This wasn't real...
After waking up half a month ago, Karen had spent nearly a week coming to terms with and verifying that he had transmigrated into another "real world," rather than merely experiencing a dream or a figment of his imagination.
Yet right now,
what he was facing
was definitely not reality!
He should be—no, he was definitely still in the basement of the Inmeles home.
All these bizarre occurrences had started when he attempted to twist Jeff's head straight.
Combined with the gigantic pair of red high heels and the woman's face towering before him—things and surroundings so wildly defying reality and rational thought—it could only mean one thing: he had been "hypnotized."
The word "hypnosis" carried many interpretations. In his current predicament, it meant being severed from his physical body and confined within a mental realm.
In simpler terms: he was currently... dreaming.
The static from the radio continued to hiss.
Up above,
the woman's mouth began to part slowly.
After stretching to the absolute limit of what a normal human face could endure, it kept splitting wider, even letting out an audible tearing sound like the grinding teeth of a zipper.
It continued until her mouth had cleaved her entire face horizontally in two. Her tightly set teeth spread apart with the widening jaws, leaving massive gaps between them, while that nimble, enormous tongue swept downward with an eerie, deft grace!
Just like a gecko about to snap up a tiny mosquito.
Buzz!
Karen felt his entire body engulfed by a warm, slimy stickiness, and then he was hoisted into the air.
When a person was rapidly yanked upward—or, more generally speaking, subjected to sudden, violent motion like a pirate ship ride or a giant pendulum—they experienced an odd, thrilling tickle in the gut.
Once that sensation grew past a certain threshold, it easily caused disorientation, or even unconsciousness.
This is a dream. This is a dream...
Karen chanted silently to himself. What he needed to do right now was to quickly "wake up."
He didn't actually understand the cause behind the current situation, but that didn't stop him from dragging the unknown into a domain he was familiar with and skilled at navigating.
It was like solving a problem: rather than sitting there scratching his head in frustration, it was better to try plugging in known formulas step by step, even if... it meant forcing them to fit.
The human mind had always been a deeply mysterious realm.
When ordinary people dreamed, they would naturally wake up once the dream progressed to a certain point. In very rare cases, they might realize they were dreaming yet find themselves unable to wake, a phenomenon commonly called "sleep paralysis."
Among another group of enthusiasts, it was referred to as "lucid dreaming." Through certain training and techniques of autosuggestion, one could increase their success rate in entering a lucid dream state.
Yet the vast majority of people who took it up out of curiosity ended up avoiding it in the end. Every time they forcibly broke out, the sense of despair—like a drowning man struggling up from the bottom of an abyss—was enough to drive them mad and leave them lingering in sheer terror.
Furthermore, those who regularly exercised their cognitive faculties due to their real-world professions tended, under such circumstances, to craft dreams that felt far more realistic—effectively weaving a cocoon to entrap themselves.
In even more severe cases, the dream splintered into multiple layers. The subconscious mind would begin "working" on its own, deceiving the dreamer through the dream itself, making them "wake up" only into a new layer of the dream to dull their resistance to it. That was true self-deception.
If ordinary sleep paralysis was merely surfacing from an abyss, then this kind was like a winter swimmer diving deep and swimming back up, only to find a thick layer of ice sealed over their head.
What would happen if one never woke from a dream... was currently undefinable. There was no "died in a dream" checkbox on death certificates, and those who survived a grand nightmare simply let the matter drop since it was, after all, only a dream and caused no physical harm.
The wind roared violently against Karen's ears. The tongue was remarkably elastic; after coiling him up, it whipped him toward the gaping maw at blinding speed.
Then came
a dense cacophony of chewing and squelching sounds.
Every crunch, every wet slurp,
relentlessly battered Karen's ears.
You are being eaten, you are being torn apart, you are being swallowed...
You are dying... you are dying... you are dying... you are... dead!
Karen knew that if he didn't wake up now, his end would be grim.
Someone who had already died once rarely took life and death lightly. On the contrary, they treasured the beauty of being alive even more. Karen was precisely that kind of person.
