Nightmare Invasion

Blurb:

Luo Ran bought a wooden bangle from a night-market stall near the university district, and from then on, she was plagued by long, endless nightmares every night.

The world in her dreams was bizarre and uncanny, with evil spirits running rampant and people struggling to survive. Her soul wandered through another person's body, becoming a nine-year-old girl in a coroner's family. Born with unusual eyes, she held the lamp for her father, wielded the knife to examine the dead, and threaded the needle to sew up corpses. One night in the real world was a year in the dream.

On the sixteenth day of nightmares, Luo Ran noticed that something seemed wrong in reality.

On the twenty-fifth day, strange phenomena erupted across the real world. People dreamed as one, monsters emerged, and supernatural practitioners appeared.

On the fifty-first day, the body she inhabited in the dream died of old age. Luo Ran opened her eyes and looked out the window. Heaven wailed, the Earth Mother mourned, and the seal over the mortal world shattered overnight. Ancient evil spirits appeared in the wilderness, while newly born monsters prowled the steel jungles, becoming nightmares in the mortal realm.

Just as Luo Ran thought her dreams had ended and focused on using what she had learned to fight the monsters in reality, she closed her eyes on the fifty-second night and entered the dream again, once more inhabiting another body!

Sewing corpses as a coroner, finding spirits with treasure-seeking arts, digging for gold, painting eyes on paper effigies... Luo Ran learned skills in the mysterious dream by day and ventured into haunted places in reality by night.

Fox spirits, ghosts, stiff corpses, demons, and monsters, along with bizarre skeletons and uncanny evil spirits, wreaked havoc on the living.

The Five Powers God, household guardian spirits, old women chanting witch spells, young men dancing the Nuo exorcism, Taoist priests of the Three Pure Ones summoning thunder, spirit mediums calling forth divine soldiers, spirit children using planchettes, incense priestesses divining with rice... mediums, shamans, knife sellers, and spirit walkers: all kinds of gifted people appeared to fight evil and slay monsters. Those who burned the light to dispel nightmares were called “Lamp Bearers.”

When the mortal world fell into a nightmare of eternal night, only the domains of light were safe. Luo Ran moved between nightmares, staring at the group of monsters gathered before her as she held an unlit lantern and murmured her calculations: “Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty monsters for lamp oil. That should keep Ancheng lit for three nights.”

The long night has come. Danger lurks at every hour.

The Lamp Bearers swore their oath: If there is no torch, we shall be the light of day.

Complete blurb screenshot uploaded and archived on August 3, 2026.

Theme: Fight on with perseverance. Never give up.