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The bed in the hospital dormitory turned out to be surprisingly comfortable. Song Bunan, who initially thought he wouldn't be able to sleep well due to being in an unfamiliar place, drifted off while Xin Yi was still working out indoors. As he fell into slumber, his mind was filled with images of smooth, well-defined muscles. He felt as if he had entered a dream garden in paradise, a smile spreading across his face as he peacefully slept.
However, the dreamscape was not kind to him. This time, he found himself in the very hospital he had been in earlier, but unlike during the day, there were no doctors or nurses here—only countless ghostly patients clad in Patient Gowns, each bearing various tragic fates. Among them was the young woman he had seen in Mighty Falcon Hospital, her face smooth and shiny like an egg.
He too was wearing a Patient Gown, blending in among the spirits and going with the flow. From the appearance of the surrounding buildings, it seemed they were on the first floor; the lights in many examination rooms were off, and the doors and windows were tightly shut, with no ghost daring to approach. Curious, Song Bunan moved closer to one of the doors. Just as his hand reached for the doorknob, he sensed a strong malice emanating from within and quickly withdrew his hand, abandoning any thoughts of opening it.
He considered that his current situation gave him an advantage; he had to check out the closed-off area on the fourth floor to see what was going on. As he moved, Song Bunan observed the hospital around him. Compared to its daytime appearance filled with people, this dream version of the hospital felt much more sinister—the walls appeared old and even showed signs of rust on the window and door frames.
New Life Hospital had undergone renovations in recent years thanks to donations from wealthy benefactors, leading to significant improvements in both environment and equipment. At that time, they had even published details of their expenses online to attract attention. Yet now, before him stood a hospital that resembled its pre-renovation state.
The stairs were located in the middle of the hospital; next to the elevator was a staircase. In dreams, elevators often malfunctioned, and now Song Bunan found himself unable to enter one. He climbed the stairs instead, noticing countless scratch marks on both walls that resembled human fingerprints as well as claw marks from beasts.
Bullet holes were scattered throughout, primarily concentrated between one and one-and-a-half meters off the ground, with some visible higher up near the ceiling. As Song Bunan slowly ascended the stairs, translucent spirits brushed past him; some still bore signs of their deaths—severed necks connected only by thin strips of skin, their internal structures clearly visible.
However, such spirits were few; most appeared whole and walked by him without acknowledging his presence as if they could not see any difference. The stairwell between the first and third floors bore only scratch marks and bullet holes, but once he reached the sign for the fourth floor, strange markings began to appear on the walls.
These markings looked deliberately carved into the surface at intervals along the steps, resembling deep gouges made by an axe. He couldn't decipher their meaning but sensed they might form words that had been intentionally defaced.
From these scratches, Song Bunan realized why this hospital had been renovated. The content etched into the walls must have posed a threat to certain individuals. He struggled to recall who had funded its renovation.
Suddenly, a peculiar laughter echoed down from above, interrupting his thoughts. He looked up and saw a massive grayish-blue head poking through the safety door on the fourth floor. Its long neck resembled that of a giraffe as it slowly moved toward him. The head was bald and its face did not resemble that of a human; two blood-red eyes dominated its features while a mouth stretched wide to its ears revealed rows of sharp teeth.
Those eyes fixed intently on him with a smile that seemed sinister; its endlessly long neck obscured its body from view. Without thinking twice, Song Bunan turned and ran down the stairs. Utilizing his dream body's lightness allowed him to glide swiftly through space as he exited the stairwell. To his surprise, there wasn't a single ghost in sight anymore.
The long-necked creature followed closely behind but stopped at the safety door on the first floor without advancing further. Its red eyes tracked his movements while it emitted continuous cackling sounds. Song Bunan did not recognize this entity but felt an overwhelming sense of danger that urged him not to linger; assuming it wouldn’t enter the lobby, he hurried toward the hospital's main entrance.
During daylight hours, New Life Hospital's front door had been adorned with cartoonish warning stickers listing several precautions. Now, however, those playful decorations were gone; instead, countless photographs of human faces covered every inch of glass at the entrance, each pair of eyes seemingly alive and watching his every move.
