Chapter 15: A Memory He Never Recalled

The beeping of medical equipment from other patient rooms was drowned out by the sound of rain outside the window. Feeling the slight chill of the rain being swept in by the wind and landing on the back of his hand, Xu Huai finally raised his hand and closed the window a little.

Nurses passing by in the hallway would occasionally glance at the window, taking a look at the tall man who had been standing outside the hallway for quite some time.

It wasn’t that Xu Huai’s security guard addiction had flared up, making him want to stand guard outside Xie Jing’s room late at night. Nor was it that he couldn’t find a hot water station after leaving Xie Jing’s room and was feeling a bit emo, striking a profound pose by the window.

As soon as Xu Huai closed his eyes, his mind couldn’t help but start recalling the dream he had in the afternoon, blending it with what he had seen in the “Nightmare.”

In the dream, he fell off a cliff, his waist pierced, severely injured, and near death.

Just now, in the “Nightmare,” he remembered himself appearing in a cave with the same injury.

Inside the cave, a lit white candle was placed in front of him, and strange red threads were wrapped around his body, giving the impression of some bizarre ritual.

Based on the injury, the dream and the scene he remembered in the “Nightmare” might be related.

Could that remembered scene be the second half of the dream?

A thought suddenly floated into his mind.

Or perhaps it wasn’t a dream at all, but a memory he had never recalled.

But it only appeared for a second before being suppressed little by little by Xu Huai’s rationality.

Unlikely.

Different events fully occupied every moment in the past.

For example, before graduating from college, he was studying at school.

When he wasn’t preparing for exams or reading, he was drawing talismans. When he didn’t want to draw anymore, he would watch Zhang Daoquan tell fortunes. As he grew older, he would occasionally help people online with their horoscopes and assist with some minor paranormal events.

A year ago, he graduated from college.

On the day of his graduation, he took his diploma home and found that Zhang Daoquan was not there.

A week passed without Zhang Daoquan being seen, and he couldn’t be reached by phone.

Zhang Daoquan would occasionally go out to help people with incidents, but he had never gone a week without sending a message, unlike this time.

Realizing something was wrong, he immediately reported it to the police. The police determined that the last place Zhang Daoquan was seen was Chengjiu Mountain in the neighboring Xilin County.

Waiting was too agonizing, so he went to Chengjiu Mountain in search of Zhang Daoquan, but he became lost in the mountains and couldn’t find his way out.

In the end, Song Lianzhou brought him out.

His memory of the conversation he had with Song Lianzhou in the hospital was only vaguely retained.

Song Lianzhou said that he had found him at the foot of the mountain. He was unconscious at the time and couldn’t be woken up no matter what.

Song Lianzhou was afraid something would happen, so he sent him to the hospital. The doctor’s examination confirmed that he was indeed malnourished. He had no wounds on his body, only a few bruises from bumps.

Xu Huai’s thoughts stalled.

The rain outside the window grew heavier, the transparent raindrops being swept by the wind and beating against the clear glass. A chill poured into the hallway from outside the window, and Xu Huai stared at the water droplets rolling down the glass, his eyes losing focus for a moment.

…Is that so?

Xu Huai raised his hand and placed it on his abdomen, where the wound from the branch piercing him had appeared in the dream, and pressed it gently.

It seemed that this was the only explanation.

If the real situation in the mountains was truly like in the dream, and he had fallen off a cliff and suffered serious injuries, then it would be impossible for him to have no traces on his body now, and there would be some scars.

So, that dream was just a dream.

The sense of familiarity stemmed from having had too many similar dreams in the past, and he had suddenly recalled fragments of a dream.

After all, only this explanation could be considered somewhat reasonable.

Xu Huai lowered his eyes and turned to look at the patient’s room behind him.

But…

Recently, too many “unreasonable” things had happened around him, and one more didn’t make much of a difference.

For example, drawing a Ghost-Dispelling Talisman on the window of the room, yet the ghost still appeared inside. It was a child ghost with some strength but no aggressiveness. It seemed that he was merely bored and came to watch Xie Jing drink his medicine.

That ball of ghost fire was entwined with Xie Jing.

It sensed his paper doll but didn’t attack; instead, it rushed up and licked him.

