2: Chapter 2 Don't scare me! I'm used to being scared!

The next day, Xie Feng didn't move an inch on his bed, pulling the blanket over his head in an attempt to physically block out that gaze.

Unfortunately, it was useless.

That gaze wasn't from the outside; it was inside his mind, or rather, in every dimension of his existence.

"I played Cthulhu for seven years and wrote over forty scenarios. Countless times in TRPG groups I chanted 'Lord Cthulhu gives out candy,' 'Shub is my waifu,' and 'Yog-Sothoth is a cold-faced cutie.' Now look what happened."

Xie Feng slapped his own face hard.

"Cold-faced cutie indeed! Cold-faced cutie indeed!"

The memories in the original owner's head said that 'aberrations' existed in this world.

There were some fragmented pieces of information in his memory. It seemed they were rule-based monsters that killed in specific ways; as long as one cracked the rules, one could survive.

Xie Feng scoffed.

"Aberrations? That's it?"

He muttered to the ceiling,

"Rule-based things, to put it plainly, aren't they just low-end monsters from Cthulhu scenarios? I've written scenarios for seven years; what rules haven't I seen? Corridors where you can't look back, stairs where you count the steps, mirrors you can't look into... the classic trio. I've played them to death."

He spoke very loudly, but his voice echoed twice in the empty side courtyard before dying out. Xie Feng fell silent for a moment and shrank back into his blanket a bit more.

"...But I'm still a little scared."

Xie Feng was, after all, a true coward. When playing horror games or watching horror movies, he would only do so during the day with the lights on, and he absolutely needed bullet comments to shield him.

When he was the Keeper for TRPGs, he dared to scare the players to the point of insomnia.

Being an Investigator himself? Out of the question.

He always chose the Keeper role because the Keeper was safe. The Keeper could sit behind the screen, drinking cola, and watching others scream in terror.

Now, the screen was gone, and so was the cola.

Xie Feng closed his eyes. His habit as an old Keeper set him thinking.

"By the way, I saw Yog-Sothoth. Don't I need to pass a Sanity Check? I actually didn't go mad. That's seriously impressive."

Footsteps came from outside the door. The Xie Family Disciples had long finished their day's cultivation.

These were the footsteps of servants, accompanied by hushed voices.

"Have you heard? Something happened in the city again."

"What happened?"

"The crying! Over in the West Ward, several people heard it."

The footsteps stopped outside Xie Feng's courtyard gate. The voices of two maidservants drifted in through the crack in the door, carrying that suppressed excitement unique to lower-class people talking about terrifying events.

"What crying?"

"Just suddenly hearing someone crying at night. No one knows where it comes from or who is crying, but everyone who hears it says the crying gets closer and closer."

"Closer and closer?"

"Yes. At first, it seems to be at the street corner, then as you listen, it reaches the base of the wall. Listen further, and it's right outside the window. And then..."

"Stop it, stop it!" The other maidservant's voice already carried a sob.

"I heard that once the crying starts getting closer, you must count from one to a hundred before it presses against you. If you count wrong, count too slowly, or don't finish counting..."

"What happens?"

"The person is gone. The day before yesterday, it was Old Wang from the West Ward, and yesterday it was Nanny Zhang from the neighboring courtyard. They both heard the crying and didn't take it seriously. The next morning, their families found them lying in bed, eyes wide open, mouths agape, with tears still on their faces. It was as if they were scared to death, or perhaps cried to death."

A brief silence followed.

"And what if you count correctly?"

"If you count correctly, nothing happens. They say the crying will leave on its own to find the next victim."

"That's just too..."

"Tell me about it. Aside from the esteemed Martial Artists who aren't afraid, who among the ladies and servants in the residence isn't terrified? It has already spread. Master Xie ordered all the lamps in every courtyard to be lit, saying that light can ward off evil. But how could an aberration be warded off by lamps..."

The footsteps gradually faded into the distance.

Xie Feng listened to the entire conversation from under his blanket. He rolled over and wrapped the blanket even tighter around himself.

"The rule is simple enough. It's just counting; who can't do that? As long as one's state of mind is stable, counting from one to a hundred isn't hard. Those who died were probably too terrified to remember to count, or they counted wrong."

A voice mumbled from inside the blanket.

"Just counting."

"I just won't go out," Xie Feng said to his pillow. "The crying aberration surely won't come into my room. Besides, I haven't heard any crying."

He got up and called a maidservant to bring him food. Although he was a useless waste, he was still born of the first wife, so they couldn't neglect him too much.

After eating and complaining about the lack of flavor, the outside of the window gradually fell completely silent.

The sun set, and the night grew thick. There wasn't even the sound of insects.

Xie Feng closed his eyes, trying hard not to think about those lights, those spheres, and that gaze eternally watching him. Perhaps because he had thought about too many chaotic things during the day, his consciousness quickly blurred, falling into Chaos.

Then, he heard crying.

A woman's crying.

A weeping sound, coming from very, very far away.

It seemed to come from several streets away.

Xie Feng snapped his eyes open.

Moonlight spilled in through the worn window paper, casting pale patches of light on the floor. The room was quiet. So quiet that he could hear his own heartbeat.

The crying sounded again.

It was a bit closer than before.

Every hair on Xie Feng's body stood on end.

"No way... I was just talking..." Xie Feng trembled violently. "This world really has them? Don't mess with me, alright? (Foreshadowing)"

The crying continued to approach.

From the street corner to the alley entrance, and from the alley entrance to outside the courtyard wall.

