Chapter 311: Depravity
After work tonight, Ji Jian and his colleagues made plans to have dinner together.
Amidst the clinking of cups and exchange of toasts, after three rounds of drinks, the table was a mess of cups and plates.
“Manager Ji, have you encountered any good things these past few days?” the colleague who had worked overtime and left with Ji Jian the day before asked, looking at Ji Jian’s somewhat dazed expression with amusement, a hint of teasing in his eyes.
Ji Jian’s unfocused pupils slowly refocused, the corners of his mouth gradually curved upwards, and he chuckled strangely, “You could say that.”
“You’re in love, aren’t you?” the colleague immediately crossed his arms, looking very interested.
Ji Jian shook his head and honestly replied, “Nothing of the sort.”
Several other colleagues joined in the teasing, seeing Ji Jian as a slightly shy young man. While he was easygoing to get along with, he rarely talked about his personal life, making them all quite curious.
Ji Jian still shook his head, truthfully stating that he wasn’t in love and revealing that he had been single since birth.
Faced with Ji Jian’s honest answer, the others couldn’t do much and assumed he was unwilling to talk, so they wisely stopped pressing him.
At nine-thirty in the evening, Ji Jian returned home. He dragged his weary body to the refrigerator, took out a bottle of soda water, and then went to the beanbag chair. He plopped down, and the soft, comfortable sofa felt like a succubus’s embrace, so comfortable it was almost sinful. Ji Jian couldn’t help but let out a comfortable groan and, fueled by the alcohol, shouted, “Awesome!”
After opening the soda water and taking a few sips of the astringent, fizzy, and ice-cold drink, Ji Jian’s previously hazy spirit instantly perked up. However, this burst of energy didn’t last long, and soon he was back to a state of clear languor. Leaning against the beanbag chair, he glanced at the digital clock on his bedside table, thinking it was time to take a bath, but his body remained unmoving.
Another voice in Ji Jian’s mind spoke in a seductive tone, telling him, “It’s okay, it’s the weekend tomorrow anyway, it’s not bad to indulge a little.”
The defining characteristic of contemporary young people was vividly displayed in Ji Jian: complete surrender to desire!
Ji Jian opened his computer and happily started surfing the internet. It wasn’t until after eleven at night that he finally stopped his leisure and went to wash up.
After showering and tidying up his change of clothes, it was already midnight.
Far from feeling tired, Ji Jian felt even more energized. He unplugged his fully charged mobile phone and lay on the bed, fiddling with it. As soon as the screen unlocked, he received a notification for an update from a special-followed video blogger. He lit up like a rat that had smelled delicious food and quickly grabbed the headphones by his bedside and put them on.
Video Title: Although it’s from the underworld, it’s very sleep-inducing!
Ji Jian strongly agreed with this title. He then noticed more information about the video blogger and was surprised to find that the creator’s number of followers had grown from single digits to over 20,000 in just a few days!
This was quite rare and strange, as this blogger operated in the niche of sleep aid videos. The videos themselves had no visuals, greatly reducing their watchability, and the creator had also actively closed off channels for interaction with fans. It was almost unbelievable that such behavior, which would normally drive away potential viewers, could accumulate such a large following in such a short time.
However, Ji Jian then considered that it wasn’t entirely incomprehensible. In terms of sleep aid effectiveness, this video blogger’s ability was no less than any of the big names he knew in the sleep aid video industry. Purely based on the sound effects for sleep, Ji Jian personally felt he ranked first in his heart, and objectively speaking, he should also be in the top ten in the industry.
Such an excellent and promising newcomer sleep aid video blogger deserved such a surge in followers.
Looking at the completely black video interface, Ji Jian’s finger hovered above the play button. For some reason, he hesitated, as if a faint voice in his mind was telling him.
Don’t listen! Don’t listen!
“Early to bed and early to rise makes for good health,” Ji Jian glanced at the clock on the table. False rationality and true desire convinced him.
He still clicked on the video, and as a crisp tapping sound came from his headphones, Ji Jian felt a flood of pleasure surge through his head, his soul seemingly cleansed and exhilarating. He couldn’t help but let out a foolish laugh.
Switching the video to background playback mode, Ji Jian turned off his phone screen, tossed it aside next to his pillow, and gazed at the ceiling with hazy eyes. Everything before him seemed to transform into a dreamlike illusion.
All things distorted and changed, space compressed and warped, everything surged and fell within a flow of multi-colored lines. He was like duckweed drifting in this world alone, sometimes following the current, undulating with the waves, sometimes accelerating upwards, soaring through the clouds, sometimes falling endlessly, plunging into the abyss, his heart racing. He danced in the illusion woven by that sound, pulled and tugged by an invisible magic, this mystical sensation making him intoxicated.
Haka—ka—
Ji Jian seemed to hear a strange low growl, but he paid it no mind, still immersed in the exhilarating, infinitely magical sleep aid sound effects, one moment tapping sounds, the next scratching sounds… all of which made him unable to stop.
This was a pleasure far surpassing a thousand amusements, a beautiful dream he was enjoying all by himself.
Ji Jian slowly narrowed his eyes. He looked at the room environment, which no longer showed any familiar scenes. He felt neither fear nor strangeness. He saw his ceiling bulging outwards, those flowing, colorful lines enveloping a human-shaped silhouette within the bulge, like a human cocoon from which something was about to emerge.
The cocoon-like person extended a hand towards him, its face sunken into a large pit, as if the being within the cocoon wanted to cry out, like a drowning, helpless woman pleading for help.
Ji Jian laughed with delight, his face growing stiff. He saw the seemingly helping hand and instinctively reached out to grab it.
Seeing Ji Jian’s outstretched hand, the being within the cocoon let out an unpleasant and excited howl, like a hungry wolf spotting a meal that had willingly come its way. The once slender and well-formed arm slowly became increasingly deformed and ferocious, like spreading branches, massive and withered.
The two hands slowly clasped fingers. Ji Jian felt the strength from the rough, withered large hand and was pulled uncontrollably towards the ceiling.
The terrifying scene that followed was just like last night. Ji Jian’s room slowly turned blood-red, and a human and a humanoid silhouette attempting to break through dimensional space continuously squeezed, twisted, and frantically deformed in this bloody world, skin cracking, bones grinding incessantly…
