Chapter 39: Playing House Part 2

Zhao Meiyou pushed the door open, carrying the faint, bittersweet chill of tobacco smoke that evoked the world of fleeting pleasures. But under the room’s lights, that edge softened into warmth. “I heard you haven’t eaten anything today,” he said as he unscrewed the thermos. “Good thing I visited some relatives today—they sent over some homemade grub.”

The aroma of the meat porridge was warm and inviting, soothing the stomach just from the smell alone. Zhao Meiyou adjusted the bed to raise the headrest, then tucked a few pillows behind for support, so they could talk face-to-face. He poured a bowl and said softly, “This porridge is easy on the stomach. Give it a try?”

Brother Qian started to lift his hand for the bowl, but Zhao Meiyou laughingly pulled it away. “You’re the patient here, Brother Qian. Just open up.”

The next day, the woman arrived at the clinic from Joyful Red Courtyard, carrying a pot of restorative soup. She wanted to see just which fresh cabbage her hapless brother was about to ruin this time. She hadn’t even reached the patient’s room when she heard Zhao Meiyou’s voice from inside: “Here, Brother Qian—ahh—”

The door was ajar. She walked right in and saw a young man with skin like white jade sitting up in bed, while Zhao Meiyou held a bowl beside him. The two were taking turns feeding each other spoonfuls of sweet congee.

…Well played, Zhao Meiyou. That speed—Joyful Red Courtyard’s own.

Zhao Meiyou spotted her and lit up with surprise. “Sis? What brings you here?”

“I brewed some soup. Knew you liked it, so I brought some to share.” The woman set down the earthen pot and gave the young man on the bed a light, appraising glance. “You two carry on. I’ll go to the front and grab some meds.”

Once the woman had left, Brother Qian asked, “That your sister?”

Zhao Meiyou nodded. “Raised me from a kid. Dad and mom all in one.” As he spoke, he uncovered the pot. “My sis makes killer soup. Want some, Brother Qian—?”

His words cut off abruptly. Zhao Meiyou stared into the pot at the goji berry black chicken soup. Why on earth had she made this?

Wasn’t this the stuff for pregnant women to boost their qi and blood?

The woman only stopped by that once. No one knew what she chatted about with the nurse, but the next day, a huge bundle of ingredients and recipes arrived. Zhao Meiyou was baffled but couldn’t ignore the pointed list at the top: deer antler, lamb meat, and so on. He didn’t dare ask questions—Joyful Red Courtyard had remedies even he couldn’t fathom. Instead, he went to the herbal shop, grabbed some ingredients, made a pot, and fed it to the dog in the back yard. The poor thing barked nonstop for three full days.

Zhao Meiyou crouched in the back yard, petting the dog and thinking, What did I ever do to you?

He could guess what his sister was up to—sort of. She’d probably dug into Brother Qian’s background. She wasn’t the type to shy from money or power; if anything, she was a gambler at heart. Someone like Brother Qian, clearly from deep waters, might be just her speed.

Whores with actors, lunatics with fools—passionate souls matched with the heartless, the reckless with the cold-hearted. If they could wreak havoc on each other just right, it might be the perfect medicine: scrape the bone to heal the poison.

He was lost in these thoughts when a wheelchair rolled up. Brother Qian had a blanket over his lap, his voice faint and breathless. “What’re you thinking about?”

“Brother Qian, you actually care what I’m thinking?” Zhao Meiyou burst out laughing, his eyes crinkling shut. “Humidity’s nice today, and you’ve recovered a bit. Wanna go for a stroll?”

Brother Qian didn’t bother hiding anything from him. “There might be a lot of people outside waiting to kill me.”

“Perfect.” Zhao Meiyou drew a pipe from his waist, spinning it between his fingers. “Whether it’s romance under the moonlight or spilling blood, it’s no fun without an audience.”

Brother Qian looked up at him, his gaze idly probing or perhaps not. He didn’t press for the meaning behind the words. “Alright, let’s go for that stroll.”

Most of the twentieth-floor streets lay abandoned, but Lantern Street still buzzed with life. Zhao Meiyou pushed the wheelchair out of the clinic. A man draped in silk sat by the roadside, his face painted with greasepaint, plucking a three-stringed instrument. Spotting them, he smiled. “Care for a tune, gentlemen?”