It's Restriction. Song Bunan suddenly thought of it. He and Xiao Mei had discussed this before. Some people would leave Restriction on buildings, objects, etc. to prevent people like him from spying on the truth of certain things through dreams. As long as someone comes in a dream or soul state, they will be trapped in it. There are all kinds of things in Restriction, and even the mountain gods and land gods can be invited to do defense, but most of them can only keep ghosts in it. The ones on the door now should be the ghosts left in it, but what is that long neck? Song Bunan suddenly felt that he had nowhere to go. He kept circling around on the first floor and couldn't find a place to hide. Those photos were like a camera that followed him. Since the eyes fell on him, he couldn't get rid of them. On weekdays, when he encountered strange things, he only needed to run to the starting point and lie back on the bed to wake up, but now the long neck was blocking the stairwell, and it was very difficult to go back to the second floor. Song Bunan came to the door of a clinic and subconsciously looked at the doctor on duty list in front of the door. He found the three words Jiang Shui Su clearly visible. Shui Su, as a doctor who came to exchange and study, also had to follow the doctors here to see patients. Song Bunan was overjoyed and rushed in. The room was pitch black. He couldn't even see his own hands when he lowered his head. He walked around blindly for a few steps, then gave up and sat down. The situation here was either deliberately made into such a strange place, or it was not counted in the dream space at all. Fortunately, there was no long neck and photo. He breathed a sigh of relief and crossed his legs to try to summon external help. The dream was where he could communicate with Ghost Messenger. When he first came into contact with Song Bunan, he learned how to summon Ghost Messenger in dreams. He had used this method to escape from danger several times. He followed the steps to spread his summons little by little. There was no fluctuation in the extreme darkness. He could only wait quietly for a response. It was so quiet that even his own heartbeat could be clearly heard. Song Bunan kept trying after completing the summons, crawling on the ground to try to find something to confirm what was here. However, this room seemed to have an infinite space. After crawling out and returning the same way, the door disappeared. "Shui Su Ah——" Song Bunan sat down and shouted at the top of his voice, "Your brother is in trouble! Help!" He tried to use his voice to awaken the conscience of the big man. After all, he came in because of his name on the door. It seemed that even the sound could not be transmitted in the darkness. He felt that the words were swallowed up the moment they came out of his mouth, and he didn't even listen carefully. This place is more terrifying than the space where he waited for others to call him out after being injured. There is light there after all. Tired. Song Bunanwrapped himself tightly in Patient Gown and lay down, forcing himself to fall asleep. Sleeping in a dream will not make you dream again, but being disturbed is a real feeling. He could sense that many people were around him, walking around, some were whispering something, but the voices were so close that he couldn't hear what they were saying, and it would itch in his ears. There were footsteps approaching quickly, like the sound of high heels stepping on an iron plate. The clanking sound made him suddenly nervous, and he closed his eyes and curled up, and didn't open his eyes until the sound stopped behind him for a long time before he slowly opened his eyes a little to see who it was. The faceless woman came up to him instantly, her forehead touching his skin, and the ice-like temperature made him shiver suddenly, and then his body fell down and woke up in bed. Song Bunan, who sat up suddenly from the bed next to him, woke up Xin Yi. He looked at the person with a sweaty face and heavy breathing, and wondered if the other person was having a nightmare. It was only four o'clock in the morning, and there were still two and a half hours before the agreed time to get up.
“Did you have a nightmare?” Xin Yi asked as he turned on the light.
The person, pulled from a daze, blinked and let out a long sigh before collapsing back onto the pillow, sweat trickling down his forehead into the pillowcase. “It was terrifying,” Song Bunan replied, his voice hoarse and trembling. “I dreamed that I fell off a cliff, and branches skewered me like candied hawthorn. I can still feel a chill in my chest.”
Xin Yi didn’t believe in ghosts or spirits; this was something Song Bunan would never forget. His lie held weight, so Xin Yi got up to fetch a warm, damp towel for him, signaling for him to wipe off and go back to sleep.
“It was just a nightmare; it’s still early,” Xin Yi said as he watched Song Bunan take the towel and quickly strip off his shirt to wipe away the sweat. His frail body was covered in scars, remnants of the injuries sustained while being rescued in the mountains. The wounds had begun to heal, revealing raw flesh with clear stitching marks.
What surprised him even more was Song Bunan’s back. The pale skin was marred by raised scars that looked like countless worms crawling over it, varying in depth and quite horrifying. There were burn scars around his waist and shoulders, making it clear that his entire back bore no unblemished skin.
“What happened to your back…” Xin Yi couldn’t help but be curious about what kind of experiences could lead to such injuries. He reached out to touch it; the uneven, hardened flesh felt strange under his fingers, occasionally flaking at the connections between the indentations and skin, as if they had cracked open only to heal again.
Unfazed, Song Bunan carelessly wiped his belly with the towel; his skin felt cool from the sweat exposed to the air. “Ah, these are from an accident when I was a kid; they’ve grown with me. They look disgusting, don’t they?” His tone was lighthearted, betraying no other emotion. Noticing Xin Yi’s silence, he handed over the towel and said, “Could you help me wipe my back? It’s a bit cold.”
Xin Yi hesitated to apply too much pressure and gently wiped over the scars with the now-cool towel. As he brushed over certain areas, he could elicit laughter from Song Bunan, who squirmed away while saying it tickled.
“It must have hurt a lot back then,” Xin Yi suddenly asked. Even he didn’t know why he posed such a question.
Still chuckling from the tickling sensation, Song Bunan turned his head. His eyes sparkled with tears from laughter, forming crescent shapes as he replied, “It did hurt. When the anesthesia wore off and I woke up, I cried every day from the pain. The area of the wounds was large and healed particularly slowly; I could only sleep on my stomach. Sometimes I’d finally fall asleep but would wake up from pain if I moved even slightly. My brother got so annoyed with my crying that whenever he saw me pouting, he’d scold me. Then when he got beaten by our parents for it, I’d just laugh.”
Xin Yi fell silent again, putting away the towel as he helped Song Bunan get dressed and tucked him under the covers. “Get some sleep,” he said softly.
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