Niu Zhiwei turned his head and froze. His phone slipped from his grasp, his eyes bulging in terror. He was scared out of his mind.

The skinless, bloody figure had appeared in the driver's seat. The seat and steering wheel were smeared with fresh blood. A hand of raw muscle and sinew rested on his shoulder, leaving a stark scarlet stain on his white shirt.

The Skinless offered him a silent smile.

"I want your skin."

"AHH!"

With a shout, Niu Zhiwei jolted awake from the Nightmare. Panting heavily and drenched in sweat, he scrambled to turn on the light.

After a long while, he finally recovered from the horrifying dream. He let out a long sigh, deciding to get some water to calm his nerves.

But as he turned to look at his nightstand, he froze solid.

There, on his shoulder, was a fresh, bloody handprint!

·

·

A bright, sunny morning.

Zhou Chen scrolled through short-form videos as he ate breakfast. The sound of soft footsteps came from the stairs as Li Xiye padded down in her slippers. It being summer, she wore only a baggy, off-white T-shirt that reached halfway down her thighs—a sight that left much to the imagination.

After everything that had happened, Li Xiye's formal respect for Zhou Chen had completely vanished. Once they had dropped that distance and opened up to each other, their bond and affection had only deepened. As a result, she'd gradually loosened up, no longer shy about many things—in fact, some of it was intentional.

"I just got a notification from the Star Association. I have a mission to go on, so I probably won't be back for lunch," Li Xiye said with a yawn, a rebellious tuft of hair sticking up playfully from her head.

"What kind of mission?" Zhou Chen instantly perked up. Experience had taught him to never overlook any potential clue.

"Just a rookie mission, or they wouldn't have handed it to me. Apparently, some high school kid stayed up all night reading a horror novel, had a Nightmare, and then it came true. Scared him half to death."

Li Xiye sat down and took a bite of a steamed bun. "The kid has a bloody handprint on his shoulder. A psychologist said it didn't look like he'd hallucinated and hurt himself, so the police transferred the case to the Star Association. The Association ran tests on the 'blood' and found it contained no actual blood. I don't know the exact composition, only that it wasn't blood. That's why it was reclassified as an Extraordinary case. A veteran is leading us rookies to investigate. It's basically our first real mission."

"'A Nightmare come true?'" Zhou Chen mused, sipping his soy milk with a slight frown.

"Mhm. I heard there have been several similar cases recently. A few days ago, a college student whose boyfriend died in a car crash said she had a Nightmare about seeing him—crushed to death—standing by her bed. When she woke up, there was a pair of bloody footprints right there. Pretty scary, right? It means some... entity was standing by her bed, watching her while she slept. Even if it was her dead boyfriend, that's beyond terrifying.

And... well, I just looked at the pictures of her boyfriend's body from the case file. That was even more terrifying."

Li Xiye polished off the bun in a couple of bites, asking indistinctly through a mouthful of food, "Do you think this has anything to do with the 'main quest'?"

She had taken to calling the unknown event that she and Zhou Chen were destined to face the "main quest."

"Hard to say... Just gather as much information as you can during the investigation. It might just be a common, small-scale case of mental pollution."

Zhou Chen shrugged. "Anomalies happen every day in this World, especially in an Extraordinary metropolis like Hong City. The city is hiding too many secrets."

"'Small-scale mental pollution' doesn't sound ordinary to me..."

"It's very ordinary. You find the source of the contamination, put on your Contract Ring, burn it away with Cyan Flame, and then you just wait to collect your reward," Zhou Chen said dismissively.

After breakfast, Li Xiye went to her room to change. Zhou Chen cleared the dishes, then sat on the sofa and opened the dark web, searching a local Hong City forum for clues. He found a few related threads, but the replies were all useless—people farming post counts, trolls, or others hawking illicit videos. There wasn't a single shred of useful information. It seemed the incidents weren't serious enough to have made many waves.

The hottest topic on the forum recently, however, was the upcoming international supermodel lingerie show.

It was worth noting that this was the dark web, not some respectable forum, so the discussions were naturally less than savory. In addition to the models' dark and dirty laundry, there were tons of leaked photos, which had the comment section going wild and calling it a feast for the eyes.

'The lingerie show...' Zhou Chen was filled with frustration about it. Watching it was one of the main reasons he'd come to Hong City in the first place. He genuinely wanted to go but couldn't. If he did, what little image and integrity he had left would probably shatter instantly.

Soon, Li Xiye came back downstairs, fully changed. She stood before him, showing off her outfit. "So? What do you think?"

Li Xiye wore a white shirt under a baseball jacket, paired with a navy-blue pleated skirt. Her fair, shapely legs were clad in black stockings, and she wore a pair of small, black leather shoes. The look was sharp and stylish, yet brimming with youthful energy.

She was starting to experiment with skirts and stockings now.

"It's gorgeous, very sharp. It might not be a man-killer, but it's definitely a lady-killer."

"..."

·

「Thirty-odd minutes later.」

Li Xiye arrived at the residential complex designated as the mission location. Fearing a potential wide-scale outbreak of mental pollution, the entire complex had been locked down, and all residents were required to undergo an examination by the Star Association.

"Sister Li!"

He Qingsong, who was already on-site, greeted her. This investigation involved three new Ascenders, and the veteran leading them was a man named Qian Su.

Qian Su had a square face, thick eyebrows, and large eyes. He sported a mature, full beard and radiated an air of integrity, giving the first impression of a dependable, older man.

"Everyone's here. Grab your equipment. Let's head up," Qian Su said, gesturing to the instruments nearby.

The three rookie Ascenders each grabbed a device and followed Qian Su upstairs. They arrived at the apartment and entered the high schooler Niu Zhiwei's bedroom.

"The Essence Detector is clear. No residual Essence."

"No signs of mental pollution."

"No trace of a Curse."

Qian Su extended his own senses, meticulously searching every corner, but he too came up empty-handed.

However, the analysis report from the research department confirmed that what Niu Zhiwei had experienced was no hallucination. His Nightmare had become real, bleeding over into the physical world.

"Check the other rooms," Qian Su ordered.

Li Xiye took the Essence Detector into Niu Zhiwei's parents' room, scanning every corner.

Finding nothing, she moved on to the bathroom to perform a more thorough sweep.

Engrossed in her work, she completely missed the eerie red shadow that flickered for a split second across the reflection of the hallway wall in the bathroom mirror.

Twenty minutes later, the team regrouped in the living room to report. No one had found anything out of the ordinary.

"Maybe the mental pollution isn't at a serious stage yet. It can only leave traces on the victim," theorized He Qingsong, who was younger but remarkably level-headed.

"But if we don't eliminate the source in time, the pollution will spread and intensify rapidly. It won't just be leaving traces then. The victim could very well be killed by the monster in their dreams," Li Xiye countered.

"The victims have all been moved to the Star Association, so we don't have to worry about their immediate safety. The only problem is that more victims might start showing up," the third rookie Ascender added.

Qian Su considered this for a moment. "We can't find anything unusual in this apartment, and it's the same story at the other locations. That means the mental pollution hasn't spread yet. I'll tell the research department to focus their efforts on the victims. They might be able to use the Nightmares to trace back to the source.

For now, your job is to set up a Purification Matrix. We're going to 'disinfect' this entire residential complex."

The three rookies' faces immediately fell. They weren't Alchemists, so they couldn't create a Matrix from scratch. However, the Star Association had ready-made, "idiot-proof" versions of the Purification Matrix that just required a lot of time and effort to deploy.

'A Matrix to purify the entire complex... Just how big would that be?'

'Could they even finish it today?'