Chapter One: The Shocking Dream

  People always said don't be too full of yourself, Su Tong never took it seriously, now she regrets it.

  Having lived for twenty years, encountering a nightmare like this was still her first time.

  When she went out for an interview during the day, in a quiet alley, an old lady with a hunched back and eyes that seemed to have only whites without pupils grabbed her.

  "Girl, your eight characters are too light." The old lady was thin and small, but her voice was exceptionally hoarse and low. She held Su Tong's wrist tightly with one hand, while staring at him with a pair of white eyeballs that made his hair stand on end. "You mustn't go to those places with heavy yin energy, or you'll inevitably provoke something you shouldn't! You're lucky to have met me today, I'm kind enough to warn you. If it were someone else, you wouldn't be so fortunate!"

  "Old lady, let go first..." Su Tong was startled by the old woman, instinctively wanting to pull his hand back, but unexpectedly, this thin and small old woman had incredible strength, her two hands were like two pieces of sandpaper, grasping Su Tong's hand so tightly that it hurt. If he hadn't seen her age, Su Tong would have almost pushed her away in pain, trying to pull his hand back with force, but was held firmly by the old lady and couldn't pull it out.

  "What's wrong, Su Tong?"

  The photographer who came out to do the interview with Su Tong heard Su Tong's shocked and frightened voice, and hurriedly ran out of the small courtyard of the interviewee's house. When Su Tong heard her colleague's voice, she felt a lot more at ease in her heart, and quickly turned around to call him, wanting him to help her get rid of this strange old woman who had suddenly appeared. As soon as she opened her mouth to greet her, she felt her wrist relax, and when the photographer came out to ask about the situation, she looked again, but the small alley was empty, where was the hunchbacked old woman with white eyes?

  A blind, thin old man disappeared silently in such a short time, which was indeed a bit strange. But Su Teng, with his materialistic spirit that had not been shaken for over 20 years, just thought he had met a neurotic old woman. After calming down, he didn't think much of it and went back to the newspaper office, even making fun of it with his closest colleague, Xiao Wang. However, after listening to the story, Xiao Wang was shocked and calculated for half a day, insisting on finding a good day to take Su Teng to the temple to ask for an amulet.

  Su Tong didn't take it seriously, instead he smiled and joked with Xiao Wang, saying: "All painters say that the easiest thing to paint is a ghost, because nobody has ever seen one, so no matter what you paint, it's always right. If there really were ghosts in this world, that would be great, I'd take a look at what they look like, and then I'd be an expert in this field too."

  "I see, you're just talking nonsense here. You'd better find a man with good luck to pair up with, that's more reliable!" Xiaowang usually joked around with Sutong and didn't take it seriously, so she didn't mention the amulet again. She teased, "Otherwise, in the middle of the night when no one is around, what if some ghostly grandpa takes pity on your loneliness..."

  "Welcome! The bedroom door is always open!" Su Tong responded at that time.

  It's okay to eat messily, but words can't be spoken carelessly. That night, I encountered a ghost pressing on my bed. In the middle of the night, I lay in bed with my eyes wide open, unable to move. Su Tong could only lament in his heart, wondering if this was his retribution in this life.

  She didn't know what time it was, only that the room was pitch black, and the dim starlight outside shone through the semi-transparent curtains, making the room feel even colder. The second hand of the small alarm clock on her bedside table made a ticking sound every time it moved, a sound that was normally too faint for Su Tong to hear, but now seemed unusually loud. Every tick made Su Tong's heart jump, and the jokes she had exchanged with Xiao Wang during the day replayed in her mind, bringing a chill that she couldn't explain. A layer of fine goosebumps suddenly appeared on her arm outside the quilt. If her limbs could obey her commands at this moment, Su Tong would have liked to knock herself on the head - what was wrong with her, thinking about such scary things at this hour!

  There must be a scientific explanation for this, Su Teng quickly searched her mind for relevant theories to comfort herself. She remembered reading an article about it before, which said that the so-called "ghost pressing on the bed" was medically known as sleep paralysis syndrome. People who experience this think they have woken up, but in fact, they are still in a dream state, and their muscles are almost paralyzed, unable to move under control.

  Suddenly, Su Tong felt that she vaguely heard some sound, as if someone was singing a song. The voice was a bit ethereal, sometimes far and sometimes near, just like someone was listening to the radio and adjusting the volume up and down repeatedly. After several times, the singing voice became louder and clearer, as if it were closer to Su Tong.

