Chapter 201: Granny

I looked up. Dark clouds had blotted out the moonlight at some point, and darkness had crept in silently.

'Underworld Live Show, I'm back again.'

Feeling my way through the pitch dark, I thought back to my first encounter with the mad old woman and followed the memory deeper into the alley.

After walking for about half an hour, I faintly made out a small two-story building with a battered rain awning.

'I think this was the house I took shelter beside that day in the rain, when I found the address on the Underworld Live Show Advertisement Card.' Stepping up to the building, I wiped off the doorplate. It read No. 43.

'Room 444 on the fourth underground floor of 44 Lightless Road—that's what the little card said back then.' I could never forget the scene where this nightmare had begun. 'This is No. 43, so the two buildings on either side should be...'

When I walked over to look, however, I found that the two buildings were No. 42 and No. 45.

'How can there be no No. 44? I clearly went inside that day.' I stood at the door of No. 43, the darkness thickening on both sides. 'Did it vanish? Or does it only appear on rainy days?'

Staring at the dilapidated wooden door in front of me, I gritted my teeth and raised my hand to knock.

"Thump, thump, thump!"

As I knocked harder, the door actually swung right open under my hand.

'It wasn't locked?' I pushed the door all the way open, revealing a scene of utter decay. It looked like no one had lived in this house for a very long time.

Covering my mouth and nose, I used my phone for light. The furniture inside was broken and falling apart, with piles of trash heaped everywhere. A pungent stench filled the air, as though the entire building had rotted through.

'No basement?' I searched the whole place without finding any way underground, though the stair railing inside matched my memory down to the last detail.

"Creak..." The door behind me was suddenly pushed open. I whipped my head around and saw a little girl in tattered clothes standing timidly in the doorway.

She didn't seem to know anyone was inside. Startled, she froze on the spot, one hand gripping the door and the other cradling a delicate cloth doll.

"Don't be afraid." I started to step forward to comfort the girl, when the Old Master's warning that no living soul walked No-Lights Road flashed through my mind. Cold sweat broke out over my skin, and I stopped dead in my tracks.

Her showing up here was far too abnormal. Even grown adults didn't dare come out on No-Lights Road at night, let alone a five- or six-year-old girl.

Everything about the way she looked was eerie, too. Her clothes were filthy and torn, yet her cheeks, arms, and calves were spotless, without a speck of dirt on them, and the cloth doll in her hands looked brand-new.

My gaze settled on the cloth doll. Its design didn't match a character from any anime or movie I knew, and there was nothing cute about it. Its face wore the expression of an infant abandoned countless times, brimming with resentment.

"Hi there, Uncle is lost. Can you tell Uncle where 44 Lightless Road is?" With a talisman pinched between my fingertips, I tried to put on the friendliest smile I could manage.

The little girl took a step back, then suddenly clutched her doll, spun around, and ran.

"Hey, I don't mean any harm!" She wasn't running fast, and I caught up to her in two or three strides. Seeing me closing in, she panicked, tripped over something, and lost her balance.

"Careful!" I caught hold of her from behind, and the moment my hand closed around hers, I realized her body was frighteningly cold.

"Slow down, Uncle really isn't a bad person." I had very little experience dealing with children, and the few kids I had crossed paths with before were all abnormal ones like Sakurako and Song Xiaofeng.

It took a long while before the girl stopped trying to run. She sat beside me on the stone steps outside No. 43, hugging her doll in silence.

"You should hurry on home. Your family must be worried about you." I reached for a cigarette and already had it between my lips before I suddenly remembered it wasn't right to smoke next to a child.

Reluctantly putting the cheap cigarette away, I fiddled with my lighter. "Where do you live? Want me to walk you home?"

The girl shook her head, looking pitiful. "I don't have a home."

That left me at a loss for words, unsure how to respond. "Then what are you doing out here at night? I hear No-Lights Road isn't safe after dark."

"Waiting for someone," the little girl said briefly, then lapsed back into silence.

As the night wind blew past, the girl shrank into her tattered clothes, hugging the cloth doll tightly.

