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The dark was not like closing one's eyes.
It was weight. A pressure that clung to Zheng Yu's skin, as if tar had seeped over him and solidified. He could not feel the ground beneath his feet, but he was standing. He could not breathe, yet air rasped into his lungs.
A weak light pulsed ahead, jagged and uncertain, like a television set about to die.
He moved toward it without thinking. His footsteps made no sound, but each one seemed to reverberate inside his skull. The light thickened, and soon a rectangular screen floated before him, its glow pale enough to make his fingers look corpse-like.
The words appeared slowly, letter by letter, as though carved by an invisible blade.
「Do you wish to experience true infinite horror?」
He stared at it. His throat twitched, dry.
If this were the kind of story he used to read late at night, the protagonist would refuse, or ask questions, or scream at the void. Zheng Yu did none of those things. He raised his hand. His fingertip touched the screen.
The words shattered like glass.
The fragments whirled around him in silence, cutting through the darkness until they pierced his body, his eyes, his skull. He tried to scream but the shards poured into his mouth like sand.
Then—impact.
He gasped and slammed against wet asphalt. Pain shot up his arm. His cheek burned from the scrape. For the first time he felt the weight of his body again, every rib and tendon alive.
Zheng Yu rolled onto his back, chest heaving. Above him stretched a sky of boiling gray clouds, sagging low, as if ready to crush the ruined city beneath. Buildings leaned at crooked angles, windows shattered into black holes. Rusted streetlamps blinked weakly, buzzing like dying flies.
He coughed, tasting iron.
And then, numbers.
Lines of trajectory sketched themselves in his vision, neat as chalk on a blackboard. Arcs of motion, probabilities of impact, the cold geometry of survival. His ability had awakened without warning: Heavenly Calculation.
Zheng Yu pressed a palm to his temple. The diagrams faded, leaving behind a thin pain, like needles scratching the inside of his skull.
Something shuffled at the corner of the street.
He froze.
From behind a toppled vending machine crawled a figure. Its limbs bent wrong, too long, as if dislocated and never reset. Skin hung in gray folds, and the face—if it was a face—looked melted, with teeth set directly into exposed flesh.
The stench hit him before the sound: rot laced with vinegar.
It turned toward him.
Zheng Yu's thoughts narrowed, collapsing into a single flashing line:
Trajectory: 0.8 seconds. Path: left lunge. Counter: sidestep right, strike head. Probability of success: 67%.
He moved before fear could paralyze him. The thing lunged exactly as calculated, and he swung the broken length of pipe he hadn't realized was in his hand. The strike crunched into its temple. Black fluid sprayed.
The creature collapsed, twitching.
Zheng Yu staggered back, chest shuddering, pipe slick with filth. He waited for triumph, relief—any of the emotions he'd once imagined when reading horror stories.
Instead, there was only the certainty of more shuffling sounds, echoing from the alleys, the buildings, the drains.
They were coming.
The city had already noticed him.
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