Chapter 15: Fifteen: Spreading the Blessing Across the World

Fifteen: Spreading the Blessing Across the World

Amidst the constant tug-of-war, Yu Lianyun, who had fallen into the hallucination created by the Faceless Woman, was also engaged in her own struggle.

She was searching for the corpse of the woman in white within the cold, dark well water; her hands were constantly groping downward and all around. The well was much deeper than she had anticipated, and if she could not find it, she had no choice but to keep diving deeper.

However, Yu Lianyun gradually felt her strength failing; after all, she was only an ordinary person, and her swimming ability was not outstanding.

Feeling unable to breathe, she wanted to surface, only to discover a powerful resistance preventing her. Looking up, she realized the woman in white was floating directly above her, with bloodshot eyes, a deathly pale face, and long, slender hands clamped tightly around her throat, not letting her surface to catch her breath.

The more Yu Lianyun struggled, the harder the woman in white gripped her throat; gradually, Yu Lianyun's consciousness blurred.

Between life and death, Yu Lianyun's intense intuition flared up again, and she once more saw the memories of the woman in white.

The only difference was that the memories Yu Lianyun saw were slightly different from the video content she had seen before; they began from the childhood of the woman in white, and it was also the first time she learned the woman in white's real name: Yao Zhenzhen.

Yao Zhenzhen's parents had divorced when she was young, and she grew up following her father. Her father's attitude toward her was lukewarm; he never remarried, raising her as if completing a life-task game, and then, after raising her to adulthood, he hung himself at home as if he had fulfilled an obligation.

Ever since her parents divorced, Yao Zhenzhen had never felt familial love again. For her, the feeling of familial love remained in her memories of being six years old—simple yet warm. She would do good deeds, and her parents would smile and praise her; she would get good grades at school, and they would stroke her head; if she did something wrong, they would reluctantly yet pretend to be fierce and give her a small punishment... In the memories of that time, even a scolding from her parents was warm.

Having lost her father, Yao Zhenzhen had always missed her mother, whom she hadn't seen in over a decade, and longed for the taste of familial love. After her father died, she resolutely embarked on a journey to find her mother.

After searching for over a year, she finally found that face from her memories, but she discovered she didn't have the courage to reveal her identity to the other party. Because her mother had formed a new family, she looked like she was living very happily, and her mother also seemed to have forgotten that she had such a daughter, unable to recognize her in the first moment they met.

Yao Zhenzhen felt envious of her mother's new family; she hoped she could be closer to her mother in the future, so she moved next door to her mother's residence.

However, Yao Zhenzhen did not expect that the situation would head toward a development she had never imagined.

She visited the neighbors as a new resident, and during a tense visit to her mother's current home, her mother's current husband and her son suddenly seemed as if they were possessed, bewitched by her beauty.

At first, her mother also treated her very warmly, but starting from a certain day a week later, her mother began to look at her with unkind eyes, occasionally muttering unpleasant words like "harlot" or "shameless," which hurt Yao Zhenzhen's heart for a time, yet she could actually guess some of the reasons for her mother's change in attitude.

Because during this period, she had already noticed the father and son next door peeping at her, and discovered their behavior was gradually reaching a morbid level.

One night, she faintly heard the sound of her mother arguing with the two men in the house; it seemed to be a dispute over a woman, and she could guess that woman was herself.

Yao Zhenzhen's heart was surprised and self-reproachful, but frustrated as she was, deep down she felt a kind of Abnormal joy because of it.

When her mother expressed dark, insulting remarks toward her, she would think of her childhood, when her mother would criticize and blame her after she did something wrong; she actually felt a long-lost sense of familial love from such foul language.

Therefore, even though her mother's attitude toward this "neighbor" became increasingly brutal and escalated from verbal attacks to physical conflict, she never had a single thought of leaving, nor did she feel her mother had done anything wrong.

It wasn't until one day, when she witnessed her mother crushed under the wheels of a car, saw the fruit knife in her mother's hand, the other party's deformed and twisted corpse, and that face that died with eyes wide open in resentment, that she finally realized her mistake. When she finally couldn't help but painfully cry out "Mom" to the corpse, she saw in a daze that her mother's lifeless corpse suddenly twitched eerily, and then two lines of blood-tears flowed from her wide-open, angry eyes.

After her mother died, Yao Zhenzhen was heartbroken and cried alone beside an abandoned stone well in the village.

That was an era when every household had connected water pipes and installed faucets; no one was willing to go to the trouble of fetching water from the well or maintaining it, so the maple forest where the well was located was a quiet place long left unattended, perfect for a heartbroken person to vent their sorrow.

However, what Yao Zhenzhen did not expect was yet to come.

The hearts of that father and son next door were already twisted and incredibly ugly. Her mother's death, fundamentally speaking, was actually caused by their improper thoughts and actions. After seeing her mother's death, they seemed to have suddenly "attained enlightenment"; not only did they not feel immense remorse for their actions, but they instead pushed all the responsibility onto Yao Zhenzhen, believing Yao Zhenzhen was a witch who had seduced their souls.

Thus, on that day when Yao Zhenzhen was crying alone by the well, caught off guard, the father and son who had been following her suddenly jumped out from the shadows, violently rose up, and joined forces to kill Yao Zhenzhen by throwing her into the well, sealing her escape route with cement.

It was under such circumstances that Yao Zhenzhen, who had been sealed beneath the well and died lonely and afraid, gave birth to great hatred and resentment toward humanity and the world. With the intervention of some unknown power, those negative emotions of Yao Zhenzhen transformed into a terrifying Curse. The Curse resided within the videotapes popular in that era, and the massive resentment targeted people through the act of watching the video, erupting in a concentrated manner...

"In this matter, you are not the one at fault; you are very resentful, aren't you? You are in great pain..." In reality, Yu Lianyun floated up from the water, pushed away the hand of the Faceless Woman that was no longer exerting force, and embraced her. "It's okay, you have the right to do this."

Yu Lianyun felt the thing in her arms rotting and collapsing, but this time she didn't feel any fear at all; she just paused slightly and then said softly, "It's alright. From now on, you don't have to be lonely in this dark, sunless deep well. Go to the surface and hate the whole world to your heart's content."

Yu Lianyun gently stroked the sharp, withered bones; Yao Zhenzhen's remains were quiet and peaceful.

But the next moment, a cold, black wind gushed out from the bottom of the water, turning into an updraft that broke through the ceiling and darted into the full-moon night sky.

Thunder rumbled in the heavens, and the faint, screeching sound of a female demon seemed to echo through the clouds.

Seeing this scene, He Jia'an's heart trembled, and a bad premonition surged into his mind.

After Yu Lianyun returned to the ground with Yao Zhenzhen's remains, He Jia'an couldn't help but grab her collar and loudly questioned, "You, what exactly have you done!?"

"It's fine, please don't worry," Yu Lianyun said softly. "I just spread the Blessing across the entire world..."