Zhao Meiyou knew this game inside out—one whiff, and he spotted the knife hidden in the instrument. He peeled off a wad of bills and handed them over. “Brother, give us a break. Play hooky for a bit and let us take a peaceful walk.”

The musician pocketed the cash with a lazy smile. “Mr. Zhao knows the rules. But strolling all the way like this? You’ll bleed money dry.”

“Better broke than dead,” Zhao Meiyou chuckled, thinking, How many more are lying in wait along this route?

Before the words had left his mouth, gunfire cracked—bang bang. Zhao Meiyou’s ears rang from the blast. It took a moment to see clearly: the musician’s head blown open, a few more bodies sprawled nearby. Brother Qian held a gun steady in the wheelchair. “Zhao Meiyou, spend money where it cuts deepest.”

“Brother Qian, you…” Zhao Meiyou was speechless. “This is right across from Joyful Red Courtyard’s entrance. My sis sees this, and I’m in for it.”

“Oh.” Brother Qian blinked. “What now?”

“Forget it, we’re already here.” Zhao Meiyou went all in. He scooped Brother Qian up in a bridal carry and strode right through the doors. “Sea of lust and dust—time we crossed it together.”

Joyful Red Courtyard was mostly private rooms, each with a smoke couch not meant for actual smoking. Cables snaked from it to neural interfaces and external boxes—old gear, with magnetic electrodes worn from overuse. But the view was killer: open the window, and Lantern Street’s sea of lights stretched out below.

Brother Qian clearly recognized the setup on the couch. “A brain link device?”

“You don’t mince words, Brother Qian.” Zhao Meiyou laughed. “Proper name’s Dream Link Machine.”

He powered up the water-cooled host beside the bed. The radiator hummed to life, low and steady. The machine was half the size of a fridge, filled with golden solution teeming with lanternfish that bathed the room in an underwater glow.

The Dream Link Machine was like a sensory simulator, but it let sharers of the myoelectric interface share the same virtual space—usually called a Generated Dream. Black market knockoffs let two people truly link dreams, diving into each other’s subconscious or merging realms. The latter was rare; legend said only those perfectly in sync, body and soul, could pull it off. It sparked fads among lovestruck youths, but outcomes were usually messy breakups—no one wanted to bare their entire mind, no matter how deep the love.

Zhao Meiyou had no plans for a full brain merge; too risky. But Joyful Red Courtyard had some top-tier Generated Dreams, meticulously crafted like virtual dates with realism far beyond holographic games.

He turned to Brother Qian. “Wanna give it a shot?”

“Depends on what kind of Generated Dream you’ve got.” Brother Qian propped his head, meeting his gaze—an expert’s look. “If it’s low-rent, we might as well hit a game hall and team up online.”

Zhao Meiyou smiled, clearly prepared. He punched a code into the Dream Machine, pulling up a hidden channel. “Brother Qian, you know how Generated Dreams are made?”

Brother Qian was smearing coupling gel on his temples and attaching electrodes. “Generated Dreams are engineered brainwave products, but not like old-school games built purely from code. At the core, there’s always a source file—a real person’s dream.”

“You’re a pro, huh?” Zhao Meiyou arched a brow.

“So why ask?”

Zhao Meiyou finished loading the dream data and lay down beside him, electrodes on. It would take about half a minute to boot. He eyed the kaleidoscopic walls. “When I was a kid, bored out of my mind, I found a bunch of scrapped Dream Link Machines in the warehouse. Turns out, tweak the motherboard, and it becomes a basic brainwave recorder—with dream-capturing built in.”

Brother Qian turned to look at him.

“Yeah, you guessed it.” Zhao Meiyou knew what he was thinking, even unsaid. “A lot of Joyful Red Courtyard’s best Generated Dreams? They’re sourced from my dreams.”

He’d had kaleidoscopic dreams since childhood. Edited and polished, they became priceless commodities.

“But this one’s my secret stash.” Before the dream loaded, Zhao Meiyou added, “I think it’s the most beautiful one.”

The dream began, once more on Lantern Street.

Unlike the real street, scarred from the recent skirmish and yet unrepaired, anyone stepping into this dream would instantly understand the origin of its name.

