Chapter 60: Chapter 59: Chaotic Trio
"Wait a minute? You saw Chen Lili’s deceased husband walk out of Li Xiyue’s house?"
The information from the Mist Ghost left Wu Liang stunned.
How did this involve resurrecting the dead!
"No, that’s wrong! I was being presumptive. Why did I assume Li Xiyue’s words were the truth? Her state obviously seems off as well!"
In just a few seconds, Wu Liang found the flaw in his logic.
Thinking this, he turned to look at Chen Lili, who was still waving a fruit knife haphazardly in the corner. The fear in her eyes at that moment almost drowned her reason.
Even when the blade occasionally scratched her arm, she didn’t notice, allowing some blood to stain her clothes red.
"Nightmare, it’s time to work."
Thud—
As soon as he finished speaking, Chen Lili’s head drooped with a thud, and she fell unconscious by the bed.
A strong snoring sound came from her mouth, sounding like the comfort of finally getting a good night’s sleep after long-term mental and physical exhaustion.
"Now, let me see what you’re afraid of..."
Wu Liang’s voice began to drift, more ethereal, as he took out the Nightmare Mask from the Ghost Compendium and slowly put it on. An eerie purple-red shimmer flashed across his eyes.
In the dream—
Chen Lili was still in her bedroom, but this time the walls had completely turned a deep blood red, and her wedding photo with her deceased husband had changed to her own black-and-white headshot.
Moreover, in the headshot, a Red Robe ghost, looking exactly like her, was trying to crawl out.
This time Wu Liang did not interfere with Chen Lili’s dream, simply letting her imagination run free, only controlling the depth of her sleep.
Otherwise, in a state of extreme terror, a normal person would have already woken up and wouldn’t be able to keep dreaming!
"You’re fake... you’re fake... you’re just something made up to scare me!" Chen Lili shouted loudly, as if doing so could muster more courage.
But the Red Robe ghost, half of her body emerging from the wall, said sinisterly, "If I’m fabricated, then why are you afraid of me?"
With that, the ghost snapped her head off and threw it at Chen Lili!
The sight of a head identical to her own rolling to her feet, with its bone-chilling coldness and extremely real texture, plunged Chen Lili into complete despair.
The head rolled and stared up at Chen Lili saying, "You’re not afraid of me... you’re afraid that you’ll also lose your head because of that paw and die!"
"After all, I am the future you, dead!"
Whoosh—
A chilling wind roared up suddenly in the locked-up space, where the windows were completely sealed off.
The next moment, the ghost vanished instantly.
Leaving Chen Lili alone, trembling and curled in the corner, with bloodstains on her feet proving everything that had just happened was real.
"Gone again..." she muttered to herself.
"Gone? Your death is already certain! Death won’t just walk away!"
Just then, the ghost reappeared in the wedding photo on the wall, poking her head out and speaking.
But this time she carried a sneaky smile, watching the frozen Chen Lili continue speaking, "Do you remember why it turned out like this? To resolve the dilemma of death, think hard..."
After listening to the ghost’s words, Chen Lili immediately fell into a dazed recollection.
Wu Liang waited quietly above the wall for the dream to change.
He was that Red Robe ghost now!
After eavesdropping on Chen Lili and the ghost’s dialogue, Wu Liang also understood a bit of the reason—
It seemed that Chen Lili did something with that monkey paw in her deceased husband’s hand, causing her to see a Red Robe ghost following her, and it was herself, beheaded in the future.
Being sentenced to death so inexplicably, no wonder she’s this scared.
The key is that in this situation, Chen Lili hadn’t called the police or sought help from Official Awakened, meaning what she did with the monkey paw was probably shady.
Dreams are quite subjective.
As they say, think about things during the day, and dream about them at night.
A person’s subconscious can influence the content of dreams to a certain extent; like, if you spent a whole night watching Maria Ozawa, the chance of having a spring dream would greatly increase tonight.
Wu Liang manipulated the dream to impersonate the Red Robe ghost to evoke Chen Lili’s subconsciousness about what happened, then immediately released control of the dream.
Now the dream would manifest strongly with Chen Lili’s recollection, revealing what she had done!
"Nightmare, thankfully you weren’t allowed to wreak havoc in the city back in the day. Otherwise, the deepest fears in everyone’s subconscious might not have been concealed from you?"
As for Wu Liang’s thoughts, Nightmare chose to pretend not to hear.
After all, it was now Wu Liang’s underling; touching this kind of bad luck foretold by the boss would definitely bring bad consequences for itself!
Look how many years Phone Ghost next door has been hungry!
A man and a ghost were waiting quietly.
Soon, the entire bedroom’s dream had fallen apart, replaced by a cemetery under torrential rain.
Chen Lili stood in the storm wearing a black raincoat, continuously digging with a shovel, eventually uncovering a wooden coffin.
Prising open the coffin, inside lay the visage of her deceased husband!
It seemed Li Xiyue wasn’t wrong; this formidable man had indeed died once.
But why was he now appearing in the neighborhood, walking out of Li Xiyue’s house?
All this likely had to do with what Chen Lili was about to do next.
"Zhang Hang! Didn’t you say burying you and this thing would revive you! It’s been half a year! Why haven’t you come to see me?"
Chen Lili knelt at the tombstone, shouting loudly, tears and rainwater mingling down her face.
"As long as you can return to my life... whatever you want me to do, I will... I’m begging you..." Her cry was heartrending.
Crash—
A clap of thunder fell, lighting up half the sky, and the monkey paw she had hugged tightly, with originally three fingers held upright, had somehow become two fingers upright.
This was followed by her lowering her head in horror; the original corpse of Zhang Hang inside the coffin was now gone.
Whoosh—
The dream vanished once more, and the scene turned.
Chen Lili now appeared at the home entrance, looking through the peephole with resentment at the newlywed couple moving in next door.
The woman was hot and beautiful, but the man was her most familiar—Zhang Hang!
Zhang Hang had been resurrected!
Chen Lili’s wish had indeed come true; he had indeed returned to her life.
But in the form of someone else’s husband.
Thinking this, she angrily returned to the room, attempting to use the monkey paw to wish again, hoping to set things right!
But oddly she couldn’t find the monkey paw.
......
At this moment, Zhang Hang, moving next door, curiously felt his pocket and discovered something strangely familiar, yet he had never seen it before—
A monkey paw!
When the dream reached this point, the curiosity in Wu Liang’s narrowed eyes grew increasingly apparent.
It seemed not only Chen Lili used the monkey paw for twisted wishes; perhaps her deceased husband Zhang Hang or even his current wife Li Xiyue also made wishes on it!
Three twisted wishes tangled together, making everything unpredictable!
So... what are the other two wishes of the monkey paw?