Different Monsters

After searching for a while, Lumian found quite a few gold, silver, and copper coins, totaling 197 ferrin and 25 kopecks. Among them, five were gold louis. As for paper banknotes, he found only some suspected fragments. Besides money, Lumian also turned up a little blue book. It had a slate-blue cover, was in 16mo format, and was widely found in the countryside and towns of Intis. Based on a calendar, it combined almanacs with the religious doctrines of the two major churches, playing a fairly positive role in guiding farmers and herdsmen in farming, production, and grazing, and enriching their spiritual lives. Of course, even though it had been nearly two hundred years since Emperor Roselle the Great advocated compulsory education, many farmers, herdsmen, and workers still could not recognize a few words and remained illiterate. They had to rely on explanations from certain people around them to get the hints they wanted from the little blue book. Lumian casually flipped through a few pages and found that this little blue book was no different from the one at home, just older overall. “A family with a little blue book and this many ferrin must be among the best-off in the countryside. There couldn’t be more than five such families in a place like Cordu Village…” Lumian tossed aside the little blue book and sorted the gold, silver, and copper coins into different pockets—some hidden deep inside his cotton shirt, some placed in his trouser pockets, and some casually stuffed into the pockets of his leather jacket. Although Lumian knew this money couldn’t be brought back to reality, he still couldn’t help collecting and keeping it. These small golden, silver, or copper-colored things always made it hard for him to look away. In his past life as a vagrant, even a single kopeck or rik copper coin was something he cherished deeply, often fighting others over them and taking risks to do certain things. After looking around, Lumian picked up his axe and crept toward the collapsed buildings closer to the red peak. He advanced bit by bit, his heart pounding every time he passed through the blank area in the middle of the ring, fearing that dozens of monsters might suddenly swarm out and surround him in a place with no cover. Within the faint gray mist, Lumian hunched his back, came behind a half-collapsed stone wall, and squatted there, using it to hide his figure. He carefully poked his head out and looked ahead. It was a long, narrow strip between two rows of destroyed buildings, with no trees, no weeds, only rubble, cracks, and dirt. Suddenly, a human figure caught Lumian’s eye. “He” stood inside the building across the way, gazing at who knows what. The figure wore a black hooded robe, and nothing strange could be seen on its back; it looked like an ordinary human. Lumian’s heart tightened, and he grew even more vigilant. In such dream ruins, a normal person showing up was far more terrifying than a monster showing up! As if sensing someone was watching, the figure slowly turned around. Lumian took a quick glance, then hurriedly pulled his head back, pressing his back against the wall, not daring to move a muscle. From just that one glance, he had the feeling he might have arrived in hell or the abyss. The figure was indeed human, but “he” had three faces and six eyes! The face in front had cloudy eyes, sparse eyebrows, and many wrinkles—clearly an old man; the one on the left was sharp-featured, with spirited blue eyes and a thick, dark beard, like a burly man; the one on the right had smooth, delicate skin like a peeled egg, with a pair of azure eyes shining with obvious innocence and naivety—clearly no older than five at a glance. “What kind of monster is this…” Lumian struggled to control his breathing, keeping his heart from racing. Not even in Aurore’s horror stories had such a monster appeared; one could only encounter such a thing in the deepest, darkest, most absurd nightmares. Although judging a person by appearance is not good, based solely on this look, Lumian instinctively felt the three-faced monster was unimaginably more formidable than the previous skinless monster! Moreover, it was very likely to possess supernatural power. “Eternal Blazing Sun, great Father, please protect me from being discovered by it…” In this situation, the casual believer Lumian couldn’t help but pray to the “Eternal Blazing Sun.” If not for the fact that he was still holding an axe in one hand, and if not for the dangerous environment, he would have spread his arms and struck a “Praise the Sun” pose. At this moment, time seemed to freeze, and Lumian thought he might be hallucinating: It seemed as though a gaze pierced through the wall and landed on his back. His back instantly stiffened, faintly feeling a burning heat. After just a second or two, the illusion vanished, and heavy footsteps receded into the distance. Lumian waited a while longer, until the footsteps disappeared completely, then slowly straightened his knees, turned around, poked his head out, and looked ahead. The monster was farther away now, behind the building whose sides were intact but middle had collapsed, revealing half its body in the faint gray fog. “He” still had his back to Lumian, as if turned into a statue. Lumian quietly breathed a sigh of relief. Facing such a monster, he had not the slightest confidence. “Going deeper into the ruins from here definitely won’t work… Go around? “Wouldn’t other places have similar monsters? “The closer one gets