Chapter 34: Listening to the Story (Part One) 2/2

She had dressed up specifically for today’s deception, creating an atmosphere of a “date.” Her black curly hair swayed in the wind, and in high heels, she stood on the bridge with a face adorned with light makeup, looking up at Li Guangyun. She asked calmly, “Li Guangyun, are all the things you just said true?”

The truth-verification bridge

It verified sincere words.

Li Guangyun, with a dark face, showed an oily smile. “Of course, Qiqi, everything I said is true. If there’s a single lie, may lightning strike me!”

Midnight, twelve o’clock, and the temperature seemed to drop on this bridge.

Li Guangyun shivered.

Huang Qiqi raised her hand as a signal to Xia Wenshi. But not wanting to be too abrupt, she casually pointed to his face, saying, “There’s something on your nose.”

“Huh?”

Li Guangyun touched his nose.

Watching him pretend like this made Huang Qiqi even angrier. She asked again, “Li Guangyun, do you really love me?”

Li Guangyun, unable to find anything on his nose, patiently coaxed her, “Yes, Qiqi, I really love you.”

He was annoyed and just wanted to get over this matter.

But as he raised his head, he suddenly froze.

He saw a shadow of a woman in white behind Huang Qiqi.

Thinking it was an illusion, he blinked forcefully.

Indeed, the shadow disappeared.

Li Guangyun secretly breathed a sigh of relief, but his heart was still uneasy. He couldn’t be bothered to ask if it was his hallucination.

Li Guangyun was terrified, holding onto Huang Qiqi’s arm and crying out, “Let’s go! Hurry!”

Huang Qiqi was puzzled; they hadn’t even reached anywhere, and Li Guangyun was already scared out of his wits.

She intentionally walked slowly, while Li Guangyun’s legs were trembling, making it difficult for him to walk fast. His mind was filled with the image of the ghostly woman on the bridge without feet, staring at him with resentment.

His brain was on the verge of exploding with fear. Suddenly, he remembered a sensationalist person he had seen on an online forum who had cited examples of friends to argue whether the ghost in Lover’s Lake was real. Although it was later revealed that one friend had died from a fall and the other had died in a car accident, the eerie part was that both had their legs broken in a strange way.

She had no feet, so did she take away the feet of others?

Li Guangyun was now on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

Suddenly, he heard someone calling his name from behind. It echoed from the lake, drifting in the silent night sky—a woman’s voice.

“Li Guangyun.”

Strange, sharp, and resentful, as if she would burst into laughter the next second.

Calling him.

“Li Guangyun.”

“Li Guangyun, turn around.”

“Turn around.”

Li Guangyun’s brain malfunctioned. Without paying attention, he stepped into the air and fell into the lake with a big splash!

After he fell into the lake, Huang Qiqi, who was standing on the bridge, couldn’t hold back her laughter anymore. She laughed heartily.

She wasn’t satisfied yet; she grabbed a few stones from the ground and threw them into the lake, shouting, “Die, scum! Go to hell!”

Xia Wenshi also burst into laughter. Although the ghostly woman from Lover’s Lake didn’t appear, he enjoyed seeing a bit of justice served to the guy.

The water in Lover’s Lake wasn’t enough to drown a guy who was 1.8 meters tall, especially when Li Guangyun was an athlete.

But this image of him falling into the lake was captured live, giving Huang Qiqi immense satisfaction. She planned to upload the recording to the online forum tomorrow, ruining Li Guangyun’s reputation. Hmph!

Ye Sheng, however, didn’t get involved in their petty revenge.

He silently stared at the screen.

On the screen, Huang Qiqi and Xia Wenshi were high-fiving each other on the bridge.

Under the bridge, Li Guangyun had a pale face. He could swim, but now he seemed to be caught by something, his head floating on the dark lake. His veins were bulging, and his arms were flailing frantically.

The barrage was filled with laughter.

But soon, someone noticed something was wrong.

【Does that scum know how to swim? Why do I feel like he’s about to drown?】

【Sisters! Don’t get yourself into trouble because of the scum!】

Huang Qiqi, with the best view standing on the bridge, also realized that something was off. It seemed like his legs were cramping. He had already swum to the shore, but suddenly he froze, his body stiffening. Huang Qiqi was stunned, cursing her bad luck, and quickly walked down the bridge to the lake’s edge, saying, “Idiot, give me your hand.” She just wanted to get back at the scum, not ruin her own life in the process.

Xia Wenshi also came over to help.

However, they suddenly found that Li Guangyun was unusually “heavy,” much heavier than they had expected. Even with both of them holding one of his arms each, they couldn’t pull him up!

Ye Sheng turned off the livestream and walked over. As he approached, he sensed a very familiar aura.

The exclusive aura of an anomaly is right below the lake.

But he could also sense that the anomaly below the lake had detected him.

Step by step, Ye Sheng approached.

Under the lake’s surface, a pair of inverted eyes slowly turned strange.

In the end, Li Guangyun’s body became “light” again. Huang Qiqi and Xia Wenshi finally managed to pull him onto the grass. Li Guangyun was now completely scared, tears and mucus covering his face, unconscious. After Huang Qiqi confirmed that he was still alive, she took several photos with her phone and kicked him hard with her high heels.

She lifted her youthful and beautiful face, laughing with bright eyes.

“Thank you, Boss, thank you, junior! I’m so happy today. I’ll take care of the rest. I’ll go tell the security office to take care of this guy.”

