13 The Midnight Encounter

"Trying to play cool really does come at a price… ''

Yuan Ge mutters to himself, shaking the wet snow off his overcoat, and quickens his pace to rush back to the Rong Mansion. He has to get back the script he has 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 walks faster, the heat spreading through his veins gradually dispels the chill in his body.

Yuan Ge greets the security guards at the entrance and enters the empty mansion. The gravel path he came from is already covered with a fine layer of white snow, and the grass and trees around are tinged with a thin silvery glow.

As Yuan Ge walks, his thoughts goes back to Amélie at dinner and some undefinable feelings are welling up in his heart. As a woman, she really is 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 is still in the toughest start-up phase and he really doesn'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 is back in front of the ginkgo tree by the Dragon Pond. His instincts tells him that something is not quite right. The air around him seems to have become so thin that he could barely breathe.

His eyes inadvertently sweeps across the darkness of the pond, and then stops abruptly. For a minute, Yuan Ge thought he was mistaken, for there, in the grass by the water under the ginkgo tree, lies a slim white figure!

No way!

Yuan Ge shakes his head, trying to shake off the effects of the wine, then steps a little closer. The white figure still lies motionless on the shore. Black hair, about waist length, spreads across the lawn at the edge of the pond; a long, water-soaked white robe seems to be tinted with moonlight and covers in frost in the night air. Its skin is as white and smooth as jade, without a trace of blood, and lifeless like a white porcelain doll. It lies on the shore as if exhausted, the lower half of its body still submerges in the cold water.

Hmm, what a classic opening scene to a midnight ghost story!

Yuan Ge laughs to himself, still he can'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 seems like a re-enactment of an old legend of this mansion, or a scene he has vaguely glimpsed in his own dreams. Only in his own dreams, this slender white-robed figure is babbling a sad opera, blood dripping from his wrists and down from his eyes... Yuan Ge suddenly feels a chill rising from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, and the hairs on his body stand on end.

Has 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 forces himself to calm down and tries 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 grows up listening to ghost stories and as a film director who has watched countless movies, Yuan Ge knows this very well. His abundance of reason immediately brings him back to his senses. Ashamed of his momentary weakness, he walks over to the person to see what is going on.

The person lying on the shore does not respond to his approach. The rigid body is motionless, seemingly asleep or completely dead. The white robe is 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 walks half a circle around the person, trying in vain to figure out whether it is a man or a woman; the person's face is so tightly covered by the long hair that it is impossible to tell the gender or age. The robe is clearly not an everyday garment, but its style looks like it comes 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 speaks loudly, but the person just lies limply on the ground, not responding at all.