He did not want to die!
In this environment, he had to summon sufficient conviction and courage to break through the barrier of this "dream," allowing his consciousness to return to his physical body, return to reality.
In his past life, through work and personal interest, Karen had encountered similar mental states before. Although none had been as grotesque and terrifying as this, he still possessed a practical set of countermeasures.
Pierce illusion with reality;
Reshape frailty with ideals;
Shatter monstrous delusions with truth!
When your own strength failed, you could seek strength from beyond.
And so,
Karen began to sing,
belting out the words with every ounce of his being:
"Arise, ye prisoners of starvation! Arise, all sufferers of the earth!
For the blood in our veins has boiled to a fury, to battle for the truth..."
At a time like this, he needed conviction and faith forged into an explosive burst of willpower to tear himself free from this mental quagmire. Besides, in his previous life, Karen had been a staunch materialist.
Amidst his singing,
the sound of his body being masticated gradually faded. Karen felt his form drifting upward. Continuing to sing, he slowly lowered his gaze.
He saw the woman's teeth, the woman's tongue,
then her mouth,
her entire face,
and finally,
between her two legs, he saw that face that seemed either grown there or grafted together... a scene that radiated an unbearable dissonance.
Right then,
the static died away.
Immediately after,
the male voice from before echoed with a touch of confusion:
"Huh... who are you?"
Then:
"Where... is this?"
Karen lifted his head,
galvanizing every bodily perception he had.
Open your eyes,
open your eyes,
open your eyes!
...
Buzz!
Karen opened his eyes.
He saw Aunt Mary squatting before him, looking at him with an anxious expression.
"Huu... huu... huu..."
Seeing Karen wake up, Aunt Mary slumped backward onto the floor, patting her chest repeatedly.
"Scared the life out of me, scared the absolute life out of me, Karen... Do you have any idea how terrifying it was when you suddenly collapsed and passed out just now..."
This nephew had just suffered a severe illness not long ago, nearly losing his life.
If anything happened to him now, Aunt Mary genuinely wouldn't know how to explain it to her father-in-law, especially since the boy had come down just to help her with the body.
Karen took a deep breath
and forced a strained smile.
"I'm fine, Auntie. My body is probably still a bit weak."
Karen looked up and saw Jeff's face on the gurney ahead. It was back in a straight position.
"Meow..."
A cat's cry came from outside Aunt Mary's workshop. The black cat, Purr, poked its head around the doorframe, peering inside with an air of curiosity.
Karen braced his hands against the floor to stand up, but his face suddenly throbbed with pain. A warm trickle surged inside his nostril, and blood dripped down.
"I... I just gave you a few pats to wake you up," Aunt Mary explained.
She called that... a pat?
Yet what could Karen say? He could only reply,
"Thank you, Auntie."
"Go upstairs and rest, and have Mina clean you up. There's no need for you down here anymore."
How could Aunt Mary dare let her eldest nephew stay here any longer?
Karen nodded. After getting to his feet, he glanced once more at Jeff lying on the gurney. He instinctively felt that his sudden nightmare had something to do with the corpse. If he left Aunt Mary down here alone to work, would she be in danger too?
Just then,
his cousin Lunt's voice drifted down from the spiral stairs of the basement:
"Mom, Grandpa is back."
Grandpa was the absolute master of the Inmeles household. Under normal circumstances, whenever he returned home, everyone in the family—especially the women—had to go greet him, even if... they were in the middle of working.
Lunt hurried over. He saw the corpse on the gurney, but showed little fear.
When terrifying things passed in and out of your house all the time, you stopped finding them frightful.
"Lunt, take your brother upstairs and have your sister get the medicine kit to stop his nosebleed," Mary instructed.
She was genuinely worried that her slaps might have ruptured a vessel in Karen's nose. Without proper treatment, the bleeding might not stop.
"Oh, okay, Mom. Come on, Karen."
Karen tilted his head back, pressing one hand over his nose while Lunt led him by the other hand toward the exit. As they passed the spiral staircase, he sensed someone standing ahead.
