Chapter 2 The Stone in the Dream and Avatar

There was a constant buzzing sound in my ears, like a fly buzzing around.

But it's winter now, so there shouldn't be any flies.

Concentrating intently, the fly began to explain the power-reduction formula.

Her vision gradually focused, and the draft paper became clearer in her field of vision. She was still sitting in the classroom, the math teacher emphasizing something on the podium. Her head was still a little dizzy, and she was afraid that if she continued like this, she would suffer a nervous breakdown.

The same scene played out again.

Xia Zhu reached into the empty space on the table to pull out her phone to check, but suddenly realized that her left hand seemed to be holding something.

It's hard, cool, and a little rough to the touch.

She loosened her fingers, and a jade-like stone lay quietly in her palm, its irregular edges the culprit that had been hurting her.

If she's truly awake this time, it means she brought a real stone out of her dream, which is incredibly bizarre. But if she's still dreaming, when will this ever end?

She gripped the green stone tightly again, carefully feeling its coolness and protrusions. Her breathing was regular, and her heartbeat was normal. Turning her head to the left, she could see the playground below through the window. The students having physical education class looked like ants, running in circles on the arc track. From her perspective, it looked like they were conducting some kind of scientific experiment to prove the intelligence and cognitive dimensions of this species.

It's a rare beautiful day; the sun shines gently on the earth. The evergreen trees shimmer their leaves in the breeze, and the classroom is enveloped in a drowsy atmosphere, making the teacher's voice seem even quieter.

She looked down at her smartphone; the screen displayed a low battery warning and today's date.

October 31, 2025.

There are no problems, everything is normal.

If the date is the only indicator of whether she is in a dream, then she should have already woken up.

He put the stone back into his coat pocket, and the bell rang at the right time. It was the last class of the morning, and the teacher would certainly not extend the class.

I put on my coat, took a few books from the table, and squeezed through the desks. Some students who brought their own lunch boxes chose to stay in the classroom to eat lunch. The smell of the food was so real that it made me nauseous.

She didn't plan to go to the cafeteria and intended to go back to the girls' dormitory first.

Today is Friday, and she has a two-day weekend, so she needs to go home. Neither dreams nor stones can stop Xia Zhu from going home.

She lives in a town 200 kilometers away from the city. To get home, she has to transfer once by bus and once by private van, and then walk for half an hour after getting off the bus to get home.

If I don't go back to the dormitory to pack my things soon, I might miss the last bus back to the county.

Of course, compared to something illusory, someone could easily block Xia Zhu's path at this moment.

Ye Li stood there with her arms crossed, the desks only wide enough for one person to pass through. She stared coldly at Xia Zhu, showing no intention of letting her pass.

Xia Zhu could only stop and meet Ye Li's eyes. The latter lowered his eyelids and scanned Xia Zhu from head to toe, from her neat bangs to her thick black-rimmed glasses, her faded school uniform jacket, and her equally old sneakers.

Ye Li seemed like a game NPC whose dialogue had been triggered. She wrinkled her pretty nose, and that familiar sarcastic remark came out of her mouth again.

"Xia Zhu, you smell awful! What exactly do you smell like?"

"Mugwort," Xia Zhu answered calmly. Inside her clothes was a mosquito-repelling sachet made by her grandfather, containing mugwort, atractylodes, and dried tangerine peel ground into powder. She wore it all year round, and the scent made her feel at ease.

"Hmph." Ye Li snorted and squeezed past Xia Zhu.

Of course she knew it was the smell of mugwort, which was the thing she hated most.

Ye Li walked to her seat. The takeout she had ordered in advance had already been picked up and placed on the table. She plopped down in the chair and caught a glimpse of a pink floral-patterned bento box wrapped in a cloth on the table. It was a lunch prepared by a nutritionist.

The pink floral print was so irritating that she pulled the lunchbox out, threw it into her backpack, and zipped it up tightly, not wanting her to see it again.

Enveloped in an aura of dislike, Xia Zhu had already reached the door. Ye Li, seeing her departing figure, was so angry that she couldn't eat anything.

After tidying up her desk and being blocked by her classmate who was sensitive to smells for a while, the people in the corridor had become sparse. Their classroom was on the third floor, and there was a tall cedar tree in the courtyard on the side of the corridor. The third floor was just close to the crown of the tree.

As you walk past the tree canopy, a striking broad leaf falls from the cluster of blue-green needle-like leaves. The veins on the leaf are unique, and when the wind blows, it flutters behind Xia Zhu and drifts through the long corridor.

The carriage swayed gently, filled with a human scent that had been filtered repeatedly. Winter nights come early, and both inside and outside the carriage were already shrouded in darkness, with only the white light reflecting from a few cell phones.

Xia Zhu sat in the last row, a spot she almost always sat in whenever she came home.

Taking advantage of the school's weekends, I would make this long trek every two weeks, otherwise I would stay in the school dormitory due to time constraints. Although the journey was long and tedious, traversing mountains and valleys was exhausting, and there was no one waiting for me at the end of the mountain road.

But she will still go back.

