Global Ghost Stories: I'm Investigating Ghosts in My Nightmare!

Chapter 72 Black Words, White Me
Bai Yu's actions were like a silent slap across Qin Yixuan's face, a face brimming with confidence and a desire for control. In the VIP box on the second floor, the victorious smile on her face froze instantly, gradually transforming into undisguised astonishment and annoyance at being played. She couldn't understand why this man could make such an "irrational" choice when faced with temptation that struck at the very softest part of his soul.

"Stop!" Her voice was no longer gentle, but carried a cold, commanding tone. "What are you doing? Are you going to betray your parents? Are you going to choose that painful 'truth' again?"

On stage, Bai Yu's "mother" changed her expression from expectation and concern to a pleading look filled with sadness and incomprehension.

"Xiaoyan...why are you leaving? Don't you want your mother anymore? Have you forgotten your promise to stay by your mother's side forever?" Her voice was choked with sobs, and every word was like a needle piercing Bai Yu's heart.

The gentle father dropped his gardening shears and rushed over, his face filled with anxiety and heartache: "Xiaoyan! Come back! It's too dangerous outside! Home is the safest place! Listen to your father, come back quickly!"

Bai Yu's steps did not falter in the slightest.

He simply continued to walk step by step toward the edge of the stage.

He didn't look back.

His voice seemed not to be addressed to anyone else, but to himself, to his long-gone past, a farewell that transcends time and space.

“I have never abandoned them.”

"On the contrary, everything I've done is to protect them."

He walked to the very edge of the stage; one more step and he would plunge into the endless darkness that represented reality. He stopped, slowly turned around, and looked directly at the warm "home" he had left behind, and at the two "relatives" whose faces were filled with sadness and confusion.

“Thank you,” he said, looking at them with a tenderness he had never shown before, a look of gentleness he had never seen before. “Thank you for letting me see all of this again. This only makes me understand more clearly what I am fighting for.”

His gaze passed over the two phantoms, over the small white building, and landed on the VIP box high up on the second floor.

Do you think that true remembrance is like a coward, forever wallowing in a false past, using self-numbing methods to escape the pain of reality?

No. You're wrong.

"True remembrance is carrying the love and hope they gave us and bravely moving towards tomorrow. It is protecting this world, which is full of imperfections but is incredibly 'real', that they gave their lives for. This is the best way for me to repay them."

As he spoke, a memory that had been buried deep within his soul resurfaced in his mind once more.

……

It was a sunny afternoon, just like any other.

Eight-year-old Bai Yu was lying on the soft wool carpet in the living room, intently assembling an extremely complex "Interstellar Expedition" flagship model. His little hands were covered in glue, and his brow was furrowed, like a surgeon performing a delicate operation.

The oven dinged from the kitchen, followed by Mother's cheerful voice: "Little glutton, your honey bread is ready!"

In the study, the father, wearing his gold-rimmed glasses, was diligently writing amidst a thick stack of documents. He was the city's youngest professor of semiotics, with an almost obsessive passion for ancient scripts and totems. Hearing the noise from the kitchen, he looked up at his son, who was engrossed in working with a model, and a gentle smile appeared on his face.

He walked over, ruffled his son's soft hair, and said softly, "Xiaoyan, take a rest. Your mother specially played a new piece for you today."

Mother came over carrying a plate of honey bread that smelled enticingly sweet, a happy smile on her face. She sat down at the gleaming grand piano, her slender fingers dancing gracefully across the black and white keys, and a clear, melodious tune, "Moonlight Sonata," flowed gently through the room.

The father sat beside his son, handing him a warm piece of bread and picking up a book, gently explaining the stories behind the ancient texts.

“…Look at this character, it represents ‘protection.’ In the oldest civilizations, people believed that words have power. A person’s name often embodies the parents’ best wishes for him.” The father pointed to a symbol in the book and looked at his son tenderly. “I named you ‘Baiyu’ because I hope your life can be like a pure white sheet of paper, on which you can use your ‘words’ to write the most beautiful chapters.”

"Then why am I called 'Xiao Yan'?" Young Bai Yu asked curiously while munching on her bread.

The mother, who was playing the piano, turned around, smiled, and gently pinched his little nose: "Because you are our most important 'promise.' You are the crystallization of your father and mother's love, and the most beautiful gift in our lives."

Sunlight streamed through the huge French windows, casting long shadows of the family of three on the carpet. The air was filled with the sweet aroma of bread, the scent of ink from books, and the melodious sound of a piano. It was a perfect picture frozen in time.

However, the painting was torn to shreds overnight.

The disaster struck without any warning.

It wasn't a monster attack in the traditional sense, but a nightmare of twisted rules that drove people to despair.

A realm called "Silence" was like a giant glass dome, silently enveloping their entire neighborhood.

The rules are simple, yet incredibly cruel—any creature that emits a sound exceeding a certain decibel level will be completely "erased" from this world by an invisible force.

