Qi Xia only felt his tears continuously flowing downward. If this was a nightmare, why hadn’t the nightmare ended yet?

“Mouse… you…” Qi Xia’s pupils trembled slightly.

He recalled the first time he met the child before him, when he had solemnly declared, “This time, I’m betting my life.”

After winning that life-or-death gamble, he had suffered an excruciating headache.

“What exactly am I doing…?”

He wanted to reach out and touch the mummified face, but the mummy shrank back a step as if terrified.

The doors on both sides of the corridor kept opening, and Zodiacs emerged one after another. They all nodded respectfully to Qi Xia before walking deeper into the corridor.

The sounds of earth-shattering destruction continued echoing from the distance, mixed with the countless footsteps of Zodiacs treading on the wooden floor. Qi Xia felt his mind in complete chaos, as if countless segments of different lifetimes’ memories were converging upon him.

“I want to go home…” Qi Xia finally came to his senses, muttering tremulously, “I want to return to my room… This place doesn’t belong to me…”

He walked forward a few steps, only to discover that the door he had entered through had vanished.

Now both in front and behind him stretched infinitely deep corridors, with neither end visible.

“Baiyang gege…” Qi Xia heard the mummy behind him call out again. He turned around, only to find nothing behind him.

“Baiyang gege…”

No matter how Qi Xia turned, that voice always remained behind him.

As if she was suspended somewhere behind his back, following his movements, forever impossible to see.

“Baiyang gege…”

“Baiyang gege…”

Qi Xia slowly closed his eyes and covered his ears.

Why wouldn’t this dream end?

If this continued, he would truly go completely mad.

After an indeterminate amount of time, the mummy’s voice seemed to disappear entirely. In this empty corridor, only Qi Xia’s heartbeat and breathing could be heard. Accompanied by the dim lighting, the place seemed extraordinarily silent.

“Baiyang.”

A strange voice rang out behind Qi Xia. The voice mixed male and female tones, yet sounded somewhat familiar.

Even though Qi Xia firmly blocked his ears with both hands, the voice still penetrated his palms and clearly poured into his mind.

“You can’t hear sounds in dreams…” Qi Xia said. “This isn’t a dream… Where exactly is this place? What are you…?”

“Baiyang, you don’t recognize me?” The neither-male-nor-female voice rang in Qi Xia’s ear again. “Turn around and look at me.”

Qi Xia’s entire body turned ice cold. This voice was even more terrifying than what he had just experienced.

“I can’t…” Qi Xia said. “I can’t look at you…”

“Baiyang, turn around and look at me.” The voice carried an irrefutable pressure.

“No…” Qi Xia suppressed his emotions and said softly, “I can’t look…”

“Are you giving up already?” The voice laughed lightly. “I’m very disappointed.”

“I’ll never give up.” Qi Xia answered with his back turned. “The reason I can still stand here is to defeat you. So as long as you’re not dead, I won’t give up.”

“But how can I die?” The voice continued asking. “We all can’t die. You should know that, right?”

“You…”

“Baiyang, you know that as long as you don’t die, everyone here can’t die either.”

The voice sounded closer and closer. Every inch of Qi Xia’s skin felt an icy chill. A thin layer of goosebumps spread across his body like fish scales, and all his body hair stood on end at this moment.

“Baiyang, I see you.” That person said. “If you won’t turn around to look at me, then I’ll come find you.”

Although Qi Xia couldn’t remember anything, his heart kept resisting. A voice told him he absolutely must not look at the person behind him.

But the footsteps grew closer and closer. He was about to walk right in front of him.

“Let me wake up…” Qi Xia said with his eyes closed. “I can’t see him… I can’t see him here…”

Smack!

With a crisp sound, Qi Xia’s left cheek felt a burning pain, and his head twisted to the side.

He opened his eyes to look, but there was no one in front of him.

“Old Qi!”

“Liar boy!”

Qi Xia’s eyes slowly widened. “Chen Junnan… fist… wake me up…”

Smack!

Another loud slap rang out. Qi Xia felt all the surrounding scenery shaking, as if it would collapse at any moment.

“Not enough…” Qi Xia said through gritted teeth. “Wake me up now…”

Qi Xia raised his head as if having a conversation with someone across space.

“Wake up!!”

“Wake me up quickly!!”

SMACK!!

An extremely fierce slap struck Qi Xia’s face. At the same moment, his lower abdomen also felt a sharp pain, as if someone had punched him there. That punch was so heavy that not only did it make Qi Xia’s internal organs churn, but even the surrounding scenery instantly collapsed under this punch.

All the scenery around shattered like thin paper sheets, revealing the pitch-black color behind them.

Qi Xia looked up to see that behind the scenery was actually the vast starry sky.

Before he could react, the ground beneath his feet completely cracked, and his entire body rapidly plummeted downward.

“Ahh!!”

Qi Xia suddenly opened his eyes wide. The surrounding smell of rot kept pouring into his nostrils, and the dim lighting inside the room entered his vision.

Right in front of him were Chen Junnan and Qiao Jiajin’s faces, while in the distance, Zheng Yingxiong, Qian Wu, and Zhou Liu were also watching him with worried expressions.

“Holy crap, Old Qi, what the hell happened to you?” Chen Junnan asked, finally relaxing slightly upon seeing Qi Xia wake up. “You were fine, how did you end up lying in bed screaming and shouting all by yourself?”

Seeing these familiar faces, Qi Xia knew he was still in this hellish place, but at least he could feel somewhat at ease.

Everything he had just experienced was vividly clear—it definitely wasn’t an ordinary dream.

Who was that person speaking?

What did Yu Nian’an’s words mean?

What did “The three thousand six hundred paths of the Dao, each person grasps a different root” mean?

“Hey!” Qiao Jiajin laughed awkwardly. “Junnan boy, I told you slapping wouldn’t work. You still needed my punch!”

Qi Xia turned his head to carefully examine his surroundings and discovered he was actually lying down sleeping on the bed.

“Absurd…” Qi Xia’s lips moved slightly. “How could you let me lie down?”

“Hm?” Chen Junnan was stunned. “What do you mean, Old Qi? What’s wrong with lying down?”

“I can’t lie down…” Qi Xia said somewhat distantly. “I can only sleep sitting up… Lying down makes me too relaxed…”

Qiao Jiajin looked at Qi Xia with confusion, then shook his head. “Liar boy… you fainted earlier. When someone faints, shouldn’t we put them on a bed instead of leaving them in a chair?”

Qi Xia also felt somewhat strange.

His subconscious kept telling him he absolutely must not lie down, that he absolutely could not relax his vigilance in any way, yet even he didn’t know the reason why.