Li Xiu had a dream.

He knew very well that it was a dream, because the red rope around his waist was always faintly hot, seemingly to remind him of this.

In this dream, Li Xiu found that he had returned to the Xiao family villa he had just visited during the day.

It must be because he was so stimulated during the day that he kept dreaming about this, right? Because this time, he not only dreamed of the silent and eerie haunted house, but also of Teacher Xu and the others he had met that day.

With no control over himself, he stood in the corner of the room and watched Teacher Xu and the others perform various strange activities in front of the small storage room door that he and Fang Qian’an had inspected before. He watched as those people poured large amounts of talismans into the brazier with cold sweat on their brows, and could faintly hear the sound of Teacher Xu chanting mantras.

Zizi…..

A discomfiting wet sound came from the brazier.

Li Xiu looked into the brazier with a frown, then realized that what was burning in the basin was not fire. On the contrary, there was now only a thick and sticky black-red mud.

Like some kind of living creature, the “mud” continuously climbed up the sides of the basin, tangled and revolting.

Li Xiu felt nauseous, and some kind of intuition made him want to avoid the thing in the basin. However, there seemed to be an invisible force restraining him in this dream, forcing him closer and closer to the storage room door.

Only then did Li Xiu discover that the storage room door was completely different in the dream than in reality.

The scarlet door was densely covered in yellow symbols, and countless chains as thick as a baby’s wrist were welded to the rock wall, locking it tightly.

One after another, long, shrill screams continued to squeeze out from the cracks in the door.

[“It’s not me…..let me out…..you made a mistake…..”]

[“He ran away. He ran away a long time ago, hehehehe…..”]

[“I beg of you, let me out…..you made a mistake, ahhhhh……let me out wuwuwu…..it hurts…..it hurts ahhhhh…..”]

They were the howls of a grown man. Each syllable uttered contained tremendous pain, as if it could be transmitted through sound waves into the souls of others.

Li Xiu’s figure swayed, and his body wouldn’t stop trembling.

So painful, so nauseous…..

He covered his ears with his hands, hardly able to continue listening.

However, no matter how he resisted, the screams of the thing inside the door were always with him, extremely clear.

But it seemed to be aware that nobody was paying any attention to its wails of pain.

The screamer’s voice became shriller and more vicious, and eventually, its howls turned into incredibly dark and vicious curses.

[“You will all die.”]

The crying was mixed with an eerie, hissing laughter.

[“There is no escape. No one can escape. Hehehehe, you think you’ve suppressed him…..hehe, he left here long ago.”]

[“I will never reincarnate…..but you…..all of you are the same…..it’s the same for all of us…..]

[“All of you will die. Everyone will die!]

Accompanied by the male voice’s curses, black and red blood as thick as asphalt seeped out of the cracks in the closed door.

“Wu…..”

Even knowing that this was a nightmare, Li Xiu still couldn’t help but take a step back.

Then…..he felt himself crash directly into a cold embrace.

Li Xiu instantly froze.

It was obviously a dream, but the feeling of cold behind him was so clear. So clear that even in a dream, his hair stood on end and his heart tightened.

The pair of hands gradually moved from Li Xiu’s shoulders to his chest. Under Li Xiu’s trembling gaze, that pair of nailless hands moved over Li Xiu’s body inch by inch.

The corpse’s lips pressed against his ear, and his breath when he spoke brought with it an arctic chill.

[“Don’t be afraid, A-Xiu.”]

[“Gege won’t kill A-Xiu.”]

[“Gege loves you.”]

. . . . . .

Beepbeep beepbeep—

The alarm on his cell phone rang next to his pillow. The boy, grimacing and sweating on the single bed, was successfully brought back to reality from his nightmare.

Li Xiu groaned. With great difficulty, he fumbled for his phone and turned off the alarm. It took several more seconds before he forced himself to open his eyes.

His head was very heavy.

All of the joints in his body were also extremely stiff. When Li Xiu stood, he almost felt like he was carrying another person on his back, so heavy that he could hardly lift his head.

It seemed he’d had another nightmare last night.

Having experienced many such things since childhood, Li Xiu didn’t pay attention to the strangeness of his body.

He just vaguely felt that something wasn’t right when he woke up. Thinking about the reason his body was so heavy now, Li Xiu suddenly realized that there was one person missing from the bed.

All of Fang Qian’an’s things had vanished. Apparently, the other party had left before Li Xiu woke up.

For a moment, Li Xiu looked at the bed and didn’t know if he should feel unhappy or relieved.

Now that he thought about it, it should be more of the latter.

…..Maybe it felt a little weird to wake up in the same bed or something. 

This thought briefly passed through Li Xiu’s mind. He glanced at the time on his phone and was suddenly invigorated, waking up completely. He also had no time to think about his poor, choppy interpersonal relationships.

