Phantom Skeleton Painting

Chapter 72.1 Dream

Lin Banxia didn’t know what happened to Song Qingluo, and he had no time to care. In fact, after falling into a dream, the world around him was completely distorted.

The ruler of this world was angered by Lin Banxia’s unhesitating rejection, so Lin Banxia woke up countless times. Every time, Song Qingluo was lying next to him. Every time, he saw Song Qingluo’s mysterious death. Lin Banxia began to try to escape many times, but when he jumped from the balcony, he realized that he did not return to the original campus, but another dreamland.

The black mountainous shadows followed him, pulling Lin Banxia into one bizarre dream after another. Some dreams hurt, some dreams didn’t hurt, some dreams were a mirror of reality, and some dreams were bizarre. The only thing in common was that the pictures were all accompanied by the death of someone he knew.

Human beings are not only fragile physically, but also mentally. Lin Banxia was extremely lucky that it was him who experienced all this and not someone else. Otherwise, that person might have gone crazy long ago.

Even in such a chaotic experience, Lin Banxia still firmly remembered his conversation with Cui Gaoyu.

“How to get close to it?”

“The depths of your dreams will give you the answer.”

No wonder Song Qingluo said that countless humans were killed in this dream. It turned out that as long as it didn’t want to, humans would be unable to wake up from it. Cui Gaoyu, the only survivor who woke up, paid the price of becoming a part of it and served as a fulcrum to support the entire dream world.

Lin Banxia understood all this, but had no way to solve it. How could he stop it from continuing? Lin Banxia saw Li Su and Li Ye in the dream. The two seemed to be quarrelling. Li Su yelled something at Li Ye, took out a sharp weapon from somewhere, and stabbed Li Ye fiercely. Li Ye was stabbed and had no intention of resisting. Instead, he reached out and pulled Li Su into his arms.

Li Su cried loudly, as if he was the one who was stabbed. Li Ye’s body slowly slipped down, and Li Su held him tightly in his arms.

The scene in front of him changed, and Lin Banxia was forced to wake up again. This time he saw Song Qingluo. It was him when he was a child. He was no taller than his thighs and stumbled when he walked. Song Qingluo opened the door and seemed to walk into a study-like room. Directly opposite the room, there was a very eye-catching ancient scroll hanging.

Lin Banxia recognized the appearance of the scroll. It was the skeleton scroll in the photo he saw in Song Qingluo’s bedroom. The little Song Qingluo staggered to the scroll and stretched out his hand in confusion and touched a corner of the scroll. However, the moment he stretched out his hand, the skeleton in the scroll seemed to come alive. His bony hand stretched out from the scroll and grabbed Song Qingluo, who was still a child.

Lin Banxia was startled, and just as he was about to continue looking, his vision was once again ruthlessly taken away by darkness. Unsurprisingly, he woke up again.

It was still the soft bed, and Song Qingluo was still lying next to him. Lin Banxia heard the sound of rain and the howling wind.

Lin Banxia slowly sat up from the bed. He felt that everything he saw just now was not like a dream, but more like a distorted memory. However, thinking about it, dreams were closely related to memories. Lin Banxia said: “What on earth are you trying to do?”

It didn’t answer.

Lin Banxia got out of bed and took two steps forward. From the corner of his eye, he noticed the wardrobe in Song Qingluo’s bedroom. He thought of something, hesitated for a moment, and stepped forward to open the wardrobe.

To Lin Banxia’s disappointment, he did not find the girl named Xiaohua he wanted to see. Could she also be a hallucination? Lin Banxia was a little disappointed. He turned around and was about to leave. Just as he took a step, he heard two clicks from under the closet. It seemed like something was tapping the drawer door carefully.

Lin Banxia was slightly startled. This drawer was so small, how could it accommodate a child? He thought for a moment, then turned sideways and opened the drawer. Sure enough, he saw the filled drawer… and Xiaohua blinking at him.

“Brother, brother.” Xiaohua shouted happily from the drawer.

When Lin Banxia met her for the first time, he thought she was strange. Now that he saw her again, he was only cordial. If the environment had allowed it, he would have wanted to reach out and take Xiaohua into his arms and kiss her twice.

Lin Banxia said: “Xiaohua, help me, how can I get out?”

Xiaohua said, “Brother, you can’t go out now.” She explained, “It doesn’t want to let you go.”

Lin Banxia naturally felt it and said unhappily: “What should I do?”

“Come here, come here.” Xiaohua said, “Xiaohua wants to tell you a little secret.”

Lin Banxia lowered his head, and Xiaohua leaned closer to his ear and whispered. What she said made Lin Banxia’s eyes open wider and wider, and finally he was filled with disbelief. After hearing this, he wanted to ask again, but when he lowered his head again, Xiaohua in the drawer were gone.

