134: Chapter 126 Have a Sweet Dream

Day broke.

In June, the sun rises early in Jiangcheng. Just past five o'clock, an orange-red crack squeezed out from the grayish-white sky in the east. Light slipped in along the edges of the blackout curtains on the sixth floor of Deji Hospital, drawing a finger-wide bright line on the floor tiles.

Pei Duo sat on a plastic chair at the first-floor reception desk.

The jade pendant hung around her neck, the light of the three dragons so dim it was almost invisible.

She hadn't slept. It wasn't that she wasn't tired—it was that as soon as she closed her eyes, she could hear the rising and falling groans throughout the entire building.

The silver threads had retreated.

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The puppets were turning back into humans.

The process wasn't pretty.

On a hospital bed in the first-floor lobby, the first to wake up was a middle-aged man in the second row by the window. He sat up abruptly, his hands clawing at the air a few times before looking down at the hospital gown he was wearing—he froze for over ten seconds.

Then he started crying.

It wasn't a wail. It was the kind of crying where something is stuck in the throat and no sound can be squeezed out. His shoulders shrugged rhythmically, and tears fell onto the collar of his hospital gown, soaking into dark circles.

A second person.

A third.

A seventh.

Some were crying, some were sprawled on the ground retching. Some rolled off their beds and lay motionless on the floor, their backs the only thing moving up and down. Some sat on the edge of their beds with eyes wide open, staring at their hands and turning them over and over as if they didn't recognize them.

An auntie in her fifties woke up; her first words were to ask a nurse what time it was.

There were no nurses.

The two "nurses" at the reception, who looked like they were copy-pasted, had vanished along with the silver threads when they retreated, leaving not even a stitch of clothing behind.

Pei Duo propped herself up against the counter and stood.

Her knees were so sore they trembled; she had to hold on for two seconds before she steadied herself.

She walked into the lobby, pulled a paper cup from the water dispenser by the door, filled it with warm water, and handed it to the middle-aged man closest to her.

The man took it.

His hands shook violently, spilling half the water. He took a sip, choked, and coughed for a long time.

He looked up at her.

"Where... where is this?"

"The hospital," Pei Duo said. "You're safe."

The man's lips moved twice, but he couldn't say anything.

He lowered his head again and continued to cry.

Pei Duo said no more. She turned to get a second cup.

When Xu Mo came out of the fire stairs, he was carrying a stack of disposable paper cups he'd found at the nurse's station.

The two of them made eye contact but didn't speak.

One handed them out from the left, the other from the right.

Twenty minutes later, the crying in the lobby had quieted down a bit.

It wasn't that they'd stopped crying. They were just exhausted from it.

Xu Mo's phone vibrated.

A push notification popped up on the screen: A Jiangcheng Morning Post reporter had received a citizen's report and was heading to Deji Hospital in the south of the city. Meanwhile, there were three missed calls from an unknown number.

Xu Mo called back.

The call connected. A female voice, speaking extremely fast with a standard lawyer's tone—

"Hello, I'm from Shengheng Law Firm—"

Xu Mo hung up.

"Legal counsel for the foreign capital." He tucked his phone back into his pocket, his tone as casual as if he were saying the weather was nice. "Forty minutes faster than I estimated. Heh, these people are efficient."

Pei Duo handed out the last cup of water and patted the moisture off her hands.

"What's the explanation?"

"Gas leak." Xu Mo pushed up his glasses. "Illegal operations during underground pipeline maintenance led to an unknown gas leak, causing collective clouding of consciousness among hospital personnel."

"Will that cover it?"

"I had Sun Ce transfer a set of data from The Seventh Hall. Through the underworld's secret contacts in the mortal realm, I injected it directly into the City Emergency Management Bureau's database." Xu Mo's voice was flat. "It was entered eight hours ago. Time stamps, approval serial numbers, maintenance crew rosters—the whole package. More real than the real thing."

Pei Duo glanced at him.

Xu Mo remained expressionless.

"Miss Pei, the underworld's clerical system is based on the Qin Dynasty's foundation and has been iterated upon for two thousand years. When it comes to forgery—"

He paused and corrected his wording.

"—When it comes to document management capabilities, no institution in the mortal realm can compare."

Meng Tian's shadow flickered.

It was unclear whether it was in agreement or protest.

At 7:12, the first ambulance arrived.

At 7:18, police cars.

