Infinite Nightmares

The two men, one tall and one short, stood under the banyan tree. After a long while, a calmer Zhang Wenda spoke again. "You’re right. It’s not worth risking my life just to break the rules. It’s a bad deal. If I’m dead, how am I supposed to make a fortune?"

Hearing that Zhang Wenda had seen the light, a satisfied smile appeared on Auntie’s bushy-bearded face. "Let’s go back. Mimi and I will help you figure something out."

"Actually, after I got here, I was really happy to see a boy around Mimi. She never had any friends before, besides her cats."

"Has she ever considered that she might be the problem? With that temper of hers, who could stand it?" Zhang Wenda said, feigning a relaxed tone. He turned around, ready to head back into Dog Hair.

Just as he followed Auntie back into Dog Hair, one behind the other, Song Jianguo jumped right in front of him, a nervous look on his face.

"What the hell?" Before Zhang Wenda could finish asking, Song Jianguo spread his hands and covered his eyes, pushing him back the way they came. "Haozi, let’s go."

"Are you out of your mind?" Zhang Wenda pried Song Jianguo’s hands away. The frantic Lamp God rushed over, trying to block his view with his body, but Zhang Wenda had already seen it.

He saw his younger self lying on the ground, being punched and kicked by instructors. They looked massive, at least three times taller than his younger self, their bodies abnormally burly.

One of them slammed a tattooed right fist into the boy’s stomach, followed immediately by a kick to his face.

His head was split open. Blood ran down through his black hair, gathering into a drop at his chin.

Under the brutal beating, his face and body were covered in wounds. His face, in particular, was swollen a reddish-purple.

Watching this scene, Zhang Wenda’s mind exploded with past experiences—things from the depths of his memory, things he had tried to forget, every single day he had spent in that place living worse than a dog.

Zhang Wenda stood frozen, the Red Core on his arm glowing steadily. The three people beside him looked even more nervous than he was.

"Don’t get worked up! Seriously, don’t! They don’t dare kill anyone here. If you actually go over there, that’s when someone might really die," Lamp God said.

Auntie, at his side, also tried to placate him. "Don’t be rash. Since this has already happened, let’s go back and figure out a solution together. This event takes place in the future; there will be a way to solve it."

"Haozi, calm down! Calm down! Don’t you forget the rules of the Internet World! You absolutely cannot make contact with your past or future self."

Zhang Wenda watched in silence. He watched the smiles on the instructors’ faces and their so-called "it’s for your own good" rhetoric, all of which had once been a blurry memory but was now becoming real all over again.

Suddenly, Zhang Wenda laughed. His gaze shifted from the scene in the distance to the three people in front of him. "What are you all so worked up about? I wasn’t going to do anything. It’s just a few beatings. It’s not like it’ll kill him."

"They don’t dare kill me. I’m not angry. It’s all in the past. To me, this is the past, not the future. What’s past should be let go. I’ve let it go."

"That’s right. You have to follow the rules, no matter where you are. I can’t let my present self get into trouble because of my past self. It’s all over. I can definitely avoid it this time."

After speaking, Zhang Wenda took one last, hard look at his former self, then turned to leave again.

But just as he was about to walk away, he heard a stifled sob from behind him. "Mom..."

The moment he heard that word, Zhang Wenda froze as if struck by lightning. All the old feelings of grievance and despair flooded his mind in an instant.

Hearing this, the instructors who had been beating him burst out laughing. They all stopped what they were doing, pulled cigarettes from their pockets, and started smoking.

One of them ground his shoe on the younger Wenda’s head, then kicked him in his bleeding nose. "Weren’t you acting all tough? Weren’t you insubordinate? Weren’t you breaking the rules? Why are you crying now?"

"Kid, you try running again and see what happens. Believe me, I’ll fucking kill you."

Seeing that he hadn’t moved, Auntie frantically signaled to the other two with his eyes. The three of them quickly grabbed Zhang Wenda and started dragging him toward the exit.

As the three of them clumsily dragged Zhang Wenda away, the instructors backed off. Wenda saw a man in a white lab coat and glasses walk out from the crowd of onlookers.

He was smiling, and in his hand, he held a device that was pulsing with blue light.

The moment he saw that thing, Zhang Wenda’s eyes instantly turned red. With a flash from his Red Core, he unleashed a powerful force that sent the three of them flying.

But just as he charged forward again, Auntie’s voice came from behind him. "Zhang Wenda! Think clearly! If you go over there now, you could die! And if you’re dead, how are you going to make a fortune and buy a luxury car? It’s in the past, so you have to let it go!"

One step, two steps, three steps... Zhang Wenda forced himself to a halt. The corners of his trembling mouth curled up slightly. "You’re right. It’s all in the past."

He turned around and walked toward the exit, one step at a time. "It’s all in the past... All in the past... Have to follow the rules..."

He walked on, step by step, as if walking away from the shadows of his past, even as the sound of arcing electricity and waves of agonized screams came from behind him.

"I won’t let you get away with this! You just wait! I won’t let you off!" Suddenly, Zhang Wenda heard his younger self’s tearful roar from behind him.

And at that very moment, a voice he would never forget, a voice etched into his very bones, spoke again.

"Heh. You kids with your internet addiction... even when you grow up, you’ll either be gangsters or prostitutes. You’re all society’s rejects, fit only to live at the very bottom. You think I’d be afraid of you?"

Zhang Wenda shut his eyes in agony and began to walk faster. Just as he was about to reach the door, a roar of pure despair—his own—shot out from behind him like a long arrow, pinning him to the spot.

"You think your authority can suppress everyone? You think we’ll just be kids forever? One day! One day! One day we’ll grow up!"

"You just wait! One day! We’ll have our own power! We’ll have our own voice!"

"And when that day comes! We’ll use games! We’ll use novels! We will use all our strength! We will nail you to the pillar of shame in history forever, just like Qin Hui! We’ll make sure that even a thousand years from now, future generations will remember what a piece of trash like you did! And in the end, we will shout it out in our own words! Yang Yongxin! FUCK YOUR MOTHER!"