Chapter 6

Every member in team China aside from Xuan, Heng and YinKong basically was assigned to stay on guard in the hotel. They gathered in a room. Zheng brought out the charms that would self-ignite as supernatural beings approached. Though whether these charms were effective in this world was another question.
Heng and YinKong’s role was to be Xuan’s bodyguard. They headed to the dealers in town to seek housing that were on sale or for rent. They had no lack of money. The millions they hacked could easily buy any house without an issue.

The sky outside the hotel was shining with sunlight. The crowded streets seemed more like the city than it was a town. The terrorizing atmosphere disappeared as they saw so many people walking along the street.

Heng let out a long breath and said, “Feels so much better in crowded place. The hotel felt extremely ghastly. It was like there’s a hand waiting behind me for a chance to attack. YinKong, did you have this feeling?”

YinKong didn’t turn to look at him while she replied, “I am always prepared for an attack coming from behind. Sneak attacks are an assassin’s specialty, also the thing we feared most.”

Heng gave her a bitter smile, “Pretend I never asked. What about you, Xuan?”

Xuan responded, “Oh.” Then walked to the crowd without another word.

YinKong frowned and followed after him.

(Well, I did ask too much. One’s a cold assassin. The other doesn’t even have a personality of his own. It’s better to just keep my mouth shut.) Heng smiled bitterly. He originally wanted to alleviate the dense atmosphere between them. He would not want to bring that ghastly pressure from the hotel when they finally came to a crowded area. The movie was scary enough and HongLu’s words tightened their nerves. It felt as though they could get killed any moment. Heng was scared. His body wasn’t strong. His strength came from his bow and arrows. If this was really a dream, his bow might not even work.

(But what should we do? This is A Nightmare on Elm Street. If I enter the despair dream, Freddy’s going to torture me. The scissor like gloves will cut open my body. Blood will flow out.) Heng could not stop his body from trembling as he was imagining. However, the piece of fortitude he possessed allowed him to follow Xuan with firm steps. His soul became tougher after he passed the illusion in the Lord of the Rings. He still couldn’t overcome the memory left from his childhood but he had taken a leap forward.

“Why are there so many people?” Heng scratched his head.

As he had expected, neither person in the front answered him. As he looked ahead more carefully, he suddenly discovered he had lost sight of them. He didn’t catch up to Xuan and YinKong in this crowded street, which was ridiculous. How could he have lost track given his senses and speed?

Heng didn’t know whether to feel mad or laugh it off. He rushed forward a few steps. Xuan and YinKong were still nowhere to be seen. Panic began to seeped into his mind. He jumped up two meters high in an attempt to look for them from above.

“Xuan, YinKong, you two…” Heng yelled as he jumped. Before he could finish the sentence, he saw a familiar figure walked into an alley. He froze as though something struck his mind. Somehow, he seemed to have forgotten HongLu’s warning. He ran toward the alley without thinking. In that instant, he felt he saw the woman dearest to him. He saw Min Yanwei entered the alley!

A chilling sensation swept across Heng’s head the moment he rushed into the alley. He suddenly remembered what HongLu had told him. Then he realized he wasn’t standing in an alley. This was in the middle of a road. A dark sky replaced the bright sunlight during noon. Heng turned his head around. The entrance to the alley was gone. All he saw was an extension of the road.

(Damn it. Did I get deceived? Freddy has targeted me? Is this… the despair dream?) Heng was panicking and scared but his experiences in the battlefield allowed him to bring out the silver bow and arrow. He placed a +4 enhanced arrow on the bow. Even Zheng had to be cautious of him in this state.

While Heng was ready for a fight, a light was shone on him from behind. He immediately turned around and fired the arrow at the light source. Clank! He saw a sedan stopped not far away. The arrow pierced through the headlight of the car.

A few seconds later, a beautiful woman in a suit walked out of the car. She looked at Heng in a surprise and said, “Heng? Is that you? Why are you here? And why did you break my headlight?”

Heng squinted the eyes that were irritated by the car’s headlight. The sight of this woman halted every word he had in his throat. She was his lover, Min Yanwei. The person who he abandoned and ran away from due to being scared. Heng never imagined he would meet her again in this place.

“The demon? Freddy?” Anger rushed up Heng’s head. His eyes turned red and he shouted, “Fuck! Who gives you the right to turn into her? Do you think I won’t shoot you like this?”