Also, Xie Jing’s strange ability to see ghosts when he touched him.

There were already many unreasonable things, and these were just the ones he had discovered.

Although there was no need to worry about things that hadn’t happened yet, these things were happening to him after all, so Xu Huai couldn’t help but think about them more.

Xu Huai turned his gaze away from the patient’s room door.

These anomalies were all caused by Xie Jing, or more accurately, by the ghost that was haunting Xie Jing.

Now there were two options: either find a way to quickly send that ghost away, so that the source of the anomalies disappeared, and that dream would be a dream.

Or find a way to ask that ghost to find out why these anomalies were happening, and confirm that the images flashing through his mind were just a dream, not a lost memory.

Both were difficult, and the latter was even more difficult…

Some moisture was swept into the window by the wind, which suddenly blew Xu Huai, causing him to sneeze.

The phone in his pocket fell to the ground with a thud due to the tremor of his body.

Xu Huai bent down to pick up the phone, feeling sorry for the small corner that had been dented on the edge of the phone.

Before he could grieve for the phone’s serious injury, it suddenly vibrated, and Xu Huai almost didn’t hold it steady, causing the phone to be injured a second time.

–The phone screen lit up; it was now three in the morning.

Xu Huai looked expressionlessly at the two words “Song Lianzhou” that appeared below the time on the screen, thinking:

This person calling at this hour better have a good reason, and it had better be that he found out why he saw ghosts when he touched Xie Jing, along with a solution.

Instead of having the 24-hour on-call special security guard clock in for an extra shift.

After answering the phone, Song Lianzhou’s first sentence was: “Something happened.”

Xu Huai’s eyelid twitched: “Is it me?”

Crap, could it be that touching someone and seeing ghosts everywhere is serious? Didn’t he say that other people had experienced this before?

What’s more, he had been following Zhang Daoquan for so long and had never encountered this situation, and Zhang Daoquan hadn’t taught him how to solve it.

Song Lianzhou, on the other end of the phone, was silent for a moment: “…Not you.”

Xu Huai’s heart sank a little, and he prepared to hang up the phone. But Song Lianzhou, on the other end of the phone, seemed to sense his intention and raised his voice: “If you dare to hang up, you’ll lose your bonus this month!”

Hearing this, Xu Huai’s hand froze.

He became obedient.

Fortunately, it wasn’t related to him, and the corners of Xu Huai’s tight lips relaxed a little. He raised his eyes and looked through the window at the rain: “What’s wrong?”

Song Lianzhou: “Li Fang’s daughter went to school and didn’t come back tonight. Li Fang has been looking for someone until midnight, and she has searched all the surrounding areas, but to no avail. Then Li Fang reported it to the police. The police checked the surveillance, and her daughter disappeared in a blind spot.”

“Okay.” Xu Huai nodded, “Do you need me to help find someone? But I’m guarding my employer now, and the ghost haunting my employer is very fierce; I can’t spare the time.”

Song Lianzhou took a deep breath, seemingly suppressing his rising blood pressure: “It’s Li Fang.”

The previous events had already overloaded his brain, and now with the addition of a new event, Xu Huai’s brain was empty and somewhat frozen.

Li Fang?

Xu Huai tentatively opened his mouth: “Who?”

Song Lianzhou: “…”

The veins on Song Lianzhou’s forehead were throbbing.

Song Lianzhou: “Your last employer, Li Fang. You even went to their house and confidently said that there was no Yin energy around, nothing at all, and that Li Fang’s daughter Zhao Qian was sick, saying that they could smell a clear musty smell as soon as they entered the house, and that her daughter’s fever was likely due to a lung or other infection.”

When Song Lianzhou said this, Xu Huai recalled that it was the mother and daughter living in that small alley who didn’t take their sick daughter to a large hospital, choosing instead to engage in feudal superstition at home.

Such unreliable parents.

Xu Huai: “How did she disappear?”

Song Lianzhou: “If she just walked out of the surveillance blind spot, that would be fine. The problem is that within the surveillance footage, Li Fang’s daughter, Zhao Qian, exhibited very noticeable movements suggesting she was talking to someone when she disappeared, including various body language and facial expressions.”

