Chapter 13 - The Midnight Encounter
"Trying to play cool really does come at a price… '' Yuan Ge muttered, shaking the wet snow off his overcoat, and quickened his pace to rush back to the Rong Mansion. He had to get back the script he had left in the props room. Not to mention delaying tomorrow's work schedule, if the script were to be stolen and the details leaked out, the consequences would be unthinkable.
How could it start snowing while he was having dinner with Amélie? It was a good thing that he just had some wine. As he walked faster, the heat spreading through his veins gradually dispelled the chill in his body.
Yuan Ge greeted the security guards at the entrance and entered the empty mansion. The gravel path he had come from was already covered with a fine layer of white snow, and the grass and trees around were tinged with a thin silvery glow.
As Yuan Ge walked, his thoughts went back to Amélie at dinner and some undefinable feelings welled up in his heart. As a woman, she really was perfect enough, and it would be a lie to say that he didn't have any feelings for her. Was it too insensitive to talk so much about art and ultimate love? Nevertheless, Dragon Dreams was still in the toughest start-up phase and he really didn't have time to think about anything other than work.
As usual, Yuan Ge used work as an excuse to avoid emotional entanglements. Before he knew it, he was back in front of the ginkgo tree by the Dragon Pond. His instincts told him that something was not quite right. The air around him seemed to have become so thin that he could barely breathe.
His eyes inadvertently swept across the darkness of the pond, and then stopped abruptly. For a minute, Yuan Ge thought he was mistaken, for there, in the grass by the water under the ginkgo tree, lay a slim white figure!
No way!
Yuan Ge shook his head, trying to shake off the effects of the wine, then stepped a little closer. The white figure still lay motionless on the shore. Black hair, about waist length, spread across the lawn at the edge of the pond; a long, water-soaked white robe seemed to be tinted with moonlight and covered in frost in the night air. Its skin was as white and smooth as jade, without a trace of blood, and lifeless like a white porcelain doll. It lay on the shore as if exhausted, the lower half of its body still submerged in the cold water.
Hmm, what a classic opening scene to a midnight ghost story! Yuan Ge laughed to himself, still he couldn't help but feel a little creeped out: on a snowy moonless night, by a dark pond in an old mansion, long black hair and ancient white costumes - it seemed like a re-enactment of an old legend of this mansion, or a scene he had vaguely glimpsed in his own dreams. Only in his own dreams, this slender white-robed figure was babbling a sad opera, blood dripping from his wrists and down from his eyes... Yuan Ge suddenly felt a chill rise from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, and the hairs on his body pricked. Had his "wife" really emerged from the water?
There are no demons or ghosts in this world! They are all made up by unscrupulous professors like Violette Fu. The person is probably someone who wanted to commit suicide by jumping into the water and regretted it, right?
Yuan Ge quickly forced himself to calm down and tried to explain away the ghostly scene in front of him. Fear comes from the unknown. To overcome the fear, all you need to do is to find out what it is - as a daredevil who grew up listening to ghost stories and as a film director who had watched countless movies, Yuan Ge knew this very well. His abundance of reason immediately brought him back to his senses. Ashamed of his momentary weakness, he strode over to the person to see what was going on.
The person lying on the shore did not respond to his approach. The rigid body was motionless, seemingly asleep or completely dead. The white robe was still wet, outlining a waist as thin as a willow, fragile and delicate as a celestial fairy, surprisingly beautiful.
"Hey, who are you! Can you hear me?" Yuan Ge walked half a circle around the person, trying in vain to figure out whether it was a man or a woman; the person's face was so tightly covered by the long hair that it was impossible to tell the gender or age. The robe was clearly not an everyday garment, but its style looked like it came from the Qing Dynasty.
"Why did you steal our costumes? How did you get in here? Get up now! Stop pretending to be a ghost and scaring people like this. I'm calling the police!" Yuan Ge spoke loudly, but the person just lay limply on the ground, not responding at all.