Chapter 1

Drip... Drip... Drip... Drip... Drip...

The entire world fell into silence, as if only the dripping of water remained, one drop every three seconds, with a steady rhythm.

Drip-drip... Drip-drip... Drip-drip... Drip-drip...

The sound of the water drops clearly accelerated, as if the person in the dream suddenly encountered a nightmare, and their breathing instantly quickened.

Drip-drip-drip... Drip-drip-drip... Drip-drip-drip...

The water drops became more and more urgent, like gunfire, changing from single shots to a continuous barrage.

Drip-drip-drip-drip-drip-drip-drip-drip-drip…

In a moment, countless water drops became incredibly dense, like beans scattered from a great height.

There was no great height, and no beans scattered.

The space was dark and suffocating, and the water drop sounds came from nowhere, making one feel as if they were being choked.

A cold wind blew through, disrupting the direction of the water curtain and breaking the heart of the living.

Suddenly, a pale hand emerged from the mud.

A hand full of the will to survive.

Struggling to dig through the muddy soil, it looked like a drowning person desperately trying to find a way to survive.

Pant!

A woman, covered in mud, straightened up from where the hand had been digging.

Her long hair covered her face, making it impossible to see her features.

Her hair, which seemed to have not been cut for many years, was tangled and hung down to her chest, dripping with mud.

The scene was inexplicably eerie.

Pant-pant-pant!

The woman panted heavily, like a bellows.

The right hand that had been digging kept the same posture, moving closer and closer…

This hand directly touched Jiang Yue's face.

"Yue-er, it's so cold…"

Jiang Yue suddenly came to his senses and sprang up like a spring. Due to the large movement, the rattan chair under his buttocks was knocked over, colliding with the nearby coffee table, causing a chaotic mess of clattering sounds.

The room was bright and clean, with green bricks and blue tiles outside.

Where was the rain curtain and mud? Where was the woman covered in mud?

Jiang Yue rubbed his temples with both hands and shook his head rapidly, trying hard to shake off the nightmare-like scene he had just experienced.

It was this dream again…

In just four days of April, this dream had already appeared seven times.

Whether it was a brief nap or deep sleep, this dream always came uninvited.

It came without a trace and disappeared without a trace.

Was it just a dream?

Jiang Yue rubbed his cheeks hard. The cold, damp, and sticky sensation of the pale hand touching his face felt as if it had really happened.

Especially…

The moment the touch occurred, the woman's disheveled, cold, and helpless appearance was deeply etched in Jiang Yue's mind, clearly preserved.

Snap!

While Jiang Yue was in a daze, something suddenly fell behind him.

Turning around, he saw that an old photo frame, which had been placed on the large red sandalwood altar in the middle of the hall, had mysteriously fallen to the ground without any external force.

An old ancestral home, an old altar, and an old photo frame.

The glass in front of the photo frame was shattered, but fortunately, the photo inside was unharmed.

It was a 20-inch family portrait, slightly yellowed, looking quite old.

The photo showed a family of four, radiating happiness. Jiang Yue was also in the photo, holding an apple with chubby little hands, a boy of about seven or eight years old.

Jiang Yue carefully observed the scene, full of confusion.

The altar was about forty centimeters wide, placed against the main wall of the hall, and the photo frame had always been placed on the right side of the altar, close to the wall.

The first thing Jiang Yue did when he returned from the city to the old house in Panshilin was to give it a thorough cleaning. He wiped and cleaned, making the old house spotless inside and out.

The photo frame had also been carefully wiped and placed back by him. He remembered exactly how he had placed it and where, and could easily recall any detail of the process.

Even if the frame had slipped, it should have slipped onto the altar, not fallen directly to the ground, leaping over the forty-centimeter-wide altar.

To achieve the effect of the frame falling to the ground, it would have to do a somersault.

"Indeed, strange things happen one after another during the Qingming Festival?"

Carefully picking up the family portrait from the glass shards, just as he was about to turn to find a broom and dustpan to clean up, Jiang Yue's eyes suddenly fixed on the photo.

Without any warning, goosebumps appeared all over his body, large sweat beads formed on his forehead, and his breathing quickened.

The image of the woman from the nightmare, which had been imprinted in Jiang Yue's mind, slowly overlapped with the woman in the photo.

"Mom?" Jiang Yue exclaimed in shock.

His teeth clenched tightly on his lower lip, and his body trembled uncontrollably.

Jiang Yue never expected that the woman in his dreams, who had been desperately helpless, was actually his biological mother, who had been missing for ten years!

No!

Upon closer inspection, there were still obvious differences.

