Night of Despair

Chapter 74: Night Rain Part Two – Alliance Hierarch
 

“Yu Hong, how are you still asleep?”

At that moment, a familiar voice rang out beside Yu Hong’s ear.

Under the light, his expression froze for a second; he quickly looked around and found he was still alone in the cave—there was no one outside, nor any shadow.

“Who’s there?” He crawled out of his sleeping bag, vigilantly grabbing a silver talisman array, and glanced around.

“Why are you sleeping so long without waking up? Didn’t we agree to team-building earlier? In the end, everyone found you asleep at home and couldn’t wake you, so we all took you to the hospital. Now you’ve been lying there for two days, and thankfully you’ve shown some signs of life, otherwise, the hospital was about to call in specialists for a consultation. You are a rare case,” the voice continued.

“…” Yu Hong meticulously began to search the cave, trying to pin down the source of the voice.

To his disappointment, there was nothing around.

And that voice grew slowly weaker, more distant, like a radio losing signal.

“Chen Huiru? Are you Chen Huiru?” He remembered the voice—she was his best female colleague at the company.

“Yeah, it’s only been two days, and you’re acting like you don’t recognize me. Can you see me? Do you see me?” The other side went on.

Then there was the sound of a slight wind stirred by a waving hand.

“Do you see my hand?” Chen Huiru said.

“It seems that lying down for too long has affected your vision,” Chen Huiru said with a hint of worry in her tone.

“Don’t worry, the company will reimburse eighty percent of Yu’s expenses. This rare disease is taken very seriously by the hospital’s team of specialists; they’re actively consulting and discussing the specific treatment plan,” another colleague’s male voice followed.

“Can’t you see anything at all? That’s a bit troublesome,” a third voice came from not too far away.

“Everyone just leave the gifts on the floor by the bed, okay? The inspection is about to start. The patient needs peace; visiting time is up,” an impatient female voice said, seemingly a nurse’s.

“Nurse, could I ask how my friend is doing?” Chen Huiru asked.

“He’s alright, but you all need to be more careful. When patients dream, they often see doctors and nurses as monsters and might sleepwalk and hit people, so be aware of your safety,” the nurse replied with impatience.

Yu Hong stood in the safety room, listening to the voices echoing in his ears, expressionless.

He poured a cup of water, tilted his head back, and drank it all, intending to see what trick the voice was playing.

“The patient is immersed in a world of his own imagination, refusing to return to reality. You visiting him from time to time can also help him recover normalcy,” the nurse’s voice continued to resound near and far in his ears.

“Understood.”

“We’ll visit when we can.”

“Ah, so young… Little Yu really is…”

Then came the sound of a group of colleagues opening the door and leaving.

Yu Hong walked to the doorway, looked at the heavy rain falling outside, and felt an inexplicable sense of turmoil in his heart.

‘Just now, was that the Language Person?’ He speculated. “Or am I really just in a coma, dreaming? Is everything in front of me merely a figment of my imagination?”

He reached out, gently touching the wooden door in front of him.

The rough texture of the door panel and its cold, solid feedback made him truly feel the reality of the world.

He withdrew his hand, started a fire, and prepared food.

The bright flames danced, releasing warm waves of heat, toasting the entire cave.

As he added more wood to the fire, Yu Hong suddenly came up empty-handed, failing to grab more.

He turned his head to look, and the spot where he had been stacking firewood was now empty.

“No dry wood left, huh….” he sighed.

“Yeah, no more wood,” Chen Huiru’s voice sounded in his ear.

“…” Yu Hong paused, quickly looked left and right, but still saw nothing; he remained alone in the cave.

“He’s started talking in his sleep again,” another nurse’s voice sounded. “The doctor said, in his case, only by fully breaking free from his dream can he wake up.”

“How can he break free? Sometimes, it seems fun the way he is, but after a while, it feels pretty sad,” Chen Huiru’s voice carried over.

“In a few days, they’ll perform craniotomy surgery on him. This morning’s examination confirmed that he’s influenced by a special tumor in his brain, which is why he stays asleep. As long as they remove the tumor in his head, he should recover quickly,” the nurse said.

Yu Hong, expressionless, leaned against the side of the fireplace, silently listening to the voices.

Before long, everything went quiet.

The voices of the nurse and Chen Huiru also slowly faded away, to be replaced by a faint scraping sound.

It was like cutting something, a raspy sound, slightly irritating to the ears.

As the cutting continued, there was also Chen Huiru’s faint humming.

“I’ve come to see you again. I’ve brought some fruit to peel for you… You’re about to have surgery; not sure how risky it will be, but you have to cooperate with the treatment and try to get better soon.”

“…”

Listening to the voice, Yu Hong took the food he had cooked and picked up a Red Value detector again.

There were a few of these among the spoils of war he had collected before, all now in his possession.

The Red Value was still the same old quiet and stable.

He put down the detector, got up, walked to the door, and opened the viewing window.

Outside, the rain poured down in torrents, and everything was shrouded in mist.

He stood quietly at the door, motionless, looking out the window, gazing at the heavy rain.

*

*

*

In the post office, inside the stone house’s basement.

Li Rushan held his daughter Aisena and sat in one of the brightly lit bedrooms reading a book.

“Daddy, I think I heard Uncle Yu Hong knocking,” Aisena suddenly turned to ask.

