It was Huang Po, who had been sitting silently beside me doing exercises, that was pinching me. His face was contorted, and his eyes were bloodshot. "Chen Feng, I'm going to kill you."
"Wh...Why... Aren't we... Aren't we... good brothers?" I reached out to pull Huang Po's hand away, but his hand was like a vise, and I couldn't budge it at all.
"Who the hell said we're good brothers? If it weren't for you, my whole family wouldn't have died in the accident, and my parents wouldn't have lost their lives!" As Huang Po spoke, he tightened his grip.
I wanted to explain, but Huang Po was choking me so hard that I couldn't breathe. All I could do was think wildly in my mind.
How could your parents' deaths be related to me? It was a car accident, an accident. How can you put the blame on me?
Huang Po seemed to be able to hear my thoughts. He bared his teeth at me in a hateful and disgusting sneer.
"You must think you're so wronged, right? You think these things have nothing to do with you, right? That's because you don't know anything! Do you know? You're a goddamned jinx!"
A jinx?! How the hell did I turn into a jinx? Just because you're suffering, you can't put the blame on me for an accident! I was even more confused.
"You still deny being a jinx? If we hadn't met you, my family wouldn't have died in the accident seven years ago, and I wouldn't have..."
Huang Po said with a ferocious face, and he tightened his grip even more.
I couldn't help but roll my eyes. There was a sharp pain in my neck, and I felt like my tongue was going to stick out the next moment.
Just then, a hand suddenly landed on my shoulder. "Chen Zi, wake up. Are you having a nightmare?"
I opened my eyes and found that I was lying comfortably in bed. In front of me was Huang Po, looking concerned.
The dream just now was so real. Huang Po's ferocious face had terrified me so much that when I saw his face again, I instinctively shrank back and covered my neck.
As I did that, there was a dull ache in my neck, as if it was injured.
Huang Po looked at me strangely. "What kind of nightmare did you have? Why are you so scared?"
Only then did I come to my senses: The dream just now was just a dream. In front of me was still Huang Po, the good brother who had helped me a lot, not the one in the dream who wanted my life.
I forced a smile. "It's okay. I just had a dream that a female corpse was throttling me. I'm still a bit dazed."
"I'm also a bit groggy from sleeping. It's already dark. Go wash your face quickly. Later, let's go out and have something to eat and discuss what to do next." Huang Po suggested.
After Huang Po left, I sat up from the bed and went to the bathroom.
While running the water, I kept thinking about that strange dream just now: Why did I have such a strange dream? Huang Po in the dream made me feel both strange and scared.
He kept saying that I was a jinx, and that if they hadn't met me, his family wouldn't have died in a car accident.
If the saying "you dream about what you think about during the day" is true, it doesn't make sense, because I never thought about the death of Huang Po's parents before.
It's not that I'm heartless. It's just that the incident happened during our sophomore year in high school. At that time, we were just teenagers. How could we understand life and death?
After I graduated, I ran into Huang Po, and he always chatted with me in a jovial way without ever mentioning that incident from back then. Naturally, I gradually forgot about it.
So, this dream couldn't have been fabricated by my brain after seeing the Posthumous Photo in the cabinet today. There must be some other reason.
Suddenly, I thought of a possibility. This dream might be being manipulated by an unknown force.
Maybe the person I saw in the dream wasn't Huang Po at all, but that eerie female corpse controlling my dreams, or the strange shadow that murdered the witch in a sinister way last night.
Thinking of this possibility, I no longer felt afraid of Huang Po. However, when I thought about my current situation, my heart skipped a beat.
The feeling of being strangled in the dream just now was so real. I had a hunch. If I were strangled to death by that fake Huang Po in the dream, I would definitely die in reality too.
You know, there are quite a few people in real life who go to sleep and never wake up. Outsiders think they passed away without any illness or disaster, but who knows what they went through in their sleep?
If I were strangled to death in the dream and stopped breathing in reality, wouldn't it seem to others that I just fell asleep and died?
With a heavy heart, I took a leak. After flushing the toilet, I turned around and went to the sink to wash my hands.
Looking at my haggard face, I couldn't help but want to take a closer look at myself. Just as I turned my neck slightly, I felt a sharp pain in my neck.
I quickly looked down and saw a faint bruise on my neck. Looking closely, I could even make out the shape of a palm and fingers.
Seeing this, I felt a chill run down my spine and my hair stood on end. If I was really strangled to death in the dream, I would definitely die in reality, right?
There's a folk tale that a person's body and soul are a match. When the body dies, the soul leaves and perishes. Similarly, if the soul is injured, it will also manifest on the body.
It's just that soul - injury cases are rare. The only evidence in this regard might be the so - called "phantom limb pain (not the same as the term in some novels)" in medicine.
This "phantom limb" isn't the kind that girls talk about when reading certain novels. It refers to patients who have to have a limb amputated due to an accident or illness.
For example, if someone gets drunk in winter and falls asleep in extremely cold weather, their exposed hands and feet may get frostbitten beyond repair, and they have to have them amputated to save their lives.
However, after the amputation, these patients will, at certain times, feel excruciating pain in the amputated part. Even painkillers and anesthetics can't control the pain.
This is really absurd. A patient without a hand feels pain in their hand. How is that possible?
Modern medicine can't find a reasonable explanation for this. It can only attribute it to psychology. Doctors say that patients think their amputated limb still exists, which causes the pain. They call it "phantom limb pain".
In fact, if this post - amputation pain is unbearable, finding a capable metaphysical expert (a person with supernatural knowledge in Chinese culture) to treat the soul can completely eliminate the pain.
The situation I'm in now should be similar. There's indeed a folk saying that dreaming is the soul experiencing things.
I was strangled in the dream, and now there's a faint bruise on my neck. This just confirms the folk legend.
I stood in front of the mirror, stunned for a moment. Hearing Huang Po urging me to go out for food, I left the bathroom and prepared to go downstairs with him to have something to eat.
Just as I reached out to turn the spherical doorknob on the bathroom door, I felt something sticky on my hand.
I instinctively raised my hand and was instantly stunned: it was black oil ash, the special black oil ash that only appears when a corpse is half - cremated.
The female corpse that escaped halfway through the cremation had returned. While we were sleeping, she had sneaked into the bathroom.