The moment he heard that voice, a layer of goosebumps erupted all over Elias's body.
It had been far too long since anyone had called him by that name.
Brother Huan.
It was the name that belonged to Jiang Huan.
And it was the voice of his childhood best friend.
Elias didn't turn around immediately.
His body reacted before his mind could even process the situation.
The spirituality throughout his entire body was instantly mobilized, yet the 【Malice Perception】 buried deep within his consciousness gave no warning.
The person behind him didn't seem to harbor any malice toward him.
But this was an illusion created by the dream demon.
He couldn't truly let his guard down.
Elias took a deep breath and slowly turned around.
In the twilight, a tall, thin young man stood just a few paces away.
Short hair.
Basketball shoes.
In his hands, he held an unopened courier package.
His face wasn't distorted in the slightest.
Even the punchable grin he always wore on his lips was exactly as it was in Elias's memory.
Elias stared at him, his throat tightening slightly.
“Xuan-shao?”
“Heading home?”
“Yeah!”
The young man stepped forward naturally and slung an arm around Elias's shoulders.
The weight of the arm pressed through Elias's clothes and onto his skin.
Body heat.
Breath.
Everything was so real it was terrifying.
The long-lost, familiar physical contact sent a jolt through Elias.
It had been so long since anyone had casually slung an arm around his shoulders as Jiang Huan.
He didn't pull away.
Instead, his tense body gradually relaxed.
“What's up with you?”
Xuan-shao turned his head, looking at him with a mix of amusement and confusion.
“Standing here like you've seen a ghost.”
“You alright?”
“I'm fine.”
Elias gave him an apologetic smile.
His voice was unexpectedly tight as he spoke.
“I just feel like I'm dreaming.”
“Oh?”
Xuan-shao let go and sized him up from head to toe.
“Since when do you talk like that?”
“Normally, wouldn't you have insulted or cursed at me by now?”
With that, he raised his hand and punched Elias on the shoulder.
Thud.
It wasn't hard.
Yet the familiar, dull ache registered clearly.
Elias instinctively rubbed his shoulder.
“Are you sick in the head?”
“There we go.”
Xuan-shao nodded in satisfaction.
“That sentimental look you had just now gave me a fright.”
“Anyone who didn't know better would think you were secretly diagnosed with a terminal illness behind my back.”
“Piss off.”
Elias cursed.
But there was no real energy behind his words.
He knew very well.
Pain couldn't prove that this place was real.
Yet, he still couldn't help but want to hear the other speak a bit more.
Even though he knew it was fake.
Elias suppressed the sudden sting of tears in his nose and stiffly changed the subject.
“What were you doing?”
“Weren't you the one who asked me to go fishing?”
Xuan-shao held up the courier package and waved it in front of him.
The plastic packaging rustled loudly.
“My girlfriend bought me a sun protection suit specifically for that.”
When he said this, his chin was practically pointed to the sky.
It looked like he was showing off the sun protection suit.
But in reality, every single word was emphasizing “my girlfriend.”
Elias knew him all too well.
“Do you really have to report on your love life just because you bought some clothes?”
“I'm just letting you know what it feels like to have someone care about you.”
Xuan-shao patted the courier bag.
“Unlike you hardcore anglers who don't care about your lives.”
“Baking in the sun all day until you're black as charcoal.”
Looking at his smug face, Elias felt a spark of his familiar urge to banter return.
“Your girlfriend probably didn't buy you that sun protection suit because she's worried about you getting a tan.”
“Then why?”
“She's probably worried that if you get any uglier, she won't be able to explain herself when she takes you out in public.”
Xuan-shao's smile froze.
“With a mouth like yours, you deserve to stay single forever.”
Elias fell silent.
But it wasn't because he had run out of words; he simply wanted this feeling to last a little longer.
Xuan-shao, seeing that he had gained the upper hand, immediately grew bolder.
“Wear some sunscreen when you go fishing too.”
“Don't go peeling like a damn lizard again.”
The two walked forward along the concrete path of the residential area.
A gentle breeze blew through the green belts.