The harsh sound of wind filled his ears again, and the thing returned to Lin Banxia’s side. The originally hard floor under his feet began to become soft, and he fell down weakly.

Lin Banxia no longer knew how many times he woke up from his dream. This time, Song Qingluo beside him had even begun to rot and decompose. Lin Banxia saw his face covered with maggots, and stood up from the bed in confusion. He stood up and walked to the window.

It was still raining outside, and the huge raindrops hit the tender rose petals drop by drop, washing the petals from the stamens and mixing them with the dirty soil.

“Lin Banxia.” Someone called his name downstairs. Lin Banxia found that Song Qingluo, who was still in bed just now, had arrived downstairs at some point. His body was half humanoid and half bones. He raised his head and waved to himself.

Lin Banxia said: “Song Qingluo…”

As soon as he finished speaking, the flesh and blood on Song Qingluo’s body began to fall piece by piece until he turned into a snow-white skeleton.

Lin Banxia stayed where he was. He wanted to say something, but he woke up uncontrollably again.

It was still that bed, and it was still the person lying next to him. The scene in front of him had been repeated countless times, perhaps hundreds, perhaps thousands. Lying on that bed, Lin Banxia began to think about what Xiaohua said to himself.

That sentence was very clear, but he didn’t quite understand it, so he fell into silence with a melancholy expression.

The harsh wind in his ears gradually became quieter. It probably noticed that Lin Banxia’s mental state was starting to show abnormalities, so it planned to give him some time to think.

Yes, who could stand such endless dreams, watching the one you love die again and again beside you, watching everything around you become weird and twisted, and watching everyone trapped in it. How could a normal person endure it?

Lin Banxia thought that maybe he was not a normal person, because besides being worried about Song Qingluo, he didn’t feel many emotions at this time. He stared at the ceiling, feeling empty in his heart. He reached into his pocket and felt like something was missing.

After thinking carefully for a while, Lin Banxia finally remembered that the bank card he carried was missing from his pocket.

It was unknown if he was stimulated by the memory related to the bank card, but he vaguely recalled what happened in reality.

Song Qingluo and he were partners. They entered the dream to seal up the heretical things. Unfortunately, the process of the matter did not go smoothly. In the unknown levels of the dreamland, he, Song Qingluo and other monitors who recorded the events in reality forgot everything.

How to get out? To be precise, how could he get out with Song Qingluo? Although Lin Banxia had not yet remembered who Xiaohua was, he always felt that the girl was inseparable from him, and was even a part of his body.

As Lin Banxia was deep in thought, the bedroom door creaked.

Lin Banxia’s body was pushed hard, and he staggered to sit up from the bed, understanding what it meant – it wanted him to get out.

Lin Banxia had no other choice and could only follow the instructions. However, there was a corridor outside the bedroom before. At this time, many rooms appeared on both sides of the corridor. Lin Banxia walked barefoot on the carpet and saw the first room.

In the room was Li Ye. He was sitting in the corner of the room, holding Li Su’s body silently. His pair of green eyes, which were always cold and as beautiful as gems, were lifeless. Lin Banxia noticed that the room Li Ye was in was not the school, but the room full of beds they had entered before. Lin Banxia immediately realized that something was wrong, but no matter how he moved forward, he could not enter the room in front of him.

In desperation, Lin Banxia could only move forward. He saw Li Su again, the same room, the same situation. This time, it was Li Su holding Li Ye’s body, his head pressed against Li Ye’s body. His head and shoulders shaking helplessly.

Li Su didn’t cry, but his grief had already spread to everyone who saw this scene. The hand that held Li Ye was clenched with all his strength, so that his veins were exposed.

Lin Banxia vaguely understood something. He walked forward quickly and saw a few more rooms. There were different people in each room. Lin Banxia searched all the way and finally saw the person he most wanted to see in a certain room. The person he was looking for was Song Qingluo.

What made Lin Banxia relieved was that Song Qingluo was not in the same environment as the others when he first came in. He was sitting in a sunny garden. The man next to him looked familiar. Lin Banxia looked at him for a while and recognized that the man was actually Song Qingluo’s good friend Cui Gaoyu.

They were chatting. Cui Gaoyu still looked as gentle and polite as when they first met. However, it was unknown what he said, but sitting opposite him, Song Qingluo’s expression looked increasingly ugly. In the end, he was simply radiating an icy chill all over his body. With a strong sense of hostility.

Naturally, he couldn’t hear Lin Banxia calling his name, but Cui Gaoyu cast a meaningful look in Lin Banxia’s direction.

 

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