Pain!
It hurts!
The head hurts!
The bizarre dreamland full of whispers quickly shattered. Zhou Mingrui, who was asleep, felt that his head had a painful ache as if he had been slammed with a pole. No, it was more like a sharp object piercing through his temple and accompanied by stirring!
Stumbling, Zhou Mingrei tried to stand up. He had wanted to rub his head and sit up, but he could not move his hands and feet. It seemed that his body had lost control.
[Perhaps, I haven't really been awake yet. I might be in my dreams… thinking that I'm awake but actually I am still sleeping…]
As someone who was not familiar with such situations, Zhou tried to focus his mind to get rid of feeling of darkness and constrained. However, as a person who was half asleep, his will was as erratic as smoke, his thoughts were difficult to control and difficult to converge. However hard as he tried to focus his thoughts, it was in vain.
[Why do I suddenly have such have a headache?
And so much pain!
Could it be cerebral hemorrhage?
F**k, will I die prematurely in this year?
Wake up! Wake up!
Hey, it doesn’t seem to be so painful anymore? But in the head there is still something like a blunt knife slowly cutting, …
It seems that I can’t continue to sleep. How can I go to work tomorrow?
Why do you want to go to work? It’s a real headache, of course, take a medical leave! Don’t be afraid of the manager’s mumbling!
It doesn’t seem that bad now. Afterall, I’ve earned a day off!]
After a series of tingling sensations, Zhou Mingrei accumulated some illusionary mindpower. Finally, he thumped his back to open his eyes and completely escaped the half-sleepy state.
The line of sight was blurred at first and it was cast with a faint blush of crimson. Zhou Mingrui saw a wooden desk in front of him. There was an open notebook in the middle. The paper was rough and yellow and there was a sentence in strange letters. The words were written in dark, eye-catching ink.
On the left side of the notebook, there was a neat stack of books by the edge of the table. There was about seven or eight books in total. The walls on the right hand side were inlaid with gray-white pipes and wall lamp was connected with the pipes.
The lamp had a Western classic style. It was about half the size of an adult’s head. The inner layer was a transparent glass and the outside was surrounded by ferrous metal.
Underneath the extinguished wall lamp, a black ink bottle shrouded in light red brilliance and the embossed surface formed a blurred angel pattern.
Before the ink bottle, a round head, dark-colored pen lay quietly on the right side of the notebook. The tip of the pen shimmered in the dim light and the cap rested next to a brass revolver.
A gun? A revolver? Zhou Mingrui was stunned. The things he saw were so strange and born no similarity to his own room at all!
Amidst the shock, Zhou realized that the desks, notebooks, ink bottles and revolver were all covered with a layer of red "gauze." This was because of the light shining through the window.
Subconsciously, he lifted his head and moved his eye upwards a bit.
In the middle of the sky, above the black velvet curtain, a crimson full moon glowed serenely.
This… Zhou Mingrui’s fear rose inexplicable, he swiftly stood up, but his legs were not completely straightened and his head was tinged with pain. This caused him to lose his strength momentarily and he fell uncontrollably. His butt slammed into the hardwood and landed on the chair surface.
Thump!
The impact did not cause any injury, Zhou Mingrui pressed his hands on the table tried and stood up again. He panicked and observed the environment he was in.
This was a small room with brown doors on the left and right. There was a low wooden bed next to the opposite wall.
There was a cupboard between it and the left door, facing each other and with five drawers.
In the edge of the cabinet, there was also a gray-white pipe on the wall at a height of a person. It was connected to a strange mechanical device with a few places exposed by gears and bearings.
Near the desk, the right corner of the room was piled with things like coal stoves, as well as soup pots, iron pots and other kitchen utensils.
Behind the right door was a two-way mirror with a simple and plain wooden base.
After sweeping his eyes, Zhou Mingrui vaguely saw himself in the mirror, and his current appearance:
Black hair, brown pupil, linen shirt, thin, average looking features, slightly deep facial outline…
This … Zhou Mingrui suddenly breathed in deeply, many helpless and messy speculation emerged in his mind.
