My Healing Games

Chapter 973 The journey was bumpy and tortuous, but I have no regrets.

The boy next to the phone booth looked up, his innocent eyes staring straight at Zhang Mingli. He didn't say anything, but his pupils reflected Zhang Mingli's image.

“Whether you’re human or ghost, it’s not safe for you to stay here alone. Go home when it gets dark.” Seeing that the boy was still unmoved, Zhang Mingli sighed, “If you really have nowhere to go, you can come with me. There’s an empty seat on the bus.”

The boy remained silent, his cold little hands clutching the candy, his eyes fixed on Zhang Mingli, as if trying to imprint Zhang Mingli's face into his mind.

"Is this your first time being a ghost? Tell me what you want! Do you want to take me as a scapegoat? Or are you planning to come home with me and slowly curse me? Or do you want to absorb my yang energy? You have to tell me before I can cooperate with you!" Zhang Mingli was a little impatient. He reached out to the boy, wanting to grab him, but as soon as he touched the boy, he disappeared.

A candy fell to the ground, and the boy left without taking the candy he had given him.

"This kid must have autism, right? He's just like me when I was a kid. I'd get beaten ten times and not get a single fart out of him." Zhang Mingli picked up the candy from the ground, unwrapped it, and started eating it.

He kicked the pebbles on the ground, and just then the phone in the abandoned phone booth rang.

"Was that kid waiting for a phone call?" Zhang Mingli was a little embarrassed. The kid was waiting peacefully, and he had scared him away by coming over. "What if it was his parents calling? Why do I always end up doing more harm than good?"

Entering the phone booth, Zhang Mingli answered the call: "Hello?"

"Dad, don't go any further, come back, please come back."

"Dad? Is this a telecom scam?" Zhang Mingli blurted out into the phone, "Your dad's on his way to your mom, he's not coming back!"

Just as I was about to hang up, a woman's voice came through the phone again: "Come back, don't go any further. I know you're in pain, we can start over, I won't..."

"Who are you? What kind of relationship do you have with me?!" Zhang Mingli hung up the phone: "This is ridiculous, it's like you cheated on me before."

Muttering curses, Zhang Mingli returned to his car and recounted what had just happened. Huang Ying didn't react much, but Han Fei was more cautious. He stared thoughtfully at the candy wrappers and telephones on the roadside.

"What are you looking at?" Zhang Mingli asked casually when he saw Han Fei frowning.

"You didn't throw the candy wrapper in the trash can."

"Damn it, you scumbag with eleven girlfriends, how dare you accuse me of littering? Is there no justice in this world?" Zhang Mingli started the car, seemingly anxious and worried about being blocked by something else, so he kept accelerating.

Night roads are dangerous; the more anxious you are, the more likely an accident will occur.

Not long after the car drove off, funeral music began to play in the distance, which sounded quite eerie in the middle of the night.

"Teacher Zhang, slow down. If someone dies, they'll never reach their destination," Han Fei whispered a reminder.

A dozen seconds later, a funeral procession came towards us. There weren't many people attending the funeral; they were all dressed in mourning clothes, no one was crying, they all had their heads down, and their faces were pale.

The vehicle transporting the coffin drove very slowly, and the eerie driver kept his head down, not paying any attention to the road.

"What a damn bad luck, a funeral procession at night?" Zhang Mingli slowed down, afraid of bumping into the loose funeral procession: "If so many people remember the dead, then the living were worthwhile."

The procession, dressed in mourning clothes, included elderly people and children. Their feet seemed not to touch the ground, and their shadows could not be seen when the car headlights shone on them.

Everyone in the group kept their heads down, but as they passed Zhang Mingli's car, a child dressed in mourning glanced at Zhang Mingli, and his face instantly changed, looking as if he had seen a ghost.

The child tugged at the adult's arm, seemingly wanting to say something, but the adult simply covered his mouth and eyes, making him follow the group.

As the hearse carrying the coffin slowly drove by, Han Fei narrowed his eyes slightly and saw the portrait on the coffin.

The photo was covered by a black cloth, but when it was blown by the night wind, half of the face in the portrait was revealed. The deceased in the photo looked eight or nine parts like Zhang Mingli.

"already dead?"

As the funeral music faded into the distance, the procession seemed to mark the "watershed" of the entire nightmare. After the hearse disappeared into the night, the surrounding gloom intensified, the road ahead became even darker, and the threat and murderous intent emanating from the depths of the night became increasingly apparent.

Where does this dark road end?

After getting away from the funeral procession, Zhang Mingli became even quieter, and he encountered various problems every time he tried to speed up.

The road conditions have deteriorated, with dead trees and rocks on the road, and large potholes dug in some places. The vehicle is bumping around and has suffered some damage. If this continues, the vehicle may fall apart before it reaches its destination.

"It's alright, I often travel this road. Bumps and bruises are minor issues, nothing serious." Zhang Mingli was comforting Han Fei and Huang Ying when he suddenly saw two cars parked not far away, and several drunks dragging a woman in red into the woods.

The woman was completely drunk, motionless like a corpse, completely at their mercy. The three drunkards wore lewd smiles and held various tools in their hands.

"Damn it, why do I always have to run into these kinds of things?" Zhang Mingli slowed down. Without much hesitation, he stopped the car, grabbed a fire axe, and rushed over: "You bastards are worse than animals! Even dogs wouldn't use such despicable tricks!"

With an axe, Zhang Mingli smashed the window of the car in front of him. Like a madman, he raised the axe with both hands and chopped directly at the drunkard!

The three drunkards, their drunkenness dissipating, seemed to realize they were in the wrong. They abandoned the woman in red and vanished into the woods in a flash.