Yanwei expressed confusion and worry. She ran a few steps toward Heng but he stopped her. The enchanted arrow in his hand began to glow. The arrow was ready to fire. Yet, as his fingers turned pale, he just couldn’t let the arrow go. He and Yanwei stood there, facing each other.

Yanwei said in a worried tone, “Heng, let me come near you. I will drive you to the hospital. Are you not feeling well?”

“Shut… Shut up! Freddy! Don’t fucking talk in her tone! Don’t fucking look into my heart! I will shoot you right here!” Heng yelled with a hint of insanity. However, his fingers were trembling. His heart was struggling. He knew this was an illusion. He knew this woman was the demon. But he couldn’t let the arrow off.

Yanwei clenched her teeth then walked toward Heng. Just then, five men came out from behind the trees to the side. They approached Heng and Yanwei with a laughter.

Heng’s heart beat violently. He instantly yelled, “Run! Why are you still here? Get on your car and run!”

Yanwei looked behind as though she was confused. She saw two men ran over to her. The first man grabbed her and the second man charged at Heng.

“Go to hell!” Heng couldn’t contain himself anymore as he released the arrow. A light flashed across. The man’s head exploded. The headless corpse rolled next to Heng then stopped motionless.

Heng grabbed several arrows. He shouted as he charged toward Yanwei and the other men. He knew this scene too well. Taking the man that he just killed away, this was the turning point of his life. There was no more Freddy in his mind. There was no more a Nightmare on Elm Street. All that was left was to kill these men, to save Yanwei. He only had this one thought.

Heng drew an arrow, ready to shoot. Yet, he suddenly realized the silver bow vanished, the arrow vanished. He had nothing in hand. The men’s fists struck toward him. The first strike hit his nose and crushed his nasal bone. The rest of the men surrounded him and began beating him.

(Don’t… Don’t let it happen again. Don’t!)

In the scene in his memory, he would run away. Heng wasn’t thinking about running at this moment. Yet, after the beating, he was growing further and further away from Yanwei and the men.

By the time he heard Yanwei’s heartbroken cries, tears had drenched his face.

“I hate you! Heng! You destroyed me! It was all your fault! You weak and despicable being! I hate you forever!”

Heng felt something inside his heart shattered. He stood there motionless, tears still rolling down his face. The corpse next to him stood up while laughing. He was wearing a black hat and a black and white striped shirt. He simply stood next to Heng and laughed hideously.

The remaining members of team China waited in the hotel. They crammed into a room due to the lack of larger suites. The season was fortunately refreshing. A cool breeze circulated through the room once they opened the windows. It would have been disastrous if the season were summer. The air would smell stale from closing the windows in order to turn on the air conditioner.
The two new girls didn’t want to stay alongside so many men. However, they also feared Freddy’s attack. They grabbed Lan and headed to the window side. The girls chatted among themselves while they bathed in the cool breeze. The men also converse topics they were interested in a low volume. Kampa and Zero talked about improving their weapons. LiuYu, WangXia, and TengYi talked about the possibilities of abilities from novels. The scene looked peaceful and no one was particularly worried.

HongLu suddenly said to Zheng, “Hey, I want to ask you something.”

Zheng was meditating at the time. He opened his eyes as he heard HongLu’s voice and saw HongLu staring at him with a frown. Zheng asked, “Sure, go ahead.”

HongLu breathed out then said, “Everything I am about to say assumes that Freddy is listening. So some things, I can’t speak in direct words. You have to think to get the meaning. The first point is there are two criteria for any person to have a nightmare. One, the origin of the nightmare. In reality, this origin comes from deep within a person’s inner conscious. It might be a physical stimulation, such as an urge to use the restroom could provoke a dream where you are being flooded. Or a prickle on your finger could provoke a dream where your hand gets eaten by a monster.”

Zheng said, “I know this but what does it have to do with our situation?”

HongLu seemed stuck. He thought for quite some time before continuing. “That is the origin for a nightmare in reality. However, we are already in a dream, which also means we are inside the movie world. I speculate there is also an origin for this dream. It is the center of this series of nightmares.”

Zheng said with enthusiasm, “Does that mean we can leave this nightmare once we find out its origin?”

HongLu shook his head and said, “No. The origin is the origin. Leaving is leaving. Our thoughts flow in momentum. The nightmare won’t simply vanish when the pain on your finger stops. Your brain will continue on with the nightmare by itself. Such as you lose sensation of your hand and then a pack of monsters chase after you. We have to make the nightmare vanish along with finding out its origin.”

