Missing Footprints

Tap... tap... tap... tap... tap...

The entire world fell silent, as if only the dripping of water remained, three seconds apart, with a steady rhythm.

Drip drip... drip drip... drip drip... drip drip...

The sound of dripping water clearly quickened, like someone in a dream suddenly encountering a nightmare, their breathing instantly accelerating.

Drip drip drip... drip drip drip... drip drip drip...

The sound of dripping water grew increasingly urgent, like gunfire, changing from single shots to a barrage.

Drip drip drip drip drip drip drip drip drip...

In a moment, the sound of countless water droplets became incredibly dense, like scattering beans from a great height.

There was no great height, nor scattered beans.

The space was dark and claustrophobic, the suffocating sound of dripping water coming from an unknown source.

A chilling, eerie cold wind howled and swept through, disturbing the direction of the water curtain and breaking the hearts of the living.

Suddenly, from the mud, a pale hand emerged.

A hand full of the will to survive.

It struggled to grasp at the muddy clods, just like a drowning person desperately trying to claw their way to a sliver of hope.

Hoo!

A woman, covered in mud, straightened up from where the hand had been digging.

Her long hair covered her face, making it impossible to see her features.

Her hair, which looked like it hadn't been trimmed in years, was tangled and hung down past her chest, still dripping with mud.

The scene was indescribably bizarre.

Hoo-ch-ch-ch!

Like a bellows, the woman gasped for air loudly.

Her right hand, which had been digging earlier, maintained its posture, moving closer and closer...

This hand actually reached out and touched Jiang Yue's face.

"Yue'er, it's so cold..."

Jiang Yue suddenly jolted awake, springing up like a coiled spring. His sudden movement caused the rattan chair beneath him to topple over, hitting the side table with a clatter, throwing everything into disarray.

Inside, the room was bright and clean; outside, blue bricks and green tiles.

Where was the rain curtain and the mud? Where was the mud-covered woman?

Jiang Yue rubbed his temples with both hands, shaking his head rapidly, desperately trying to shake off the nightmarish scene.

This dream again...

It had only been four days into April, and this was the seventh time this dream had appeared.

Whether he was dozing or in deep sleep, the dream always arrived uninvited.

Coming without a shadow, leaving without a trace.

Was it just a dream?

Jiang Yue rubbed his cheeks fiercely. The cold, damp, sticky sensation of that pale hand touching his face felt as if it had truly happened.

Especially...

The moment of contact, the woman's disheveled, desolate, and helpless appearance was imprinted in Jiang Yue's mind like a photograph, clearly preserved.

Snap!

As Jiang Yue was lost in thought, something suddenly fell behind him.

He turned to see an old photo frame on the large red sandalwood incense table in the center of the main hall had inexplicably fallen to the ground without any external force.

An old ancestral home, an old incense table, an old photo frame.

The glass in front of the photo frame was shattered, but fortunately, the photo inside was unharmed.

It was a 20-inch family portrait, slightly yellowed and looking quite old.

The four people in the photo radiated happiness. Jiang Yue was also in the picture, a rosy-cheeked little boy with a small apple in his hand, just a seven or eight-year-old little sprout.

Jiang Yue carefully examined the scene, his mind full of questions.

The incense table was about forty centimeters wide and placed against the center of the main hall's front wall. The photo frame had always been placed against the wall on the right side of the incense table.

The first thing Jiang Yue did when he returned to the old ancestral home in Panshi Ridge from the city was to thoroughly clean the entire place, inside and out. He wiped and polished, tidying up the old house until it was spotless.

He had naturally cleaned the photo frame carefully as well, and he had placed it back himself. He remembered exactly how he had placed it and in which specific position, able to recall any detail from that moment.

Even if the photo frame had slipped, it should have slid onto the incense table, not leaped over the forty-centimeter-wide table to fall directly to the ground.

To achieve the effect of it falling as it did, it would have to be as if the photo frame could do somersaults.

"As expected, once Qingming Festival arrives, strange things happen one after another?"

Carefully picking up the family portrait from the shards of glass, Jiang Yue was about to turn and find a broom and dustpan to clean it up when his eyes suddenly fixed on the photo.

Without any warning, goosebumps erupted all over Jiang Yue's body, large beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, and even his breathing became rapid.

The woman from his nightmares earlier, the image she left in Jiang Yue's mind, slowly began to overlap with the woman in the photograph.

"Mom?" Jiang Yue exclaimed.

His teeth clamped down on his lower lip, and his body trembled uncontrollably.

Jiang Yue never imagined that the woman who had been bothering him for days, the desperate and helpless woman in his dreams, was actually his birth mother who had been missing for ten years!

No!

Upon closer inspection, there were still obvious differences.

In the photo, his mother appeared knowledgeable and capable, her sternness softened by affection, around her early thirties—the prime of a woman's life.

