211: Chapter 207: Showing Off Power 211: Chapter 207: Showing Off Power In the blink of an eye, several days had passed.
In the middle of the night, within the courtyard of Chen Hai’s house in Liuhua Alley.
“Ah…” a shriek pierced the air.
Aunt Liu woke up from her sleep, her face pale as death.
She rolled over and tumbled out of bed, swiftly turning on the bedside lamp.
The bright light filled the bedroom, making it as clear as daylight, yet she was panting and still seemed somewhat unsettled.
For the past few days, she couldn’t explain why, but she always felt uneasy.
At night, lying in bed trying to sleep, she always had the sensation that something was pressing down on her.
She seemed fully conscious, aware of everything happening around her, but she couldn’t see, couldn’t speak, and couldn’t move her body.
In the face of this eerie scenario, she felt like an outsider, only her thoughts still churned—she could do nothing else.
Just tonight, the feeling of being powerless under the weight of some unknown entity had continued from the moment she lay down and closed her eyes, persisting till now, already lasting two or three hours.
Only now, as the unknown presence seemed to have departed and no longer oppressed her, could she finally open her eyes and cry out.
“Fang, Fang…”
She called out tentatively a few times, then slapped her forehead.
Suddenly she remembered, her man Fang had claimed just last night there was a snake slithering all over the bed, scaring him into a sleepless night, sitting up with the light on.
After a busy day and still haunted by his fears, Fang said he was going to play cards at a fellow villager’s house and didn’t come back all night.
It was already past the Ninth day of the Ninth month; in this season, where would you find snakes roaming around?
A grown man, yet his courage was so slight—Aunt Liu had thoroughly scorned him.
Last night, she slept here and didn’t see any snakes.
At most, during her drowsy moments, she just felt something pressing down on her.
By the wee hours, she placed a kitchen knife by the bed and then had nothing more to worry about, sleeping soundly through the night.
“What’s the matter with today?
Is it another case of sleep paralysis?”
“This damn place, it’s been so strange these past two days…”
Having confirmed that her man Fang hadn’t come back tonight, the still somewhat unsettled Aunt Liu picked up the kitchen knife from the bedside.
Cursing under her breath with gruffness, she carried the knife and walked a few circles around the room.
After all this, Aunt Liu felt much more at peace.
However, having just been scared awake, she no longer felt sleepy.
She left the lights on and sat down in front of the slightly worn dressing table not far from the bed.
Looking at her reflection in the mirror, her hair resembling a bird’s nest, Aunt Liu took a comb and began to tidy her hair.
“These past few days, I’ve been sleeping poorly, my complexion looks so much worse.
Even the crow’s feet at the corners of my eyes have deepened,” she murmured.
“Our Fang, he couldn’t have started to despise me, could he?”
“Did he make up excuses not to come home, perhaps he went to Widow Wang’s from our village?”
“Don’t think I don’t know, Widow Wang, she came to Capital City half a year ago, working as a nanny for a family just a few miles away!”
…
As she stared at her own reflection in the mirror, lost in thought, Aunt Liu began to murmur to herself.
But suddenly, she noticed that the reflection of herself in the mirror unexplainably, creepily, smiled.
Following that, her face in the mirror gradually blurred.
Right before her eyes, the reflection in the mirror lost its eyes, ears, mouth, and nose—leaving nothing but a blank, White Title face before her.
“Ah…”
Louder than before, Aunt Liu screamed again.
Dressed only in shorts and a tank top, not even taking the time to throw on a jacket, she dashed out of the room.
She ran out of the house and out into the alley until she finally caught her breath.
By this time of year, the sky lacked its sprinkling of stars, with only a crescent moon suspended in the heavens.
The alley outside the courtyard was unlit, shadowy in the moon’s glow, the whole alley shrouded in mist.
Just a few meters from the entrance to the house, near the corner of the alley wall, a dark figure was squatting there, a glimmer of light flickering on and off at the edge of their mouth.
“Who…” Aunt Liu, having just run out from the house, already on edge, let out another scream upon seeing the dark figure.
“Aunt Liu, stop your goddamn yelling, it’s me, Shoe Maker Wu!”
The man squatting by the wall, smoking in silence, stood up and responded to Aunt Liu wearily.
“Wu?
In the middle of the night, instead of sleeping in your house, what the hell are you up to squatting out here in this little alley?”
“People scaring people, it’s like courting death!”
“I already picked up a brick, if you hadn’t spoken in time, I would have hurled it down!”
With a face full of discontent, Aunt Liu muttered.