Like a habit, she bought a ticket, boarded the train, and spent three hours drowsily on the train before returning to her familiar yet unfamiliar house. In winter, the mountain roads were rugged, requiring only a flashlight; in summer, the sunset offered a welcome respite. Even though she could only stay at home for a whole day before having to go through the process of returning to school on the weekend, this short time was enough for Xia Zhu to sort out her feelings.

No matter how far she travels, she still loves to return to the bare earth and to nature, which is full of life regardless of whether it is withered or flourishing.

Grandpa once said that she was like a blade of grass, seemingly weak but able to withstand wildfires. As long as the spring breeze blows, she will always be able to grow again next year. Xia Zhu agreed wholeheartedly.

Grass should grow in the mountains and fields.

It's almost the end of the year. After the New Year and the start of the new school year, she will have to take the college entrance examination again when summer comes.

Yes, once again.

Xia Zhu is an outstanding student who excels in both character and academics and is repeating a year of high school.

In front of her teacher and the elderly neighbor, she said that she missed the exam because she overslept, but the truth is that on the day of the exam, Xia Zhu got up early, fed the chickens, went to the fields, and did everything she should and shouldn't have done, but she didn't go to the exam hall.

The homeroom teacher was heartbroken. Xia Zhu was her prized student, and she was counting on her to win the title of top scorer in the city, which would help her in the selection of an outstanding teacher. If she knew that the candidate for the top scorer had deliberately not gone, she would definitely faint on the spot, angry that this stubborn rock was so obstinate and wouldn't understand.

Thinking of the upcoming college entrance exam, Xia Zhu's fingers began to spasm again. She crossed her arms and tucked them into her sleeves, resting her head against the condensed car window, the headlights outside like fireflies. The man next to her woke up after a few naps, finally stopping his deafening snoring, and then started scrolling through short videos on his phone with the speakers playing loudly.

First came exaggerated laughter, then some pop music with indistinct lyrics. The man's fingers impatiently scrolled across the screen, finally stopping at a low, indistinct humming.

The song was one that the old-fashioned Xia Zhu was familiar with.

"That day, my grandfather took me to see a Peking Opera."

"I saw a lot of painted faces on the stage."

The man's phone seemed to be malfunctioning, as the sound, accompanied by a crackling electrical noise, echoed throughout the carriage.

"Dou Erdun with the blue face stole the imperial horse..."

"Guan Yu with a red face fights in Changsha..."

Amidst the jubilant opera singing, Xia Zhu slumped against the car window and fell asleep.

Thankfully, she didn't have any more tormenting dreams this time. After a long and tiring journey, she finally arrived home. It was too dark to see anything, and she was so tired that she couldn't wait to boil water to wash up. She quickly ate a quick meal with the ice-cold water and lay down on her small bed. Before closing her eyes, she mentally checked that all the doors and windows in the house were locked.

Not content with having several thick quilts on top of her, she also put her school uniform jacket on top of her. The countryside night was quiet as still water, and she quickly fell into a deep sleep.

I don't know how much time passed, maybe a few hours, maybe a few minutes, but a string of songs drifted into the silence and entered Xia Zhu's ears.

"The blue-faced one, Dou Erdun, stole the imperial horse..."

She regained consciousness almost instantly.

My eyes had long since adjusted to the darkness after I woke up. The bluish moonlight shone through the gauze curtains and spilled onto the floor. The desk under the window and the washstand next to it stood clearly in their respective positions in the darkness, with nothing else out of the ordinary.

She initially thought she had misheard. Perhaps the two strange dreams she had in class that day had made her a little sensitive and fragile. However, this was the first time she had encountered something like this. Fortunately, Xia Zhu was relatively slow to process things other than studying, and she could eat, drink, and sleep normally as long as she could get out of it.

Staring at the blue lily print on the sheer curtains, my thoughts drifted away. Just as I was about to drift off to sleep again, a song suddenly rang in my ears.

"The blue-faced one, Dou Erdun, stole the imperial horse."

The voice was sharp and piercing, yet carried a sly smile, though the pronunciation was unclear, like a toddler learning to speak.

Xia Zhu woke up with a start again. She was certain that this time she heard it clearly and it wasn't a hallucination. What was worse, the singing seemed to be coming from under the bed beneath her.

The quilt felt incredibly heavy, making it hard for her to breathe. Her feet were ice-cold, and her blood seemed to have frozen, unable to reach her limbs. In the darkness, all she could do was stare intently at the ceiling above her head, trying to calm her breathing. She strained her ears, trying to discern whether there was another person in the room by listening for the slightest sounds.

Listen attentively.

A sound.

Two sounds.

Right under the bed, just a bed board away, was hiding a person, or something else, breathing heavily.

The most important thing now is to figure out how to deal with it. She knows that her fragile wooden bed will make a creaking sound even if she moves her body slightly, so for now she can only stay still and lie on the bed with her limbs stiff, pretending that she is not awake yet.

The door to the room was just three steps away, but out of habit, Xia Zhu always carefully locked it before going to bed, something her grandfather had repeatedly emphasized. The locked door and windows didn't appear to have been damaged; how did the thing under the bed get in?

