“Ahem!”
As if he had suddenly emerged from the surface of a dark lake, Xia De opened his eyes, then he sat up abruptly from the bed, coughing as he was choked by the dust.
"Damn, has this place not been cleaned in hundreds of years?"
There was almost no light in the room, only a little light from the gas lamp at the crack of the door. The air was extremely cold, and the smell of mold and dust was almost everywhere. This damp, cold and dilapidated environment formed by no one living there for many years was even more shocking than the lighthouse on the island in the middle of Lake Pantanal. Shade even wondered if he was sleeping in a cemetery.
"Silver Moon."
The gradually brightening golden spots on his body illuminated the bed beneath him, and the moonlight on his fingertips illuminated the entire room. Seeing the entire room, Xia De's eyes widened slightly.
This was actually the master bedroom of Room 1 on the second floor of No. 6 Saint Teresa Square where he had fallen asleep in real life. The evidence was in the decoration and furniture of the room.
However, compared to the bedroom in reality that had been renovated and had furniture replaced, the layout of the room in the dream was exactly the same as the layout of the room where Detective Sparrow died when he came to this world. Even the bed was the bed where Detective Sparrow died.
At this time, most of the furniture in the room was covered with white cloth, and Xia De also sat up from the white cloth covering the bed. However, in the same place in reality, the atmosphere was completely different.
He jumped off the bed and touched the white cloth, feeling a thick layer of dust. The blackened floor was covered with dust as Shade's feet touched the ground. He pulled open the white cloth on the bookshelf and saw a metal kettle and a black and white photo frame.
These furnishings were exactly the same as those in the master bedroom where Detective Sparrow lived before his death. Everything was almost exactly the same as Shad remembered.
"I'm sure this wasn't my dream, but how could Luvia have these things in her dream? I've never described the details of this bedroom to anyone else."
Maybe you can look somewhere else.
"She" whispered softly in Xia De's ear. Even in his dreams, "she" was still with Xia De.
In addition to the dust and white cloth, the difference between this and the bedroom in his memory is that the windows are completely blocked by layers of wooden boards, which is why there is almost no light inside. Shade has only seen this way of blocking windows in mental hospitals or buildings where epidemics broke out in this era.
"I expected Luvia's dream to be special, but it turned out to be like this..."
He approached the window, the moonlight from his fingertips illuminated the wall, and he saw the gray-green moss-like traces on the wall. Number 6, Saint Teresa's Square in this dream, was completely dilapidated. Even though he knew that this was a dream, as the owner of this house, a stranger who regarded this place as his only home, his feelings at this moment were quite complicated.
After confirming that there were no other noteworthy details in the bedroom, Shad pushed open the door and walked out of the room, then frowned as he saw the layout of the living room, which was also the layout of the detective agency in Sparrow's era.
All the furniture was covered with white cloth, and only the sofa and coffee table showed signs of use. All the windows that could be seen were still completely nailed shut from the inside with layers of wooden boards, and the fireplace in the living room, which had been repaired because of the coming winter, was also completely abandoned.
There was only one gas lamp on the wall, and the flame of the gas lamp was extremely weak. This was not only because the gas in the gas pipe was insufficient, but also because the lampshade seemed to have not been wiped for hundreds of years. The living room was also cold and damp. Apart from the warm feeling of home when Shade and Mia lived there, this place was no different from the haunted house in the urban legend that could be imagined.
In the dim light, Shade came to the wall next to the fireplace, frowned and looked at the traces of gray-green moss, then tried to push it, but couldn't find the secret door leading to Room 2. That secret door was also made during the renovation:
"It is indeed the layout of the detective agency during the Sparrow era. It looks like after the death of Detective Sparrow, this place was completely abandoned and no one used it. After the church reclaimed and inspected the dangerous house, it sealed it up."
Suddenly he turned his head and looked behind him, and in the dim light, he saw another door:
"If Detective Sparrow dies and no one inherits the house, then 'my' bedroom..."
Thinking of this, he turned around and walked towards the side bedroom, which was where the original owner had lived when Detective Sparrow was still alive. The door was not locked, but after pushing it open, he saw that it was a utility room, with a mess of old furniture and sundries piled up, of course, they were also covered with white cloth.
Xia De entered the room and tore off the white cloth, confirming that there was no bed where the bed was. This place was indeed used as a storage room and was definitely not the bedroom it once was.
"Everything is the same as before, except for the room where 'I' lived. There is no trace of 'me' anymore."
