How Can You Drive A Male Ghost Crazy? - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Ghosts can be seen by people, provided they choose to manifest themselves, and they can change their appearance at will. Generally, minor ghosts won’t harm people; humans have human laws, and ghosts have ghost laws.

Since the soul-summoning ritual, Lou Xu has not seen He Qing. He often suspected that the summoning had failed and that the man was deceiving him.

However, the man didn’t take money or gifts, so he had no real reason to lie.

The minor ghosts didn’t heed the warning in the study that night. Instead, they became emboldened and started to provoke Lou Xu.

Lou Xu returned late from a meeting today, not arriving home until nine o’clock.

The house was dark, and the sensor light at the door didn’t react. He knew the minor ghosts were causing trouble.

“Fingerprint verification successful, unlocked.” Lou Xu walked inside and placed his brief case on the cabinet in the entryway.

The windows inside were tightly shut, preventing any draft from entering, yet Lou Xu’s hair moved, as if someone were blowing air behind him.

Lou Xu reached out to turn on the light. The living room light flashed for an instant, then began to flicker as if malfunctioning, and finally went dark.

The living room television suddenly turned on by itself. The cold, white fluorescence made He Qing’s portrait hanging above look even more eerie.

Lou Xu walked to the sofa, picked up the remote control, and turned off the TV, but the minor ghost deliberately worked against him, and the TV turned on again.

A piercing scream erupted from the television, sending chills down the spine. A distorted ghost face appeared on the screen. Its mouth was wide open, split at the corners and bleeding.

The face moved closer and closer to Lou Xu, near enough to engulf him.

“Get out.” Lou Xu frowned, turning and walking toward the stairs.

The door to the second-floor bedroom was, as expected, already open. Lou Xu tried to turn on the bedroom light. Unlike the living room, it functioned normally.

On the natural-colored wooden floor was a trail of black footprints. Lou Xu crouched down and touched them with his finger. They were the same black color as the handprint on the photo from the day of the summoning—they looked a bit like coal ash.

Lou Xu smiled at the black ash on his finger. The black footprints led all the way to the bed. He followed the black prints step by step: “I’m home. Aren’t you going to welcome me?”

Upon reaching the foot of the bed, the black footprints turned a corner and extended to the bedside table. The photo of the two of them on the cabinet was also covered in black handprints.

Lou Xu picked up the photo frame and looked around: “Qing Qing, do you really not want to see me?”

There was still no response, but Lou Xu seemed to be in a good mood, still smiling.

He took off his suit jacket and went into the bathroom to wash up. The bathroom light was noticeably dimmer than usual, tinged with a faint green.

When he emerged from the shower, Lou Xu’s hair was still dripping wet. He walked to the sink, leaned one hand on the counter, and used the other to feel the black stubble that had just sprouted.

The moment Lou Xu lowered his head, a white ghost figure emerged in the mirror. When he looked up again, the mirror returned to normal.

Following his usual habit, Lou Xu reached for his razor, but touched a sticky, rough object instead. He tightened his grip and lifted the object.

It was a human head. Long hair obscured the face. The severed neck was bloody and indistinct, still dripping bl00d. The clear water in the sink had turned entirely into bl00d.

Lou Xu lifted the ghost head by its dripping wet hair, then casually tossed it aside without looking.

The ghost head hit the wall, bounced off, and rolled onto the floor, trundling until it stopped at Lou Xu’s feet.

Lou Xu clicked his tongue impatiently. All his good humor vanished.

The ghost head grew bolder, its seaweed-like hair began to grow and spread, covering the bathroom floor in hair that gave off a foul stench.

Another section of hair wrapped around Lou Xu’s ankle and continuously spread upward. The head used the support of the hair to climb, smearing bloody filth onto Lou Xu’s bathrobe.

The razor buzzed. Lou Xu continued shaving his beard in the mirror, completely ignoring the hair that was starting to cocoon him.

Before long, Lou Xu was completely encased. The head hung directly in front of him, allowing Lou Xu to clearly see its bloodshot eyeballs.

Black bl00d streamed from its eyes. Because its complexion was so pale, the bloodstains left by the black bl00d appeared unusually vivid.

Lou Xu could no longer stand these minor ghosts. He raised his hand and placed the razor on the head, pushing it from bottom to top like clippers.

The razor was immediately entangled in the overly long hair, emitted white smoke, and finally stopped working.

Because Lou Xu was exerting too much force, beads of bl00d continuously seeped from the head and flowed down, mixing with the bloody tears streaming from the eye sockets.

The head instantly let out a miserable shriek. The thick hair in the bathroom burst apart, while the hair on Lou Xu’s body wrapped tighter and tighter, attempting to strangle him.

The hair tightened fiercely around his neck. Lou Xu’s entire face turned red and purple due to restricted bl00d flow.

The veins on his forehead bulged, and his eyeballs trembled, yet a smile was plastered on his mouth. His expression was more terrifying than the ghost head’s.

