Post-Disaster Investigation

The memorial service was simple and quick.

Yu Jin did not dare stand in front of the grave for too long. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to stop himself from... squatting down.

He found standing too tiring.

The two of them came in a hurry and left in a hurry, just like a person's life—leaving nothing behind but memories.

On the way to the investigation site, Tang Yaoting was still complaining about his parking spot being stolen by the dog.

Yu Jin had a bizarre expression as he asked softly, “Yaoting, do you really think there's nothing wrong with a dog driving a car and flipping you off?”

Tang Yaoting slammed the steering wheel in anger. “Of course there's a problem! What right does it have to flip me off?”

“...”

It didn't seem like he was acting.

Yu Jin was too lazy to deal with Tang Yaoting. Closing his eyes, he stroked the revolver given to him by the mysterious woman and began to ponder the various bizarre occurrences of today.

Admittedly, in this world where Nightmare Disasters ran rampant, anomalies frequently appeared, and ordinary people could awaken in their dreams, there were precedents for animals driving. A Dream Thief could easily turn into a dog to do such a thing.

But at the very least, as a member of the Post-Disaster Investigation Team, Tang Yaoting should have been alert to this behavior that suggested a Dreamwalker was approaching.

Yet he wasn't. He only cared about the dog's middle finger, highly resembling certain extreme animal rights organizations.

Yu Jin felt that no matter how lazy and slack Tang Yaoting was, he would never be so dense. Thus, the only possible explanation was that there was a problem with the present reality.

Just now, that mysterious woman had pointed out that his hair was red, yet his hair only turned red when he slipped into other people's dreams.

So was it possible that everything he was experiencing right now was still a dream?

Yu Jin's heart skipped a beat, and he asked uneasily, “Could this be a dream?”

Tang Yaoting, still seething with rage, paused. “What dream?”

Yu Jin frowned, resting his legs on the front passenger dashboard, and said with a bit of resistance, “This isn't a dream. This is reality.”

Tang Yaoting was baffled. He looked Yu Jin up and down. “I know it's reality. But didn't you just ask me if it was a dream?”

Yu Jin pulled his legs back and sat up properly. “If this is reality, why can I still talk to you? Shouldn't you only exist in my dream?”

Tang Yaoting slammed on the brakes, stopping the car.

He turned his head and stared at Yu Jin for a long while. He reached out to feel Yu Jin's forehead. Finding it wasn't hot, he let out a sigh of relief and said, “What gibberish are you talking about? It's my old man who died, not me. Do you think this is a horror movie, where visiting a cemetery lets you bring a spirit back with you...”

Yu Jin irritably brushed Tang Yaoting's hand away, put his legs back on the passenger dashboard, and said in an extremely resistant tone, “I have always existed. I am you, and you are me. We have been from the very beginning!”

“?”

Hearing this, Tang Yaoting's mind boggled. He looked at Yu Jin in terror, completely unable to comprehend what was wrong with his buddy.

What normal person did crunches on the passenger seat?

Yu Jin pulled his legs back. After finishing his last set of “crunches,” he sat quietly in the passenger seat and stopped talking.

Tang Yaoting was a bit at a loss. It wasn't until the car behind them honked furiously that he nervously restarted the car. He drove carefully, casting sidelong glances at Yu Jin as he did.

Neither of them spoke, making the atmosphere in the car extremely bizarre.

In the end, Tang Yaoting finally couldn't hold it in any longer and asked curiously, “Does working out like that actually do anything?”

Yu Jin nodded. “It does. It's good for the brain.”

Hearing this, Tang Yaoting immediately threw his legs onto the driver-side dashboard.

They soon arrived at Qingniao Street. Following the address provided in the report, they pinpointed a specific block. Next, they were supposed to conduct inquiries in this area to find out the truth behind the disappearance of the Nightmare Disaster signal.

However, the moment they got out of the car, Yu Jin took Tang Yaoting and headed straight for the home of the person involved in last night's Nightmare Disaster without another word.

At this, Tang Yaoting was extremely puzzled. “Why are crunches good for the brain?”

Yu Jin lightly tapped on the front door and explained seriously, “The fact that you can ask this question shows that the crunches have already taken effect.”

The door swung open, and standing there was the furious father from last night.

Seeing two strangers standing at his door, he tightened his grip on the white baseball bat he held behind his back.

Yu Jin's gaze swept over the baseball bat in the man's hand. Raising an eyebrow slightly, he politely showed his ID. He remembered seeing the man's name in the report. “Hello, Mr. Xia. I'm Yu Jin from the Bureau's Post-Disaster Investigation Team.”