At 7:30, a van from the City Emergency Management Bureau.

Pei Duo stood in the shadows of the first-floor side corridor, watching teams of personnel in reflective vests flood inside.

Xu Mo had already changed his face.

Not literally changed his face. He had that harmless look of 'I'm just a young doctor from the neighboring department who just finished a night shift and happened upon the accident.'

He stopped the emergency team leader and delivered the 'gas leak' story in three sentences. His speed, wording, and facial expressions were all textbook-perfect.

Pei Duo didn't get involved.

She was waiting for someone.

Footsteps came from the stairwell to the third basement level.

They were unsteady. Heavy on the left foot, light on the right. The intervals between each step were inconsistent, as if he were counting them out.

Zhou Jianguo emerged, leaning against the wall.

His hospital gown was crumpled, and his hair was as messy as a bird's nest. Color hadn't yet returned to his face, and his lips were grayish.

But his eyes were bright.

The kind of brightness that comes from waking up from a very, very long nightmare and not yet being sure if you're truly alive.

After he came out, he didn't look at Pei Duo, nor did he look at the ambulances.

He was feeling his pockets.

Left side. Right side. Back.

Nothing.

Pei Duo walked over.

She pulled a phone out of her pocket and handed it to him.

There was a crack in the screen. Xu Mo had picked it up in the second-floor basement corridor—likely dropped when Zhou Jianguo was being dragged away.

Zhou Jianguo took the phone.

His fingers were completely stiff; he pressed the power button twice.

It lit up.

Seventeen missed calls.

All from the same number.

The contact name was three characters: **Zhou Xiaoge**.

The earliest call was at 4:13 PM yesterday. The latest was at 3:41 AM today.

Seventeen.

Zhou Jianguo stared at the screen. His lips trembled twice.

His thumb pressed the redial button.

Ring—

Ring—

Before the second ring could finish, it was answered.

There was silence on the other end at first.

As if the person on the other side had been clutching the phone for so long that when it finally connected, they didn't know what to say.

Then, a little girl's voice burst out.

"Dad!"

Just one word. Her voice was hoarse. The kind of hoarseness from crying too much.

The words that followed were all jumbled together with sobs, coming in fits and starts—

"Where did you go! You promised to pick me up! I waited at the school gate for so, so long! Teacher Zhang called you but you didn't answer! Later Grandma came to get me, and I asked Grandma where you were but she didn't know either—"

Zhou Jianguo crouched down.

It wasn't that his legs were weak.

He simply couldn't stand anymore.

He slid down the wall and sat on the corridor floor tiles, the phone pressed to his ear, his other hand covering his face tightly.

"Dad's here."

The words were forced out of his throat, scratching painfully as they came.

"Dad's here. I'm sorry. Dad's coming to get you."

The little girl on the other end cried even harder. Her voice was so loud it could be heard clearly even through the phone's speaker.

Pei Duo turned and walked away.

After three steps, she paused.

Her eyes stung for a moment.

But no tears fell.

She thought back to two years ago.

The home landline rang until midnight. Her mother dialed her brother's number over and over. Off, dial. Off, dial.

On the forty-third time, her mother threw the phone onto the floor.

She crouched in the living room.

Without letting out a single sob.

Pei Duo took a deep breath and continued forward.

She turned into the storage room on the west side of the first floor.

Lin Sa had come down from the sixth floor. The cloth around her palm had been changed once, and the blood was seeping through less.

"Where's Shen Ruocheng?"

"Asleep." Lin Sa leaned against the wall. "A normal sleep. With dreams."

"How do you know she's dreaming?"

"Her eyes are moving."

The corner of Lin Sa's mouth twitched. It wasn't quite a smile, but she looked more relaxed than before.

"They hadn't moved for three years. Now she's like a normal person."

Pei Duo nodded.

"Chen Muyu has stabilized too. In the first-floor observation area, her heartbeat is normal, and the integrity of her soul shell has risen back to eighty-nine percent."

Xu Mo had followed them at some point and was leaning against the doorframe. He habitually rubbed the bronze back of his token.

After rubbing it twice, he stopped.

"There's something."

Pei Duo looked at him.

"The third basement level. While I was cleaning up the remains—"

Xu Mo pulled a sealed bag from his pocket. It was transparent and contained a single item.

It was very small, about the size of a pinky fingernail. Silver.

Pei Duo leaned in for a closer look.