The woman in his dreams was disheveled, looking at least forty or fifty, her eyes filled with terror and helplessness, flowing with heart-wrenching despair.

But—

Jiang Yue, who always paid attention to detail and had a photographic memory, confirmed through repeated comparison: the similar facial features, the height of the cheekbones, the proportions of the three courts and five spaces...

He could be absolutely certain that it was indeed the same person!

This was getting strange.

His mother, who disappeared ten years ago in her early thirties, was appearing in his dreams in her forties or fifties, crying out to him, begging for help!

Jiang Yue had always been fond of pondering strange and mysterious matters and had some understanding of dream interpretation.

People appearing in dreams mostly remained as they were in the past.

Especially deceased individuals appearing in dreams, they usually appeared as they were when they were alive.

When his mother's archaeological team mysteriously disappeared ten years ago, Jiang Yue was only eight years old. His mother's appearance in this family photo was essentially Jiang Yue's last memory of her.

Jiang Yue had never seen his mother at forty or fifty, so he couldn't have formed an impression of her, and there was no reason for her to appear in his dreams.

Holding the photo, Jiang Yue stared blankly, forgetting the scattered glass shards.

"Second Brother, Second Brother..."

A cheerful shout came from outside the courtyard. A sturdy-looking boy trotted through the yard and poked half his head into the main hall.

Seeing Jiang Yue inside, his face lit up with surprise. He rushed over to Jiang Yue, his face beaming with the joy of seeing a long-lost relative.

The boy was about eleven or twelve years old, with healthy bronze skin and a pair of bright, expressive dark eyes, complemented by the high nose bridge characteristic of the Old Jiang Family. He exuded the wildness of a rural child.

The child was the only son of Jiang Yue's third uncle. His given name was Jiang Tong, and his nickname was San Gou.

His third uncle and aunt had been working in a prosperous city for years, and his grandparents had passed away. San Gou was left in the care of no one in their hometown, so he had been living with his aunt in town.

The Qingming Festival offered a rare short holiday. The little guy had heard that his cousin Jiang Yue was returning to their ancestral home in Panshi Ridge for the tomb-sweeping ceremony, so he had been pestering his aunt for days to take him back.

Unfortunately, his aunt's small shop in town was busiest during the holidays, and she couldn't spare the time to take him back to Panshi Ridge, dozens of miles away.

This naturally didn't stop San Gou.

On Qingming Festival, he woke up early and, all by himself, trekked dozens of miles of mountain roads back to Panshi Ridge. Upon arriving in the village, he didn't even go to his own home, heading straight for Jiang Yue's old house.

"San Gou, didn't Auntie say she was busy with the shop and couldn't bring you back?"

Perhaps it was due to their blood relation, but despite the five or six-year age gap and infrequent meetings, the two brothers had an incredibly close bond.

Every time he returned to their hometown, San Gou would stick to Jiang Yue like glue, wishing he could be tied to his second brother's waist.

Jiang Yue was also particularly fond of his younger cousin, treating him like a younger brother.

Facing his cousin's question, San Gou scratched his head. He didn't want to admit that he had snuck back without his aunt's knowledge, so he changed the subject.

"Second Brother, who was that woman who just left?"

"Nonsense! It was just me here. Who left?" Jiang Yue playfully smacked San Gou on the back of his head, thinking he was trying to dodge the question.

San Gou immediately protested: "Who do you mean no one? She was wearing a floral print skirt and had long hair. Her face and hair were dirty, like she just came from the fields. I thought it was strange! Who's this silly woman who goes to the fields wearing a floral skirt?"

Before Jiang Yue could deliver a second smack, his arm froze mid-air.

Floral skirt, long hair, dirty face and hair.

The description inexplicably overlapped with his dream again.

San Gou's description sent another wave of goosebumps through Jiang Yue.

He grabbed San Gou and rushed out of the courtyard.

"San Gou, which way did you see that woman go?"

San Gou pointed to the left: "This way. She was just leaving the courtyard when I arrived, right around here. She went this way. I even looked back."

San Gou spoke earnestly, but there was no one in sight down the road.

Jiang Yue followed the path, checking the ground. Due to the continuous drizzling rain over the past two days, footprints were easy to spot. The only fresh footprints were San Gou's from when he arrived; there were no fresh footprints in the opposite direction.

"San Gou!" Jiang Yue's face darkened.

"Second Brother, I'm not lying! I swear, if I'm lying, let a car hit me." San Gou was clearly an honest boy, puffing out his chest and swearing.

Although San Gou was mischievous, he knew his limits. When it came to swearing, he was absolutely serious, and it was 100% true.

Jiang Yue sighed and stared blankly in the direction San Gou had indicated.

These bizarre and strange occurrences just kept coming, one after another.