Chapter 284: A Night Visit

Damp, rotting wind drilled into his nose and mouth, stripping the warmth from his skin and mucous membranes, freezing and choking his thoughts until they could no longer continue.

Buildings, streets, rivers—everything that should have appeared was erased from his vision, replaced by torrential, falling dark rain that, like the apocalypse, fused heaven and earth into one, returning them to the chaos before creation.

Millions of tons of water fell from the sky, merging into the flood surging from the ground, galloping across the square and streets.

The unreachable depths communicated with the surface through the water; like an ancient, massive creature suddenly injected with a large volume of blood after hemorrhagic shock, some pulsation traveled along the refilled vessels to the surface. Only then did the tiny creatures dwelling in the dry fur realize their situation with terror: something had always been active below.

There was no Lei Ting; in the rushing air currents, he could sense another signal, not coming from the clouds, but from the water body below.

As the rising foam arrived, it also shattered like scum, further torn and stretched by the rushing air currents into something resembling a cry.

He had heard this sound before, in the tomb at the bottom of the Tem River, when being chased by chaotic things; it sounded as if the vocal cords of countless individuals were plucked in unison.

And now, this sound rose steaming from the waves, carried up by the wild wind along with that rotting scent, permeating every inch of space he could perceive.

【You come!】

They whispered, yet the sound was deafening, obeying no understanding of sound, existing outside the realm of hearing.

The dark water world pouring down outside the window seemed, in that instant, to possess some collective consciousness beyond comprehension; at the same moment he "heard" the sound, it discovered him, and all together turned their attention toward this swaying window in the wind and rain.

That attention coalesced into information with sharp teeth and finned tails, born from some agonizing, massive living creature patrolling lightless waters, swimming upstream along the vertical channels of the six walls, oscillating through tunnel systems as complex as blood vessels, riding the turbulence to the surface, and leaping out of the water.

The sensation was so real that the recipient felt he could see it, like an eel smelling blood, lunging at him, piercing through his frontal bone, swirling within the frontal sinus, passing between his eyes. The nasal septum deviated to one side under pressure; the refraction of his eyeballs became mottled and blurred due to deformation; a lump swelled and twitched on the roof of his throat.

He instinctively grabbed at his face with his hand, feeling only the damp clumps of hair on his forehead and his intact nasal bridge.

But in the sensation, that thing had already pierced through the blood-rich, thin-shelled region, breaking into the cranium, blending with the fluid surrounding the brain into a diffuse, explosive, excruciating pain that seeped into deep cavities and was still extending even deeper.

Pure, real pain, heavily crushing the spirit; consciousness shattered instantly after reaching its limit, and blackness closed in at the center of his vision.

Before losing voluntary control, he saw something: a white halo resembling a moon reflection slowly floated upward, extending soft, flexible tendrils from between the wave crests, climbing up by gripping the shoulders of the holy statue.

"Uh..."

Dizziness that made the sky spin and the earth turn, accompanied by the sharp noise of wooden furniture legs dragging on the floor, overturning, and colliding.

Green opened his eyes. Above him was the familiar ceiling, illuminated along one edge by a candle that had only half its length remaining; the rest was shrouded in uneven shadows.

Instinctively, he looked toward the window. The locked window shutters kept out the damp cold of the Duling night. The glass mosaic reflected the dim, yellow candlelight like holy radiance. Inside the room, a scene of tranquility and harmony gave him a familiar sense of security.

A nightmare?

The remaining memories were as fragmented as the ceramic cup lying on the floor. Only the most profound parts remained in the area of his consciousness that his instincts refused to touch; merely delving slightly deeper triggered an incomprehensible resistance.

Darkness, dampness, pain—extreme and chaotic, with no clear cause or effect.

But upon opening his eyes, it had completely vanished, perfectly confirming that everything was a dream.

After lying on the ground for a while, he swept away the cup fragments beside him, and in the process, touched scattered sheets of paper that had been soaked.

The blurred handwriting recorded content he still remembered: the clinic had recently added a new medicine.

The sensation of acid reflux and worry over the documents forced him to prop up his upper body as quickly as possible. Bearing the dizziness that had not yet faded, he rescued the remaining papers from the water stains and spread them out separately in dry areas.

