I froze for a moment. My first instinct was to look around for the Green-Faced Ghost.
But I found that I couldn't move again.
The previous dream had passed quickly, unfolding smoothly, and nothing supernatural had happened, so I hadn't wanted to move. Only now did I realize that this dream was different.
And not just because I couldn't move again.
I could sense a subtle difference.
This dream was like the first time I'd dreamed of the old hag in the kimono, or the teddy bear. I was a complete bystander, not a soul that had left its body and traveled to some point in the past.
Xu Guangzong fell to the ground, but the Green-Faced Ghost didn't appear.
I didn't know if it was because I was only a bystander now, and had merged with Xu Guangming, seeing through his ordinary eyes—which was why I couldn't see anything.
Xu Tie and his wife cried out in shock, but neither of them moved. They simply watched Xu Guangzong fall.
I heard Xu Guangming's heartbeat.
Just like Xu Gang, in that moment, a thought came to him: If Xu Tie died now, all this conflict would be over.
The thought began to grow wildly in Xu Guangming's mind.
It was Xu Guangzong's favoritism that had turned Xu Tie into the person he was, wasting his whole life.
And it was also because of Xu Guangzong's favoritism that Xu Tie's wife—Xu Guangming's own mother—had become a vulgar, materialistic shrew, unable even to pretend to be cultured. She'd turned into a haggard old woman far too soon.
In Xu Guangming's memories, Xu Gang was a mature, hypocritical success, and Xu Gang's wife was a mature, hypocritical rich man's wife. He also remembered hearing Xu Tie say that Xu Gang's marriage had been