June 27th, 1349 of the Fifth Epoch. The evening in Tingen City, Loen Kingdom, remained as ordinary as always.
Crimson moonlight illuminated the streets without streetlights, and the cool night breeze provided the most basic assistance to pedestrians.
At the location of the Church of the God of Steam and Machinery in Tingen City, Nimrod stood brazenly atop the mechanical holy emblem on the highest floor, directing his gaze toward a particular place in the city.
It was an old row house apartment, situated on a narrow street where dirty water flowed freely and debris was scattered about.
Adjusting his monocle, Nimrod's eyes lit up with mysterious runes. His vision penetrated the apartment building's walls, reaching a room on the third floor where he saw a young man collapsed face-down on a desk, blood flowing from his head.
"Counting the time, the nesting doll should be born soon. The Night's gaze will also turn here shortly. Staying here any longer might draw Her attention.
I should make some preparations. Though it's a bit risky, I can't miss the nesting doll's birth."
With a thought, Nimrod's entire form vanished, entering the gaps between worlds where only deities wielding relevant authority could observe him and track his movements.
And Night clearly lacked such authority - even if She had it, it wasn't Her area of focus.
Pain! Such pain! My head hurts so much!
The bizarre dream filled with whispers shattered rapidly. Zhou Mingrui, who had gone to sleep early tonight, felt his head throbbing abnormally, as if someone had directly smacked his skull with a brick.
The intense pain made him want to turn over and sit up to check what was wrong with him, but to his horror, he found he couldn't move his limbs at all - his body seemed to have lost control.
"It seems I haven't really woken up yet - I'm still dreaming... Maybe I'll experience the situation where I think I've woken up but am actually still asleep. Is this sleep paralysis?"
Having had similar experiences before, Zhou Mingrui struggled to focus his will, trying to completely break free from the dark and hallucinatory shackles.
However, in the half-awake state, his will always drifted like smoke, difficult to control and gather. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't help but let his thoughts scatter and random ideas surface.
"Damn, I only had a few drinks. I was fine when I lay down earlier - how did my head suddenly start hurting? And it hurts so badly!
Could it be a brain hemorrhage or something? But I was drinking beer - where would such a strong aftereffect come from?
Shit, am I going to die young like this?
Wake up! Wake up!"
Wave after wave of pain allowed Zhou Mingrui to gradually accumulate ethereal strength. Finally, he gathered himself and straightened his back, opened his eyes, and completely escaped the half-awake state.
Struggling to stand up from the chair, Zhou Mingrui first gasped for breath, then his blurred vision gradually cleared.
Looking ahead, Zhou Mingrui saw a natural wood-colored desk in front of him. In the center lay an open notebook with rough, yellowed pages. At the top, strange alphabetic text wrote a sentence in deep black ink, still wet and prominent.
To the left of the notebook, near the edge of the desk, was a neat stack of books - about seven or eight volumes. To their right, gray-white pipes were embedded in the wall, connected to a wall-mounted gas lamp.
This lamp had a very Western classical style, about half the size of an adult's head. The inner layer was transparent glass, with the outer part surrounded by black metal in a grid pattern.
Below the extinguished wall lamp, a black ink bottle was shrouded in faint red light, its raised surface forming a vague angel pattern.
In front of the ink bottle, to the right of the notebook, lay a deep-colored fountain pen with a round belly. The nib glinted with a faint light, and the cap rested beside a brass-colored revolver.
Revolver? A gun? Zhou Mingrui was completely stunned. Everything before his eyes was so unfamiliar - nothing resembled his room in the slightest!
In shock and bewilderment, he noticed that the desk, notebook, ink bottle, and revolver were all covered with a layer of crimson "gauze" - light streaming in from the window.
"It doesn't hurt as much as before, but my head still feels like there's a dull knife slowly cutting through it...
Is this someone's reality show? Did Old Shi and Old Lu set this up for me? I wondered why they poured so much alcohol into me today."
Just as he was about to reach up and rub his aching head, Zhou Mingrui suddenly froze in place.
Through the window, his gaze fell upon the night sky. To his amazement, against the black "velvet curtain," a crimson full moon hung high, peacefully illuminating everything.
"A red moon? How is this possible?"
An inexplicable panic suddenly surged in his heart. His legs, which had just stood up but weren't fully straightened, experienced another wave of head pain. This caused him to momentarily lose strength, and his center of gravity involuntarily dropped, his posterior hitting the hard wooden chair seat heavily.
"Smack!"
Enduring the pain in his backside, Zhou Mingrui used his hands to support himself on the desk and stood up again. In his panic, he turned around and began to seriously examine his surroundings.
This was a small room with brown doors on both left and right sides. Against the opposite wall stood a wooden bunk bed.
Between it and the left door was a cabinet - open compartments on top, five drawers below.
At the edge of the cabinet, at about a person's height, gray-white pipes were similarly embedded in the wall, connected to a strange mechanical device with gears and bearings partially exposed.
In the right corner near the desk were items resembling a coal stove, along with soup pots, iron pots, and other kitchen utensils.
Past the right door was a full-length mirror with two cracks, its wooden base decorated with simple, modest patterns.
Seeing the full-length mirror, Zhou Mingrui's gaze lingered on it. His mouth opened slightly, his pupils contracting sharply.
In the crimson moonlight, he saw himself in the mirror - his current self:
Black hair, brown eyes, linen shirt, thin build, ordinary features with deeper contours, giving off a strong scholarly air - just like his former self when he was still in college, before entering society...
"What the hell is this? Is this me? How did I become so young?"
Zhou Mingrui immediately sucked in a cold breath. Without feeling pleased about contributing to global warming, countless helpless and chaotic speculations flooded his mind.
The revolver on the desk, the room decorated in European classical style, his younger, changed appearance, and that crimson moon so different from Earth's - everything pointed to one thing!
"I've transmigrated. I transmigrated just from sleeping and having a headache? No, this must still be a dream. I remember reading online about dream-within-dream phenomena - this must be a dream within a dream."
Zhou Mingrui's mouth gradually opened wider, feeling this was all unreal. As someone who grew up reading web novels and often fantasized about such things, when it actually happened, he found it hard to accept.
After several dozen seconds, Zhou Mingrui dismissed the idea that he was still dreaming. The pain in his head persisted, and his sensations of the external world were so real - completely different from dreaming.
Calm down, calm down, calm down... Taking several deep breaths, Zhou Mingrui, his face full of bitterness, could only try to keep himself from appearing so panicked - at least not on the surface.