Realm Walker

Knock, knock!

The knocking came again, identical in rhythm to before, each interval precise, down to the millisecond. It was hard to imagine any human being capable of controlling their tempo with such mechanical exactness.

Is that Auntie? Zhang Yuanqing wondered in a daze. His head throbbed as though his skull were splitting apart, and a thick fog swirled within his mind. He moved to climb out of bed and answer the door, but the instant he threw back the covers, his body went rigid.

A thought struck him like ice water. The person outside had no footsteps. None at all.

Before the knocking had started, he hadn’t heard a single sound. For a Level 2 Nocturnal Specter, it should have been impossible for anything to completely evade his hearing at this distance, even with the bedroom door providing a thin layer of soundproofing.

The person outside was no ordinary person.

He raised one hand and pressed it against his throbbing skull, forcing himself to think through the pain. Has someone uncovered my real identity? Come knocking at my door? Dark Rose, Black Wuchang’s people, or the Taiyi Sect?

Every muscle in his body drew taut, adrenaline flooding his system so violently that it briefly overpowered the splitting headache. Whoever they are, sneaking into my home at this hour means they’re not here to talk. I can’t fight them here. It would put Auntie and the others in danger. I need to lure them outside somehow...

Just then, the knocking stopped. A moment later, Zhang Yuanqing watched the door handle turn, slowly and deliberately.

Click.

There was the faint snap of the latch releasing. The bedroom door creaked open, just a sliver, and beyond the gap lay nothing but thick, inky darkness. He stared at the widening crack, every muscle coiled tight. He still couldn’t sense the intruder’s presence at all, and cold sweat seeped down the length of his spine.

Slap!

Without warning, a hand with unnaturally deep black skin reached through the gap and gripped the doorframe, then shoved the door wide open. As it swung open, Zhang Yuanqing finally saw his uninvited guest.

It was a woman, her hair hanging in wild, matted tangles across her face. She wore a filthy white cloak, smeared with grime and stains, its hem dragging along the floor behind her.

There was something deeply wrong with her posture. She stood crooked and askew, like a mannequin whose limbs had been assembled in the wrong order. In her blackened right hand she clutched a rust covered cleaver, the blade facing backward, away from him.

Through the thick curtain of tangled hair, dark droplets of blood fell steadily, one after another, each one pitch black.

That look... There’s something eerily familiar about it. Where have I seen—

Realization hit him like a thunderclap. Was this the White-clad Killer Woman? The vengeful spirit mentioned in that text message earlier that day?

Wait... That wasn’t a prank?!

Disbelief flooded his face. He had never in a million years expected that the junk message he’d received during the day would turn out to be real. There was no way to prepare for something like this. Still he didn’t exactly have to be afraid if it was just a vengeful spirit—

Even as the thought formed, the White-clad Killer Woman lurched into motion, barreling toward him with steps that were somehow both clumsy and blindingly fast. Her movement was grotesque. She seemed to be walking backward, her torso swaying and twisting, her arms and legs bending at impossible, inhuman angles.

Zhang Yuanqing’s eyes darkened as he reached for the Power of the Dark Moon—

His expression changed instantly. The power wouldn’t come. The abilities branded into his very genes had vanished, and with them, his natural dominance over vengeful spirits.

In the same heartbeat, the woman lurched backward toward him with that trembling, jerky gait, the cleaver raised high overhead. Her right arm rotated a full hundred and eighty degrees with a sickening crack-crack sound as it rotated the blade to face him and bring it crashing down.

He threw himself sideways across the bed.

Thunk, thunk, thunk!

The cleaver chased him, hacking deep gouges into the mattress with every stroke.

Zhang Yuanqing rolled off the bed and hit the floor, his expression growing grimmer by the second. It wasn’t just his skills that had disappeared. His physical attributes had reverted to ordinary human levels. He had been stripped of everything.

The words from the text message surfaced in his mind.

Is this a dream?! My skills haven’t vanished. I’m trapped inside a nightmare. My skills, my items—none of them can be used here.