“It doesn’t concern us. You must have heard wrong,” Li Rushan replied with a smile.

“But I really heard it!” Aisena emphasized.

“Even if you heard, we can’t answer. Right now, the Language Person might have suddenly contaminated this place, and we cannot respond to any sound; responding would cause infection,” Li Rushan sighed, “This kind of Evil Shadow, the Language Person, is normally impossible to detect through Red Value changes. It keeps accumulating, fostering a vision that one most wants to come true, making one think that everything in front is fake, and that leaving here will make everything go back to normal.”

“Isn’t that terrifying?” Aisena shrank back a bit in fear.

“I was intending to leave a note for Xiao Yu, but…” Li Rushan shook his head, recalling the scene he had just witnessed, his pupils involuntarily contracting.

Over ten minutes earlier.

Patter.

Outside the stone post office building, Li Rushan heard a shout from outside and quickly went up to the surface. Peering through the window, he crumpled the note he had written into a ball and flung it out the window with force.

The ball of paper hit Yu Hong outside the courtyard.

But what shocked Li Rushan was that Yu Hong was expressionless, as if he had not seen the ball of paper thrown right in front of him. Instead, he just kept calling out to the stone house on his own.

“Is anybody there? Open the door.”

“Is anybody there? Open the door.”

Yu Hong stood outside the courtyard, repeating the phrase over and over, knocking on the door incessantly.

His body was straight, oddly not carrying his most frequently used Wolf Fang Club in his hand.

Seeing this, Li Rushan felt a chill in his heart, the voice that was about to respond caught in his throat.

Flashbacks of detailed information about Language Persons flooded his mind, leaving him with an icy chill in his heart.

Watching the mechanical knocking of Yu Hong from outside the courtyard, he didn’t dare to utter a sound, quickly shut the window, and returned underground.

After knocking on the door for a while and getting no response, Yu Hong turned around woodenly and headed back the way he had come.

The paper ball that was meant to warn him remained on the grass in front of him; even though it was a striking white color, he ignored it as if it didn’t exist and turned to leave.

“Dad, what should we do if we become infected with such an Evil Shadow like the Language Person?” Aisena’s voice pulled Li Rushan back from his recollections.

He came back to reality, sighed heavily, and surveyed the quiet bedroom around him in the basement, his gaze finally resting on his beloved daughter.

“The method of infection of a Language Person is very troublesome. As soon as you hear the voice and respond, you become infected. At first, the infection is not dangerous, and you’ll just hear different voices, but over time, the Language Person becomes more dangerous and more unstable.

Until… 12 hours later, it fully erupts.”

He paused.

“And the only way to fight against it is to prepare enough luminous stones at the moment it erupts completely.”

“How many do we need?” Aisena asked hastily.

“I don’t know…” Li Rushan shook his head, “but it has to be at least a Red Value of negative two thousand… which means at least twenty to thirty Large Pyroxene Stones.”

“Then Uncle Yu Hong should be fine, he deals with Large Pyroxene Stones, he must have enough,” Aisena sighed with relief.

Li Rushan didn’t respond.

Only the scene of Yu Hong flashed through his mind.

‘Based on the estimate, if Yu Hong had just been infected at that time, then now, it should almost be time…’

Thinking about this, a touch of worry crossed his brows. He had invested so much in Yu Hong, and if that kid died, it would be a great loss…

*

*

*

Inside the cave bunker.

Yu Hong looked at the heavy rain outside, then let out a long breath, about to turn around and rest.

Bang.

Suddenly, a burst of gunshots rang out from amidst the rain.

“Run… run!!!” An extremely familiar female voice cried out after the gunshots.

Followed quickly by rapid footsteps and intense gasps for air.

Yu Hong shuddered and moved back to the lookout window to peer outside.

But the heavy rain concealed everything from view.

Bang bang!

Two more gunshots followed quickly.

“Yiyi!” A second familiar female voice called out. “Run fast! I’ll lead him away!”

“No… don’t!” A stammering voice followed.

Hearing this, Yu Hong could no longer contain himself. He turned around quickly, put on a lighter set of reinforced gecko suits, grabbed his Wolf Fang Club, and dashed out the door.

Crack.

A flash of lightning split the sky, casting everything in a ghastly pallor.

Yu Hong sprinted towards the direction of the voices, across the courtyard and into the shroud of rain.

Patter patter, along with heavy footsteps, clear prints appeared one after another on the ground.

But having just dashed out of the courtyard, he suddenly stopped, looking intently ahead.

“Something’s not right.”

Ahead, all he could see was the heavy rain and the trees swaying with the wind.

In the dark early morning forest, there was no one but himself.

‘Shouldn’t Yiyi be far away in Hope City? How could she suddenly appear here?’

At this thought, he felt a sense of dread. His Inner Qi exploded in an instant, and with a reverse pivot, he dashed back to the courtyard.

The luminous stone grass covering the courtyard’s ground gave him considerable reassurance.

Back in the courtyard, he decided not to venture out again and headed straight back to the bunker.

But just as he opened the door and entered, another muffled noise came from behind him.

Boom!!

“Yiyi!” Dr. Xu’s cry rang out once again.

“Your leg, what happened to your leg!?” she cried out.

Crack.

Listening to the sounds, the club in Yu Hong’s hand creaked with pressure.

He resisted the urge to rush out to check again, leaned back against the wall, and took deep breaths.