If this wasn't a dream, then this scene would be a bit too scary. The interestingness of Luvia's dream far exceeded Shade's expectations. He stood at the door of the side bedroom and thought for a while, then gently closed the door. He thought he could try to find out where the boundary of this dream was.
"Meow~"
The dilapidated haunted house was originally silent, but at this moment, a cat's meow was suddenly heard, and the meow was extremely familiar.
Xia De hurriedly turned and walked towards the door of Room No. 1. After opening the door, the corridor and the staircase were filled with depressing, eerie and terrifying darkness.
An orange and white cat jumped up from the darkness downstairs. The cat ignored Xia De who was standing at the door and continued to run to the third floor.
"Mia?"
Of course, the cat was just a creation in the dream. The real cat was still in the closet and had no direct contact with Shade. This dream belonged to Luvia alone.
Xia De raised his right hand slightly, illuminating the staircase from the second floor to the third floor. Just as he thought, the broken staircase was repaired by the church after he came to this world, and of course it was not in the repaired state in reality. Someone got a bunch of door panels from somewhere and forcibly glued them together to connect the second floor and the third floor.
The splicing of those door panels was extremely sloppy. If Xia De was not mistaken, that was the effect of the adhesion spell. He also knew this basic spell.
He climbed the door-panel stairs to the third floor, which was the same as before the repairs. There were mold spots everywhere, and there were no gas lamps on the walls. The door panels of the two rooms on the third floor were gone, and Xia De suspected that they were in the pile of door panels just now. The windows in the room were all sealed, and the dark appearance was extremely strange.
Although the cat that had run upstairs had disappeared, there were still cat paw prints on the dust on the ground. Following the paw prints, he came to the staircase leading to the attic in the corridor, and in the dark, Shade climbed up to the attic on the creaking old stairs.
There was no "Moonlight Water" or "Sunlight Fire" ceremony in the attic, and the piled up debris was covered with white cloth. Looking around, I still didn't see the cat, but there was a rusty metal triangular ladder on the east side of the attic, and the small door above the attic, which was only wide enough for one person to pass through, was opened.
The roofs of the houses around Saint Teresa's Square are all covered with tiles at an angle, which prevents residents from moving around or drying clothes on the roofs. In reality, Xia De has only climbed onto the roof once when the house was under repair to check for problems with the waterproofing layer.
Normally, an additional ladder is needed to get from the attic to the roof. In reality, in order to prevent the naughty cat from running up and falling from the roof, not only has the ladder been put away at home, but the small square door on the attic roof has also been locked by Shade.
"Luvia, are you on the rooftop now? Why is Mia also in this dream? Does Luvia have plans for Mia just like Resia?"
He came to the triangular ladder and looked up. From the square hole, he could see the strange sky that was dim and looked like an oil painting. It seemed that the outside world in the dream was just as abnormal as the house.
After hesitating for a while, Xia De climbed up with the help of the ladder. After he emerged from the roof, he finally saw the whole picture of this strange world in his dream.
In the dim yellow sky, countless fragments of building debris and corpses were floating. The sun in the distance was still suspended in the sky, but it was black, with a white edge and a red halo around it. The black sun was like a hole, with a fiery red line flowing downwards.
The world seemed to have turned brown, and the sand covered most of the city. Gravel was flying in the wind, and even the tiles on the roof were covered with a layer of fine sand. I thought that only the house was cold and damp like a haunted house, but when I went outside, I found that the temperature had even become colder.
Xia De climbed up to the roof from the attic and stood up to look at Tobysk. The once prosperous "Pearl of the North" now seemed to have experienced a century of vicissitudes. One-third of the buildings in the urban area were severely damaged, and the remaining buildings were also full of signs of dilapidation. If the roads were not blocked by collapsed buildings or sand piles, they were also full of garbage and debris. Occasionally, pedestrians could be seen wrapped in robes, hunched over and flashing quickly in the alleys.
Further away, the western part of the city looked like it had been hit by a giant meteorite, leaving behind a smoking crater, with black smoke rising into the terrifying dim yellow sky. In the northeast of the city, wriggling tentacles danced toward the sky from the smoke, but if you looked closely, they seemed to be just a few wisps of black smoke in the wind.
And in the far sky, surrounded by countless garbage and corpses, a building like a giant floating island was floating there silently. The island was wrapped in a storm, and black electric light flashed in the storm.
Compared with everything around it, Saint Teresa's Square is even the place with the best architectural integrity and the only shelter in this doomsday dream.