It wasn't a residue of the silver threads. The broken ends of the silver threads were rough with dark gold oxidation edges. This object had a smooth surface and a perfectly round shape.

Like a—

"Seed," Pei Duo said.

"Yes. At the bottom of the shallow pit where Thanatos stood." Xu Mo held the sealed bag up to the light. "Right in the center of the vitrified scorch marks. All other traces were burned away, but this one grain was left there, clean as can be."

"Are there any energy fluctuations?"

"None."

Xu Mo turned the bag around.

"The underworld emissary token scanned it three times. The Ghost Seal Script didn't light up once. It's dead. No reaction at all. Just like a real seed picked up from a flower bed."

He paused.

"But there are patterns on the surface."

Pei Duo narrowed her eyes.

The plastic film of the sealed bag was tight against the seed, and she could faintly see—extremely fine, etched-like lines, coiling around the silver shell in circles.

The language of the rules themselves.

Xu Mo put the sealed bag back in his pocket and zipped it up.

"We won't touch it for now. We'll talk more after we take it back."

Pei Duo didn't object.

Zhou Jianguo's voice came from the end of the corridor; he was still on the phone with his daughter. The crying tone was gone, replaced by a voice desperately suppressed to coax the child—

"Stop crying now, Dad will buy you a strawberry cake. Yes, a big one—"

In the adjacent corridor, a phone rang.

Pei Duo and Xu Mo turned their heads at the same time.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

Four seconds.

It didn't hang up.

Fifth second. Sixth second.

The ringtone continued.

At the stairwell to the second basement level.

Chen Li stood there.

Her hospital gown hung loosely on her body, and her hair was messy against the side of her face. She was clutching an old phone she'd found in an underground cubicle.

A caller ID was flashing on the screen.

The contact name was one character: **Nan**.

Seventh second.

Eighth second.

Chen Li's thumb hovered over the answer button.

Motionless.

Ninth second.

She pressed it.

She put the phone to her ear.

On the other end, a girl of about ten spoke with a nasal tone from just waking up—

"Mom, it's Saturday. Why are you calling so early... wait, you're the one calling?"

Chen Li's lips trembled.

"Nothing... I just wanted to hear your voice."

There was a two-second pause on the other end.

"Mom, are you crying?"

"No," Chen Li sniffled hard. "Just sand in my eyes."

"Liar."

"I'm really not."

The corridor fell silent.

Only the little girl's chattering voice from the phone remained. She talked about getting a ninety-two on her math test yesterday, how her deskmate borrowed her eraser and didn't return it, and how Grandma was stewing pork rib soup again for her to drink when she went back for the weekend.

Chen Li leaned against the wall and slowly slid down.

She sat on the corridor floor tiles, her knees curled up, the phone wedged between her ear and shoulder.

Her free hand went to wipe the tears from her face.

She couldn't wipe them all away.

Meng Tian's shadow clung to the base of the corridor wall, the silhouette of his spearhead motionless.

He had been listening for a long time.

From Zhou Jianguo's call to Chen Li's.

Two thousand years. Beacon fires on the Great Wall, the flash of blades in the Sea of Darkness, the prostrations in the great halls of the underworld—all of it was grand, heroic, the stuff of history books.

But not a single page of history had ever written about a father crouching on the ground and telling his daughter, 'Dad's coming to get you.'

Never.

His shadow shrank slightly.

As if he were sighing.

Pei Duo turned and walked toward the main entrance.

Morning light flooded in through the doorway. In June in Jiangcheng, heat began to steam up from the ground. The cicadas hadn't started singing yet, and the air was filled with the scent of roadside trees that had just been watered.

She stood on the steps and took a deep breath.

The jade pendant on her chest was cool against her skin. The three dragons coiled quietly, as if recovering from their wounds.

Xu Mo followed her out and stood by her side.

The two of them watched the breakfast stall across the street. Fritters had just been dropped into the pot, sizzling.

"Xu Mo."

"Yeah."

"That seed—do you think it will sprout?"

Xu Mo was silent for three seconds.

"I don't know."

He pushed up his glasses.

"But if a god of death, before leaving, buried a seed in the place where it stayed for three years—"

He didn't finish.

Steam rose from the breakfast stall, white and misty, blurring the roadside trees across the street.

The sealed bag in Xu Mo's pocket pressed against the outside of his thigh.

The silver seed lay quietly inside the plastic film.

An object that was either a relic or a dying wish.