At first, there were car horns, pedestrian conversations, and music from shops on the street... but they all stopped abruptly in an instant, disappearing without a trace along with the sources of the sounds.

Then came screams of fear, cries of pain, and pleas for help from people in despair…

Sound, something so common in daily life, has become the deadliest death warrant.

The whole world fell into a deathly silence.

Bai Yu's father, with his extensive knowledge of semiotics, immediately recognized it as an extremely rare nightmare. He promptly took his wife and son and hid in the basement storage room, where the soundproofing was best.

In that suffocating silence, they communicated using sign language and conveyed their concern and fear to each other through their eyes.

The father used all his knowledge to draw various ancient symbols with the meanings of "protection" and "blessing" on the walls of the storage room, trying to fight against the invisible force of obliteration in this way.

The mother held young Baiyu tightly in her arms, using her body heat to soothe his trembling little body. She kept mouthing to him, "Don't be afraid, Mommy's here."

However, the rules of the Nightmare are constantly evolving. From the initial "annihilation of voices," it has gradually evolved into "annihilation of existence."

The items in the storage room began to disappear one by one. First, the insignificant odds and ends, then the food and water they depended on for survival, and finally, even the protective symbols that their father had drawn on the wall began to blur and fade.

They knew they wouldn't last much longer.

In their final moments, the father and mother exchanged a glance, and in each other's eyes they saw a resolute determination and love that needed no words.

They did not cry, nor did they despair.

The father walked up to Bai Yu, squatted down, and with his trembling hands, which were weak from exhaustion, wrote three words on his son's palm, stroke by stroke: "Live on."

His mother hugged him tightly from the other side and, with her last bit of strength, wrote "We love you" in the palm of his other hand.

They stood up, hand in hand, smiling as they looked at their son, their eyes filled with reluctance and affection, and a blessing that transcended life and death.

They poured all their love and hope, and their unwavering devotion to protecting their parents, into Bai Yu's soul, which was like a "sea of ​​nothingness" due to his special constitution, into an invisible spiritual energy.

Immediately afterwards, under Bai Yu's tearful gaze, their bodies, like sand paintings scattered by the wind, were silently swallowed up by the rules that erased everything.

Young Bai Yu witnessed all of this firsthand.

The extreme sorrow and despair, along with the immense and unimaginable power of the love from his parents, created an incredibly intense chemical reaction within his unique soul.

He didn't break down and cry like the other children, because he knew that if he made a sound, he would disappear immediately.

He just bit his lip hard, letting the tears fall silently.

At that moment, his soul, which was like a "sea of ​​nothingness," made an instinctive choice that even he himself could not understand—he did not resist that power, but instead opened his "arms" and completely "absorbed" the core of the nightmare event filled with the rules of "erasure," along with the despair and darkness that was enough to devour everything.

Within that darkness of the soul, representing utter despair, an independent consciousness slowly emerged.

It carries all of Baiyu's pain, sorrow, and darkness, as well as the unwavering protectiveness that comes from her parents.

It is black language.

Once this newborn consciousness had fully formed, it looked at the soul huddled in the corner, trembling with sorrow, yet as pure as a blank sheet of paper. For the first time, Hei Yan spoke, uttering its own "language," which was also his own.

That was neither a curse on the world nor a roar against fate.

That was a promise that was almost a vow of protection.

"From now on, I will bear all the darkness for you, and I will become your sharpest sword to cut through all the thorns for you."

"And you..."

"...You only need to continue to exist as 'hope' itself, as that 'miracle' born in 'nothingness'."

“I am your black ‘words’.”

"And you are the white 'me'."

……

The tide of memories slowly recedes.

On stage, a single, glistening tear slid down Bai Yu's cheek. Yet, his gaze was more resolute and brighter than ever before.

He raised his head, meeting Qin Yixuan's eyes filled with shock and confusion, and said, word by word, "Now, do you understand?"

"It is precisely because I once possessed such irreplaceable 'perfection' that I am even more determined to use everything I have to protect this real world full of 'imperfection'."

"Because this... was something they bought for me with their lives and their love!"

The moment he finished speaking, a powerful and pure willpower exploded from the depths of his soul like a supernova!
"boom--!!!"

The entire "dream theater" constructed by Qin Yixuan could no longer maintain its false form in the face of this will full of "protection" and "love"!
That white building, that lush green lawn, that golden sunflower field... everything crumbled in an instant!

Huge cracks began to appear in the structure of the entire theater! The bricks on the ceiling began to peel off, and the curtains on the walls turned to dust!

In the VIP box on the second floor, Qin Yixuan's body involuntarily took a step back. All expression vanished from her face, replaced by an unprecedented solemnity and an uncontrollable sense of horror.

She finally realized that she had provoked a being far more terrifying than she had imagined.

The second act of the game ended in a way she had never anticipated, resulting in her complete defeat.

And from now on, she will have no more reservations.

A war called "The End" is about to officially begin on this crumbling dreamland.

(End of this chapter)