"You must be cold." I took off my jacket and draped it over her shoulders. The oversized jacket swallowed her tiny frame whole, making her look rather comical. "Who are you waiting for, and how long do you have to wait?"

"Twenty years."

"Twenty years?!"

Surprised as I was, I chalked it up to childish nonsense and patiently waited with her for a full twenty minutes. Just as I was about to call the child relief center, the girl handed my jacket back to me and walked alone into the darkness of the alley. "The person I was waiting for is here. Thank you for keeping me company."

She left just like that. Before I had even recovered from my daze, a woman in her twenties—about my own age—walked out from the other end of the alley. She had an otherworldly grace, delicate skin, and the quiet poise of a wild orchid. Even among all the beauties I had met, only Huang Xue could rival her bearing.

'A female ghost?' Rude as it was to have that thought at first sight of a stranger, reason told me that a woman so strikingly beautiful who dared wander down No-Lights Road in the dead of night could never be an ordinary person.

"Are you looking for someone? A five- or six-year-old girl walked that way just now." Noticing a faint resemblance between the woman's eyes and brows and the little girl's, I took her for the child's mother.

"I'm not looking for her. I came here to wait for someone." The woman, lovely as a painting, gave me a charming smile and walked gracefully toward me. Only then did I notice that her clothes were just as tattered, and she was holding a cloth doll with an eerie expression.

'That doll is the exact same one the little girl was holding just now, except it doesn't look as new—as if the years have worn it down.' Puzzled as I was, I kept my expression neutral. "You're waiting for someone too? Don't tell me you have to wait twenty years as well?"

"I can't wait that long. I'm waiting fifteen years." Her bright eyes shimmered and a smile touched her rosy cheeks as she studied my face closely.

"Miss, have we met before?" Unnerved by her stare, I shifted a little to the side.

She didn't answer. Lowering her head, she toyed with the ugly doll as the night breeze stirred her dark hair, looking as though she had stepped right out of a painting.

Fifteen minutes later, the woman slowly rose to her feet. "The person I was waiting for is here. Until fate brings us together again."

She walked off down one side of the alley. Once the darkness had swallowed her figure, a beautiful woman of about forty emerged from the other end, still carrying an alluring mature charm.

'How did she appear?' I had kept my eyes fixed on the end of the alley ever since the younger woman left, yet I hadn't sensed a single sign of anyone approaching. It was as if she had materialized out of thin air.

Wearing a gentle smile, the woman swayed her waist as she took small, mincing steps over and sat down beside me.

"You're waiting for someone too, aren't you?"

"Yes, just for ten years." Her voice was soft and sweet as glutinous rice, pleasant to the ear, yet I had no desire to make conversation with her. These women showing up one after another out of nowhere were simply too eerie.

Her clothes were just as worn and tattered, and completely against all common sense, she too was clutching a doll. This one was ragged and battered, its seams split open in several places without being mended.

Ten minutes later, the woman gave me a slight bow. "The person I was waiting for is here. If you have any questions, you can ask her."

Once she walked off and vanished at the end of the alley, I couldn't sit still another second. Turning up my phone's brightness, I aimed it down the opposite end of the alley and was just about to use Chasing Eye to look when the screen went black with a pop.

That sudden shift from light to dark left me momentarily dazed. By the time I looked up again, a white-haired old woman clutching a tattered cloth doll had stopped right in front of me.

"You're..." Looking at this face that had grown old, I felt a sudden flash of familiarity. "Have we met somewhere before?"

The old woman didn't answer. She simply walked over to the doorway of No. 43 and gazed at the wreckage inside. "Times change, and nothing stays the same. In five years, you should understand."

She glanced at me, walked once around the room—taking five minutes on the dot—and then pushed the door open and vanished into the alley.

'What on earth do these women mean?'

While I was mulling this over, an Old Granny with a hunched back appeared at the mouth of the alley. The wrinkles on her face were deep, like folded dried bean-curd skin. She leaned on a cane, her arms wrapped tightly around a heavily patched, threadbare cloth doll.

"Little mouse climbs the lamp-stand high, steals some oil, can't get down no matter how it tries. Meow, meow, meow, here comes the cat, roly-poly, tumbling down it goes..."