Chapter 61

It was not until the next morning that Yang Siguang finally wore off the effects of the medication and regained full consciousness.

"...How are you feeling?"

Hearing the tentative inquiry beside his ear, Yang Siguang slowly turned his head to look at Li Bo, who was standing beside the hospital bed.

He blinked and gave a slight, faint nod.

"I suppose so."

Even now, his voice remained hoarse.

It was a minor lingering aftermath of his piercing screams from the previous day, though of course, compared to the psychological trauma he had suffered, this was nothing.

As far as the eye could see, Yang Siguang's hospital room was impeccably clean and tidy.

The scent of antiseptic lingering in the air was far from pleasant, yet it inexplicably brought a sense of reassurance.

The entire room was rendered in a gentle cream color, and compared to the chaotic and noisy environment of a public hospital, the conditions here resembled a luxury hotel. An intravenous drip for nutritional support was still hooked up to Yang Siguang's wrist. The nurse's technique was so exceptional that he could not even feel the cold needle piercing his flesh.

Yet, even under such meticulous (and presumably exorbitantly expensive) medical care, Yang Siguang still felt as though something inside him had broken, and that his vitality and health were now continuously leaking out through some invisible, gaping wound.

He remained weak and chilled to the bone.

Consequently, when he heard Li Bo hesitantly broach the next question, it took him a long while to gather his thoughts and respond.

"Siguang, those wounds on your body... what happened to them?"

Li Bo asked.

"Wounds? What... what wounds?"

Yang Siguang asked in bewilderment.

He did not know that when he raised his head from the hospital bed, his once expressive and clear eyes now looked like two deep, lifeless wells devoid of the slightest trace of vitality.

And as Li Bo met those dim eyes, a pang of near-pity welled up inexplicably in his chest.

He sighed.

Then, with utmost gentleness, he lightly tapped Yang Siguang's arm over his hospital gown.

Prompted by Li Bo, Yang Siguang slowly rolled up his sleeve. Then, gazing at the shades of deep and shallow bruises and scratches covering his arm, his pupils suddenly constricted.

The next moment, he reached up and pulled open his collar. Shocking, horrific marks once again entered his field of vision, clearly extending far beyond the narrow confines of his arm.

A brief silence fell over the hospital room. After another long moment, Li Bo spoke slowly.

"During your initial examination earlier, we discovered numerous... signs of abuse on your body."

His voice was exceptionally slow, as if he were constantly struggling to weigh and choose the appropriate words.

"Do you remember what happened?"

He then asked.

Yang Siguang did not answer for a long time; only his breathing grew noticeably more rapid.

"I... I... I don't... I don't know..."

The young man's voice was unnaturally hollow.

"I don't know."

He repeated.

"I don't remember."

He said.

Yet...

[Do you really not remember?]

Deep in the recesses of his heart, a voice shot a piercing inquiry at Yang Siguang. He shuddered violently, wishing he could burrow straight under the covers to hide from the imaginary nightmare like a six-year-old child.

Did he truly not remember?

Of course that wasn't true.

He remembered.

*

Before he shook off the effects of the tranquilizer and woke up, he had been trapped in that dream.

He dreamed that he was lying quietly in his modest yet familiar bedroom. He was sleeping, yet amid the haze, he sensed that the window of his room had been easily opened from the outside.

That shouldn't have been possible.

He clearly remembered making sure to double-lock the window every single night.

Yet... with a faint creak of the window hinges, the damp night breeze of the late hour swept through the open casement, brushing against his face.

Someone had indeed come in.

The shift in airflow triggered the most ancient survival instincts within his body. Yang Siguang was jolted awake instantly, yet while his consciousness had awakened, his body remained trapped in a state resembling paralysis.

His eyelids felt glued shut by some unseen force, and his limbs felt as though they had been filled with liquid cement; even moving a single finger required immense effort.

Was it sleep paralysis? Was it?

Yang Siguang continually asked himself in his heart.

Deep down, his body trembled slightly and uncontrollably, as if anticipating the impending danger. He clearly heard the sound of soft footsteps—footsteps deliberately kept so light and slow that perhaps even the most skilled burglar could not have matched such stealth.

Yet the night was far too quiet, and Yang Siguang was far too tense. He uncontrollably caught every surrounding movement, and those footsteps sounded utterly deafening to him.

Immediately afterward, the footsteps stopped.

They stopped right beside his bed.

Then, the wooden frame of his bed shifted slightly. A wave of warm breath fell near his feet.

How unfamiliar, yet how familiar that breath was. Starting from the foot of the bed, the intruder licked Yang Siguang's toes, then his ankles, and crawled step by step up his body.

The quilt was carefully lifted back.

[“Hah...”]