Xie Feng recalled what the maidservant had said: the crying would get closer and closer. At first at the street corner, then reaching the base of the wall, and then right outside the window.

One must count from one to a hundred before it pressed against one's body.

Xie Feng opened his mouth.

The crying was already in the courtyard.

"One, two, three, four, five..." Xie Feng began to count, his voice trembling, counting rapidly.

The crying entered the room.

"Six, seven, eight, nine, ten..."

Cold.

A bone-chilling cold surged in from the doorway. There was nothing in the moonlight, but Xie Feng could feel something approaching him. Accompanied by the weeping sounds, that coldness chilled him to the marrow.

"Eleven... twelve, thirteen..."

The crying reached the bedside.

Xie Feng squeezed his eyes shut and counted desperately. Counting was the only thing he could do.

"The rules say if I count to a hundred I'll live. As long as I count to a hundred, as long as I count correctly, as long as..." With these thoughts running through his head, and the blanket over his head, the numbers flew out of his mouth!

"Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine!"

His voice began to shake. Not only was fear about to consume him, but it was also cold.

That coldness was boring through his skin, like countless ice needles piercing his bones at the same time.

The crying sounded right in his ear, as if it were right next to his pillow.

Something was pressing against his auricle.

Xie Feng could feel something wet and cold touching his cheek. It seemed to be hair.

And it was the hair of a drowned person—soaked, freezing, hanging down strand by strand, brushing against his skin.

"Damn it, why does my imagination have to be so good at a time like this just because I've written so many horror scenarios!" Xie Feng's mind raced.

His mouth refused to cooperate.

His teeth chattered, and his tongue felt frozen. He desperately tried to utter the next number, but only a muffled gasp escaped his throat.

"F... F..."

The crying stopped right by his ear. The woman was no longer crying.

"Is it gone?" Xie Feng opened his eyes.

Then Xie Feng felt... something, from the side of the pillow, slowly pressing its face toward his.

He turned his head.

Xie Feng saw a face.

Pale and wet.

Pupilless eyes were only a finger's width away from him. Tear stains ran down the face, but the corners of its mouth stretched open into a curve that was absolutely impossible for a human, so wide that they couldn't be seen from the front, seemingly split all the way to the back of its head.

It opened its mouth.

Xie Feng's mind went blank, and he let out a terrified scream.

"Ah!!!"

Then, in the deepest recesses of his consciousness, at the absolute bottom of his Soul, that gaze eternally watching him shifted slightly.

It was merely "a single glance."

The face froze.

It had just happened to see what was in Xie Feng's eyes.

Xie Feng's eyes—or to be precise, inside Xie Feng's eyes—that gaze from all of time and all of space.

The All-in-One was looking at Xie Feng.

And at the same time, It saw the entity.

The aberration let out a scream even louder than Xie Feng's.

"AAAAHHHHHHH!"

It was not a sound a human could make. It was sharp, ear-piercing, like thousands of panes of glass shattering at once, or a baby's cry stretched out infinitely.

The windows of the entire room shattered simultaneously, sending shards of glass flying everywhere.

The scream left Xie Feng's ears ringing. He bounced up from the bed, his back slamming hard against the wall.

Then, there was nothing.

The crying vanished.

The coldness vanished.

The face vanished.

Only the shattered windows and the moonlight spilled across the floor remained in the room.

And Xie Feng's own heartbeat, racing so violently it felt as though it would leap out of his chest.

"Ha... ha..." Xie Feng panted heavily, his entire body pressed against the wall. His legs felt weak, and he slid down to sit at the corner of the bed.

"That aberration just now... it screamed and vanished?" Xie Feng didn't even know whether to feel relieved or despondent.

"Holy sh—" Just as Xie Feng was about to swear, the courtyard gate was kicked open.

The light of torches flooded in.

The head of the Xie Family, Xie Tianxiong, strode into the courtyard, followed by seven or eight servants and guards. Everyone's face was filled with terror; that scream had been so loud that the entire Xie Residence had heard it.

Xie Tianxiong walked to Xie Feng's door. Seeing the broken glass covering the floor, his brow furrowed into a tight knot.

Then he saw Xie Feng curled up at the corner of the bed.

His face was deathly pale, covered in cold sweat, and his entire body was trembling.

"You useless waste! You..." Xie Tianxiong had just opened his mouth when he suddenly stopped.

Xie Tianxiong saw the floor beside Xie Feng's bed.

On the wooden floor, there was a puddle of water.

It was no ordinary water.

The shape of the puddle was that of a curled-up human figure. The aberration had come to Xie Feng's bedside, clutching the edge of the bed with both hands, its face pressed against the pillow, but it seemed to have been directly vaporized by some kind of power.

Xie Tianxiong's pupils shrank slightly.

He looked up at Xie Feng.

"That aberration just now... was it after you?"

Xie Feng's lips trembled.

"N-No... n-no..." Xie Feng was about to wet himself from fear, his teeth chattering so hard he couldn't even form a coherent sentence.

Xie Tianxiong fell silent for a long time.

Then he turned and spoke to the steward behind him.

"Take my token. Delay the Sect selection by one day, and bring him along."

The steward behind him stepped closer to Xie Tianxiong and reported in a low voice, "Master, his skeletal structure..."

"Bring him," Xie Tianxiong said, casting one last complicated look at Xie Feng. "A useless waste who can scare away an aberration... I'd like to see what kind of waste he truly is."

The light of the torches flickered across Xie Feng's face.