The sounds of cooking, televisions, and parents urging their children to do their homework echoed continuously from the surrounding buildings.
These sounds, which Jiang Huan used to find noisy, sounded incredibly comforting at this moment.
Elias turned his head, listening to Xuan-shao continue to boast about his unopened sun protection suit.
He was just about to deliver another witty comeback.
Suddenly.
The cicadas fell silent.
It wasn't a gradual fading out.
It was as if they had been directly erased from the world.
The warm summer evening breeze turned bone-chilling in an instant.
The smile on Elias's face instantly froze.
He exhaled.
A puff of white mist billowed from his mouth and nose.
The residential area, which had just been bathed in twilight, was now covered in a pale, ghastly light.
The sky turned a heavy, leaden gray.
Large flakes of snow tumbled down from above, whipped into massive white waves by the howling wind.
Everywhere he looked was a vast expanse of blinding white.
The original apartment buildings had completely vanished.
The familiar roads were gone, replaced by frozen, cracked ruins.
Broken walls were covered in thick layers of ice, with twisted steel rebars protruding from the deep snow.
The freezing wind snuck into his collar and cuffs, scraping painfully against his skin.
Elias suddenly looked down.
The short-sleeved shirt he had been wearing was gone.
In its place was a strangely styled set of cold-weather gear.
It was heavy and bulky.
The outer layer was made of a grayish-white material he had never seen before.
In his hand, he held a torch.
In the blizzard ahead, eleven figures were trudging forward with great difficulty.
Each of them held a torch.
The flames were bent low by the fierce wind, yet they never went out.
The eleven points of fire formed a broken line in the blizzard, slowly moving toward the obscured distance.
Elias stood at the very back of the line.
His heart began to hammer violently.
This wasn't White Tower Island.
Nor was it any place in his memories.
He had absolutely no recollection of ever seeing this snowy plain.
Just as he tried to get a clearer look at their faces, the person at the very front suddenly stopped.
That person turned back through the swirling snow.
Their face was completely bundled up against the cold, leaving only a pair of blurry eyes visible.
“Last one, keep up!”
The voice was distorted, torn apart by the howling wind.
The flame of the torch in Elias's hand flickered violently.
He instinctively took half a step forward.
In the next instant.
A white light flashed.
The bone-chilling wind, the frozen ruins, and the eleven figures vanished simultaneously.
A wave of summer heat rushed over his face once more.
The buzzing of cicadas flooded his ears from all directions.
It was as if the blizzard just now had been nothing but a split-second illusion.
Elias froze in place.
His back was completely drenched in cold sweat.
“I'm heading out first, then.”
Xuan-shao's voice came from beside him.
Elias whipped his head around.
That familiar face was still there.
The other seemed entirely oblivious to what had just transpired, simply waving his hand.
They had just arrived at the gap between two of the apartment buildings.
To the right was Xuan-shao's home.
To the left was Jiang Huan's home.
Over the past twenty-odd years, they had parted ways here countless times.
Walking home after school as kids.
Going out for meals as adults.
Occasionally, they would pull an all-nighter gaming and head back to their respective homes with dark circles under their eyes.
No one ever thought their next meeting would be far away.
Because with a single text.
Or a phone call.
The other would show up downstairs cursing and swearing within minutes.
“Remember to call me when the time comes!”
Xuan-shao took a few steps, then turned back and shouted to him.
“Sure.”
Elias murmured in response.
Xuan-shao turned and walked away.
His tall, thin silhouette quickly vanished behind the building.
Elias stood there, motionless for a long time.
He remembered this day.
Later on, Xuan-shao had to bail because of some sudden work issues.
Jiang Huan had roasted him for it, but ultimately ended up taking his fishing gear to the wild lake alone.
The next time he opened his eyes, he had become the lighthouse keeper on White Tower Island in the Kingdom of Velen.
Sometimes, he couldn't help but wonder.
What if Xuan-shao hadn't worked overtime that day?
What if the two of them had gone together?
Or what if they had canceled the fishing trip altogether?
Would he have avoided coming to this place?
Would he have avoided encountering the carapace husk?