With no tools for self-defense at hand, Xia Zhu was imagining the possibility of quickly jumping off the bed and rushing to the door to unlock it and escape when a hand suddenly grabbed the edge of the bed beside her head.

She felt her breath catch for a few seconds, but thankfully she regained her composure instantly, biting down hard on the soft flesh on the side of her mouth to keep herself from screaming.

It was a blue hand covered in long hair.

The nails were long and sharp, with dark red grime hidden in the crevices.

At this crucial moment, Xia Zhu was even able to think of Avatar.

"whee."

A furry head poked out from under the bed, opening its large red mouth to chuckle. Its face, also blue, was covered with sparse, long brown hair, and its mouth was enormous, revealing a set of sharp, broken teeth before it covered its lips.

Its eyes were round and without eyelids, with the whites of its eyes making up two-thirds of its entire eyeball. It met Xia Zhu's gaze on the bed.

"Dou Erdun." The blue-haired monster grinned, his words indistinct, mimicking the melody of the song.

"Stealing the imperial horse!" It suddenly stretched out its sharp claws towards Xia Zhu.

Great, it's not an Avatar, and it's not a human.

As she thought about it, she mustered all her strength and punched the blue-faced monster in the face, then quickly threw off the covers and jumped out of bed.

The blue-faced monster seemed surprised that Xia Zhu would punch it. It was stunned by the blow and its body twisted and stuck between the floor and the bed, maintaining this strange posture.

While he was still loading, Xia Zhu quickly turned the door lock, removed the hinge, and rushed into the hall.

Oh no! She thought to herself as she ran, but the main hall door was locked.

"Steal the Imperial Horse!" The blue-faced monster finally finished loading and chased after them.

The front door was locked from the inside with a key, which was currently lying in his coat on the bed in the bedroom. Xia Zhu could only grab the shovel by the door and turn to confront the blue-faced monster who had chased after him.

Under the bright blue moonlight, the blue-faced monster stood by the bedroom door, and this time Xia Zhu could finally see its full appearance.

Its upper body resembled that of a middle-aged man with a beer belly, its bulging belly revealing a protruding navel, except the skin was blue. The monster's upper and lower body were strikingly different; its lower body consisted of only one thin leg, standing on one foot with the toes turned backward, seemingly struggling to support its round body.

Mandrill.

Goosebumps rose on her arms as she remembered seeing something similar in a book.

It has one leg and one heel, a blue face and a hairy body, and when it laughs, it covers its eyes with its lips; this is the mountain demon.

Xia Zhu gripped the cold shovel tightly in her hand. The mandrill leaned against the door, revealing its bright red gums and grinning. Although it didn't cover its eyes with its lips, it was humming off-key operatic raps in a strange manner, mimicking human language.

It compared itself to Dou Erdun from the song.

Xia Zhu desperately wanted to rush into the room to check her phone again, to confirm whether she was still dreaming, and whether risking her life to fight the monster would wake her up or lead to her heroic sacrifice.

The mandrill by the door wouldn't give her time to confirm. It lowered its waist, bent its knees, and with a burst of energy, leaped in front of Xia Zhu, who was originally at least four or five meters away from it.

Seeing the mandrill's claws swinging towards her, she swung her shovel and smashed it hard on the monster's head, but it easily blocked it. Xia Zhu realized that even though she exercised regularly to strengthen her body and was skilled at everything from climbing mountains to swimming in rivers since she was a child, there was still a huge difference in physical strength compared to the blue-faced monster in front of her.

The force with which the mandrill blocked the shovel even numbed her hand; the vivid sensation confirmed that she wasn't dreaming.

“Steal, ride, horse.” The mountain demon uttered a shrill voice, tilted its head, and reached out to grab Xia Zhu’s face.

The speed was so fast that she didn't even have time to react. She just instinctively closed her eyes. At the critical moment, a series of firecrackers suddenly went off outside the door.

"Ahhh—" The mandrill suddenly pulled back its hands, clutched its head, and screamed. The sound even drowned out the sound of the firecrackers. Xia Zhu felt as if the inside of her ear canal was almost injured.

Mandrills are afraid of firecrackers.

While it was clutching its head in pain, Xia Zhu picked up the shovel and whacked it on the head, then quickly distanced herself from it.

The firecrackers were still going off. She guessed that someone in the village was holding a funeral. The mandrill kept covering its ears and screaming in pain. It seemed that it could not bear it any longer. It suddenly jumped up on one leg, its body shrinking into a blue ball of flesh in mid-air and then disappeared into thin air with a bang.

Xia Zhu stood there holding the shovel, her palms still a little numb.

The sound of firecrackers gradually stopped, and the room became deathly silent. Everything that had just happened seemed like an illusion, and only then did she feel fear.

He stood there for a moment, then took the shovel back to his room, leaned it against the headboard, picked up his coat and put it on. The coat contained the key to the front door, just in case something else happened tonight.

Then she touched something cold and rough to the touch, which was placed next to the keys.

It was that stone that appeared out of nowhere.

Xia Zhu recalled the lyrics that the mandrill had repeated. Dou Erdun was referring to its own words. What about the imperial horse?

A note from the author:

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