Chapter 3 – Nightmares and Contracts

In Wei An’s imagination, when he finally settled into a peaceful retirement, his dreams should have been filled with idyllic scenes of nature, countryside, and leisurely parties.

But reality was far from it. His dreams were bloody and fragmented, filled with explosions, blood, death, screams, and charred corpses.

Tonight was no different, except for the addition of Dexin Ming.

The man appeared as he had when Wei An last saw him at a banquet long ago—young, dressed in understated luxury, trying hard to appear conventional.

But in the dream, Wei An quickly realized that the setting wasn’t some elegant gathering but rather a testing facility under the Ministry of Science. The monster Dexin Ming had brought lurked in the corner, taking the form of an ordinary man but emanating an impenetrable darkness, with eyes that didn’t belong to this world, staring at humanity.

In the dream, Wei An wanted to say something—perhaps, as he often played the role in real life, to warn Dexin Ming about the risks of straying off course. But then the scene shifted, and he found himself sitting at a large desk, pouring himself a fine drink.

A man sat across from him, his face covered in blood, shouting at Wei An.

“That’s not something you can just take!” he yelled. “Do you know how many people have died for this over the years?! This isn’t some minor violation where you kill a few people or throw someone in jail—this is a truly ancient and terrifying power—”

Wei An watched him. He had never been the type to drink while working, but now he was certain he’d had too much.

He couldn’t remember the exact reason—perhaps he had simply been too bored while waiting to kill someone. But unlike others who might grow drowsy or find everything amusing when drunk, Wei An remained expressionless, appearing calm and rational on the surface while his mind churned with madness.

“I know you disapprove of the feeding, but it’s always been tacitly allowed!” the man continued to scream. “Do you realize how deep this goes?! If you walk away now, you might still have a chance to live! You’re someone with status—”

Wei An kept staring at him with that eerie silence. The man began listing the horrific things that would happen to him if he didn’t back off, spewing venomous curses. Wei An listened for a while but found nothing he hadn’t heard before.

He finished his drink, savoring the expensive taste.

Then he jumped off the desk and walked toward the man—

Wei An woke up groggily.

The room was dark, the night deep. Outside, the occasional chirp of insects sounded like whispers from a dream.

It was another quiet night, as always. He was retired now—no longer embroiled in the dangerous power struggles of the Capital Sector but living in a secluded mansion in a remote province, with a stable life and plenty of friends.

Yet the night wasn’t entirely peaceful. In the darkness, his head throbbed with pain, as if something inside was stirring.

It was a mass of black hunger, pulsing with some kind of will. Just within the weakest reach of his left ear’s hearing, distant clamoring noises were barely discernable—like the cries of countless people, screaming in agony from some unknown place, their voices filled with suffering threaded with something dark and unspeakably malevolent.

Among them was a faint electronic voice, repeating something over and over, always just beyond comprehension.

Wei An sat up, grabbed the painkillers on the bedside table, poured a handful into his palm—not bothering to count—and swallowed them all at once.

Then he lay back down, closed his eyes, and waited for the pain to pass.

He had been through this many times before. He adjusted his position for maximum comfort, even regulating his breathing to mimic sleep.

By dawn, he could begin another seemingly normal day.

He knew that outside his mansion, Taoyuan Province must be in chaos. Hospitals near Silver Bay were undoubtedly overwhelmed, emergency medical resources mobilized from surrounding areas, coordination teams assembled, and traffic controls imposed in several districts—the usual aftermath.

The military would undoubtedly issue statements denying any breach of defense codes, insisting that Silver Bay was a tightly secured military facility that couldn’t be compromised by something as simple as inputting a string of numbers, like in the movies.

Some of those ground missiles had surely come from official military stockpiles, while others were from rogue mini-launchers—forces with no connection or even outright hostility toward each other.

Over a thousand of them? Ridiculous. The entire Taoyuan Province combined couldn’t muster that many.

Most had likely fired due to viral infiltration, some because their authorized operators had suddenly gone mad—cases impossible to investigate further.

All necessary information had been erased, all witnesses silenced. The Federation’s conspirators were thorough in that regard.

Wei An knew the drill. But it had nothing to do with him anymore.

This was just another disaster born of infighting among the upper echelons—everything within expectations. Yet as he lay there, unease gnawed at him. He felt like he had forgotten something important.

He thought again of that grotesque statue-like human figure he had seen in the advertisement… The last time he had encountered it was in an unlisted warehouse.

It was a filthy, dilapidated place. He had stood on a rusted metal walkway three stories high while a subordinate briefed him.

The statue had been wrapped in a grimy tarp, piled in a corner among genuine, counterfeit, and outright fake artifacts from the ancient civilization—just another piece of toxic junk in the heap.

The subordinate had ranted about how the Ministry of Science had cordoned off some area for three years under the pretense of “investigation and surveying,” based only on local folklore and shallowly buried statues like this one. The locals were furious, and the body count involved was anyone’s guess.

He spoke indignantly about the Ministry’s lawlessness, insisting this was exactly the kind of thing their department should be overseeing.

Wei An barely remembered most of it now. He only recalled lighting a cigarette at the time—inhaling the smoke felt like poison, a tangible sense of harm.

The report had included an inconsequential folktale.