Because he was almost late.

Li Xiu quickly finished washing up, changed into his school uniform, and went to rush into his gege’s room and take out the uncooked rice he had placed under the bed the day before.

However, there was nothing under the bed.

Li Xiu’s heart tightened at once. He even took out his cell phone and took several pictures under the bed, but the bowl that should have been there was still missing — it wasn’t until Li Xiu arrived in the kitchen that he discovered that his gege’s bowl had been cleanly washed and placed on the dining table.

Standing at the table, Li Xiu looked at that lone bowl. He kept feeling that after waking up this morning, the house felt extremely cold.

There seemed to be a sweet, fishy smell in the air…..

Teacher Xu’s words the day before were still ringing in his ears. Li Xiu calmed down and forced himself not to think in the direction of the supernatural.

After taking a deep breath, he stood next to his grandmother’s bedroom and whispered into the quiet room, “Grandmother, did you take out Gege’s rice bowl?”

He waited for a long time before an extremely faint, hoarse response came.

“He’s full…..A-Xiu, ah…..he’s full.”

He was full?

Did that mean “Gege” was full?

Li Xiu was at a loss. He heard his grandmother continue to speak: “Just ignore all that and leave quickly. Leave quickly.”

The old woman’s voice returned to normal, and she began to urge Li Xiu to go to school.

At the door, Li Xiu let out a quiet sigh: “Oh. Then I’ll leave for school first, Grandmother.”

Recently, his grandmother’s various manifestations showed that her Alzheimer’s disease was getting increasingly serious. Perhaps in his grandmother’s mind, that “gege” trapped under the bed was finally full?

Although he was extremely uneasy, Li Xiu was indeed very close to being late.

Li Xiu could only hastily rush out of the house with his school bag on his back, his heart in his throat.

When the door closed, it seemed as if he could still hear his grandmother’s babbling.

[“A-Xiu, leave quickly.”]

[“Leave quickly.”]

*

“Hey, Li kid.”

When he got downstairs, Li Xiu walked in a hurry with his head down.

But when passing by the downstairs neighbor, he was still stopped in the alleyway by the neighbor sister.

“Auntie Liu? What is it?”

Li Xiu raised his head to see the neighbor sister’s long face.

“I say, ah, can’t you tell that relative of yours to stop crying every night at three in the morning? Seriously, I’ve tolerated you for a long time. How can the noise keep me awake living next door to you across the street? Crying one day, two days, crying and crying every day. You wouldn’t want to be disturbed by that noise, would you? My son still needs to go to school. It’s annoying to death.”

Li Xiu looked at the neighbor with a blank face.

“Relative? Auntie Liu, we don’t have any relatives coming to our house…..”

Auntie Liu became instantly furious when he heard Li Xiu’s response, and yelled while pointing at the window of Li Xiu’s living room: “How is that not the case? I can see through your window!”

Building homes in a shantytown had always been about finding every opportunity. Although Li Xiu’s house and the neighbor sister’s house were two buildings, the distance between the two families was indeed so close that you could run from one to the other just by clambering up.

And the neighbor’s balcony really did face Li Xiu’s living room.

As Li Xiu suddenly became very silent, the neighbor sister was still shouting in anger.

“At three in the morning, she’ll run around the living room crying, and I’ll call to her through the window to keep her voice down. But she’s still pretending to be deaf.”

“But…..”

“I say this so loudly and angrily, because you’re a child who studies, yet you’re still lying to me. What do you mean your family has no relatives? How many years has that woman lived there with your grandmother? Do you think we’re all blind?”

The shouts of the neighbor sister gradually became distant.

It was like a pair of invisible hands were gently covering Li Xiu’s ears.

However, on this ordinary weekday morning, Li Xiu stood below his home and shivered uncontrollably from the cold.

He knew very well that he and his grandmother had only each other to depend on for so many years.

But at the same time, he also thought of the “guest” he would see in the living room every time he went home, as well as the pair of high heels the guest left by the door.

Some things that Li Xiu had inadvertently ignored suddenly became extremely clear.

For example, he had seen the old pair of high heels at the door when he got home yesterday.

But when he entered the house, no one was there.

For another example, his grandmother seemed to have hugged him once while murmuring to him.

[“A-Xiu, don’t touch those shoes.”]

[“Those are the shoes of a dead person. Whichever direction the toes of the shoes point, she only knows how to go in that direction.”]

[“If you mess up her shoes, she won’t know how to get home.”]

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The Author Has Something to Say:

Just in case, I’d like to add that this idea of the shoe toes came from a ghost story I heard before. 

That is to say, everyone should avoid pointing the toes of their shoes toward the bed before going to sleep. Otherwise, ghosts will follow the toes of the shoes and crawl up.

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Chapter 37 << Table of Contents >> Chapter 39