There was no time for further analysis. From the corner of his eye, he caught the filthy-robed spirit raising the cleaver once more. He rolled again, and the bang of elm floorboards shattering erupted uncomfortably close to his ear. If that blow had connected, it would have separated his head from his body.

Shit!

He planted both hands on the ground and launched himself upright, then sprinted for the living room, for the entryway, for the front door.

He had to get out. But no matter how desperately he wrenched at the handle, the front security door refused to budge. The latch seemed rusted solid inside the frame.

A whistling sound tore through the air behind his head. Without thinking, he ducked.

CLANG!

The cleaver came spinning through the air and embedded itself in the security door.

It can throw the cleaver too?

He swallowed hard, instinctively reaching up to yank the blade free and turn it against the spirit. But when he looked up, the cleaver was gone. Only a deep gash remained on the door’s surface.

The White-clad Killer Woman was already gripping the cleaver again, lurching toward him in that horrible backward stride.

Zhang Yuanqing crossed to the dining table in three quick steps, seized a high-backed chair, and swung it with everything he had, meeting the descending blade head on.

The chair shattered on impact with a sharp crack. The cleaver smashed through the wood and bit into his chest.

Agony erupted through him as the rust-covered blade tore open his chest and sheared through several ribs.

In this dream, his enhanced regeneration was gone.

Zhang Yuanqing could smell death. He staggered backward, bracing himself against the edge of the dining table. The spirit advanced with that trembling, backward shuffle, raising the cleaver high once more.

He threw himself sideways. The blade slammed into the dining table with a meaty thunk, burying itself deep in the wood. The woman wrenched at it once, twice, but the cleaver held fast.

Now! Clamping one hand over the wound in his chest, Zhang Yuanqing grabbed another chair with the other, gathered every ounce of remaining strength, and swung it in a vicious arc toward the spirit’s midsection.

CRACK!

The woman’s waist snapped instantly, folding at a grotesque angle, and she crumpled to the floor.

Click. Click. Click.

The spirit lay twitching on the ground, her head wrenching itself to one side, her limbs each twisting in opposite directions. Her left knee pointed right while her right knee pointed left, like a doll that had been torn apart and reassembled by a careless child.

Amid the grinding, popping sounds of shifting bone, her waist flexed and her lower body sprang upright, dragging her upper half limply along the floor.

What the hell! The sight set Zhang Yuanqing’s scalp tingling with primal terror. Clutching the wound on his chest, he stumbled back to the bedroom. The thing couldn’t be killed.

He slammed the bedroom door shut and locked it, then staggered to the window, threw it open and peered outside. There was nothing but absolute darkness. No streetlights, no cars, not a single neighboring building in sight.

In the real world, he might have risked jumping to an air conditioning unit mounted on the exterior wall. But this was a dream. Even setting aside whether jumping would save him, what if the fall simply meant death?

What should I do? he thought desperately

He couldn’t escape the dream, and he couldn’t kill the spirit. His skills and items were useless. He found himself at a dead end. Worse still, the blood flowing from his chest wound showed no sign of stopping. At this rate, he would bleed out within ten minutes.

If I die in the dream, what happens in reality?

He didn’t dare follow that thought to its conclusion.

Who’s trying to kill me? Dreams are an Illusionist’s domain, but I have no grudge with any Illusionist, no connection to one at all...

The door handle rattled. Finding the door locked, the spirit outside grew agitated, wrenching the handle back and forth and making it clatter furiously.

A few seconds later, it stopped, as if it had given up. Then, a tremendous bang shook the room, and the tip of the cleaver punched through the door panel from the other side.

The woman was hacking through the door.

Despair welled up in Zhang Yuanqing’s eyes. He glanced at the pitch-black void beyond the window, weighing whether to risk the jump.

Bang. Bang! BANG!

Each blow of the cleaver caused the door to splinter further, the hole growing wider with each strike.

Finally, with one last resounding crash, the door burst apart. The wild-haired spirit stepped through the wreckage, cleaver in hand, moving with that same twisted, unnatural gait.