Chapter 76

Zhao Kuazui fumbled his way down from the bed, then lit an oil lamp and came to the door of the outer room. Through the glass on the door, he could vaguely see his wife hugging their son, who was not yet two years old, sleeping soundly.

To speak of why they had started sleeping separately, it was not unrelated to the nightmare he had just had.

Similar nightmares had persisted for many days. Each time, he would suddenly wake up in shock, only to find the room covered in blood, with a nauseating stench of blood filling the air.

His body was tightly restrained to the bed, only his head could勉强 move slightly. During this process, he would always see a woman crawling on the ground like a gecko, with a hideous face approaching him...

This was the seventh consecutive night he had dreamed the same thing. Each time, he would wake up in a sudden shock just before the woman was about to kill him.

Because he had been so terrified upon waking up several times, he moved from the outer room to the inner room to avoid scaring his wife and child, planning to sleep alone for a while to adjust.

However, after several days, there was no improvement. Instead, the fear and despair in his dreams grew increasingly intense.

"What the hell is wrong with me? It's just that I slept with a woman, is it really necessary to torture myself like this?"

Zhao Kuazui picked up his pipe, lit it, and habitually sat at the table to smoke, his face full of anxiety and unease.

He really didn't know what was wrong with him, why he had been having the same nightmare for so many consecutive days, and why the person in the dream was always the same. No, to be precise, it should be the same dead person!

It was the woman who had been forced to have a relationship with him and whose body had mysteriously floated in the Hulu River, Chen Lao Da's nominal daughter-in-law—Xiao Li.

Although he had taken advantage of Xiao Li, he was not the mastermind. He had only accepted Hu Dan's kindness. After all, with such a young woman being offered to him for free, how could he, as a normal man, resist?

Of course, he admitted that Xiao Li's subsequent suicide might have been partly due to this, but the main reason should be on Chen Lao Da's side. If Chen Lao Da hadn't bought her from the human traffickers, bribed the villagers to watch over her, and married her to his foolish son, would she have been threatened by Hu Dan? Would she have had a relationship with them? Would she have jumped into the river to commit suicide?

Obviously, none of these would have happened. So, the blame had a clear source. In Zhao Kuazui's mind, even if Xiao Li had come back as a vengeful ghost, she should not have targeted him but should have gone after Chen Lao Da and Hu Dan.

"Blame has a clear source, please don't torment me anymore."

Hu Dan muttered to himself. In the silent rainy night, only the sound of the rain outside responded to him, as if warning him of something.

"Damn, this is really killing me."

Zhao Kuazui sighed in distress, extinguished his pipe, and then took off his shoes and climbed into bed.

Lying on the slightly damp bed, listening to the rain outside, he gradually felt sleepy. The sound of the rain gradually became fainter until it was completely inaudible.

Zhao Kuazui thought he would fall into a deep sleep, but suddenly his drowsy mind became clear. The stark contrast was so great that he even forgot why he was still lying in bed.

The room was pitch black, and it took a while for some vague shadows to appear.

"Has the rain stopped?"

Zhao Kuazui stared at the ceiling for a while, and the room was completely silent, as if he were the only one there.

Facing the darkness alone, his heart was filled with fear, anxiety, and unease, and he desperately wanted to escape.

Zhao Kuazui was tormented by his guilt and wanted to scream. He struggled to sit up but was terrified to find that his body was numb and couldn't move, only his head could turn slightly.

At that moment, Zhao Kuazui felt drenched in cold sweat, his body cold as ice, as if he were in the middle of a freezing winter river.

"Ah..."

Zhao Kuazui didn't know if he was asleep or awake. He clearly remembered not falling asleep, and his mind was exceptionally clear, but the scene before him was like the nightmare that had plagued him for the past few days.

Zhao Kuazui kept screaming, trying to wake his wife in the outer room and have her come out to comfort him, telling him it was just a nightmare.

However, no matter how he shouted, his wife did not come out of the outer room. Instead, strange sounds began to appear in the room, and a nauseating smell of blood filled the air!

"A nightmare! It's that nightmare again!"

Zhao Kuazui's heart screamed in fear. Although he had experienced this terrifying nightmare before, this time it felt more terrifying than ever.

It was as if... what was about to happen was not just a nightmare.

The nauseating smell of blood grew stronger, and Zhao Kuazui turned his head with great difficulty to see a hideous woman with her head raised, crouching near the window!

There was no doubt that the woman was staring at him with malice.

Soon, the woman began to crawl slowly toward his bed, moving like a stiff gecko.

The "hissing" sound of her crawling made him feel extremely uneasy.

"It's just a dream, just a nightmare."

He kept reassuring himself, watching the woman crawl closer and closer, then climb onto his body.

"Clack, clack, clack..."

The woman's hands and feet pressed firmly on Zhao Kuazui's body. His shouts had become hoarse, and she suddenly lowered her head, her neck making a series of bone-cracking sounds.

Throughout the process, Zhao Kuazui's eyes were wide open in fear, watching the woman's arm slowly reach out and grab his neck.

At that moment, he felt a strong sense of suffocation enveloping every pore of his body, and his clear consciousness was rapidly fading.

The suffocation grew stronger, and Zhao Kuazui's eyes opened wider and wider, unable to control them...

Until his consciousness was completely erased by the cold of this world.

"I should have woken up, right?"

"This should just be a dream, right?"

"I must be dreaming... I must be dreaming..."

"How can a person be killed by a ghost in their sleep!"

This was Zhao Kuazui's final question to the world.

...

Looking at Zhao Kuazui's face, contorted in extreme pain, Xia Tianqi couldn't help but think of a drowning death picture he had seen online, which was similar to Zhao Kuazui's death.

When Xia Tianqi and Leng Yue arrived at Zhao Kuazui's house, he had already been drowned in his bed, with a large amount of blood flowing from his nose and ears, clearly having been suffocated to death.

They had once again arrived too late.

Xia Tianqi clenched his fists in frustration and said, not willing to give up:

"Let's move on to the next house. I really don't believe that the female ghost will always get there before us!"