to that mountain peak, the stronger the monsters that appear?” Lumian drew back his body, thought for a while, and decided to end it for the night. He planned to ask the woman who gave him tarot cards after dawn whether there was a way to deal with the three-faced monster, and if all else failed, consider taking a detour. Hunching his back, he detached himself from the wall and headed back the way he came. At this moment, he had a thought: “If I fall asleep in these ruins, will I also be able to leave the dream?” Considering the many monsters around, he temporarily suppressed the urge to try. On the way back, he quickly searched every ruined building he passed, but found no useful written materials, and even the coins were only a few scattered ones. After withdrawing for a while, Lumian thought it over and decided to take a slight detour, approaching from the side the burned-down house he had first reached—the place where he had buried the skinless monster. He wanted to observe whether the death of that monster would be noticed by its kind and whether it would bring about any changes. Finding a spot and hiding his body, Lumian poked his head out from the side and looked toward the target area. The next second, he saw another “figure.” The figure was half-human, half-beast, with its legs folded forward, squatting there, examining the corpse of the skinless monster. It had already moved aside the stones and bricks Lumian had piled up. It wore a dark jacket and fairly tight muddy trousers, with black hair messy and greasy, hanging down to its neck, and a hunting rifle slung behind its back. A hunting rifle! Lumian quickly looked away and pulled his head back. “These monsters are just ridiculous! “They actually know how to use hunting rifles…” At that instant, Lumian felt the absurdity, disillusionment, and disappointment of being a hunter who had gone up the mountain with weapons and companions, only to find that the rabbit across the way was manning a water-cooled machine gun, aiming at them. Time passed second by second as he patiently waited for the monster with the hunting rifle to leave. Finally, he heard a slight noise that gradually faded away. Lumian carefully poked his head out again and looked at the half-humanoid, half-beast monster. “It” moved with a cat’s gait, heading toward the rear of the building. Lumian first let down his hanging heart, then immediately widened his eyes. He discovered that the place where the monster walked completely overlapped with the route he had taken when he previously ventured deeper into the ruins! “It’s tracking me! “It has very strong, beyond-normal tracking ability!” Lumian instinctively made this judgment. He was extremely glad that he had taken a sudden whim on his way back and taken a detour, otherwise he would surely have run straight into it, or even been ambushed! No sooner had the monster’s figure disappeared than Lumian quickly got up and sprinted toward his home. The crimson stove fire reflected on the glass windows of the ground floor was like sunlight that could dispel darkness. Lumian ran all the way to the two-story building that was his home, pushed open the ajar door, and rushed inside. After locking the door from the inside, he then looked toward the ruins through the window. In the distance amid the gray fog, at the edge of the ruins, a vague figure stood, but did not approach this way. Whew, Lumian exhaled, preparing to put out the stove fire, go upstairs to sleep, and leave the dream. He glanced at the still-burning stove fire and muttered to himself: “It can keep burning for a good while… “I can test this—to see whether, after I leave the dream, it keeps burning until it goes out, or stays fixed at the moment I left…” Lumian had already confirmed through the rain that the wilderness where the ruins were located showed natural development regardless of whether he dreamed or not, but whether the same was true inside his house, in the so-called safe zone, remained to be verified. He did as he thought, added a few lumps of coal to the stove fire, poked it, and then, carrying his axe and steel fork, went upstairs to the bedroom. … When Lumian woke up, dawn was just breaking. He checked his shirt-style pajamas, and, as expected, felt rather disappointed to find that the gold, silver, and copper coins had not come with him into reality. Rolling out of bed and stretching, Lumian walked to the desk and pulled open the curtains. With a rustling sound, soft and clear light streamed in. And as the window was opened, fresh natural air drifted into Lumian’s nose, making him stretch lazily, feeling that getting up early was sometimes quite wonderful. Of course, this was also thanks to Emperor Roselle the Great’s vigorous implementation of the “Patriotic Health Campaign”; even though its impact on the countryside wasn’t huge, it eventually brought some improvement—at least manure became a treasure and wasn’t everywhere—and he also thanked later rulers for retaining it, merely changing its name. His gaze wandered around, sometimes looking at the distant mountains and forests, sometimes gazing at the clouds dyed orange-red on the horizon, sometimes observing the weeds outside the house. Suddenly, Lumian’s gaze froze. He saw a fairly large bird perched on an elm tree not far away. The bird had a sharp beak, a cat-like face, brown feathers sprinkled with fine spots, and brownish-yellow sclera with black pupils, looking very spirited. It was an owl. It seemed to be watching Lumian.