CHAPTER 448: CHAPTER 447: THE CONFERENCE

The boy on the left couldn’t help but mock, "What a bizarre name. Are they sending Morse code or something?"

"Shut up!"

The leader clenched her fists tightly, cleared her throat, and continued, "There was once a very unlucky office worker who faced immense competition at his company. He was forced to work overtime without extra pay and had to endure envy and oppression from his leaders and supervisors, as well as their mocking words. The clients he was in charge of often had many capricious and unreasonable demands, which only added to his workload for no good reason. It exhausted him to the point where he couldn’t bear it any longer, and he thought of committing suicide."

The boy mocked, "It’s a ghost story as real as it is terrifying!"

The girl ignored him and went on, "He went up to the platform, intending to jump in front of an oncoming train to end his life, but tragically miscalculated a bit. His lower body was severed by the train, while his upper body fell onto the tracks. He suffered extreme agony and torture as he watched himself slowly die. Perhaps because his obsession was too strong, people would often see a man with only half a body crawling on the tracks at great speed, making a Teke-Teke sound as he moved—that was the sound of his clothing buttons hitting the tracks. If you hear the sound of Teke-Teke at the station, remember not to look back. Just run for your life, the faster the better. Otherwise, he will catch up to you, chop you in two, and use your lower half to patch himself up..."

Just then, a flash of lightning streaked past the window, and a dull rumble of thunder burst through the sky. The girl who had just finished telling the ghost story suddenly screamed in fright. She lurched backward and nearly fell to the ground. Only moments later did she collect herself, coughing twice in an attempt to seem calm, and blurted out carelessly, "What the heck, it was just the thunder..."

"Who would have thought that the leader, known as ’Tiger in the Palm,’ would be scared by thunder," the boy said softly. Seeing the leader about to strike, he quickly raised his hands in surrender. "Alright, alright, it’s my turn to tell a ghost story."

"Hmph!"

The leader slowly withdrew her hand and leisurely sat down.

The boy built up the atmosphere for a moment and then began, "The protagonist of the story is a friend of my friend. Let’s call him Mr. A for now. One day, Mr. A went out with his girlfriend and accidentally ended up in a very remote place where, for some reason, they had an argument and parted on bad terms. After walking some distance, Mr. A felt a tinge of regret, so he went back the way he had come. He saw the girl squatting in the same spot, crying. Mr. A was very distressed. He quickly apologized, cheered his girlfriend up, and they walked hand in hand towards her home.

As they passed a crossroads, Mr. A saw someone on the roadside waving at them. Mr. A turned pale with fear. He grabbed his girlfriend’s hand, and they sprinted towards her home, only slowing down as they neared her doorstep. At that point, his girlfriend asked what was wrong. Mr. A replied that the movements of evil spirits are the opposite of humans’ and the person standing by the road had been waving at them with the back of their hand.

As he spoke, Mr. A paused. He saw his girlfriend slowly lift their clasped hands, a sinister smile on her face. His ’girlfriend’ was holding his hand with the back of her hand, which was bent backward at the wrist, for the entire walk..."

The boy finished the chilling tale with a spooky tone and stretched his neck, waiting for the audience’s reaction.

"Wha-what? That wasn’t scary at all. Obviously, he’s just a lame jerk," the leader stuck out her tongue, letting out a BOOO of disapproval. However, her shaking form was, without her noticing, hugging the girl with thick bangs sitting next to Liu Wu Dai.

"Hmph."

The boy sneered contemptuously, leaned back, and propped himself up with his hands. "Who’s next?"

"I’ll tell one."

The girl with thick bangs, who was sitting on Liu Wu Dai’s right side and had remained silent up until now, spoke in a delicate and gentle voice, "This happened a few months ago. Back then, I was feeling down, so every day after school, I would take a slightly longer route home, cycling by the riverside. One day after school, just like always, I cycled towards the river and unexpectedly saw a mother and daughter arguing noisily on a bench below the riverbank. The mother appeared to be in her forties, wearing a red dress, while the daughter seemed about the same age as us and was wearing a uniform from another school.

Concerned, I deliberately slowed down a bit as I passed above them and saw that they were fighting fiercely. The mother was even yanking her daughter’s hair and screaming, smashing her head violently against the stone bench. Just then, I saw a policeman slowly cycling towards us from ahead, so I rushed over and told him what was happening. To my surprise, he looked in the direction I was pointing, his expression suddenly becoming strange. After hesitating for a moment, he still leaned out from the side of the road to look towards the riverbank. Where I had clearly seen the women just moments before was now empty, with only the bench remaining.

The policeman sighed in relief. He said that a murder had occurred in that very spot just last night. A girl had died by suicide, banging her head against the riverbank’s stone bench during an argument with her mother. Her mother had held the body and cried by the shore all night until she was found the next morning.

I thought it was strange. Suddenly, a pair of hands grabbed the policeman’s feet, dragging him down the riverbank slope. A while later, a pitiful scream echoed. Then, I saw the middle-aged woman in the red dress slowly crawling up the slope. Her eyes were pitch-black, and with a menacing expression, she said to me, ’You saw it too, didn’t you? It wasn’t me. Oh, it was Hanako who banged her own head against the bench, like this—THUMP, THUMP, THUMP!’"

As the girl spoke the last three words, the sound of THUMP, THUMP, THUMP! echoed in the room, clear and heavy.

A chill wind swept in, and the candlelight was snuffed out in an instant. The leader screamed in terror. Even the boy, who had feigned composure, trembled, his hands shaking. This continued until the girl with thick bangs calmly revealed the hand she had hidden behind her back. She took out a match, lit the candle, and indicated that she had made the knocking sound and blown out the candle.

"Huh... is that all?"

The leader tried to cover her brief lapse with an awkward laugh. She swallowed hard to calm her nerves and then turned to Liu Wu Dai, who had remained silent throughout. "Well then, Lord Hirata, it’s your turn now."

Was it finally her turn? Liu Wu Dai sighed softly in her mind. Li Ang and the others had just been exchanging information in her head. After listening for a while, she had roughly understood. What they were experiencing was most likely the personal memories of Fushen Pingyuan, not the actual Fushen Pingyuan from the past timeline—her left wrist bore no scar from Wanli Fengdao’s previous attack. In her palm, she clutched a piece of paper with writing on it; it seemed to be the ghost story script Fushen Pingyuan had prepared for tonight’s test of courage.