The nightmare swallowed Chen Yun whole.

Darkness. Bone‑cold cold. Suffocation. Deathly silence.

He felt himself lying naked on an arctic plain. The frost bit into flesh, gnawed at bone, froze the blood and the soul. When he tried to move, a stabbing pain tore through his limbs.

“This feels so familiar… am I back at the moment I died in my last life?” he thought.

Clenching his teeth against the pain, Chen forced himself upright and looked around. Everywhere was a flat, oppressive gray‑white. Snowflakes the size of goose feathers drifted down. Far off, the ruins of enormous unidentified buildings stood half buried beneath thick layers of ice and snow.

Crunch… crack…

A brittle sound came from not far behind him, like porcelain shattering. He turned stiffly toward it.

The sound came from a little drift. Suddenly a bluish‑purple hand, frosted white, burst out of the snow! The hand clawed at the drifts, and soon a sunken, blue‑black skull emerged—lips cracked and blackened, skin split to reveal pale flesh beneath.

Within breaths a whole humanoid crawled free. It moved with a twisted gait toward Chen, producing the sickening creak of frozen joints.

Crunch… crack…

The noises multiplied. One after another, snow mounds heaved and more humanoid figures crawled out, their hollow eye sockets fixed on him. The frozen things swarmed in from all sides.

Farther away, the wind roared. Snowflakes in the gale twisted together, the white sheets coalescing into a vague, hideous silhouette that rolled toward him like a living blizzard.

“Shit!” Chen tried to run, but the pain in his limbs pinned him. A cold, rigid hand shot out from beside him and clamped his ankle. Frost spread upward from his foot in crystalline tendrils across his body.

“Damn, I’m done for.” His vision went black.

…

Chen bolted upright in bed.

“I… I’m not dead.”

He was back in the dim bedroom of his old home. Sunlight sifted through dusty glass and fell in soft, blurred patches on the floor. It had been a dream.

He checked his phone—ten o’clock already. He washed, dressed, and sat on the sofa, trying to shake off the nightmare.

“That was too real,” he muttered, frowning. “Those humanoids looked like frozen people… and what was that huge shape formed by the snow and wind?” He rubbed his temple and thought.

Some say dreams mean the opposite, some that they are scenes from a parallel world, some that they’re premonitions. He seldom dreamt, yet this dream had been so vivid—there had to be significance.

“Whether it’s real or not, I should prepare for those things. Better be ready,” he decided.

Suppressing the lingering chill the nightmare left behind, Chen stood. Time to start renovating the old house.

His eyes landed on the front door. He walked over and ran his hand along the thin panel. The door was little more than an inch of shell over a wooden core, covered with a thin rusted iron sheet pitted with dents and scratches. Last life, he didn’t even have time to react before a few blows shattered this flimsy door.

“Let’s start with you,” he said.

He pressed his palm to the door, summoned the system panel, and chose “Enhance.”

[Target: Ordinary wooden front door]

[Cost: 40 points]

“Yes.”

[Confirm enhancement. Consume 40 points.]

[Enhancing…]

A progress bar crept across the HUD. Chen fixed his gaze on the door; he thought he felt a faint vibration through his palm. The bar filled quickly.

Hum—

For a moment his vision blurred. When it cleared, the door in front of him had transformed.

[Enhancement complete.]

The thin, rusted panel was gone. In its place was a heavy, iron‑gray metal door, thick and solid, exuding an integrated, weighty sturdiness. Chen gripped the handle and opened and closed it. The new seal sounded as a single low, sure click—no more creaks.

He rapped his knuckles on the surface. The sound was a deep, muffled thud, like hitting a slab of thick metal. “This door won’t be smashed down anymore,” he said, satisfied.

The room still wore layers of dust. Yesterday he’d only cleared the bedroom. “Today I’ll clean the whole house,” he decided.

He pulled cleaning tools—brooms, mops, rags—out from storage and set to work. All morning he scrubbed every corner until floors and furniture were spotless. Standing in the center of the living room, he nodded in approval.

“Next, the courtyard.” He stepped out through the reinforced door into a yard choked with overgrown weeds and a few one‑man‑high saplings pushing up through brick seams. He fetched a sickle, severed tall weeds, then used a machete to fell the saplings and a hoe and shovel to uproot their roots. By afternoon the yard was cleared.

“Done. Looks good.” He stored the tools and went inside.

He ate a self‑heating meal and a soda, then sat to rest. The enhanced recovery from the serum had him back at full strength within minutes. He glanced at the clock—three in the afternoon.

“This afternoon: scout the surroundings,” he said. He needed to learn the village’s current state, the nearby terrain, and check out the houses of those who had wronged him.

Putting on his shoes, he shut the reinforced door behind him and stepped onto the freshly cleaned brick path. He locked the gate behind himself and was about to walk away when a neighbor’s door—the old one next door—creaked open.