Tang Yaoting casually flashed his ID as well, but he didn't care about the case at all. He was busy thinking about whether he could squeeze some time for crunches into his eight hours of slacking off at work. Although he was already smart enough, who wouldn't want to be a bit smarter?

Hearing “the Bureau,” Mr. Xia's expression visibly soured. Frowning, he said, “What is the Post-Disaster Investigation Team doing here? No Nightmare Disaster happened here.”

Yu Jin smiled. “Precisely because none happened, we came to take a look. Last night, there was a brief, wide-scale consciousness disturbance in this neighborhood. The Bureau sent us to investigate the cause of the disturbance to prevent any potential reignition of the Nightmare Disaster.”

As he spoke, Yu Jin peeked into the house. “Mind if we come in to chat?”

Mr. Xia remained silent, doing nothing but blocking the doorway as he glared at Yu Jin and Tang Yaoting, clearly unwilling to let them inside.

The two sides faced off for a moment before Mrs. Xia stepped out from inside with red eyes and patted Mr. Xia on the shoulder.

Mr. Xia gave a heavy snort and turned his head away.

Mrs. Xia's makeup was slightly smudged. She squeezed out a smile. “I'm sorry, Officer Yu. We've had a bit of a situation at home, but we are willing to cooperate.”

She then tugged at the corner of Mr. Xia's shirt to make way for Yu Jin and Tang Yaoting.

Mr. Xia, his face dark, was tugged a few times but refused to budge. It wasn't until Mrs. Xia looked on the verge of tears that he let out a cold snort, closed his eyes, and turned his back to them.

Yu Jin noted their interactions, expressed his thanks, and nudged Tang Yaoting into the house.

The moment he stepped inside, he was stunned by the sight. The room was a complete mess, looking as if a battle of the century had just taken place.

Shattered furniture was barely kept in its original positions, exposed and broken steel rebars peeked out from beneath the peeling plaster, a charred television, severed wires of light fixtures, and glass littering the floor...

It was hard to imagine what had transpired here. Hadn't last night's Nightmare Disaster been resolved?

Yu Jin frowned slightly. “This is...?”

Mrs. Xia bent over to clear the only sofa fit to sit on, looking a bit embarrassed. “Our child didn't do very well on the recent exams, so we had a bit of an argument.”

“...”

An argument? More like a battle to grab weapons!

But what kind of weapon could wreck a home like this? An RPG?

Yu Jin remembered to smile and express understanding. He turned to look at Tang Yaoting, only to see him whisper nonchalantly, “That's normal. I tasted plenty of my dad's belt when I was a kid, and I turned out just fine.”

Is the “fine” you're talking about referring to your brain?

Yu Jin's mouth twitched, and he whispered back, “Even so, it shouldn't be to this extent. The walls are cracked.”

Tang Yaoting paused, glanced around, and asked in confusion, “Where is the wall cracked? Isn't it perfectly fine?”

“!?”

Hearing this, Yu Jin's pupils dilated, his spine instantly tensing. He looked around once more at the surrounding wreckage. “The wall isn't cracked?”

“No. At most, they broke the coffee table and scattered some glass. Look, they're already starting to clean it up.”

Mrs. Xia was indeed sweeping up the glass on the floor, but the glass shards Yu Jin saw didn't just belong to the coffee table; the vast majority of them came from a shattered glass curtain wall.

At this moment, Yu Jin realized that the scene he saw was actually different from what Tang Yaoting saw!

What was going on?

Though horrified inside, his expression remained unchanged. Keeping his smile, he subtly rubbed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the scene before him hadn't changed at all—it was still a complete mess. His gaze swept across every corner of the living room until his eyes met a pair of sinister eyes near the bedroom door. Mr. Xia!

Another segment of pale bone blade slid from Mr. Xia's wrist. The bone blade moved around his arm, its tip pointing straight at Yu Jin.

Yu Jin gasped in fright and gripped Tang Yaoting's shoulder, wanting to warn him. But when he looked again, he saw that the bone blade had turned back into a baseball bat, which Mr. Xia held in his hand, its tip still pointed at him.

Hallucination?

No, something was wrong!

Today was extremely wrong!

Yu Jin's expression gradually darkened. Just then, Mrs. Xia walked over, breaking his eye contact with Mr. Xia. She gathered her skirt and sat beside Yu Jin, asking politely, “What is it that Officer Yu would like to investigate?”

...