Chapter 177 Give Me Back My Life
Dust and sand rushed towards him, and Luo Gaohan's pupils suddenly contracted.
In the shadows around the corner, a hunched figure slowly straightened up.
Tian Xiao'e's bluish-purple hands were pressed tightly against her swollen abdomen, thick black blood seeping from between her fingers, leaving long trails on the expensive carpet.
"Brother Gao Han." The voice seemed to be right next to his ear, making his legs tremble.
"Fifty years... Have you ever burned a single piece of paper money for my mother and me?"
Luo Gaohan staggered backward, pressed against the wall, with nowhere to escape, when suddenly the back of his neck touched something wet and sticky.
Turning my head, I saw that the snow-white wall was covered with dense, bloody handprints.
Those handprints were becoming fresh at a visible speed, dripping blood.
All the handprints were tiny, clearly the size of an unborn baby.
The bloody handprints on the wall form a line of words: Give me back my life.
Luo Gaohan's screams came to an abrupt halt.
His skin shrank at a visible rate, the moisture was drawn away by some invisible force, his muscles atrophied, his bones twisted, and his whole body rapidly dehydrated like dried bacon.
Luo Gaohan had become a hunched, desiccated corpse, his knees slamming heavily to the ground, remaining in a kneeling position.
His forehead was pressed against the floor, his arms twisted and stretched forward, as if trying to grasp something, or as if in desperate repentance.
The direction of their kneeling was the outskirts where Tian Xiao'e had been hastily buried.
...
As the cook, Sister Cao, carried the ginseng soup she had prepared according to the doctor's orders toward the main house, she saw a dark figure huddled in the corridor from afar.
She squinted her dim old eyes and muttered, "Who's there?"
As she approached, she suddenly stopped in her tracks—
It was a hideous mummified corpse, and the clothes on its body indicated that it was indeed Old Master Luo.
"ah--!!!"
Aunt Cao's scream shattered the tranquility of the old house.
Zhou Yanzhi was awakened from her sleep by a piercing scream.
She sat up abruptly, her muddled mind unusually clear at that moment, as if someone had poured a bucket of ice water over her head.
"What kind of behavior is this..." She shakily put on her coat and pushed open the door.
The corridor was crowded with trembling servants.
The old lady asked sternly, "How have I taught you manners?"
The crowd parted abruptly, like seawater being cleaved by a knife.
Upon seeing the mummified corpse surrounded by the crowd, Zhou Yanzhi's pupils suddenly contracted.
"Ah...Ah Han?"
In the middle of the corridor, Luo Gaohan's corpse was twisted in a bizarre posture.
His withered fingers dug deeply into the carpet, and a look that was both crying and laughing was frozen on his bluish-purple face.
Beside the mummified corpse lay a pair of worn-out mismatched shoe insoles, covered in yellow sand.
Looking at the kneeling posture of the mummified corpse, and then at the four hideous, blood-red characters "Give me back my life" on the wall, Zhou Yanzhi suddenly understood something.
"Haha...hahaha..."
Zhou Yanzhi suddenly burst into a maniacal laugh.
She staggered backward, her silver-white hair falling loose.
"Retribution! This is retribution!"
Her laughter echoed down the corridor.
One evening fifty years ago.
Zhou Yanzhi was sitting in the Luo family's living room eating sunflower seeds when she suddenly heard a commotion outside the door.
Luo Gaohan walked in with a gloomy face, followed by two cadres in Zhongshan suits.
"Comrade Luo Gaohan, someone has filed a formal complaint against you for misconduct during your time as an educated youth sent to the countryside in northern Shaanxi."
The letter of complaint stated in black and white: "Luo Gaohan seduced a rural girl named Tian Xiao'e, causing her to become pregnant, and then abandoned her, leading to her suicide." It was signed "Wang Xiaohong."
That night, the arguing in the study almost lifted the roof off.
"Who is Tian Xiao'e?!" Zhou Yanzhi smashed the teacup.
