Uninvited Guest
In the luxurious bedroom, aubergine-colored European-style curtains hung quietly over the rosewood floor. A gust of cold wind blew in from the open terrace, lifting the curtains into violent arcs.
As the cool breeze entered, the air in the room suddenly turned cold.
On the large bed in the bedroom, a slight protrusion twisted restlessly.
The man lying on the bed had his eyes slightly closed, his eyelashes trembling continuously. His thick black eyebrows furrowed, and his face showed a hint of pain. Whether tormented by nightmares or disturbed by the sudden drop in temperature, he clearly was not sleeping soundly.
After Qiu Rui fell asleep, he kept dreaming. In the dream, he walked into a thick fog with white mist all around. He tried to find an exit but discovered that no matter how hard he tried, he kept going in circles.
Just as he was secretly growing anxious, he suddenly felt his body lighten and float halfway in the air. Then an inexplicable force pulled him along, drifting about like a leaf. Suspended in the air, he felt neither warmth nor cold, just floating lightly.
The surroundings were completely silent. He didn’t know how long he had been flying when his vision suddenly brightened. Red light flashed, illuminating the surrounding scene with exceptional clarity.
After observing, Qiu Rui discovered this appeared to be an apartment living room. At this moment, he was standing in the center of the living room, with five beams of red light forming a pentagram shape that enveloped him.
Finding himself in an unfamiliar place with bizarre and strange surroundings, after a moment of bewilderment, Qiu Rui decided to investigate first.
He took a few steps but found that whenever he approached the red light, he would be forced back by the activated light beams.
Qiu Rui tried many times, and it was the same each time. Helplessly, he could only accept reality.
Qiu Rui had a calm and composed personality, unflappable in the face of change. He sat quietly in the empty living room, looking at the red light emanating from the pentagram, his sword-like eyebrows tightly furrowed. He pondered silently—was everything now happening in a dream, or did it exist in reality?
If it was a dream, why would it be so real?
If it was reality, who exactly had trapped him here, and what did they want to do?
Qiu Rui closed his eyes and sat quietly, his fair fingertips lightly tapping his knee. After thinking it over repeatedly, he couldn’t come up with any valuable information.
Qiu Rui thought the formation would disappear after daybreak. He stood up and tried to walk out of the controlled area, only to discover that just like the previous night, once he approached the red line, he would be forced back by the surging red light.
Jiang Yi had a habit—no matter how late he stayed up writing, he would always wake up promptly at 7 AM. During university, to snatch the time-limited and quantity-limited green pepper chicken pancakes in the school cafeteria, he, being a foodie, developed such a good habit. Accumulated day by day, his biological clock formed and had continued until now.
At 7 o’clock sharp, Jiang Yi opened his drowsy eyes, yawned, and sat up from the bed. In the gap before getting out of bed, he grabbed his T-shirt and put it on. Rubbing his sleepy eyes, he pulled open the door.
Jiang Yi froze…
There was an uninvited guest in his living room.
The person had their back to him, sitting quietly within the marriage fortune formation. A pentagram pattern woven from red threads surrounded them.
Jiang Yi’s heart skipped a beat. What was this situation?
Home invasion robbery? Would there also be murder to silence witnesses?
Although Jiang Yi was nervous, the instinct for survival still made him calm down in an instant.
He didn’t know what this stranger sitting in his living room planned to do. If they had malicious intent and also carried a weapon, how could he, Jiang Yi, a mere scholar without the strength to truss a chicken, contend with them? At that point, he would really become meat on a chopping board, at the mercy of others.
Jiang Yi planned not to alarm this person first, to retreat to the bedroom, get his phone, and call the police. Having decided this, he quietly retreated toward the bedroom.
However, his slippers failed him—one didn’t stay on properly, his foot slipped, and he nearly fell headfirst. He steadied himself against the wall, barely managing to stabilize his body.
But this action alarmed the uninvited guest in the living room.