Chapter 162: Midnight Ballad

"What just happened to me?" Lin Yun still felt a little dazed, struggling to piece the moment back together.

Just as Sang Biao opened his mouth to explain, the very same folk tune drifted through the air once more.

"Naa~ Na na~ Na aah~"

"Naa~ Na na~ Na na~"

"Na aah~ ahh~ na aah~"

"There it is again! That’s exactly the sound. The second it started up, you just sat bolt upright, climbed out of bed, and tried walking straight out the door. Scared the absolute life out of the cat, you know."

Sang Biao clung to Lin Yun tightly at once, wrapping both paws and hind legs around her, terrified she might fall under the melody’s spell all over again.

Lin Yun gave him a reassuring pat on the head; this time, at least, the singing hadn’t affected her.

She reached down to untangle the vines from around her feet, then checked the spot where Sang Biao’s teeth had caught her earlier. The skin hadn’t broken, so it was nothing to worry about.

Wait a second... If she’d only been snapped out of it because her own pets happened to wake her up in time — what about everyone else out there?

Lin Yun immediately fired off a flurry of messages to both Song Zhenzhen and Song Xizheng, practically begging them not to have their phones muted.

As for Xiong Qi and George, she had no way of reaching either of them — they weren’t on her friends list at all.

Song Xizheng, meanwhile, had gone and slammed his head straight into a door without ever quite coming back to his senses. The singing had been much louder and far more overwhelming on his end than it had been for Lin Yun — nothing like the muffled version she’d experienced.

His shelter sat considerably farther away, and though the tune could still be heard from that distance, the sound arrived faint and indistinct.

Beep beep beep...

Eyes still closed, Song Xizheng lifted a hand, pressed the door release, and began walking mechanically toward the stairs.

His shelter happened to be a two-story structure, and he normally lived up on the second floor.

Beep beep beep...

So noisy...

He hesitated for just a moment, and in that instant his foot slipped, sending him lurching forward toward a fall.

As though some flicker of danger finally cut through the fog, Song Xizheng snapped abruptly back to full awareness.

"I’ll take the punishment for this later!!"

He grabbed frantically for the railing and just barely avoided tumbling all the way down the stairs, though the near-fall still left his backside and legs throbbing with pain.

Beep beep beep!

His personal panel kept right on chiming.

"Hiss... oh man, why is Sister Lin blowing up my messages in the middle of the night like this?"

Song Xizheng straightened his legs out gingerly, opened the panel, and found ninety-nine-plus unread messages waiting for him.

"Good heavens?!"

Then the memory of what had just happened came flooding back, and he hissed again in pain.

He vaguely recalled hearing message alerts going off somewhere in the background earlier, but at the time he’d simply dismissed the noise as just more general racket.

Just thinking about how badly things could have gone if he hadn’t snapped awake in time — if he’d actually tumbled all the way down those stairs — made his stomach turn.

Song Xizheng swallowed hard. "I think I woke Sister Lin up too. She nearly fell down her own stairs because of me."

Lin Yun replied, "Good thing you’re awake now. That song outside is dangerous. Don’t fall back asleep for a while, okay?"

She added, "I’m starting to think that lullaby can actually control us once we’re asleep."

Song Xizheng: "??? Here I was wondering why someone who’s never sleepwalked in her life suddenly went marching straight out of her room!"

Song Xizheng: "This whole amusement park is seriously shady. They’re actually pulling stunts like this?!"

Back and forth in the chat, the two of them spent a good while thoroughly condemning the amusement park together.

After venting — well, "condemning," officially — Song Xizheng rubbed at his sore leg. Thankfully it had already started feeling better; aside from the bruise from his earlier stumble, nothing seemed seriously wrong.

Though it still stung a little, admittedly.

Song Zhenzhen quickly responded to Lin Yun’s flood of messages as well.

Unlucky as ever, she’d actually tumbled down her own staircase and ended up dislocating her arm in the process.

The fall, at least, had jolted her fully back to consciousness. She’d heard the notification alerts going off on her personal panel, but the pain was bad enough that it took her a long while before she could manage to type out any kind of reply.

Once Lin Yun confirmed neither of them had actually left their shelters, she let out a small breath of relief. A minor injury indoors was manageable enough — it was stepping outside the shelter that would have turned into a genuine disaster.