Zheng muttered, “By waking people up?”

“There’s another method to make the dream vanish aside from waking people up.” HongLu sighed.

He looked at Zheng with a peculiar gaze. After a while, he moved his eyes away and sighed deeply again. “I have told you, our conversation assumes that Freddy is listening. I can’t tell you the details. What should be said has been said. I have fulfilled my responsibility. Lastly… our lives are placed on your hands, Zheng. Thanks to you, our team made it through so many movies. So let fate decide our lives. Save us if you can. Otherwise… we will leave everything to fate.”

Zheng was more confused than before. He stared at HongLu for a while then said, “Your words are too strange. It’s on the same tone as Xuan. I really can’t get what you people are thinking… Speaking of which, I wonder if their mission is going well.”

“That’s the situation. The two of us rented a house on the east of the town. The house is fully furnished. The first floor is large enough to fit all thirteen of us.” Xuan spoke while holding a piece of document.

Zheng laughed. “Great. I was worried since it took you so long. Since the house can fit all thirty of us… thirteen… Eh? Thirteen?”

The rest of the team looked to Zheng in confusion. Zheng counted them one by one then yelled, “Heng? Xuan! YinKong! Where’s Heng? Where did you lose him?”

Xuan and YinKong were puzzled. YinKong said, “Who’s Heng? Have you seen someone not from our team again?”

Zheng took a deep breath and looked over the people around him. These people were here with him the whole day. There was no demon that manipulated them. They should remember Heng.

“Heng? No. We don’t have this person in our team. Team China had ten people then we get three newbies. So we should have thirteen people.” Zero, Kampa and WangXia all verified.

Zheng was speechless. He asked the rest of the team but the answers were the same. There was no such person in team China. Either he had gone insane and caused false memory or the whole team had gone insane.

“Heng vanished. Do magical weapons not work on Freddy? What should we do? How did Freddy make Heng disappear? Is Heng still alive? Why have everyone forgotten him?”

Zheng was feeling worse and worse in this world. If there was one person that he feared, it could only be his clone. He would not back off from fighting anyone else. He had the strength to not lose in such a baffling manner. Yet, it was the unknown that struck the most terror into people, because you never knew what would happen. You would feel baffled.

This was the unknown Zheng was facing. Teammates disappearing one by one and the remaining members lost their memories of those who disappeared. The stress weighing on him grew with each disappearance. He felt as though he would vanish in the next second. All his teammates had died once. They couldn’t be revived again. Disappearnce equted to eternal death. Those who once fought alongside him so suddenly disappeared. Worse yet, forgotten by their comrades.

It was dusk when Zheng led the team out of the hotel. Everyone stayed close to each other because Zheng affirmed there was a person named Heng. He disappeared when he went out with Xuan and YinKong. Zheng required everyone to stay close and yell if anything out of the ordinary happened. This was how they would prevent another disapperance. He didn’t want to see another one… That feeling was terrible.

“This is the house?” Zheng asked as he looked at the ordinary house in front.

YinKong nodded, “Yes. Xuan and I checked it out before going back. That was why we took so long. The first floor has a big living room, enough to fit all thirteen of us. It has three floors. The upper floors can also accommodate all of us.”

Zheng nodded and went in. Twelve people followed behind him. He was slightly relieved since nothing happened on their way here. Night was gradually coming. Even though death could come at any time in this world, bright daylight still felt safer to them. Everyone rushed into the lighted house as darkness began to overtake the sky. This was perhaps human nature.

“Wah!” The two new girls exclaimed. The house looked ordinary from the outside but was gorgeously decorated on the inside. It rivaled the rooms of the wealthy portrayed in movies. The girls obviously loved the house. They asked YinKong the cost of renting this house.

But Zheng stopped them. “You are a member of the teams in God’s realm. Money is useless to you from this point. If you want gold, platinum, diamond, just exchange it in God’s dimension with a minute amount of points. You can even travel back to the real world and be a super human or even God in that world. Why bother with money?”

Zheng then assigned the team members’ tasks. He brought out the charms, incenses, and weapons. He told everyone they must stay in the living room. If they had to go somewhere, someone else must accompany them. He also brought out the eight little flags.

“Come! Freddy! If you dare to come out I will destroy you!”