  It's already this late, how can someone be so inconsiderate? Su Tong silently complained to herself. Her limbs were still immobile, and it seemed like the only things that could still move were her two eyeballs. The singing voice was a gentle hum, seemingly some unfamiliar opera, with lyrics that she couldn't understand at all. The melody had a sorrowful and mournful tone that sent chills down one's spine, sounding as if it was crying and pleading. And the woman's voice was sharp and thin, singing in a flat tone without any ups and downs, always dragging out the long notes, making people feel uneasy.

  Cough...

  Cough...

  Suddenly, a strange noise came from outside the window. The sound was somewhat familiar, like the sound of a mischievous boy in class scratching the blackboard with his fingernails when reading books in the past. It made people feel very uncomfortable. The noise came abruptly, and the singing voice that followed also became sharp and shrill, as if it were just outside the window. Su Teng instinctively cast his gaze towards the window and was terrified to discover that an unknown hand had appeared outside the window at some point. The hand was dry and thin, with long, curved fingernails visible. At this moment, it was scratching the glass again and again, making a "creaking" sound.

  Su Tong's heart suddenly rose to her throat, she lived on the 10th floor, at this height, how could someone possibly reach her window from outside? Now it was a hand, wouldn't there be something else later?

  But, just like Murphy's Law, what you fear most always happens. Su Tong's worst fears came true as the hand scratched against the glass, and a shadow cast by the cold starlight outside the window appeared on the ceiling - a long-haired woman in a long gown that seemed to have no curves, her hair disheveled, like a profile, but there was nothing outside the window.

  What kind of angle would make a person's side profile appear on the ceiling like that, Su Tong couldn't figure it out, her mind was completely occupied by fear, and she had no time to judge anything else, she could only stare at the side profile on the ceiling with wide eyes, slowly, slowly, it turned around, changing into a frontal posture, just like a person without facial features standing on the ceiling, looking down at Su Tong on the bed.

  The shadow grew longer and longer, slowly moving from the foot of the bed to Su Tong's head, the singing that had just echoed in his ears suddenly stopped, replaced by a series of mournful dry laughs. The shadow didn't have a mouth, but Su Tong was deeply convinced that the laughter came from this dark figure.

  The dark shadow had stretched very long, and from its long body, two withered branch-like ghost hands split out, continuing to stretch forward, as if wanting to crawl down along the wall against the headboard to grab Su Tong. Su Tong wanted to scream, but her throat was also disobedient, being strangled by an invisible hand, unable to make a single sound, and could only stare with wide eyes full of terror, watching those ghost hands slowly stretch towards the edge of the bed. Her heart was filled with fear and despair, a taste she had never experienced in this life.

  However, something unexpected happened. When the ghostly hands touched the wall above Su Tong's head, a golden light suddenly flashed out, and although it was very brief, it caused the ghostly hands to quickly shrink back as if they had been electrocuted. Not only did the ghostly hands shrink back, but the entire ghostly shadow also shrank back with them, shrinking bit by bit until it reached the edge of the bed, where it seemed to flow out through a gap in the window and disappear.

  As the ghostly shadow disappeared, Su Tong's originally stiff and uncontrollable body suddenly felt a little lighter. The force that had been binding her limbs also vanished along with the shadow. She let out a sigh of relief, not bothering to think about anything else, and hastily flipped on the bedside lamp. The soft, warm glow of the lamp was usually something Su Tong found comforting, but now it was far from enough to dispel the fear in her heart. She shivered and shook as she climbed down from bed, turning on all the lights in the room, even the whole house, before scurrying back under the covers, wrapping herself up like a cocoon.

  After calming down for a while, after the intense heartbeat had slightly subsided, Su Tong suddenly remembered that golden light that had appeared out of nowhere earlier. She pulled one hand out from under the quilt and felt around the wall at the head of her bed, but no matter how she looked at it, she couldn't see anything unusual about this wall.

  Anyway, the wall just now must have saved itself. Su Teng thought so and leaned his body closer to the wall, as if hoping to gain some sense of security from it.

  He curled up at the head of the bed, one hand touching the wall, and Su Tong maintained this slightly strange posture until the sky was faintly cool, before falling asleep with a tiredness that followed a fright.

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