The figure wasn't particularly towering, but standing there, he exuded an aura of profound steadiness, as though he could handle any situation with ease.
Karen's restless, anxious mood instantly eased a great deal.
"Grandpa," Lunt called out.
"Grandpa," Karen called as well.
In his memory, Grandpa Diss Inmeles was a very stern man, yet he often showed a gentle side toward him, the eldest grandson.
"Mm."
Diss nodded and stepped down. He said nothing, nor did he comment on Karen's nose.
Lunt seemed a bit afraid of Grandpa. He quickly took Karen's hand and led him up to the second floor to find his sister.
The lights in the basement were dim and yellowish.
When Diss reached the bottom, he saw the black cat, Purr, strolling toward him with elegant steps.
Diss stopped.
The black cat stopped as well.
"You have plenty of free time today?" Diss said.
"Meow..."
Purr flicked its tail and tilted its head, seemingly puzzled by Diss's words.
Diss waved his hand, apparently having no interest in continuing a conversation with a cat, and walked straight into his daughter-in-law Mary's workshop.
Mary was sitting there lighting a cigarette, still shaken from her nephew's collapse. She hadn't expected her father-in-law to come down so quickly, and in her panic, she instantly stubbed out the freshly lit cigarette.
The puff of smoke that should have vented from her nostrils barely seeped out before she sucked it back in and swallowed it whole.
"Cough, cough... cough, cough..."
Mary coughed until tears welled in her eyes.
Diss didn't pay much attention to his daughter-in-law. Instead, his gaze settled first on Jeff. He reached out, peeled open Jeff's eyelids, and placed his palm against the man's chest.
Immediately, Diss's eyes narrowed slightly.
Right after, he took a step back, seeming to inspect the workshop's surroundings, and sniffed the air.
Mary spoke at once: "I won't smoke in the workshop next time, I really won't..."
Mary truly feared this father-in-law of hers. It wasn't just because she and her husband were living under his roof; it was simply that he was inherently someone who inspired an inexplicable dread, even though he was regarded as the kindly priest of Mink Street Church.
Diss waved his hand and asked,
"What happened just now?"
"I... Karen suddenly collapsed. I only gave him a few slaps to wake him up, and I broke his nose... I..."
"Karen collapsed?"
"Y-Yes."
"And then Purr came in, didn't he?"
"Purr?" Mary blinked, only then realizing it was the name of the black cat. She had never understood why her father-in-law gave the cat such an unpleasant, tongue-twisting name. "It seems... I..." Mary tried her best to recall. "Karen woke up on his own. Purr... Purr didn't come in."
Mary hadn't noticed whether the black cat had been lingering outside the workshop, but she was certain it hadn't appeared before her—at the very least, it hadn't stepped inside.
"He didn't?" Diss murmured thoughtfully. "Karen woke up on his own?"
"Yes, Father."
"Where did this one die?"
"This is a welfare case, Father. He probably froze to death on the street last night."
"A welfare case? Call your husband back."
"Mason went to Flower Water Bay Nursing Home..."
"Call him back."
"Yes, I understand, Father."
Even though she had lived in this household for quite a while, Mary still felt immense pressure whenever she faced her father-in-law. In many other families, daughters-in-law addressed their in-laws by their first names, but she would never dare.
The title "Father" carried an almost religious weight when it came from her lips.
The flustered woman hurried out of the workshop.
Diss reached out and closed the door.
Then he walked over to the gurney, sat down on the chair Mary had occupied earlier, and looked at Jeff lying before him.
The workshop fell silent, save for the occasional flicker of the lightbulb as the voltage fluctuated.
Diss extended a hand and lightly curled his fingers in the air.
From beneath his feet,
strands of black shadows began to spill outward like wildly growing vines, swiftly spreading across the tiled floor and the surrounding walls, enveloping everything in the room.
Then Diss spoke:
"Tell me. How did you die?"
It was an absurd sight—he was actually questioning a dead man.
Yet what followed was even more absurd:
Jeff, who had long been dead on the gurney, slowly sat up on his own...
Chapter 3