I gripped the hilt of my sword, pointing it at her brow. If I wanted, I could obliterate her soul at any moment.
"Who hurt you?"
"Chen Li'an..."
She coughed up black blood, and tears mixed with mud welled up in her eyes.
“He is my fiancé, and this house is our marital home… I… I really didn’t mean to hurt anyone, I just wanted to find myself again.”
The more she talked, the more confused I became. How could I find myself again?
"Find yourself?"
I asked in a cold voice, "What do you mean?"
"It's...it's about finding my physical body. I...my name is Zhang Xixi!"
Zhang Xixi?
I suddenly remembered the knocking on the door half an hour ago—a hollow female voice asking, "Is Zhang Xixi here?"
"Are you Zhang Xixi?"
She nodded, her whole body trembling violently, and the drops of water from her hair were no longer water droplets, but blackish-red pus.
"I am Zhang Xixi... But when I knocked on the door... I couldn't remember that I was already dead..."
She raised her remaining severed arm and pointed to the bathroom mirror: "Every time I see my face in the mirror, I realize that I've been rotting for a long time..."
I followed her gaze and saw that the mirror was covered with cracks.
Sewage seeped from every crack, reflecting half of her rotting face.
His left eyeball was hanging off his cheek, his right earlobe was reduced to half, and pieces of skin and flesh were peeling off his chin.
Her amputated arm traced a desperate arc in the air: "On our wedding night, he put sleeping pills in my red wine. When I woke up, I was already soaking in the bathtub..."
As she spoke, she suddenly looked down at her ankle.
There was a rusty iron chain wrapped around me, the other end locked to the bathtub drain: "He was afraid I would struggle, so he first chained me to the bathtub, and then..."
Her voice was cut off by a sob, and the blood that welled up in her eyes splashed onto the tiles, leaving the words "Give me back my life" on the ground.
"He slashed me seventeen times with a kitchen knife..."
She raised her severed arm, revealing the grotesque bone fragments at the elbow: "My head, hands, feet... were all stuffed into the cement blocks in the wall."
"We met at the subway entrance..."
Zhang Xixi's voice, soaked in blood, was sticky and unsettling: "He said he came to the city to work because his father was seriously ill and he didn't even have the money to stay in the ICU..."
A bitter smile tugged at the corner of his crooked mouth: "I believed him and gave him the 100,000 yuan I had saved over three years to help him out. After that, he brought me breakfast every day and waited for me on my way home from get off work, saying, 'Xixi, you are the first city person to be kind to me...'"
I saw blood dripping from the silver bracelet on her wrist, the words "Eternal Union" engraved on the bracelet were smeared with blood and turned dark red.
She rubbed her face with her severed arm, only to smear more blood onto her festering skin: "He said he wanted to marry me, but he was still short 200,000 yuan for the down payment. I gritted my teeth, sold my house in my hometown, and borrowed money from my colleagues..."
She suddenly coughed violently, and dark blood gushed from her throat: "The day I got pregnant, he knelt on the ground and put a bracelet on my finger, saying, 'Once we get the keys to the house, we'll have our wedding in the new house...'"
The bathroom ceiling light flickered on and off.
Zhang Xixi's afterimage appeared and disappeared in the light and shadow.
That's when I noticed that she had a deep, long scar on her stomach.
That was the incision from a cesarean section, and the baby in her womb never had a chance to be born.
"Last month I went to his construction site to deliver food and saw him embracing a woman wearing a mink coat..."
Zhang Xixi's severed arm gripped the edge of the tile tightly, her nails chipping but she was oblivious: "That woman called me a 'country bumpkin,' but he just laughed and said, 'It's just for fun, I'll dump you soon'..."
At this point, she suddenly let out a sharp laugh: "I broke up with him and said I didn't need to pay back the money, just give me back the bracelet... He agreed and said we should have one last meal together."
The blood-red words "Chen Li'an" writhed on the floor like a dying snake.
Zhang Xixi's afterimage gradually became transparent, but it suddenly became clear when she mentioned that night: "He put sleeping pills in the red wine. Before I passed out, I heard him on the phone."
He said, "Wife, I got that stupid woman's money. We're getting a divorce tomorrow..."
Her rotting face was pressed against the tiles, bloody tears dripping into the drain: "So he was already married. The one in the mink coat was his legal wife. He came to the city to work just to swindle money..."
I finally understand why Zhang Xixi asked at the door, "Is Zhang Xixi here?"
Her wronged spirit is trapped in this house, unable to even remember who she is, yet still remembering that Chen Li'an once called her "Xi Xi".
"I woke up when he stabbed me with a kitchen knife..."
Her severed arm pointed to the showerhead: "I begged him to spare my life for the sake of the child, but he said, 'Even a bastard doesn't deserve the surname Chen...'"
Zhang Xixi's voice suddenly became soft, like a feather falling on the water.
"When he made the first cut, I was counting, the second cut, the third cut... When he made the seventeenth cut, I heard the sound of my skull hitting the bathtub..."
Zhang Xixi's blood and tears formed two lines on the wall: "I believed until my death that he loved me!"
I snorted coldly, the tip of my sword lifting the hem of her tattered skirt: "Even if you're pitiful, you shouldn't harm people after becoming a ghost!"
She shook her head frantically, and several pieces of rotten scalp fell out of her long hair.
"Master, please understand! I can't even form a complete physical body, how can I harm people? Throwing that man out the door every day has already exhausted all my strength..."
She raised her severed arm, her knuckles tapping the wall with a hollow echo: "I was afraid I would hurt him, so I went to all that trouble to throw him out. Please, Taoist priest, understand!"
I recalled Lin You's words.
He wakes up in the corridor every morning with no marks on his body, which certainly doesn't seem like he's been possessed by an evil spirit.
This chapter is not finished, please click the next page to continue reading!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
