Blood Neon

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Third Kind of Contact

Zhang Qiming felt as if he were dreaming a distant dream.

.

What entered his eyes should have been a scene he had seen countless times before.

Home. His home.

The home he hated.

His father's home.

His mother's home.

A home that clearly had other people, yet felt like it belonged to him alone.

The iron gate slowly creaked open. It should have been coated in rust-proof paint, yet now it was covered in blood-red rust. The gate panels let out painful groans, distant and hoarse.

He didn’t want to see this. He didn’t want to step inside.

From the nearby doorways, countless peepholes revealed countless eyes, rapidly trembling, watching him, casting unsettling gazes filled with false goodwill.

So Zhang Qiming closed his eyes.

Immediately, the distant sound of ocean waves began washing through his ears.

A strong scent of brine drifted into his nose.

He took a deep breath — it felt as if he were walking along a seashore. If he opened his eyes, he would see the sapphire-blue sea, sunlight, and sand. Joy welled up in his heart.

So Zhang Qiming opened his eyes.

Countless people appeared before him.

Men and women.

Boys and girls.

The newly born, and those close to death.

Wearing swimsuits, holding swim rings, carrying beach balls;

Under parasols, at the water’s edge, beside sandcastles;

In the air, in the water;

Even buried in the sand, with only their heads exposed. Human heads were spaced one meter apart, densely packed and unevenly arranged into an endless rectangular matrix, resembling a breakwater.

But everyone was laughing and talking cheerfully. Everyone seemed content and at ease.

So Zhang Qiming smiled too, and couldn’t help but take a step forward.

He wanted to be part of it.

Suddenly, he felt as if he had stepped on something. A hard object struck the sole of his foot, sending an unpleasant jolt up his leg.

He lifted his right foot and saw a small, smooth seashell.

Instinctively, he bent down and picked it up.

He held the shell before his eyes, staring intently into its spiral.

Suddenly—

Black tendrils stretched out from within the shell. Hundreds of fine, shrinking black threads instantly wrapped around his palm.

At the center of the threads’ densest point, within the spiral’s opening, strands writhed like human hair.

From within, a pair of gem-like crimson eyes lit up. A small head slowly emerged, stopping there to look directly at him.

An indescribable terror struck him out of nowhere, and Zhang Qiming felt his heart stop beating for an instant.

He gasped instinctively.

And then, he opened his eyes.

.

"Ah, you’ve finally ‘woken up.’"

A pair of eyes—larger and even more beautiful than before—were gazing at him from up close.

Lin Ying sat on one side of the sofa, leaning forward slightly, meeting his eyes directly.

Only then did Zhang Qiming realize he was lying on the sofa, breathing lightly.

There was no sea, no sunlight, no beach. Above him was the familiar ceiling of his home, with a pale energy-saving light calmly glowing from its ring-shaped fixture.

His heartbeat was steady now, his limbs no longer cold, and all his vital signs seemed perfectly normal.

What the hell was that?

Recalling what had just happened, he couldn’t help but cry out inwardly.

He turned his head toward the girl beside him. Her large eyes were filled with concern and innocence.

Red.

That was Zhang Qiming’s first reaction.

Among normal humans, eyes of that color were impossible—except in rare cases like albinism, where a complete lack of pigmentation exposed the color of blood vessels, making the irises appear red. But that possibility clashed with her black hair. And the colored contact lenses he remembered seeing before could never achieve such a naturally flawless effect.

He still remembered—after pushing through the haze of his earlier memories—that just before he lost consciousness, he had seen those flexible, limb-like tendrils extending and dancing from her pale skin.

He might have thought that earlier, when they were on the street without sufficient light, her crimson pupils weren’t so obvious, and he hadn’t paid much attention…

…but all that was just his brain’s excuse.

Now his thoughts drifted entirely according to his assumptions—and under the sway of some unknown will.

.

The girl still wore a playful expression as she looked at the boy before her.

At first, she had only intended to observe his condition and leave once his emotions stabilized. But suddenly, she sensed a strange wave of emotion.

Those feelings didn’t come from Lin Ying herself, but from the person sitting before her.

When Zhang Qiming turned his head toward her, it didn’t take long before Lin Ying distinctly felt his mix of doubt, fear, and excitement.

At first, the emotions were vague and fuzzy—but soon, they began to stabilize. If one were to describe this complex state of mind in concrete terms, it would be something like...

How to put it? It was as if one day, you woke up to find your best bro suddenly gone, and then turned to the window to see Unit-01 sumo wrestling with Behemoth, and just as Unit-01 was about to fall silent for good, you realized the Power of Kings in your right hand had begun to stir.

Shock, fear, curiosity, excitement—all of it tangled together.

And Lin Ying could directly sense every bit of it.

It was the first time since coming to this world that she had experienced anything like this.

Like a sudden awakening of a superpower—she had read someone else’s emotions.

Her expression remained blank, but inside, waves of shock were crashing through her.

No way. As the first true variable she had encountered in all this time, she couldn't just walk away now. She had to observe a little longer.

The boy had felt fear. That meant he had clearly seen a part of her. If that was true, then…?

Within her, a theory slowly began to form after comparing it with other past cases.

So, after a long moment of thought, the girl was the first to speak.

"You saw it, didn’t you?"

Originally planning to brush things off and leave, Lin Ying now decided to probe him first. If her theory was correct...

"Saw... what?"

A statement had suddenly turned into a question, with a hesitant tail tacked on.

"Before you lost consciousness—what did you see?"

Her expression didn’t change as she repeated the question.

Zhang Qiming swallowed hard. From the seemingly emotionless girl in front of him, an invisible pressure radiated outward, making it nearly impossible for him to think straight.

"I saw… a bunch of tentacles extend from your body. They caught me."

He had no choice but to lay it all out.

.

Lin Ying was a little disappointed.

The moment the boy answered, nothing special happened.

She had suspected that recalling her form had triggered such strong emotions that it awakened this new ability in her—but that theory now seemed invalid.

Could it only be triggered once?

Or was it more like unlocking a skill fragment—like in a game—where one must find more special exclamation marks on the map to unlock further abilities?

Lin Ying felt a bit of a headache coming on. She glanced at the utterly confused boy, thought it over again, and decided: screw it.

Things had already come this far, might as well push it further.

Though she didn’t dare try anything too drastic. She merely extended a single tentacle slightly from her back and gently let it rest on her shoulder.

"This… is what you meant?"

She poked at the unknown black organism on her shoulder with her little hand.

Zhang Qiming’s expression instantly became... something truly remarkable.