She finally climbed off of Sang Biao, slipped her feet into her slippers, went to rinse them off in the bathroom, and settled herself down on the sofa, curling up tightly.

She didn’t dare risk falling asleep again, terrified the lullaby might come creeping back to claim her a second time.

Tuan Tuan and Sang Biao each stretched out beside her, standing quiet guard over Lin Yun through the rest of the night.

Before long, the folk tune drifted through the air once more — though this time, something about it felt subtly different from before.

"Naa~ Ahh~ Na ahh — Naa~ Na na~ Na aah~"

"Naa~ Na ahh — Naa~ Ahh~"

"Naa~ Na na~ Naa~ Ahh—"

The ghost vine had already quietly coiled itself around Lin Yun’s ankle without a word, as though determined not to let a repeat of earlier happen again.

Lin Yun shifted her feet with a helpless little laugh. "Xiao Teng, I’m completely fine, I promise. Look at you, getting so worked up over nothing."

[Heh. Still, better safe than sorry, don’t you think?]

Now that it had been caught red-handed, the ghost vine simply grew bolder and wrapped its tendril more snugly around her ankle instead of retreating.

Lin Yun let it stay put — after all, there was no telling for certain whether the song might still take hold of her even while fully awake.

She checked the time and let out a small groan. Barely past two in the morning.

Was she really meant to just sit here, wide awake, for another three or four hours straight?

"Since we’re all just killing time anyway, why don’t the two of you go check what’s left in the vegetable stores out back, grab a few things, and we’ll whip up something good to eat tonight?"

"Seriously?!"

Well, if that was the offer on the table, neither the cat nor the tiger felt the slightest bit sleepy anymore.

Lin Yun nodded, leaving the choice of what to cook entirely up to them, and followed the pair out toward the backyard.

[Dumplings! Dumplings! I want dumplings tonight!] The ghost vine scrambled up onto Lin Yun’s shoulder, waving its tendrils excitedly in the air.

[Ooh, what’s this? Are we eating? Count me in too!] The ivy had already caught wind of the commotion inside but hadn’t bothered coming in to check for itself.

It trusted the ghost vine and the others completely — so long as they were on watch, nothing bad was likely to happen.

[Here we go again — ordering a midnight feast! Well, might as well, since we’ve got nothing but time tonight anyway.]

[Could we maybe try using star tea fruit in the dumplings?] Ivy asked, practically buzzing with anticipation.

Lin Yun paused mid-step and stared at the ivy in mild horror. "Wait, can that thing even be eaten?"

The ivy let out an easy "Eh," followed by, [Not entirely sure, honestly, but why not give it a shot? Might turn out delicious!]

"Fine, I’ll pick some, but I’m not personally eating any of it."

[Deal, deal!]

[Me too, me too! I’m eating too!] The ghost vine, predictably, never once turned down a chance at food.

Lin Yun’s mouth twitched slightly. Apparently only her small collection of mutated plants had any real appetite for culinary experimentation — she herself politely declined to be a taste-tester.

Since dumplings took a fair bit of time and effort to prepare properly, they settled on simply making a full batch of them together.

Outside, the strange song kept drifting in intermittently, but Lin Yun found herself completely unbothered by it now.

The mutated plants had no need for sleep at all, and technically, neither of the two felines truly required rest at night either — though both had simply grown accustomed to curling up with Lin Yun out of habit.

By now, all three of them were thoroughly caught up in the fun, far too energized and excited to feel even a hint of drowsiness.

Lin Yun kept folding dumplings steadily while chatting away with Song Xizheng in the meantime.

He explained that the float he’d been riding on earlier had since been moved and now sat parked at the very spot where he’d first witnessed those tourists tearing into raw flesh and blood.

From there, he’d spotted more survivors who’d clearly fallen under the song’s spell — every one of them walking out of their shelters with their eyes shut tight, moving as though sleepwalking.

Trailing quietly behind each of them came one of the black creatures.

The creature kept its focus fixed intently on them the entire way, following close until they reached the float itself.

A staff member in a little black vest stepped down off the float, the fabric instantly drenched through by the pouring rain.

They gestured toward the black creatures, who obligingly seized hold of the entranced survivors as they arrived.

The captured survivors were then loaded onto the float one after another, though exactly where that float might be headed afterward remained a complete mystery.