"Shanshan..." This name, sealed away for seven years, exploded like a thunderclap in the silent room. Even Mrs. Xu felt a strange twinge of pain when she uttered it herself.
For seven years, this name had been the greatest taboo in the Cui Mansion. The couple strictly forbade anyone from mentioning it in the mansion, as if by doing so, that silly little girl had truly never existed.
The night was thick, and the wind howled. Suddenly, a clear tinkling sound of bells came from inside the room.
Both Mrs. Xu and Cui Weiqi turned pale!
This sound was all too familiar. Many years ago, they had begged for a longevity lock for Shanshan. Every time she ran in the courtyard, it would emit such a light and distant sound!
"It... It's Shanshan... Is she back?!"
"Hehe... Giggles..."
As if in response to the two of them, a strange laugh suddenly rang out in the darkness. It was like a child's laughter and also like a whimpering cry. The sounds overlapped and intertwined, as if coming from different directions, constantly echoing in the empty room!
Everyone was startled by this laugh!
A conjecture that Mrs. Xu and Cui Weiqi least wanted to believe suddenly popped into their minds - Could it be that Shanshan had taken Jiaojiao's soul and come to claim their lives?!
The next moment, the entire room suddenly shook violently. Everyone felt dizzy, and the scene in front of them began to change at a visible speed!
A thin and small figure slowly emerged in front of everyone - It was a little girl about five or six years old. Her skin was unusually fair, and her figure was much thinner than her peers. But what was most noticeable were her big, black eyes, like two bottomless pools of water. At this moment, she was looking blankly in everyone's direction!
Everyone had seen Jiaojiao lying on the sickbed with their own eyes, so they all knew that the little girl in front of them was the first child of Mrs. Xu and Cui Weiqi - Shanshan.
"What's going on? Did Shanshan appear on her own?" a disciple asked blankly.
Shen Cuiyu squinted his eyes. Just as he was about to step forward to check, a sudden scream came from beside him!
"We've encountered a ghost! We've encountered a ghost!"
Mrs. Xu and Cui Weiqi looked extremely pale. They actually started to run around in the illusion!
Zhong Shengwan twitched the corner of her mouth. She and Dongfang Xiao each grabbed one of them. It took them a great deal of effort to barely stop them from screaming and running.
"Stop shouting!" Dongfang Xiao gasped for breath. She didn't expect these two in - laws to be harder to catch than a ghost. For a moment, her words were a bit straightforward:
"Even if it is a ghost, it's your daughter. What are you afraid of?"
Mrs. Xu and Cui Weiqi glanced at each other. Their faces were ugly, and their lips trembled, but they couldn't say a complete sentence.
Pei Yu stood aside and said coldly, exposing the truth:
"A clear conscience fears no false accusations. They're just guilty."
"Mother..."
Shanshan rubbed her eyes and suddenly called out.
Just as Mrs. Xu timidly dared not respond, someone suddenly answered this call from behind.
Everyone was stunned. They turned around and saw a woman walking slowly over. She had a smiling face, and in her arms was a clay doll wrapped in red cloth. She walked briskly towards them.
"This... Isn't this me when I was young?" Mrs. Xu murmured to herself.
At the same time, Shanshan walked straight through everyone's bodies and rushed towards the woman.
Only then did everyone realize that everything in front of them was just a replay of the past.
This was Shanshan's memory and also the illusion of her mental prison.
Liu Ruyan glanced at the other disciples and raised her voice to explain, "Don't be afraid. These are all fake. They're just illusions. You can think of it as a dream. We're just onlookers."
Mrs. Xu subconsciously let out a sigh of relief. Looking at Shanshan, who was intimate with the "herself", her expression was complicated, and she didn't say a word for a long time.
At that time, although Shanshan was silly, she was lively and active, and in good health.
She would stumble around in the garden to catch butterflies. Although her movements were clumsy, she laughed happily. She would also try to shout "Dad... Mom..." in a slurred tone, and then follow Mrs. Xu or Cui Weiqi like a happy little tail, even if the response she got was sometimes just an absent - minded pat.
At that time, although her eyes were blank, they were bright, full of attachment to her parents.
Everyone also saw with their own eyes the much younger Mrs. Xu. She was full of joy and carefully wiping the clay doll "invited" from the temple. She set up an incense burner and offerings. Her face was filled with the expectation of becoming a mother again, completely unaware that she was planting the seeds of disaster with her own hands...
The smoke rose slowly from the incense burner, swirling around the clay doll. The originally cute smiling face of the clay doll actually showed a bit of strange vividness in the changing light and shadow. Just as Mrs. Xu turned around to get other things, the smile of the clay doll seemed to become more and more exaggerated in the smoke. Even... its lips twitched imperceptibly!
A subtle but clear voice full of temptation directly drilled into Shanshan's ears. Shanshan was just standing there blankly, watching her mother busy.
"Do you... love your father and mother?"
Shanshan was slow to react. After a long while, she turned her head blankly following the sound and stared blankly at the clay doll on the incense table.
She tilted her head, as if trying to understand where this strange voice came from and what it meant. Finally, she staggered forward, looked up at the clay doll, and nodded very seriously and forcefully.
"Hehe..." The clay doll let out a suppressed and unpleasant cackle. Its voice was full of malice. "It's a pity... Your parents don't love you... They think you're stupid and silly... They think you're a burden. Because of you, they're not happy at all..."
Shanshan's mind couldn't fully understand these malicious words, but she keenly caught the most crucial word - "unhappy".
She remembered that sometimes her mother would sigh when looking at her, and that her father rarely picked her up high like before.
She didn't want her parents to be unhappy.
An anxious look appeared on Shanshan's little face. She tried hard to organize her words and said in a slurred but extremely serious tone:
"Shanshan... wants... wants mother to be happy..."
The voice of the clay doll seemed to carry a hint of pleasure at having achieved its plan. It continued to lure, "Even if... you can never run again, never bask in the sun again, you'll get sick, and you'll lose a lot of fun things... Are you still willing?"
Shanshan hardly hesitated. In her simple and pure world, her mother was the person she loved most. Compared with her mother, what were other things?
So she nodded solemnly again. Her black eyes were filled with a pure and unadulterated loyalty.