Xiang Yunshang said:

“My dad has confused me again. Who wears a shroud while they’re still alive?”

Just as I was about to speak, my dad’s voice turned stern, “Get down. Do as I say.”

Normally, I wouldn’t listen to my dad, especially when he tried to explain things. Then I’d listen even less.

But at that moment, I don’t know what came over me. I was like a puppet, walking into the funeral shop, picking up the shroud, and holding it up against myself.

The shop owner was startled. “Whose kid is this? Tempting fate! Riding in a hearse, wearing a shroud, don’t you want to live?”

Hearse. I turned my head sharply and saw that my dad was driving a hearse from the funeral home.

I hadn’t paid attention when I got in the car. Now that I saw it clearly, a cold sweat broke out on my back.

My dad turned his head from the driver’s seat and shouted, “Get in the car, hurry! Get in from the back.”

Wasn’t that where they put the dead?

Before I could say anything, the back door of the hearse opened automatically, revealing a body covered with a white sheet.

The feet sticking out from under the sheet were wearing a pair of cotton shoes. My eyes scanned the shoes, and I felt like I had seen them somewhere before.

I hesitated for a moment, then I heard my dad shout, “Get in the car, quick!”

I still climbed into the car as if I had no control over my own body, and sat down next to the door, afraid to look at the body.

My dad didn’t say anything, just kept driving.

The more I sat in the car, the more I felt that something wasn’t right. When I was in the funeral shop, the proprietress had been screaming in fright. When I left, I didn’t even pay, so why didn’t she chase after me?

Where did my dad get the hearse? Only funeral homes have those!

When I mustered the courage to look at my dad, he spoke first, “Don’t look at the dead person’s face. It’s for your own good. If you make eye contact with a dead person, you might not be able to look away.”

As my dad spoke, the white sheet covering the dead person’s face seemed to tighten suddenly, stretched tautly over their face, and the outline of their features became clearer and clearer.

The hotel owner!

I remembered. Weren’t those the hotel owner’s cloth shoes?

When I first entered the hotel, he was telling someone that his wife had made the shoes, how good they were, and that you couldn’t buy them anywhere else.

When I left, the hotel owner had even greeted me. How could he be dead? And when did my dad put the hotel owner in the car?

As I was wondering about this, the white sheet covering the body lifted on its own.

I watched as the white sheet retreated from the corpse’s face little by little, and I felt extremely scared. Just as I was about to see the dead person’s face clearly, I suddenly woke up.

Hearing this, I interrupted Xiang Yunshang, “Are you saying that you were awakened by a nightmare that night?”

“Yes!” Xiang Yunshang nodded, “Not just me, Yun Ya too.”

Ye Yang and I exchanged glances, both seeing the doubt in each other’s eyes.

Ye Yang and I are both warlocks, extremely sensitive to changes in our surroundings. The slightest disturbance would attract our attention.

When people are awakened by nightmares, they usually have violent reactions. How could Ye Yang and I have been completely unaware?

I nodded and said, “Continue.”

Xiang Yunshang said, “That day, after Yun Ya chased you away, Yun Ya and I had a fight.”

Yun Ya told me about her dream. Our dreams were exactly the same, but the person driving in the dream was Yun Ya’s father, Yun Sheng.

Yun Ya told me that Yun Sheng had also said one more thing, “One of you is a dead person. I’m making you wear a shroud to hide from that dead person. If you put on the shroud, he won’t know if you’re dead or alive. Only then will you have a chance to escape. You must remember!”

Hearing this, I said in a deep voice, “Are you saying that what you’re telling me now is the real reason Yun Ya wanted to drive us away?”

Xiang Yunshang nodded, “Yes! Because Yun Ya suspects that the dead person is among you. She suspects you…”

Xiang Yunshang looked at my face before continuing, “Yun Ya said that she couldn’t hear your heartbeat. She also said that you were very cold, like a dead person.”

Xiang Yunshang quickly added, “Yun Ya’s hearing is very good. She studied music and is very sensitive to sound. Even if you speak softly, she can still hear you.”

Xiang Yunshang’s reason was plausible. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a heartbeat, it was just that most people couldn’t hear my heart beating. But this reason was also unconvincing, because Yun Ya firmly believed that the events in the dream were Yun Sheng’s instructions.

This proved that Yun Ya and Yun Sheng should be able to communicate. At least, it wasn’t as if she had no leads at all.

If this assumption was correct, it meant that Yun Ya knew that Yun Sheng was already dead, because living people can’t appear in dreams. Unless they were warlocks who had mastered the secret art of dreaming, but such warlocks were too rare. Even my master and the others had only heard of them, but never seen them.

I asked calmly, “What happened later?”

Xiang Yunshang said, “After you left, Yun Ya said that we couldn’t stay in this room and had to leave quickly.”

“I could only follow her out. You guys drove the car away, so I had to find a bus station.”