Lou Xu raised his hands, cupped the head, and plunged his thumbs deep into the ghost head’s eye sockets. The eyeballs were crushed like toy balls, and bl00d and flesh smeared all over the head.

The female ghost’s agonized screams echoed through the room. Lou Xu kept relentlessly pressing down on her head. Bl00d splattered onto his face, making his smile look extremely sinister.

Lou Xu was not an unreasonable person. The ghost was just trying to scare him, and he was just trying to scare the ghost. After who knows how many waves of high-pitched shrieks, the female ghost’s hair finally retreated.

Her face was riddled with holes. Lou Xu’s face was also covered in fragments of flesh and bl00d. He finally let the female ghost go.

He held the head in one hand and whispered, “Get lost.”

Then he violently tossed the head aside again.

Lou Xu felt his temper was genuinely excellent. He allowed these lonely spirits to live here and didn’t even get angry when they played tricks on him. Where else could one find such a generous person?

After cleaning the bl00d off himself, the head in the bathroom was gone. Lou Xu finally lay down on the bed and said goodnight to He Qing’s photo.

Lou Xu had been sleeping for only a few hours when he was woken up by a thump-thump sound of knocking. He hadn’t taken sleeping pills, so his sleep was light. Every time he woke up, the sound disappeared, only to resume once he drifted off again.

After several back-and-forths, Lou Xu got up and opened the bedroom door. There was nothing outside.

Just as Lou Xu was about to go back inside, a head instantly dropped down, its hair entangled on the ceiling, hanging level with Lou Xu’s face.

While Lou Xu was sleeping, she had been knocking on his door like this, a chilling smile on her face.

“Idiot.”

Lou Xu finally lost his patience. He pressed down on the ghost head, yanked the hair bundle hanging from the ceiling, and, still gripping the head, kicked open the study room door.

He found a basketball net bag from the utility closet, placed the head inside, tied the hair and the net bag’s string together, and hung it on the wall.

Finally, he retrieved the Guo Yin mirror from that night and placed it directly facing the head.

When the female ghost saw her own appearance, she began screaming incessantly, but Lou Xu ignored her wails, walked out of the study, and locked the door.

The entire house was filled with the female ghost’s screams. The glass was practically shaking from the sound.

Lou Xu returned to his room, poured out a few sleeping pills, took them, put in earplugs, and fell into a deep sleep.

By the next morning, the ghost cries had stopped, and the head in the study was gone. Black footprints reappeared, leading from the bedroom to the study, and finally stopping where the ghost head had been hanging.

Lou Xu looked at the trail of footprints and chuckled lightly: “You are still so kind.”

The footprints inside the room were messy. He followed the trail to the bookshelf, where a black fingerprint was left on the spine of a book. He pulled out the book and opened it.

He skillfully found a photo tucked inside the book, which was also smudged with a fingerprint.

Lou Xu overlapped his own finger with the fingerprint on the photo, covering it, as if his skin were touching He Qing’s: “You found it after all.”

This was a photo Lou Xu had taken secretly.

The photo showed He Qing sleeping on a desk, but it was only a back view, taken through a classroom window. All that was visible was the top of his fluffy head and a section of his arm resting on his head.

Lou Xu gently stroked the top of He Qing’s head in the photo and explained: “You didn’t really know me then. It was just during a gym class. I passed by your classroom and took the picture for some reason.”

“I was the school’s notorious charity case, and you were the school’s notorious troublemaker. We were actually quite well-matched, weren’t we?”

Lou Xu put the photo back, thoughtfully rubbing the book’s cover. He returned the book to its place.

“Qing Qing, are you trying to ask me something?” Lou Xu spoke toward the south side of the guest room. “Do you want me to help you with something? Do you want me to help you recover your memory? Or something else? Just tell me, I can do anything you ask.”

There was no sound. Lou Xu, receiving no response, still wouldn’t give up: “If I keep you trapped here, will you resent me?”

“But I am your husband. We are supposed to be together.”

“Go ahead and blame me, but don’t disappear on me. You can do whatever you want, just let me see you, okay? I miss you so much…”

These past few days, Lou Xu had been searching for He Qing, neglecting his own feelings. It wasn’t until today that he felt an unusual soreness in his neck.

This was not the normal soreness from work.

He picked up the Guo Yin mirror on the table, unable to believe it. He tilted the mirror upwards little by little. In the mirror, he saw a pair of legs hanging down over his chest.

The legs were pale and bloodless. There was a small mole on the side of the left leg. Lou Xu’s breathing caught in his throat.

He greedily stroked the leg. Even though his hand passed right through the leg and touched his own shirt, in the mirror, his hand was covering that section of the calf.

He meticulously rubbed the small mole, even feeling the soft, smooth texture of days past.

So He Qing had truly returned. He had been by his side all along—hanging around his neck.