Ye Sheng nodded in agreement to Huang Qiqi’s words.

Being a local, Huang Qiqi lived at home even when working part-time during the summer vacation. After leaving with Xia Wenshi, only Ye Sheng remained standing there in thought.

He bent down, reached into the lake, and stirred the water. Soon, when he raised his hand again, he had a few strands of hair in his fingers. The hair carried a strong smell of decay, dampness, and blood.

Ye Sheng pursed his lips, took out his phone, and took a picture of the hair.

This time, the search response was quick.

【Category: Story King】

【Ghost Name: Lover’s Lake Ghost (Incomplete)】

【Ghost Level: C】

【Overview: The Truth-Verification Bridge verifies true hearts. Only those genuinely in love can cross this Magpie Bridge together. Liars and unfaithful people are destined to leave their lives behind.】

In the later part of this description, Ye Sheng saw a familiar phrase…

【Post Scriptum:

Those targeted, unfaithful people don’t harbor any illusions.

Because vengeance is inevitable, it is only a matter of time.

Love is something that requires no lies in this world.

February 14th, 0:00 AM】

This postscriptum was written on February 14th at midnight, with no mention of the year. But Ye Sheng knew that it had been a long time since then—at least several decades, maybe… It was born together with the strange events in Lover’s Lake.

The person who wrote this post scriptum had the exact same handwriting as the one who spontaneously continued the story of the fetal girl at the train station and tried to trap him to death.

*

Ning Weichen didn’t stay long with the Qin family.

When he got in the car,

Li Butler, sitting in the driver’s seat, respectfully said, “Young Master, I’ve arranged everything for your enrollment. The president of Huai’an University wants to meet you. Would you like to see him?”

Ning Weichen calmly said, “No need. Thank him for me and tell him I don’t have time right now.”

“Alright,” Li Butler replied. “Young Master, should we head to the apartment or the Rose Empire Hotel?”

“The hotel,” Ning Weichen said.

Leaning back, Ning Weichen’s black Bentley moved towards the city center, like a fish swimming into the desire-filled, neon-lit metropolis. The dark night pressed down, and Ning Weichen, with his fingers against his face, gazed indifferently at the towering skyscrapers outside, resembling colossal creatures.

At midnight, the weather shifted from clear to cloudy.

Rain was approaching Huai City.

In the misty rain, the city became even more mysterious and dangerous.

Ning Weichen smiled mysteriously, suddenly saying in a soft voice, “Li Butler, play some music.”

Li Butler was surprised. “Music?”

Ning Weichen, in a casual tone, said, “Yes, switch to Huai City’s radio station.”

Li Butler nodded. “Okay.”

Ning Weichen didn’t like noisy things. Li Butler had never heard such a request when he was driving before. But as a qualified butler, he didn’t question the Young Master’s unusual request.

In the quiet car, a soothing melody flowed vaguely.

It was the gentle voice of a female radio host.

“Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Storytelling with Little Mouth. I’m your good friend, Little Mouth.

Tonight, I’ll continue to bring you various bizarre, funny, quirky, and interesting stories. Thank you all for listening.”

“After the recent cold storage murder case, a bizarre death occurred a few days ago in the Wanjiajing Farmer’s Market in Jiaohai District, Huai City. This time, a 37-year-old middle-aged man died in his own pork stall. The doctor diagnosed it as sudden cardiac death, but when the butcher died, someone had cut off his tongue. The whole tongue was severed from the throat, and the method was extremely cruel, clearly a homicide.”

“The police preliminary suspect that the neighbor is the suspect because the butcher had a violent temper and the two of them had a long-standing feud. The case is still under further investigation, and you may have already learned some details from Huai’an Daily.”

“However, this time, Little Mouth wants to talk about another thing related to the case.”

“A little kid called and told Little Mouth that he suspects there’s a psycho killer in our city. Because the person who died in the cold storage had his eyeballs pierced with a medical needle while alive, and the man who died in the farmer’s market had his tongue cut off. The child, in fear, asked if the next person to die would have their ears pierced. Gotta say, the child’s imagination is quite rich.”

“If this little friend is listening, Little Mouth wants to reassure you. Don’t be afraid; trust us adults. The environment you’re in is not like the scary ghost stories your dad tells you before bedtime. You are in a fairy tale.”

Little Mouth continued storytelling for more than ten hours, divided into several time slots. Some hosts liked to distort facts into bizarre tales, but the current host was obviously more gentle.

After her gentle laughter, she briefly read a few submissions from listeners before cutting to commercials.

After that, Ning Weichen heard the ending of Huai City’s most popular story on radio.

It was a boy’s self-disclosure.

The tender voice of a child always had the power to turn anything into something beautiful and distant, as if the yellowed pages were flipping through time covered in snowy whiteness.

“When I was very young, I asked my dad, Why do we tell stories?”

“Dad said there are three kinds of people in this world: those who listen to stories, those who tell stories, and those in the stories.”

“Stories help us record the years, storing joy and anger.”

The boy said,

“And those who grow up listening to stories will one day become characters in the stories.”

Boom!

Suddenly, heavy rain poured outside, and a thunderbolt illuminated this steel forest of the city.

Rain washed the world, and those neon lights seemed to be stained with thick, indelible blood.

In the deep, it seemed like someone in the sky was silently gazing at this place with a strange and silent look.

This city, both in the light and the dark, was full of mysterious and twisted urban strangeness.

And now, everyone was… those who listen to stories.