The ground was alive with vibrant lantern shadows. The lanterns lining Lantern Street formed an absolute spectacle—not merely from their lights, but from the shadows they cast. Turkish lanterns bloomed with dazzling mosaic patterns, Persian oil lamps flickered with ornate palm-leaf arabesques, and Indian colored lanterns bore paintings of tales from the Ramayana, their pierced walls projecting exquisitely beautiful silhouettes of women. Emerald green, antique gold, imperial purple, cobalt blue—countless shadows flowed through the streets like dancers swaying their hips. The twentieth-layer street surface had long since crumbled into uneven, muddy paths overgrown with slippery moss. Yet on Lantern Street, people navigated in wooden clogs, or even barefoot, for a luminous river seemed to flow right across the ground.

At the street’s end stood a pavilion where a veiled performer sang “Lantern Street Picking Emeralds”.

This was a play meant for a full cast, yet here only one figure recited the lines in a leisurely drawl. Zhao Meiyou turned to the man beside him. “My sister loves this opera. She’s always humming bits of it, so it shows up in my dreams all the time.”

“‘The Purple Hairpin’—Yunchu Theater still runs that one,” the young man replied, as if familiar with the piece. He glanced around. “Is this the twentieth layer you saw as a kid?”

The scene was a hazy dreamscape of lantern glow, unearthly even by the standards of the 330th layer. Zhao Meiyou shook his head all the same. “Lantern Street wasn’t like this when I was little.”

“Was it for your sister, then?”

“She never saw it either. I think I must’ve read some storybook right before the dream hit. They say Metropolis looked like this back when it was new, before the layers got so strictly divided—back when it was all this bustling and alive.”

Zhao Meiyou’s generated dream bore no fancy edits; it kept the raw, surreal weirdness of the subconscious. Midway up a staircase, the steps plunged into a pond. Telephone booths brimmed with goldfish. The sky churned like flowing mercury, adrift with enormous moons and eyes. Strange birds wheeled overhead, their bodies pure gold but reduced to gleaming skeletons.

Towering lantern racks lined the street. Zhao Meiyou plucked one lantern free and turned to the man beside him. “Brother Qian,” he began. “Can I ask your name?”

The young man turned, studied him for a beat, then tilted his head skyward toward the swarm of moons. “I figured you wouldn’t bother.”

Zhao Meiyou coughed lightly. “How could I not?”

Someone shifted the lantern between them aside. The young man met his gaze and smiled—tender yet tinged with sorrow, less a first encounter than a long-awaited reunion.

The expression dazzled Zhao Meiyou. It was like a blaze too fierce to behold, hot enough to sting.

“Zhao Meiyou, remember this,” the man said. “My name is Qian Duoduo.”

The name struck Zhao Meiyou as oddly familiar. He racked his brain—had he heard it during talks with Jade Face Hall? Maybe they’d crossed paths. But would a man like Qian Duoduo just hand out his real name? Or was even this an alias?

No. It didn’t feel fake. Some gut instinct assured him otherwise.

Qian Duoduo’s name was real.

“What’re you thinking about?”

“Just that Brother Qian, your name’s a good one…”

Mid-sentence, the lantern before Zhao Meiyou snuffed out. Qian Duoduo’s form flickered—like a sudden disconnect, the image tearing apart in a glitch. Before Zhao Meiyou could pinpoint the fault line, a new figure intruded into the stuttering frame, spliced in like a botched edit: the face of a stranger.

He knew at once—an invading virus. Zhao Meiyou moved to force-logout from the dream.

But the intruder was quicker. In the split second it took to mash Enter, agony lanced through him—not a physical blade, but a virus shoved straight into his brain.

Control over his central nervous system vanished.

“Sigh. Stab after stab—I’m practically a butcher at this point.” The figure peeled free from Qian Duoduo’s body, solidifying until he stood fully before Zhao Meiyou. He let out a weary breath. “Butchery’s your side hustle. Guess that makes me the nanny.”

“Sorry to crash your moonlit rendezvous with Qian Duoduo, Zhao Nothing. Not that it matters—you two have done this dance plenty. What’s one more…” The man rambled on before raking Zhao Meiyou with a glance. He snorted a laugh. “After all these reincarnation runs, though, Zhao Nothing? This persona… you’re quite the wild flirt, all sexy and seductive.”

Zhao Meiyou barely registered the words. He’d lost all agency over his own mind, reduced to watching as the intruder kicked him flat. The man pumped a fist. “Fucking finally. Been dying to do that.” He looked down. “Still, Zhao Nothing—you’ve gotta die one more time.”

“But first, introductions.”

The young man crouched and patted Zhao Meiyou’s cheek with surprising gentleness.

“Name’s Diao Chan.”