Yongxin’s body, Zhang Wenda suddenly understood a few things: why they had helped Yang Yongxin in the adult world, why the rules clung to him like a shadow he could never shake, and why they had been following him all this time.

"MEOW!" Seeing another enemy appear, a giant Black Cat Shield shot up in front of Zhang Wenda, accompanied by the sound of a cat’s cry.

Song Jianguo had no time for grief now; she and Auntie stood on high alert.

The atmosphere, which had just begun to ease, instantly became incredibly tense.

Just as Song Jianguo was bracing for another vicious battle, under everyone’s gaze, the two tall, grotesque pseudohumans rapidly turned transparent and faded away, as if they had never existed.

Seeing this, Song Jianguo let out a sigh of relief. "I told you this Internet World is dangerous! You can run into anything. Let’s go, let’s go! Let’s get out of here, I’m never coming back."

But Zhang Wenda didn’t move. He seemed distracted. After a moment of silence, he spoke again. "Um... you and Auntie go back first. I have something I need to confirm."

"You? Right now?" Song Jianguo frowned, looking at the various wounds on Zhang Wenda’s body. "Go back and let your injuries heal first. You can barely even walk right now."

Zhang Wenda shook his head and looked at the Yellow Core on his arm. "You guys go. Just go ahead."

After saying this, without waiting for their agreement, Zhang Wenda pressed down hard on his Yellow Core. The scene before him instantly shifted, and he found himself in a clean and tidy internet cafe.

All around him, people had their heads buried in ultra-thin screens. The entire cafe was unusually quiet.

An active computer station was right in front of him, its screen blank.

Zhang Wenda looked down and saw that the injuries on his body had vanished without a trace. In their place, however, was an incredibly oppressive feeling in his heart.

He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it, taking a deep drag. The tingling sensation in his lungs slightly eased the crushing weight on his chest.

Zhang Wenda glanced around before quickly walking out. Outside was still a grotesque world—strange people, a strange environment, with all sorts of bizarre things happening at once.

But he couldn’t be bothered with any of that right now. He began to search the city.

「A dozen or so minutes ago」

After shouting those words in the flea market, the power of Zhang Wenda’s Yellow Core had tripled, increasing his time in the adult world to 30 minutes.

Normally, this would have been great news, but Zhang Wenda wasn’t happy about it at all.

Zhang Wenda carefully compared the details of this world with the environment of the past. Gradually, he began to notice a pattern: this world seemed to be the same as the one from his past, only the people and the environment had changed.

「Twenty minutes later」

Zhang Wenda arrived in front of a tenement building. It was his old tenement building. Compared to the past, it was even more dilapidated, completely covered in green ivy. A huge, red character for "Demolish" painted on it looked as if it might crush the entire building.

Staring at the scene before him, Zhang Wenda took a deep breath and walked forward with heavy steps, finally stopping in front of his old home on the fourth floor.

With a CREAK, Zhang Wenda pushed the door open. Once again, he saw them—the two conjoined monsters covered in voids.

They were tilting their heads, huddled in the cramped room, roaring frantically.

They were attacking each other, and dark red blood flowed across the floor to Zhang Wenda’s feet.

There was no surprise on Zhang Wenda’s face. He stepped into the room and gently pulled the door shut behind him. As the outside light was completely blocked, the room became even more grim and terrifying.

In the dim room, he looked up at the two giant pseudohuman monsters before him and, calmly yet earnestly, called out two words he hadn’t spoken in a very long time.

"Dad... Mom."