CH 52

I was completely confused as the middle-aged woman exerted her strength and dragged me towards the back door of the bus. “What’s gotten into you? How could I steal from you when I was sitting in front of you the whole time? Did you see me leave my seat once?” 

Despite my attempts to explain, the middle-aged woman refused to listen. “It’s you! I saw it clearly, a grown person like you not learning to behave and stealing things!” 

With that, she forcefully pulled me towards the bus door, insisting that we go to the police station immediately.

Feeling bewildered and falsely accused, I found myself being dragged off the bus by the determined woman. 

As I watched the bus slowly disappear into the distance, I didn’t know weither to laugh and cry, “Auntie, I’m really not a thief. You can search me if you want, I have nothing on me.”

“Auntie knows you’re a good person.” She gasped for breath as she watched the No.14 bus disappear into the night. “It’s because you’re a good person that I wanted to save your life.” 

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Just now, the wind blew open the mourning clothes of those people outside. Can you guess what I saw?” She spoke in a secretive tone, lowering her tone. 

I subconsciously asked, “What did you see?”

“Those guys aren’t human!” The wrinkles on the middle-aged woman’s face gathered together as she whispered, “They didn’t have legs under their mourning clothes!” 

“No way,” I never expected the seemingly ordinary middle-aged woman to be so observant. I had been keeping an eye on those people in mourning clothes since they got on the bus, but as someone who had studied criminology, even I didn’t notice anything unusual. 

“Could it be because of the angle?” The middle-aged woman was very close to those people, while I could only watch from my phone. 

“Never mind about that. Auntie saved your life without expecting anything in return, I just hope you can take me home.” After getting off the bus, she became solemn and serious, completely different from her demeanor on the bus. 

Since we had already gotten off the bus, it was too late for me to go back and chase after it. I nodded helplessly and asked, “Where is your home? It’s not easy to find in this remote area.” 

“It’s easy to find, just follow me and don’t stray too far from me. Keep your head down and watch your step.” We walked north along the road and soon heard a woman’s cry for help. I was about to go check it out. 

“Don’t bother! Keep moving!” The middle-aged woman’s face was serious as she urged me on in a stern voice. 

I hesitated, “Isn’t it better to check it out? It sounds like the couple who got off the bus just now.” 

The middle-aged woman firmly grasped my arm and urged me to move. “If I tell you to move, just move. Interfering too much can get you into trouble,” she cautioned. Her grip was surprisingly strong, making me feel as though she had the strength of a grown man.

“No. I still need to take a look!” The woman’s crying grew louder and more desperate, as if someone were chasing her with a knife.

I shook off the middle aged woman’s arm and left the road despite her obstruction, running towards the source of the woman’s cries for help. The ground was uneven, and the wild chrysanthemum branches scratched my legs, causing a sharp pain.

“Hey! Are you okay?” After passing through the chrysanthemum garden, I could vaguely see a woman lying in a pool of blood in the darkness, and without much thought, I hurried over.

Placing my hand on the woman’s nose, I realized she had already stopped breathing.

“She’s dead?” Perhaps due to my profession, I instinctively turned over the woman’s body, but strangely, there were no wounds on her, except for the bruised and blackened marks on her neck from being strangled with a rope.

“Then where did this blood come from?” My body trembled as I gazed ahead and saw a man lying near a nearby mound with several stab wounds on his body.

“The man is dead, so…”

“Watch out!” Suddenly, the middle-aged woman pushed me with great force. As I stumbled away, I looked back to see a bright fruit knife lodged into the ground where I had been crouching just moments before.

Still reeling from the shock, I turned around and saw the woman who had just stopped breathing suddenly shaking her head and getting up.

“You’re not dead?”

“She probably doesn’t even know how many years she’s been dead, and her body is probably rotting.” The middle-aged woman stood between me and the other woman, seemingly trying to protect me but actually gripping my arm tightly, as if afraid I would run away.

The woman who missed her attack didn’t seem bothered and sneered, “You have the nerve to talk to me? Your own grave has been abandoned by your own son. Now you’re homeless…”

“Shut up!” The middle-aged woman’s grip on my arm was painful. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll take you to my house, and once we get there, you won’t see any of these lost souls and ghosts anymore!”

Their conversation gave me chills, and at this point, I didn’t dare to follow her. “Auntie, I don’t think I can take you home. You two talk slowly. I have to go.”

I tried to break free but couldn’t shake off the middle-aged woman’s hand. Her grip was tight, as if her hand was attached to my flesh.

“Don’t go, we’re almost at Auntie’s house. Come sit for a while, come sit for a while!”

The more enthusiastically she invited me, the more frightened I felt. 