Rough pressure marks remained on his forehead. Combined with the soreness and numbness in his arms, he must have fallen asleep while slumped over the desk, and had the worst dream of his life—so terrible that even when he woke with a start, he struggled fiercely, falling to the ground with both himself and the chair.

"Knock, knock!"

The sound of knuckles contacting wood rang out twice behind him, regularly.

"Come in, Brother Wading, I'm still awake." Without nearly any thought, the permission to enter tumbled out. Night visits occurred in only two situations: urgent matters, or acquaintances; and this unhurried knocking clearly belonged to neither of the former.

He had already prepared himself for Brother Wading to push the door open and mock how he had slept from the desk to the floor.

But what responded to him was not the turning of a key in the lock, but a second round of knocking.

"Knock, knock, knock!"

The person outside seemed not to have heard the house owner speak; the knocking became more hurried and urgent. The sound echoed through the empty building, then bounced back to the door, arriving in heavy, overlapping layers.

Before he could figure out the visitor's identity, the same knocking sound rang out on the window shutters.

A gust of cold wind, bony and jagged, crashed against the window. The glass trembled in unison, flickering with uncertain light and dark, the rhythm strangely peculiar, possessing a sense of "imitation."

He shouldn't have been able to distinguish the difference in the knocking, yet this knocking seemed like something drawn rigidly by a template by someone who had never encountered language—formally nearly correct, yet written on the face.

Green tried to rise. Regardless of the situation, he had to get up first and retrieve the sword enshrined beneath the holy emblem. A sense of déjà vu was at play; this action had vaguely occurred once not long ago.

Only when actually doing it did he realize it was not so simple. His body, usually as obedient as an arm pointing a finger, seemed glued to the ground with paste. It took several times longer just to turn over, as mercury-like heaviness poured into every inch of his limbs from his jaw to his feet.

When he finally managed to prop his torso up with his elbows, sudden tinnitus and loss of balance interrupted further movement.

The knocking sound vanished; a metallic-sounding hum became the only sound remaining by his ear. The ground before his eyes moved a short distance out of nowhere, like a carpet being pulled away, scraping against his stinging arms. He fell to the ground again, his chest pressed against the cold stone tiles, utterly bewildered.

Soon, he understood.

Once again, the shift in his vision arrived with the tinnitus. Some force, causing everything before his eyes to tremble incessantly, was transmitted to his ribcage through the bricks beneath his chest. Like an insect inside a giant bell, something was striking this room, suspended alone in a night where reality and unreality were indistinguishable.

That force was so powerful it felt unreal, yet each time it arrived, the blood in his chest swelled within his blood vessels like foaming wine, and gas resonated with it in his lungs, where the tearing sensation was obvious.

Suffocation and palpitations pressed his eyelids down. Before his fragmented consciousness could attempt to organize a final resistance, the room shattered. The striking things surged in; Green could feel how they seized his hand from between his fingers, dragging his body toward some kind of fall.

He fell, or rose, into a darkness and unconsciousness; direction was meaningless at this moment.

When he regained a sense of reality again, the first sensation was the soreness and distension in his arms and the stiffness in his cervical spine.

Green opened his eyes. Letters with completed approvals lay on the desk; fine raindrops drifted in through the window cracks.

"Knock, knock, knock!"

The knocking sound came from behind him.

"..." Green's spirit instantly tensed.

"It's me, Father." A familiar voice; it was not Brother Wading, but another monk. Green clearly remembered his name and origin, certainly not because of a good memory, but because he had personally copied it a few days ago when submitting information on personnel participating in the operation.

Green breathed a sigh of relief, rose, and opened the door. "Brother Sando?"

"Good evening, Father. I'm glad you're not asleep yet. May I come in and sit for a while?" The monk, dressed in ordinary robes, stood at the door without a sword, looking as though he had not come for official business.

"Welcome, my brother. Please sit by the stove; I'll light it in a moment."

"Thank you, but there's no need to trouble yourself. I won't stay long."

"Hmm?" Green tossed a roll of dry hay into the fire basin. Holding the candlestick, ready to ignite it, he turned around and saw Sando standing straight by the chair, not sitting. Perhaps because of the rain outside, his trousers below the knees were soaked through, and his boots looked as if they had just been soaked in water, leaving a trail of footprints behind him.

"What do you mean?"

"Did you hear that?" Before Green could answer, he saw the answer he wanted in the priest's unprepared, ugly expression and offered a somewhat stiff smile.