"Wake up!" Zhang Mingli patted the unconscious woman's face, but she didn't react at all. "Was she drugged? Girls, never drink beverages given to you by strangers when you go out!"

He really didn't want to be distracted by other things, but leaving the unconscious woman alone on the road was dangerous: "So annoying, I can't get any important things done every day, just a bunch of trivial matters!"

Despite cursing incessantly, Zhang Mingli carefully carried the woman in red on his back: "Damn, she's heavy!"

Perhaps those words stung the woman in red, for she awoke from her unconscious state. Her fair arms slowly rose, gently encircling Zhang Mingli's neck. Her soft, red lips somehow found their way to Zhang Mingli's ear, her tongue darting out as if she wanted to say something.

"Pretending to be unconscious? You fucking move again, and I'll chop you to pieces! I hate being lied to more than anything in my life! Get down here!"

Zhang Mingli tried to shake the other person off several times but couldn't. He walked towards his car, hoping that Han Fei and Huang Ying could help him.

With each step forward, his steps grew heavy, and the woman's hair fell down, gradually obscuring his vision.

"Teacher Zhang! Over here!" Han Fei shouted loudly from inside the car, using his Word of Power ability. The aura of the curse spread through the night. Zhang Mingli followed the sound and finally returned to the car.

"Damn! This woman is so damn heavy!" His vision returned to normal, and Zhang Mingli pointed behind him, but when he came to his senses, the woman in red wasn't there at all: "Holy crap? Where is she?"

The woman in red was gone, but Zhang Mingli seemed to have aged and looked haggard.

“There are a lot of ghosts on the road at night. The ones you just encountered were probably a drunkard and a lecherous ghost. Luckily, you were brave enough to avoid them, or you might have been dragged into the woods.” Han Fei didn’t dare to get out of the car. This nightmare was extremely peculiar. The laughing ghostly markings kept reminding him that he would surely die if he got out of the car.

"Who cares what he's talking about? As long as I have a clear conscience." Zhang Mingli put the fire axe aside and drove off in silence.

The nighttime trip was anything but peaceful. After several twists and turns, Zhang Mingli and his companions encountered all sorts of unexpected events: a baby suddenly crawling across the road, a wandering ghost asking for directions, a middle-aged ghost looking for a scapegoat, and an abandoned grave chasing after a car.

The car also started to have some problems and wasn't going as fast as before.

Zhang Mingli dealt with all the troubles he encountered on this night road by himself. He became increasingly exhausted, his posture was no longer upright, and even his cursing was not as powerful as before.

“We can’t shake off this grave. It’s been following us all the way. Why don’t we get out and dig it up?” Zhang Mingli was a straightforward man. He saw the lonely grave in the rearview mirror, and after holding back for a long time, he stopped the car again, grabbed the fire axe with both hands, and got out of the car.

The grave wasn't large, and no one knew what was buried inside. Zhang Mingli saw several crows constantly carrying stones away from the grave.

"What the hell? You're a tomb raider, huh?"

He chased away the crows and chopped the grave mound with an axe.

Huang Ying and Han Fei were both watching him from inside the car. At first, the two thought Zhang Mingli was very problematic and even suspected that he had killed his first love. However, as they spent more time together, Han Fei and Huang Ying discovered that things didn't seem to be like that.

“Everything we encounter on this dark road represents the confusion and troubles in his life. The suddenly appearing female corpse might represent a past romance, something that is dead but still occasionally remembered; the child by the phone booth might be a real child, or it might be a kind of hope for the future; the drunkard and the lecherous ghost represent desires on the road of life, and the various obstacles and potholes are the countless troubles in life; the middle-aged ghost looking for a scapegoat might be a company leader; the baby crawling across the road might be an aborted child; Zhang Mingli is getting more and more tired, and this car is also starting to have more and more problems, so the car should be a symbol of his own health.” After Zhang Mingli got out of the car, Han Fei immediately began to search the car, hoping to find more clues.

"What do those graves that chased after us represent?"

"Could it represent the housing prices he can never outpace? Or perhaps it symbolizes his family?" Han Fei found many IOUs in the car, all owed to Zhang Mingli by the same person, Zhang Yougui, who also had the surname Zhang and seemed to be his uncle.

"If that's your guess, then this night road is Zhang Mingli's life story. I'm getting more and more curious about where this night road will end."

"I have another immature idea." Han Fei put the IOU back in its place: "The portrait of the deceased in the funeral procession looks a lot like Zhang Mingli. When the little ghosts at the funeral saw Zhang Mingli, they actually looked like they had seen a ghost. I suspect that Zhang Mingli might already be dead, but he doesn't know it himself?"

"It's possible!"

Halfway through their conversation, Huang Ying and Han Fei noticed that the darkness outside the car window had been dispelled. Turning their heads, they saw Zhang Mingli had set fire to the desolate grave. He then gathered a large number of dry leaves and threw them on top, making the fire extremely fierce!

After doing all this, Zhang Mingli took out three cigarettes, lit them, and stuck them beside the grave: "Smoke is rising from the ancestral grave, your descendants will definitely be rich and powerful, so stop chasing me!"

Zhang Mingli is a reckless person with extremely low moral character, but he is very methodical in his work and has his own set of ideas.

"Let's continue on our journey!"

A quick glance at the navigation showed that despite the bumpy and winding journey, Zhang Mingli never considered turning back.

The night bus started moving, and they were getting closer and closer to their destination, while the night outside the window became increasingly dangerous.

Compared to when he first left the town, Zhang Mingli looked much more haggard, but his eyes were still bright and full of expectation.

"My story is coming to an end. Would you like another cigarette?"

(End of this chapter)