In the photo, his mother exuded a sense of intelligence and competence, with a blend of strictness and kindness, looking to be in her early thirties, the prime of her life.

The woman in the dream, disheveled and dirty, looked to be in her forties or fifties, with a look of fear and helplessness, her eyes filled with heart-wrenching despair.

But…

Jiang Yue, who paid attention to details and had a photographic memory, compared the features: the similar facial features, the height of the cheekbones, the proportions of the face…

He could be certain that it was indeed the same person!

This was strange.

Ten years ago, his mother, who was in her early thirties, had repeatedly entered his dreams, appearing as a woman in her forties or fifties, crying and begging for help!

Jiang Yue was usually interested in mysterious and strange things and had some knowledge of dream interpretation.

People who appeared in dreams often stayed the same age as they were in the past.

Especially when deceased people appeared in dreams, they often looked as they did when they were still alive.

Ten years ago, when Jiang Yue was eight, his mother's archaeological team had mysteriously disappeared. The image of his mother in this family portrait was basically his final memory of her.

He had never seen his mother in her forties or fifties, so he could not have formed an impression of her, let alone have her appear in his dreams.

Holding the photo, Jiang Yue was lost in thought, forgetting the glass shards on the ground.

"Second Brother, Second Brother…"

A cheerful voice came from outside the courtyard, and a boy with a round, sturdy face ran through the yard, poking his head into the hall door.

Seeing Jiang Yue inside, he was instantly delighted and rushed to him, his face beaming with joy at seeing a long-lost relative.

The boy was about eleven or twelve years old, with healthy bronze skin, bright black eyes that seemed to speak, and a high nose bridge, exuding the wildness of a country child.

The boy was the only son of Jiang Yue's third uncle, named Jiang Tong, with a nickname of San Gou.

For years, his third uncle and aunt had been working in a prosperous city, and his grandparents had passed away, leaving San Gou with no one to take care of him. He had been living with his aunt in town.

During the Qingming Festival, the boy had eagerly learned that his cousin Jiang Yue would be returning to Panshilin to pay respects, and had been pestering his aunt to bring him back for days.

Unfortunately, his aunt ran a small shop in town, and the holiday was the busiest time for business, so she had no time to take him back to Panshilin, which was dozens of miles away.

This was no problem for San Gou.

On the day of the Qingming Festival, he got up early, traveled dozens of miles alone, and returned to Panshilin. As soon as he entered the village, he rushed straight to Jiang Yue's old house without even going home to see his own family.

"San Gou, didn't your aunt say the shop was busy and she couldn't bring you back?"

Perhaps because of their blood ties, despite the age difference of five or six years and rarely seeing each other, the two brothers had a very close relationship.

Every time Jiang Yue returned to the old home, San Gou would stick to him like glue, wishing he could tie himself to his second brother's waist.

Jiang Yue was particularly doting on this little cousin, and their relationship was as close as that of real brothers.

Faced with his cousin's question, San Gou scratched his head, not wanting to admit that he had secretly returned without his aunt's knowledge, and changed the subject.

"Second Brother, who was the woman who just went out?"

"Talking nonsense as soon as we meet! I've been alone all along, who went out?" Jiang Yue slapped San Gou on the back of the head, thinking he was trying to avoid the topic.

San Gou was immediately unhappy: "How could no one have gone out? She was wearing a floral dress, with long hair, and her face and head were dirty, as if she had just come back from the fields. I was wondering who this crazy woman was, wearing a floral dress to work in the fields?"

Jiang Yue's second slap was still in the air when he stopped.

Floral dress, long hair, dirty face and head.

The image inexplicably overlapped with the dream again.

These features, described by San Gou, gave Jiang Yue another chill.

He suddenly grabbed San Gou and rushed out of the yard.

"San Gou, which way did the woman go?"

San Gou pointed to the left: "This way. When I came, she was just leaving the yard, and I met her here. She went down this road. I even looked back once."

San Gou spoke with great certainty, but there was no one in sight at the end of the road.

Jiang Yue followed the road, and because it had been drizzling for the past two days, the footprints were easy to identify. The only fresh footprints were those left by San Gou when he arrived, and there were no fresh footprints in the opposite direction.

"San Gou!" Jiang Yue's face darkened.

"Second Brother, I'm not lying! I swear, if I lie, may a car hit me." San Gou, a straightforward boy, stuck out his neck and swore.

San Gou, though mischievous, had a sense of propriety. Once he swore, it was absolutely not a joke, and it was one hundred percent true.

Jiang Yue sighed, looking in the direction San Gou had pointed, lost in thought.

These strange and bizarre events were happening one after another.