Aunt Liu, who was always ready to throw herself to the ground and kick up a fuss, was known to be a fearsome woman among the ladies.
At this moment, although she screamed, just like she had said, she had already picked up half a brick from the ground.
Upon seeing that the person squatting by the wall was the shoe repairman Wu who lived in the same courtyard as she did, she tossed away the brick in her hand.
“Aunt Liu, aren’t you also out here in the alley outside the courtyard, panicked, without even having time to put on a coat?”
“What are you up to?
I’d like to ask you the same question, what exactly are you doing?”
After sizing up Aunt Liu for a moment, Wu casually responded.
“What’s up, Wu?
Is the room you’re staying in also creepy at night?” Aunt Liu was taken aback and cautiously began to inquire.
“Um!
A couple of days ago, when I was half asleep, I only saw a woman in an opera costume singing opera in my bedroom.”
“But tonight, not long after I went to bed, I turned over and suddenly saw the woman in the opera costume, with a green face and fangs, lying right next to me.”
“I don’t know what came over me, but in the heat of the moment, I reached under the bed and grabbed a firewood knife, ready to chop at the head of that opera costume woman lying beside me.”
“But as it turns out, it wasn’t the woman in the opera costume that I was about to chop, but my wife.”
“Luckily, my wife must have had some nightmare, and she screamed suddenly, waking me up.”
“Otherwise, my knife would have really landed on my wife’s head.”
“Aunt Liu, given these circumstances, how can I dare to go back home to sleep instead of sitting out here?”
With the half-smoked cigarette in his mouth, Wu stomped it out with several fierce steps, his face filled with bitterness as he let out a long sigh.
“Ah…
Wu, it’s that serious over at your place…” Aunt Liu expressed her disbelief and uncertainty.
Compared to what Wu was facing, the situation she encountered was relatively less severe.
“Um!” Wu nodded, “I don’t know what’s going on, but this place has been really weird these past couple of days.”
“It’s not just us two; Old Man Li and Butcher Zhang’s households are also the same.”
“Every night, strange things happen, and we see bizarre entities.”
“I can’t stay here any longer; I’m moving out tomorrow…”
Upon hearing Wu’s words, Aunt Liu immediately became discontented.
“Wu, that’s really not decent of you.
Just the other day, when we were discussing how to deal with the new landlord, we agreed to stick together through thick and thin.”
“If we stand united, that young Chen will have to compromise sooner or later.”
“Then he will either allow us to continue living here or give each household a compensation of thousands to relocate.”
“Now, without a word, you’re just going to move out?
You can forget about getting any compensation.”
“Don’t you think that by doing this, you’re taking a huge loss?”
Aunt Liu glared harshly at the shoe repairman Wu and murmured her complaint.
“To hell with compensation, with the state of this courtyard now, if we keep living here we might end up dead!”
“If you and Old Man Li want to stay, then stay.”
“I’m just saying that I’m moving out tomorrow, I didn’t say you all had to move out too!”
Wu lit another cigarette for himself and grumbled.
This evening’s events had truly frightened him.
If it weren’t for his wife suddenly waking up screaming, their entire family could have met with a fatal disaster!
“Ah…” As they were talking, a few more screams came from the courtyard.
Then, Old Man Li and his wife, looking panicked, hurried out of the courtyard at a run.
…
Near Capital Political and Legal University, inside a restaurant.
With a few dishes and bottles of alcohol, Chen Hai, Bai Xiaohang, and Xiang Dong chitchatted while drinking and eating.
“Boss, those things you had us do were really something!”
“It’s only been three days, and this morning, Xiang Dong and I were hanging around nearby when we saw that shoe repairman Wu, about to move out with his family!”
“When he saw us, Shoe Maker Wu even asked whether your promise to subsidize them a month’s rent if they moved out was still valid.”
“He must be dreaming; Xiang Dong and I immediately gave him a piece of our mind.”
“After hearing that there’d be no subsidy, he was a bit disappointed, but he still packed up his family and moved out of that courtyard without a fuss.”
…
After toasting Chen Hai, Bai Xiaohang said with a smile.
After carrying out the tasks assigned by Chen Hai, he and Xiang Dong had taken a liking to hanging around that area, with or without reason, usually during the day until dusk.
They didn’t go there in the dead of night.
Otherwise, they definitely would have seen even more spectacular dramas.
“Has it been three days already, and only Shoe Maker Wu’s household has moved out?”
“Aunt Liu, Butcher Zhang, Old Man Li, how have they been reacting these past two days, have you noticed?”
Chen Hai took a bite of the side dish, slightly furrowed his brows, and asked.