The breathing grew ragged and heavy.

In contrast, the intruder possessed a pair of exceptionally cold hands.

With long, dexterous fingers, the person effortlessly unbuttoned Yang Siguang's pajamas.

With his eyes tightly shut, Yang Siguang bizarrely envisioned the scene from a documentary where a venomous spider flexes its slender forelegs, slowly dismembering its prey and feeding it piece by piece into its oral cavity.

His pajamas were stripped away as well.

Someone panted heavily, trailing down his neck inch by inch before pressing heavily onto his chest.

A sharp sting bloomed across his skin.

The person was licking him, then biting him.

In a daze, the remote and blurred malicious laughter of that person seemed to blend entirely with the panting.

No. It wasn't sleep paralysis.

He was simply being... violated by someone.

Deep within his body, his last remaining shred of reason clearly informed Yang Siguang of this fact.

As the damp, tickling itch and the sharp pain in his chest washed over him, extreme panic engulfed him.

Amidst this terror, the invisible force pinning him down finally relaxed by the tiniest sliver.

At last, Yang Siguang forced his eyes open just a fraction. He stared into the darkness, only to be met with a face completely distorted by wild elation and satiation. It was a face he had previously seen in hallucinations—ugly, twisted, and nauseating.

The eyeball of a corpse rolled wildly around within its blood-smeared skull... and attached behind that deformed, grotesque head was the body of a muscular, mangled, monstrous black hound.

[“Sisi...”]

[“Hehehehe... I've become Sisi's dog now...”]

[“I've always wanted to be your dog, hehehe...”]

As if sensing Yang Siguang's terrified gaze,

that human-faced hound abruptly lifted its head from Yang Siguang's chest. It parted its lips, revealing Yang Siguang's still-beating heart caught between its teeth.

It let out a bark at Yang Siguang, and like a pure animal, began to rapidly thrust its hips.

...

Yang Siguang had experienced similar dreams countless times, repeating intermittently long before Li Chen's accident.

Yang Siguang had consulted online psychotherapists, who invariably told him that it was his extreme fear and suppression of his own sexuality manifesting in the form of nightmares.

Thus, he hadn't paid it too much mind—after all, he had many, many other nightmares.

Only this time, yesterday's nightmare had left Yang Siguang remembering every single detail of the dream—a dream that had become exceptionally vivid, clear, and agonizing for him.

And the wounds inflicted upon him by the human-faced hound in that dream...

now appeared on his physical body in reality.

No, wait, was this truly reality?

Was he still trapped in a dream?

Or... had the monster from his dream broken through the barrier and sunk its claws into his reality?

Yang Siguang covered his mouth with his hands, his body trembling uncontrollably.

That was supposed to be just a dream, impossible. Impossible—if it was all a hallucination, why would the wounds inflicted in the hallucination directly appear on his physical body?

"This isn't real."

Yang Siguang whispered softly, only to realize when he spoke that his voice had grown extraordinarily hoarse.

Inadvertently, he glanced toward the hospital window. A thought suddenly forced its way into his mind: many people said that when you have a nightmare, you can wake up simply by jumping from a high place.

Yet who had told him that? He could no longer remember.

*

Li Bo was still watching Yang Siguang.

The man's gaze carried a strange, inclusive calmness.

Yet this only made Yang Siguang increasingly agitated.

Before Li Bo, he felt like a genuine madman, a psychiatric patient, a paranoid delusional, and...

"I'm sorry, Siguang." At that moment, Li Bo suddenly spoke, interrupting Yang Siguang's self-loathing. "However, I think I need to show you something. It might be a little repulsive, but I believe it's necessary for you to see it..."

As he spoke, Li Bo extended his bandage-wrapped hand toward Yang Siguang.

Li Bo unwound the gauze from it.

And as the gauze unwound layer by layer and fell away, an indescribable stench wafted out from beneath it.

Immediately afterward, Yang Siguang saw the wound that Li Bo had kept hidden beneath the gauze.

In the center of the man's palm was a gaping hole, nearly transparent.

Surrounding that hollow wound were clusters of intertwined black and red flesh, along with a copious amount of yellowish-green pus.

Yang Siguang opened his eyes wide in shock.

It was evident that someone had previously attempted to treat the hollow wound in Li Bo's palm. However, amid the bleached bones, deep red muscle, and pale yellow subcutaneous tissue, the intertwined, rotting flesh remained all too clear.

Of course, what shocked Yang Siguang the most was not Li Bo's phantom-pain-inducing wound, but the rows of deep red scriptures written in cinnabar surrounding the injury.

No matter how one looked at it, these scriptures had no business appearing on the limb of a wounded person.

"Wh-What is this—"

The scene before him appeared utterly bizarre.