Song Lianzhou wouldn’t come to him for ordinary events. When Song Lianzhou said this, Xu Huai could roughly guess: “The surveillance shows that there was only Zhao Qian alone?”

Song Lianzhou snapped his fingers: “That’s right.”

“I see…” Xu Huai pressed his knuckles against his chin. “Did her daughter return home alone?”

Song Lianzhou keenly noticed the key words in Xu Huai’s words: “Why do you say ‘return’, didn’t you say there was nothing there before?”

Xu Huai was very sure, “Yeah. When I went there, I didn’t feel any cold Yin energy or malice; there was nothing that entangled her daughter.”

Xu Huai: “The place where they live is quite remote. Even if there’s nothing there, it’s still dangerous for a child to go home alone at night. The surrounding area is full of old alleys, and the equipment is in disrepair all year round, with many surveillance blind spots. I remember that I already reminded Wang Fang when I went there the other day.”

He reminded her, but she didn’t listen and still let her child go home alone. Irresponsible for her own child, she then regretted it and began looking for her when she was lost.

Xu Huai sighed: “So what’s the situation now?”

Song Lianzhou: “Your employer is called Li Fang.”

Song Lianzhou: “She has pushed all the responsibility onto you, saying that if you hadn’t destroyed some formation in their house that protected her daughter, her daughter wouldn’t have been possessed and disappeared in the surveillance blind spot. She wants you to help her find her daughter and also pay her some compensation for mental distress.”

Xu Huai always believed that the last sentence was the point, and his tone was very certain: “She wants to extort money from me.”

Song Lianzhou was noncommittal: “Is her reason for extorting money valid?”

You could say it was valid, after all, he did go to someone else’s house and break the red rope tied to the bedpost.

You could also say it wasn’t valid because the rope didn’t have any effect in the first place, and there was no concrete evidence to prove that the “formation” had any absolute connection with her daughter’s “possession,” illness, abnormal behavior, and disappearance on the street.

It all depended on his willingness, whether he wanted to get involved in this matter.

Xu Huai: “I have to think about it.”

He already had a lot of things going on; why should he get involved in other people’s affairs? He wasn’t a philanthropist.

Xu Huai narrowed his eyes.

The rain outside the window didn’t seem to be getting any lighter. Perhaps the rain caused a short circuit in some aging circuit on the sign, and the blurry red light in the darkness flickered and went out.

And this scene was witnessed by Xu Huai.

Xu Huai’s hand holding the phone tightened.

The patient room located behind him was in the southeast, and the emergency building, directly opposite him, was in the west.

West, Dui trigram.

In addition to the direction, the Dui trigram in the Bagua imagery also represents young girls.

At this time, the lights in that building went out.

Xu Huai clicked his tongue, speaking irrelevantly: “Why don’t you let Li Fang give me some money?”

A question mark popped up in Song Lianzhou’s mind.

“Xu Huai!”

The physical condition of people can’t be generalized. It was almost four in the morning, and Song Lianzhou’s roar could still be heard from the other end of the phone, full of energy.

Xu Huai withdrew his gaze from the distant emergency building and looked at the patient room behind him through the reflection in the window: “I’m taking my employer to a hospital more than forty kilometers outside the city. Something is clinging to my employer, I can’t just leave and let whatever’s haunting my employer attack him.”

“And I can’t wake up my sick employer at this hour and ask him to go find someone with me.”

In short, he had a perfectly valid reason for being “willing but unable.”

Before he could finish speaking, Xu Huai saw Xie Jing in the reflection from the window.

Xu Huai: “…”

Xu Huai turned his head and met Xie Jing’s gaze behind the door: “Why are you up?”

Xie Jing curved his eyes: “Maybe I rested enough in the afternoon. I tried to fall asleep several times just now but failed.”

Xie Jing stepped aside by the door of the patient room, leaving a gap wide enough for one person to pass through: “I heard you talking outside and thought it was cold in the hallway. Anyway, I’m awake, so I wanted to ask you to come into the room.”

Look, look! A considerate employer.

Xu Huai himself didn’t even realize that the expression in his eyes had softened a little. He didn’t refuse Xie Jing’s kindness: “Okay.”