The revolver, the European classical flavor setting and the crimson moon that was very different from the earth, all pointed to one explanation!
[Did I transmigrate?] Zhou Mingrui’s jaws dropped.
As someone who had grown up with webnovels, he often had fantasized about transmigrating. However, when he actually encountered it, it was difficult to accept.
This was probably the so-called Ye Gong’s passion for the dragon(1)? After a few dozen seconds, Zhou Mingrui bitterly muttered himself.
If not for the pain still existing in his head and the consciousness that had become sharper and clearer, he would think that he was dreaming.
[Calm down… ] Take a few deep breaths, and Zhou Mingrui tried hard to make himself not flustered.
At this moment, with his reconciliation of mind and body, a memory fragment suddenly jumped out and appeared in his mind!
Klein Moretti, a citizen of the Northern Continent, Ruen Kingdom, Awwa Province, City of Tingent. He was also a student who just graduated from the Department of History at Hoey University…
His father was a sergeant of the Royal Army and sacrificed in a colonial conflict of the Southern Continent. The pension he received provided Klein with the opportunity to enter a private grammar school and laid the foundation for his admission to the university…
His mother was a faithful follower of the “Goddess of the Night”. She passed away in the same year when Klein entered Hoey University…
He also had a brother and a sister living together in the other two bedrooms of the apartment.
The family was not rich and its conditions could even be described as below average. At the present, the expenses were maintained by his brother who was a clerk at an import and export company.
As a graduate in History, Klein had mastered the ancient Fusak language, which was known as the origin of the characters of the northern continents, as well as Hellenese which often appeared in ancient tombs as it was related to worship and prayer…
Hellenese? A thought ran through Zhou Mingrui’s mind. He reached out, holding down his painfully throbbing temple and took his eyes to the notebook on the desk. He realized that the line of text on the yellowed paper had turned from strange to unfamiliar, from unfamiliar to familiar. Slowly, it becomes understandable.
This was a short sentence written in Hellenese!
In dark ink it read:
“Everyone will die, including me.”
Hiss! Zhou Mingrui felt an unknown fear rising in his heart. He instinctively leaned back, as if trying to widen the distance between him and the book
As Zhou was very weak, he almost fell and had to hurriedly reach out to press on the edge of the table. He felt an unseen turbulence in the air around him and he could almost hear whisperings in his ears. It was like the horror stories that old people told him when he was young.
Shaking his head, as if everything was just an illusion, Zhou Mingrui regained his steadfastness. He shifted his gaze from his notebook and started panting.
At this time, his eyes fell on the shiny brass revolver and a doubt came up in his mind.
“With Klein’s household conditions, how could I afford to buy a revolver?” Zhou Mingrui could not help frowning.
In his deliberation, he suddenly noticed that the edge of the desk had more than half of a red handprint. The color was deeper than glow of the moon, and it was thicker than the veil.
It was handprint in blood!
“A Blood handprint?” Zhou Mingrui unconsciously opened the right hand holding the edge of the table. He lowered his head and saw his palms and fingers smeared in blood.
At the same time, he felt the tingling pain in his head again. It had weakened slightly but was still continuing.
“Did I break my head?” Zhou Mingrui muttered as he turned to the cracked mirror.
After a few steps, he could see the medium build, dark brown pupil of his own figure in the mirror.
[This is me now, Klein Moretti?]
Zhou Mingrui paused because the light was not enough in the middle of the night to see clearly. Thus, he continued to move forward until he was only one step away from the mirror.
With a veil-like blush of the moonlight, he titled his head and looked at the reflection of his forehead.
The mirror clearly reflected an ugly wound entrenching around his temple. The edges of the wound were burnt, with bloodstains all around it. Through the wound, Zhou could see the grey matter of his own brains slowly trembling.
TN
1 – ostensible fondness of something one really fears