Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Mrs. Lu immediately grabbed a feather duster and started swatting Lu Changxue with it. “Any decent ghost should go to bed early and get up early! You say you can’t be out in the sun, but it must be because you stay up all night playing on your phone!”

What kind of ridiculous logic was that? She was a vengeful ghost. Sunlight damaged her spirit. What did that have to do with staying up late on her phone?

Lu Changxue raced around the living room, dodging Mrs. Lu’s feather duster.

In the end, Yun Jianyue stepped forward to save her. “Uncle, Auntie, Ah Xue might not be dead in the strictest sense of the word, but she did technically die. Shouldn’t we think about holding a funeral for her?”

Mr. and Mrs. Lu thought that made sense. They immediately packed their things and prepared to return to their hometown to arrange Lu Changxue’s funeral.

Before leaving, they didn’t forget to lecture Lu Changxue. “You should learn from Xiao Yun. Look how sensible she is. She gets up before dawn every day and goes to bed at ten every night.”

The moment her parents walked out with their suitcases, Lu Changxue shrieked, pounced on Yun Jianyue, and began strangling her with all her might.

“What the hell was that act? You hadn’t even gone to sleep at six this morning, yet you pretended you were an early riser in front of my parents! Yun Jianyue, I’m telling you, there’s such a thing as trying too hard!”

Yun Jianyue giggled. “Just my standard routine. No need to applaud.”

“Your standard routine nearly got me lectured to death!” Lu Changxue roared. Then she glared irritably at Yun Jianyue’s phone. “Your phone’s been buzzing nonstop. Who’s sending you so many messages?”

Yun Jianyue picked it up and saw they were from Zhou Benxin.

“Hey, isn’t that the junior from your Debate Team?” Lu Changxue leaned over and recognized him.

Both girls were students at University A, and so was Zhou Benxin. Yun Jianyue was the vice captain of the university’s Debate Team and often coached the younger students for debates. Zhou Benxin was one of her juniors on the Debate Team, and the two of them got along quite well.

After reading his messages, Yun Jianyue realized Zhou Benxin was asking her for help.

His computer screen had suddenly gone black for no apparent reason. After he forced it to shut down and turned it back on, he got a blue screen. He had specifically reached out to Yun Jianyue, his senior in the computer science department, to ask how to fix it. If he couldn’t repair it himself, he planned to take it to an authorized service center.

As luck would have it, Zhou Benxin was from City Z, and he was currently there.

With her junior in trouble, Yun Jianyue couldn’t simply stand by. She immediately messaged Zhou Benxin and told him she would come over and fix it herself.

Half an hour later.

“Come in, Senior. I haven’t cleaned up, so the place is a little messy. I hope you don’t mind.”

Dressed in casual clothes, Zhou Benxin awkwardly welcomed the petite, beautiful young woman inside, then hurriedly poured Yun Jianyue a cup of tea.

Yun Jianyue sat on the extremely cluttered couch and got straight to the point. “Bring me the computer. I’ll take a look.”

Zhou Benxin hurried to his bedroom to fetch it. With nothing else to do, Yun Jianyue glanced around at the apartment’s decor.

It had an ordinary three-bedroom, two-living-room layout. Strangely, however, there was a small door beside the TV wall. It stood slightly ajar, with a faint red glow spilling through the gap.

It wasn’t the color of neon light. Instead, it resembled the flickering glow of candles in the dark.

Just as Yun Jianyue’s curiosity was piqued, Zhou Benxin emerged with the laptop. “Senior, could you please take a look at it?”

The interruption drove her earlier curiosity from her mind, and she focused on tinkering with Zhou Benxin’s computer.

About half an hour later, Yun Jianyue finally managed to get it running. She was just about to speak to Zhou Benxin when his phone rang.

“Senior, I need to take this call from my mom.” Zhou Benxin gave her an apologetic smile, then hurried onto the balcony with his phone.
The Zhou Family home was well soundproofed. Even with the balcony door half open, Yun Jianyue, sitting on the couch, could only vaguely make out what Zhou Benxin was saying.

“What? Grandma passed away?”

“Neither you nor Dad can come back? My sister can’t make it either? What kind of work could possibly be that important?”

“What do you mean, I was arguing with you…”

Zhou Benxin was getting worked up on the balcony. Yun Jianyue had no intention of eavesdropping, but out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the slightly ajar door with red light leaking through it again.

She wanted to ask Zhou Benxin what was behind it, but when she turned and saw that he was still arguing on the phone, she suppressed the urge.

“Forget it. I’m a guest in someone else’s home. I shouldn’t be rude,” Yun Jianyue murmured, forcibly reining in her curiosity.

Just then, the red light behind the door flared brilliantly.

It was dazzling, yet inexplicably cold and sinister. It was as though what spilled through the crack wasn’t light at all, but dark red blood spreading in every direction.

The next second, the glare abruptly vanished, leaving only a faint red glow.

Yun Jianyue was horrified. She had no idea what it could be.

“Did you see that?” she quietly asked Lu Changxue inside the jade pendant.

Lu Changxue replied, “I didn’t just see it. I can sense something in there that makes me extremely uncomfortable.”

But she couldn’t say exactly what it was. She had only been a ghost for a few days and knew very little about such things herself.

Yun Jianyue looked back and found Zhou Benxin arguing even more fiercely. He hadn’t noticed anything happening inside the apartment.

Forget it. She would find out what was going on first.

She rose from the couch and cautiously approached the door.

With every step, the sound of her breathing grew louder in her ears.

She wasn’t easily frightened, but whatever lay beyond that door instinctively struck her as dangerous.

Even more dangerous than Wang Hui’s mother.

At last, the doorknob was within reach.

The faint red glow continued to pulse.

Time seemed to slow. Yun Jianyue gradually extended her hand, but the instant her fingers closed around the doorknob, someone suddenly tapped her from behind.

“Senior, what are you doing?”

She instinctively spun around and found Zhou Benxin standing behind her. She hadn’t even noticed him come in from the balcony.

His expression was dark and menacing. He still clutched his phone tightly, and his bloodshot eyes were fixed on her in a deathly stare.

He looked at her as though she were already dead.

For an instant, it felt as if something had placed Yun Jianyue under a spell.

She couldn’t utter a single word. Her limbs no longer obeyed her, leaving her standing stiffly in place like a puppet.

“Senior?” Zhou Benxin waved a hand in front of her face, looking confused.

The moment he drew his hand back, Yun Jianyue finally recovered her voice. “Huh? I’m fine.”

Only then did she see clearly. Zhou Benxin’s eyes weren’t bloodshot at all. They were filled with tears, the rims reddened from crying.

A muscular man five foot eleven and nearly two hundred pounds, who even worked out, was standing in front of her with tear-filled eyes and an aggrieved expression. Out of basic human decency, Yun Jianyue asked, “Junior, are you okay?”

“My grandmother passed away. No one else in my family can make it back, so I have to drive to my hometown now and handle her funeral arrangements.” Zhou Benxin wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes, looking deeply apologetic. “I’m really sorry. You came all this way to fix my computer, and I don’t even have time to treat you to a meal.”

Yun Jianyue frowned as she listened. The death of an elderly family member was no small matter. Could Zhou Benxin, a college student who wasn’t even twenty yet, really handle everything on his own?