"A country girl, I don't even know her! It's all Wang Xiaohong's fault for framing me!" Luo Gaohan gripped her wrist. "She had a crush on me, and she was jealous of our relationship!"
Luo Gaohan presented her with so-called evidence: books Wang Xiaohong had lent him and notes she had shared with him...
There were also the mandarin duck insoles that Tian Xiao'e embroidered for him, which he mistakenly attributed to Wang Xiaohong, insisting that she embroidered them and forced them on him.
Zhou Yanzhi still had doubts, but her mother advised her to turn a blind eye in order to maintain harmony in the family.
She had no choice but to give up.
Later, Zhou Yanzhi's father used his connections to get Wang Xiaohong labeled as "spreading rumors" and "undermining the unity of educated youth," and she was sent to an even more remote place.
And that girl named Tian Xiao'e disappeared from people's memories as if she had never existed.
"Hahaha... So she really did come back..."
Zhou Yanzhi kicked away the mismatched insoles of the shoes, which were covered in yellow sand, and her withered fingers gripped her collar.
She suddenly started screaming in the Shaanxi dialect, her voice sounding exactly like Tian Xiao'e from back then.
"I've been waiting for you on the Bridge of Helplessness for forty-nine years!"
Suddenly, all the wall lamps in the corridor shattered, and the cries of a baby echoed in the darkness.
The servants were horrified to see that the old woman's shadow in the moonlight had transformed into another person: a girl with long braids, holding a blood-soaked baby in her arms.
...
Luo Yinglang rushed back to the old house, his face ashen.
The father had become a dried-up corpse, the mother had gone mad, and the whole house was filled with a sinister atmosphere.
The servants whispered among themselves that they often heard women crying and babies wailing in the middle of the night.
"This house is haunted!"
Luo Yinglang gritted his teeth and immediately sent someone to invite Master Huiming of Lingyin Temple.
As Master Huiming stepped into the Luo family's house with his sandalwood prayer beads in hand, the beads on his wrist suddenly snapped, and the ebony beads rolled to the ground.
"Amitabha..." The old monk picked up a bead and rubbed its surface with his fingertips.
Unbeknownst to them, dark red streaks of blood appeared on the beads.
He suddenly looked up, his old eyes flashing with a sharp light: "Such heavy resentment!"
His sharp gaze swept across the Buddhist hall, finally settling on the third-floor suite where Bai Li was imprisoned. "It's all related to this woman."
Luo Yinglang's expression changed: "What do you mean?"
The old monk said in a deep voice, "...That unclean thing came for her and the fetus in her womb. It probably wants to possess her body and return to life!"
When Bai Li was roughly dragged into the Buddhist hall, her thin nightgown was already soaked with cold sweat.
The maid's iron grip pressed down on her shoulders, and she struggled violently, yelling, "Let me go!"
"Hold her down!" Luo Yinglang shouted sternly.
The two burly male servants immediately increased their force, forcing her knees down onto the prayer mat.
Bai Li was in so much pain that her vision blurred, but she still stubbornly raised her head, facing the seemingly smiling face of the white jade Guanyin on the altar.
Master Huiming held a peach wood sword, and the yellow talisman spontaneously combusted without fire.
"Master!" Luo Yinglang suddenly stepped forward, "After all, she's carrying my child..."
The old monk didn't even turn his head, lightly flicking the tip of his sword: "Don't worry, Benefactor Luo, this old monk is merely dispelling the possessing vengeful spirit."
A string of Buddhist prayer beads flew out from his sleeve and hovered above Bai Li's abdomen, "It will not harm the fetus in the slightest."
Bai Li suddenly felt a sharp pain in her abdomen.
With a crack, a fine line appeared between the eyebrows of the white jade Guanyin statue on the altar, and dark red tears of blood meandered down her compassionate face.
"Want children?"
The ethereal female voice seemed to surge from all directions, carrying a majestic echo.
The corners of the Guanyin statue's lips slowly turned upwards, revealing a chilling smile:
"Then let it be born on its own."
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