Turning his head to the right, he saw the familiar gate, and beside the gate hung the sign he had kissed many times during the day.
Behind him, footsteps sounded.
Li Sanjiang looked back and saw a petite figure slowly emerging from the shadows, carrying immense resentment.
Without hesitation, Li Sanjiang ran straight into the police station.
The girl stood outside the police station, her expression filled with spite, mouth opening and closing.
The first night he dreamt, he heard the threatening voice loud and clear; she wanted him dead; when he dozed off on the tractor, her voice became muffled.
All he could do was watch her little mouth incessantly open and close, and though he couldn’t hear a thing, she was probably cursing filthily.
Li Sanjiang chuckled, then lay down on his own accord.
If he encountered someone with whom he could reason, he wouldn’t mind losing face to beg or speak softly, and wouldn’t even mind kneeling and kowtowing if needed.
But evil spirits are transformations of humans after all; some people can be communicated with, but some just can’t be reasoned with.
Dealing with the latter, paying them any more attention is just a waste of energy.
At least in his dreams, Li Sanjiang had seen the world. After all, he had once been a leader who choreographed a group of zombies in The Forbidden City.
So, Li Sanjiang just lay down, stacking his hands on his belly button.
Tired, he fell asleep.
Outside in the real world, Xue Liangliang, while drying his hair, stepped out of the shower room, curiously glancing at the willow tree diagonally opposite the room.
The willow branches kept swaying as if they were stirred by the wind, but strangely, he didn’t feel any breeze at all.
"How odd, why can’t the wind blow in?"
He didn’t think too much of it, mainly because today’s encounters were too bizarre, and he had no mood to study the wind direction.
When he returned to the bedroom, he saw Li Zhiyuan sitting at the desk under the desk lamp reading a book.
Peering closely, he saw the words were densely packed and incredibly small, which made him worriedly say:
"Reading such small print at night can easily damage your eyesight."
"It won’t, Brother Liangliang, I’m used to it. Just a quick skim based on feeling, and I can recognize the content."
"Really that amazing?" Xue Liangliang didn’t doubt Li Zhiyuan’s word and climbed into bed.
The characteristic of an old-fashioned wooden bed is its spaciousness.
"Xiao Yuan, are you sleeping on the outside or the inside?"
"I’m fine with either."
"Then I’ll sleep on the outside. Children feel safer sleeping on the inside."
"When do you plan to go to bed?"
"I’ll shower and go to bed after reading a bit more."
"I think you should treat these as hobbies. It’s better to focus more on your studies."
In the past, Xue Liangliang would surely have advised further, but today, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. After giving it some thought, he really had relied on those seemingly useless books Li Zhiyuan read to be a great help.
Therefore, his tone softened: "Xiao Yuan, come to think of it, it’s quite interesting. Before the day before yesterday, I really couldn’t have imagined these things existing in this world, but somehow, I’m not very scared. Not that I’m fearless, but I’m not panicked."
"Fear comes from the unknown, Brother Liangliang, you’ve even dug up the origins of the Bai Family’s Lady, what is there to fear?"
"True. But, do you think I should also read some books in this area? Do you have any recommendations?"
Li Zhiyuan hesitated for a moment before saying: "These books belong to my Grandmaster, I can’t lend them out without asking him first."
"That’s alright, your Grandmaster specializes in this line of work, and these books are probably his treasures, so he wouldn’t easily lend them to outsiders."
On this point, Xue Liangliang was mistaken.
Over the years, Li Sanjiang had just left all these boxes of books to gather dust in the basement.
"Xiao Yuan, what’s your village’s phone number? Let’s exchange contact information."
Li Zhiyuan recited the phone number of the village committee, and also mentioned the phone number of the village convenience store.
Usually, if villagers wanted to make a call, they would go to these two places. When a call came in from outside, it would ring here, ask for someone, then hang up leaving a message for the desired person to call back after about a quarter of an hour.
Li Zhiyuan had noted down this phone number, hoping that his mother would call him, but as expected, she hadn’t disappointed him by not calling even once.
"Never mind, I’ll write it down." Xue Liangliang got out of bed, walked over to the desk, took out pen and paper to write down the number, and then sighed.
Although Li Zhiyuan was engrossed in his book not lifting his head, he still managed to multitask and said:
"Brother Liangliang, are you about to say that one day every household will have a phone?"
"There will come a day. Do you believe it?"
"I believe it, but it seems like what’s popular now are pagers."
In recent years, BP machines had started to enter China and quickly became massively popular. Young people in cities, in particular, took pride in clipping a BP machine to their waist.
"I’m actually planning to get one myself. In that case, I’ll arrange it and give you one too, how about that, Xiao Yuan?"
Li Zhiyuan shook his head: "I don’t have a need for it."
"Oh, right." Xue Liangliang suddenly remembered and slapped his forehead, "I said I’d buy you snacks and toys and ended up forgetting. When I go back to school, I’ll send them to you."
"Thank you, Brother Liangliang."
"Well, I’m off to sleep." Xue Liangliang got back into bed, and soon, he fell asleep.
After Li Zhiyuan finished reading the volume in his hand, he went to shower. Passing Grandmaster’s bedroom, he could clearly hear his snoring through the door panel.
It seemed Grandmaster was sleeping soundly.
Returning to his own bedroom, he placed a new toothbrush in the basin, then climbed to the inside of the bed, lay down, and went to sleep.