I tightened my grip on my phone and used all my strength to push her away. 

Stepping back a few paces, her face was cloudy and vague. “Where exactly is your house, Auntie?”

The middle-aged woman, who was now facing away from me, shook her head a few times. Her head seemed to be about to fall off, but she suddenly turned around and said, “The house is close. We’ll be there soon. Once we pass this mound, you’ll be able to see it…”

“Mound?” It was only then that I noticed that the man had been leaning against not a pile of dirt, but an unmarked grave. My body uncontrollably ran backwards, as I instinctively wanted to get away from these two eerie women.

“Don’t go, come sit at my place. You won’t have to worry about any wandering spirits or ghosts once you’re inside!” The middle-aged woman’s voice was slightly high pitched and sounded eerie and desolate in the night wind. I didn’t dare turn back and instead used both my hands and feet to run into the endless darkness of the night.

My pants were torn, my shoes had been lost, and my feet were covered in fresh blood. I had no idea how long I had been running; time had become incomprehensible.

All I could hear was my own labored breathing, which grew heavier and more strained with each passing moment. My body was exhausted, and I knew that I couldn’t run any further.

Finally, I was exhausted and couldn’t run anymore. I collapsed on the ground with a thud. “Are you done running?”

With a thud, my legs gave out and I collapsed to the ground, gasping for air. “You’re not running anymore?” 

I looked up to see a terrifying sight: a person was crouched on top of a grave several meters away. As I focused my vision, I realized with horror that it was a ghost.

The middle-aged woman who had pulled me off the bus approached me, holding a large rock in her hand. “An eye for an eye, a life for a life. We must kill the wicked!” she declared.

Before I could react, the rock came crashing down, and my world spun out of control. A fiery pain erupted in my chest, and my heart began pounding wildly in my chest.

****

I slowly opened my eyes, and there were no graves, wild chrysanthemums, or evil spirits in front of me. All I could see was a blazing fire.

As I watched the flames rising and listened to the heart-wrenching cries, my mind suddenly cleared, and I stopped in my tracks.

“What’s going on?” I looked around and saw a wide road. Across the street, an old woman was putting paper money into an iron basin and burning it in the middle of the road!

“Was that just a dream?!” I still had a cigarette in my hand, and I looked around, realizing that I was still standing in front of the bus stop at Miyun Mansion with the number 14 bus sign.

I checked my watch and saw that it was not yet midnight. “This can’t be real,” I thought. The events of earlier were still vivid in my mind, and I remembered them clearly.

“The live stream, right. Let me ask the viewers in the chat room.” I picked up my phone and asked, “Hey, guys, I have a serious question for you. Did I just get on a bus earlier? Did you see a few drunk construction workers and some mourners?” 

“The host is acting mysterious again.” 

“He’s acting so convincingly, it feels like it’s real.” 

“Applause and flowers, you deserve an Oscar for your acting!” 

Half-immortal Liu from Qingcheng Mountain chimed in: “Hey, buddy, how have you been? I saw you lost in thought on the side of the road about half an incense stick ago.” 

As soon as Half-Immortal Liu’s comment appeared on the screen, I breathed a sigh of relief. “Since even Half-Immortal said so, it seems like I really was dreaming just now.”

I looked down and saw that my shoes and pants were intact, and there were no injuries on my body. “Was it really a dream? But it was too realistic,” 

It wasn’t until I reached into the pocket of my inner jacket that I realized something was off. This was the pocket where I stored the talisman papers, and as I touched it, I found that out of the six talisman papers, only four remained, and two had turned to ashes.

I was stunned and didn’t know what to say for a moment. “How could talisman papers spontaneously combust?” I muttered to myself.

Fortunately, Half-immortal Liu was in the chat room, so I recounted the whole incident to him.

Half-immortal Liu from Qingcheng Mountain said, “Based on what you’ve said, it feels like it was not just a dream but also some sort of omen. Could it be that a higher power is secretly helping you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The only higher power I know is a blind man who is constantly being chased by urban management officers,” I said while pouring out the talisman ashes from my pocket. I tried to recall their appearance and divine patterns and said to Half-immortal Liu, “Half-immortal, do you think the dream I had might be related to these two talisman papers?”

After listening to me, Half-Immortal Liu took a long time to post a comment: “Strange! Strange! Based on what you said, I’m 80% sure that the burned mother and son talismans are a secret technique not passed down by the Xiao Zhuang Taoist Temple! The son talisman has the ability to pull the soul, which can make people dream, while the mother talisman can make the dream linger, making them experience disasters in their dreams!”

“The soul is pulled, and the dream lingers?”