Chapter 152: A New Dream
The parchment has been unusually quiet since its last outburst.
It’s not like it’s giving up; rather, it seems like after exploding, it’s holding its breath to make her pay, so it’s pretending to be aloof.
Lu Jinzhao’s view on this is: childish.
She hasn’t done such things since she was 10 years old.
Returning home, Lu Jinzhao did not choose to rest, but instead opened her mobile phone and dialed Lin Lin’s phone call.
However, as always, there was no response.
“It’s been so long already.”
She opened the group and forum to search for messages about the death platform. Fortunately, the platform had not ended yet, rather than Lin Lin not coming out alive.
In the forum, regarding this death platform, everyone’s attitude was that this mission’s time wasn’t too long; on the contrary, they were used to it. Lu Jinzhao sent Lin Lin a text message, then closed the page.
After reading the most concerning messages, she took her backpack and walked into the workroom.
It’s called a study, but it has actually been transformed by her into a workroom.
Here, she has almost replicated the workbench from the inheritance, and also created a suitable environment for air-drying shadow puppets.
Now, she needs to organize the materials she brought out. Without the ghost, she alone would need almost a week just to air-dry them, and the freshly peeled human skin is best not left untreated piled in the backpack.
Opening the backpack, a familiar bloody smell rushed into her nostrils. Lu Jinzhao had even become somewhat accustomed to this smell.
She calmly took out two portions of human skin and human bones, and focused on mixing the soaking materials’ “potion.”
“It probably doesn’t need to soak for too long, right?”
Human skin is not like animal skin; the depilation process will be much faster.
After depilation, it still needs to be scraped clean of residual flesh on the skin, and only then can air-drying begin.
As for processing the bones, it requires different potions and bone knives.
If it were the old her, she might have needed chainsaws or something to assist, but now she is different from before!
She now has great strength and only needs a good bone knife to cut the bones into bone signs of the same size.
Hmm. Not only great strength, but also very precise control of force.
After processing the materials and completing these preparations, Lu Jinzhao’s body, besides the bloody smell, also carried the scent of chemical agents.
She checked once to confirm the process was correct, then took her backpack and left the workroom.
The clothes Lu Jinzhao was wearing had long become unsightly due to stains and bloodstains, but fortunately, because of her passenger identity, no one in reality would be surprised by it. Even if taking a taxi, the driver seemed unable to see the large patches of bloodstains on her clothes.
After showering and changing clothes, confirming there were no more urgent matters at the moment, Lu Jinzhao finally lay back on the bed, ready to rest.
This mission, although it didn’t cause her body too serious harm, truly made her spirit somewhat fatigued.
She originally thought that when she fell asleep this time, she would probably dream more or less about the substitute, but unexpectedly, just after lying down not long, she lost consciousness as if in a coma, and then, she heard a call.
The voice was somewhat familiar, but she couldn’t remember where she had heard it.
She followed this voice and fell into the dream.
Then, she saw a scene completely beyond her expectations.
Her parents.
They were sitting on a rundown train, which looked to have a history of at least a century.
This reminded Lu Jinzhao of the train, but compared to the train’s neatness, this one seemed even more rundown.
There were not only her parents in the carriage; counting carefully, there were nearly ten people.
But except for her parents, Lu Jinzhao couldn’t see the others’ faces clearly.
She could feel that the atmosphere in the carriage wasn’t great, somewhat too heavy.
Someone was talking nonstop, but Lu Jinzhao couldn’t hear what they were saying.
She saw her parents’ hands clasped together, as if encouraging each other.
The next second, Lu Jinzhao seemed to sense something. She looked at the young woman sitting across from her parents. There seemed to be a fog on her face, making Lu Jinzhao completely unable to see her face clearly, but Lu Jinzhao could almost be sure that she was… looking at her?
This “eye contact” lasted only an instant. The next instant, Lu Jinzhao disappeared from here.
The moment the scene dissipated, even in the dream, an extremely clear doubt emerged in Lu Jinzhao’s mind:
Who is she?
A friend of her parents?
The next second, she realized again that she was dreaming, perhaps this woman didn’t exist in reality.
This strange “lucid dream” lasted only a very short time. Perhaps it wasn’t brief in reality, but in Lu Jinzhao’s “consciousness,” this dream was merely less than a minute.
Then, her consciousness fell into chaos until she woke from deep sleep.
When she opened her eyes, Lu Jinzhao’s consciousness was still somewhat blurry.
She took about half a minute to slowly pick up the mobile phone by her pillow, and saw that only five hours had passed.
“…I dreamed of my parents?”
Lu Jinzhao was somewhat slow to realize.
Actually… since her parents passed away, she rarely, or almost never, dreamed of them.
No matter how much she missed or grieved back then, for some reason, she could never dream of them.
It once made her think that the saying “thoughts by day, dreams by night” was completely a lie.
But unexpectedly, today, without any omen, she suddenly dreamed of them.
However, dreaming wouldn’t have any omen to begin with, right?
But after waking up, with reason returning, she realized one thing.
“Was the scene in the dream the train?”
Too similar.
Especially that atmosphere, exactly like the heavy mood of passengers about to head to the platform.
“…Didn’t dream of the substitute, but dreamed of entering the platform?”
Whichever it was seemed somewhat ominous, but after all, seeing deceased relatives lightened this ominousness.
Lu Jinzhao didn’t dwell on a dream for too long. After getting up, she went to the workroom to complete the next part of the skin-making preparations, then took out her mobile phone to contact Sang Yuanbo.
[I have a transaction I want to discuss with you.]
She sent the message, and since Sang Yuanbo was not inside the platform at the moment, she soon got a response.
Sang Yuanbo was available right then, so Lu Jinzhao made an appointment with her for a meeting location, packed her things, and prepared to set off.
When she put the box into her backpack, the parchment that had been pretending to be aloof seemed to realize what she wanted to do and finally appeared again.
[Are you going to open it?]
Seeing this line of bright red text, a hint of sarcasm appeared in Lu Jinzhao’s tone: “Oh, not pretending to be dead anymore?”
The parchment fell silent, as if trying to express that it was very different now from before.
But… halfway through the silence, just before Lu Jinzhao was about to meet Sang Yuanbo, it finally couldn’t hold back.
It “reminded” again:
[Give it to me, and I’ll spare your life.]
[Otherwise, you will die.]
Lately in my period, updates will be fewer; more updates in a few days.