It told of villagers who believed that deep in the nearby mountains lay a military base built by the ancient civilization long ago, where unspeakably cruel experiments had been conducted. It was a true pocket of hell, powered eternally, where those trapped in suffering still could not escape, enduring torture to this day.

Those creatures sometimes wandered the night, wailing in agony year after year, with no one able to save them.

If you ventured too deep into the mountains, you might encounter them—dragged into hell. Many who disappeared in those hills had met this fate. Desperate families of the victims had organized search parties, but none ever succeeded.

“No matter where you run, it’s useless,” the subordinate had said. “That’s how the ancient civilization works. Once you enter, it’s like signing a contract—you can never leave—”

Wei An’s eyes snapped open.

His heart pounded, his body drenched in cold sweat.

The contract, he thought. How the fuck could I forget about that contract?!

The room remained dim; dawn had yet to break, but Wei An was wide awake now.

The house’s automated system sensed his wakefulness and opened the balcony door, letting in crisp air.

Outside was a massive viewing balcony overlooking a slow-moving river, petals and leaves occasionally drifting downstream before vanishing—lonely and serene.

Wei An usually sat out there for a while after waking, savoring his beautiful new life.

But now, seated in the chilly early spring air, his sweat-damp skin had dried, leaving him cold to the bone.

The way a “Contract” operated sounded like something out of a fantasy novel, but it was actually an ancient civilization’s weapon control system.

Humanity had discovered its existence years ago in the ruins. When connected to a suitable terminal, it automatically generated program code and an interface to regulate and control certain ancient technology—like the behavior of mutants.

No one fully understood the underlying science, but they had still managed to categorize and adapt it into a technology they occasionally used.

These contracts came in various types and levels. Among them, the Ministry of Science had long held the only high-level contract ever discovered by humans.

It was also the only contract in existence capable of controlling Gui Ling—a creature so powerful that nothing else could restrain him.

The Ministry had tried countless methods to dismantle or replicate this contract on a larger scale, all to no avail. Controlling Gui Ling was extraordinarily difficult. Years ago, the Ministry had issued a strict decree: the master contract must never be moved. He was to remain within a three-hundred-meter radius of headquarters at all times.

If he needed to leave, the Ministry would painstakingly assign an administrator with the sole authority to enforce strict regulations.

Now, three years later, Wei An sat on his bed, pressing his temples as he assessed the situation.

His “retirement” had been the result of a major case he had handled.

Back then, Wei An had worked for a highly influential department under the Federation. His job hadn’t been directly related to the ancient civilization, but he had taken on what seemed like a routine embezzlement case within the Ministry of Defense.

As the investigation expanded, most of the Federation’s factions—including his own—were dragged in, along with the Ministry of Science.

The root cause traced back thirteen years, when someone had discovered ruins of the ancient civilization in Qingshi Province and uncovered a new high-level contract.

They believed that if nurtured, it could surpass the Ministry of Science’s existing contract.

This had triggered a bloody power struggle, and what Wei An experienced went far beyond the usual twisted nature of his work.

Regardless, the ancient civilization was an inseparable part of human life, embedded within the stellar regions they inhabited.

This civilization was so mysterious that people could only speculate about it—most theories baseless. The only certainty was that its technology far surpassed humanity’s current level, and every aspect of this dead empire’s advancements was military-oriented.

It must have been a warmongering regime. The remnants of its power were astonishingly bizarre, becoming objects of obsession and contention for those who came after.

Based on fragmented legacies and excavated ruins, humanity could harness this power to some extent—but always haphazardly, more like sheer accident or spectacle. No one understood its theoretical framework.

Even when integrated into regular use, its existence inevitably warped reality, making ancient technology seem more like sorcery.

Take the process of nurturing the contract from Qingshi Province, for example—it could have been the plot of a horror movie series, violating countless basic humanitarian laws. It was sheer madness.

Yet none of the ostensibly upright institutions cared. They were ready to take over.

The struggle was ostensibly over Qingshi Province’s high-level contract, but everyone knew the real prize: Gui Ling, the weapon the Ministry of Science had kept locked in darkness at headquarters for years.

He was an incomprehensible entity from ancient technology—something that should not exist.

According to records, Gui Ling appeared as an ordinary young man, with nothing overtly unnatural or eerie about him. But this creature was deeply sinister.

He had lived for over a century without aging, still appearing youthful.

No one knew the full extent of his power. In the Federation’s earlier warring days, he could effortlessly obliterate heavily fortified palaces.

The contract’s usage rules were complex and had to be followed meticulously—any deviation risked catastrophic failure. The monster could easily turn on his handlers and destroy an entire work zone. It had happened before.

The Ministry kept him under tight control, but rumors still spread, growing ever more exaggerated and fantastical.

Gui Ling—the God of Terror created by humans, bound by an ancient contract, listening to incomprehensible whispers in the dark.

How powerful was he? What could he do? What secrets of the ancient civilization’s power did he hold? Even the dark emperors’ grasp of this ancient force paled in comparison. It was all fodder for wild speculation, fueled by humanity’s collective imagination about their primordial history until it spiraled out of control.

This was science on a scale that transcended species, surpassing the limits of time and physics. For many, it represented the ultimate fantasy—something worth pursuing at any cost.

And humanity had always been willing to pay any price for their dreams.