Avoided being cursed by the dream demon?
And would he have avoided living under someone else's name, turning into someone he barely recognized?
But such hypotheticals were meaningless.
Life didn't have save files.
And you couldn't reload a save to before you baited the water just because you went home empty-handed.
Elias lowered his head and laughed.
The laugh was self-deprecating.
“Who can I blame?”
“I can't exactly blame the fish that I never even caught.”
He raised his head and looked at the residential area before him once more.
The immersive illusion still showed no flaws.
An electric scooter rode past the intersection, its horn honking twice.
Even the bad-tempered ginger cat by the flowerbed was lying in its usual spot, licking its paws.
Elias suddenly wanted to see just how many memories the dream demon had managed to read from his spirituality.
The moment this thought surfaced, his heart squeezed uncontrollably.
He looked at Building 14 in front of him.
Then, he took a step and walked inside.
The sound-activated lights in the stairwell lit up one by one in response to his footsteps.
Small advertisements for lock changes, drain cleaning, and appliance repairs were still pasted on the elevator doors.
Everything was exactly as he remembered.
Elias pressed the button.
The elevator was currently on the tenth floor.
The numbers slowly ticked down.
Ten, nine, eight.
With every change of the digit, Elias's breathing grew heavier.
Ding.
The elevator doors slid open.
He stepped inside and pressed the button for the tenth floor.
This was an old-style tower block apartment building.
There were eight apartments on each floor.
The elevator smelled of a mix of home-cooked food, cigarette smoke, and stairwell dust.
Jiang Huan used to complain about the smell.
Now, it brought him nothing but peace of mind.
The tenth floor arrived quickly.
Elias stepped out of the elevator and walked down the familiar hallway to Room 1001.
The spring couplets on the door had faded slightly.
The bottom right edge had curled up slightly.
He and his father had pasted them up together before the Spring Festival.
Elias raised his hand, his knuckles hovering in front of the door.
Just as he was about to knock, he suddenly remembered something.
He should have his keys on him.
Since the dream demon wanted to disguise this place as reality, it wouldn't fail to simulate his house keys.
The moment this thought crossed his mind.
His empty pants pocket suddenly sagged.
A ring of keys materialized out of thin air.
The metal clinked together, producing a soft jingle.
Elias froze.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys.
The house key.
The building access card.
And the old keychain whose design had long since rubbed off.
Not a single item was missing.
“Heh.”
Elias sneered as he looked at the objects in his hand.
“Still real-time rendering, I see?”
“So you just load whatever I happen to think of, huh?”
There was no response from his surroundings.
The dream demon clearly had no intention of discussing the production process of its illusions with him.
Elias found the key and inserted it into the lock.
He gave it a gentle twist.
Click.
The door opened.
The motion-sensor light in the entryway turned on.
Beside the shoe cabinet lay the slippers his father often wore.
The television in the living room was on.
The volume was low, playing a show that had probably been rerun countless times.
The twilight outside cast its glow through the sheer curtains, spilling onto the floor.
Everything remained exactly as it had been before he left.
Standing in the entryway, Elias's grip on the doorknob tightened bit by bit.
The sound of pots and pans clinking drifted from the kitchen.
Right after.
The woman he thought about day and night walked out of the kitchen, carrying several dishes of food.
She wore her familiar loungewear with an apron tied around her waist.
Her hair was casually pinned up at the back of her head.
There was no sadness on her face.
Seeing him return, she simply set the dishes on the table naturally.
As if her son had merely been delayed downstairs for a few minutes.
“You're back?”
In the center of the dining table, a split hot pot was steaming.
The spicy red broth bubbled.
Scallions and red dates floated in the clear broth.
The familiar aroma drifted into his nose.
The woman wiped her forehead with her hand and said casually:
“Your dad is on a business trip, so let's just have some hot pot today.”
Elias.
No.
He should be called Jiang Huan.
He stood frozen in place, a lump forming in his throat.
The composure he could maintain even when facing terrifying monsters was on the verge of collapsing entirely at this moment.
Forcing down the swell of emotion, he nodded gently.
“Okay.”
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