Around 6:00 in the morning, the world outside was as black as ink. lody Sumrs was nudged awake in her sleep by a furry head.
She groggily opened her eyes and t the Leopard’s gaze, which shone like two small light bulbs in the darkness.
lody Sumrs reached out from under the quilt and gently stroked the Leopard’s furry head, mumbling, "It’s you, Flora... Are you hungry...? Just wait, I’ll feed you when I get up in a bit..."
lody Sumrs had let the Leopard out of her space to keep her company yesterday. It was probably because the scene she’d witnessed in that basent was too bizarre—the powerless freezer room filled with boxes of decaying human organs, the empty dical beds... The images replayed in her mind like a movie.
At the ti, lody Sumrs hadn’t felt scared in the basent, just heartbroken for those innocent people.
But the more lody Sumrs thought about it over the past couple of days, the more terrifying the scene beca.
And so, the night before last, she’d had another nightmare.
For the first ti in a long while, she started dreaming about the events of her past life again.
She dread that in her past life, during the extre cold, she had co down with a high fever. Water was scarce, so she had nothing to drink. The fever left her parched, her throat raw and painful, and she groaned in agony on her bed.
Then, Elaine Hughes knocked on her door, asking with a hint of complaint why she hadn’t made dinner yet. The whole family was hungry.
In her past life, Elaine Hughes had never lifted a finger. The other Lancasters were even more pampered and wouldn’t do a single chore. lody Sumrs was the only one who handled all the housework.
Facing Elaine Hughes’s nagging, lody Sumrs could only force her ailing body to the kitchen to cook for the Lancasters.
At that mont, she was trembling slightly from the high fever. Her hands were unsteady, and she accidentally dropped and shattered a plate.
Seeing this, Sylvia Lancaster burst into tears and asked, "Sister, do you have sothing against ? That plate you shattered was a gift I made for Mom and Dad in pottery class. How could you break it on purpose?"
lody Sumrs hurriedly explained that it wasn’t on purpose, but not a single one of the Lancasters believed her.
While comforting Sylvia Lancaster, Elaine Hughes looked at lody Sumrs with a gaze full of disappointnt. "I’ve said it before. Sylvia is innocent in the matter of you two being switched at birth; she’s a victim too. Why must you always target her like this? You disappoint so much. I truly wonder... is a malicious child like you really my daughter?"
Simon Lancaster also stared coldly at lody Sumrs, his tone harsh. "Get on your knees and apologize to Sylvia!"
In the dream, lody Sumrs continued to plead weakly, "I have a fever! My hands were shaking, I couldn’t hold the plate steady! I didn’t break it on purpose, and I didn’t know she made it!"
Upon hearing this, Silas Lancaster looked at lody Sumrs with utter disgust. "You can’t even hold a plate steady? You’re useless. Why did soone like you have to co back and disturb our lives?"
Robert Lancaster, the head of the family, tried to smooth things over. "Alright, don’t just stand there. Sylvia gets angry just looking at you. You should get back to cooking."
Watching lody Sumrs silently pick up the ingredients and resu cooking, Robert Lancaster added, "lody, you’re the one who stole everything from Sylvia in the first place. You should be thinking about how to compensate her, not targeting her. Understand?"
lody Sumrs couldn’t rember how she had responded in the dream. She only recalled the scene suddenly shifting, and she was being drugged by Robert Lancaster and Elaine Hughes and sent to Hector Hayes’s bed.
In the dream, she tried to fight back, but as soon as she pulled out a razor blade, the Lancasters, who had suddenly appeared in the room for so reason, pinned her down by her arms and legs.
Robert Lancaster and Elaine Hughes held down her arms, one on each side, while Simon Lancaster and Silas Lancaster grabbed her ankles.
They stared at lody Sumrs with loathing, chattering incessantly about how much she had disappointed them. They even ordered her, "If you still consider us your family, then don’t resist!"
Sylvia Lancaster stood in the room, flanked by Flynn Adler and Ethan Sutton. She snuggled against the two n, looking down at lody Sumrs with contempt.
Seeing Hector Hayes approach her with a lecherous grin, lody Sumrs, in her despair, found a sudden burst of strength and broke free from the Lancasters’ grasp.
Then, lody Sumrs grabbed the knife from the bedside table, killed Hector Hayes first, and then hacked Ethan Sutton and Flynn Adler to death.
Then she turned to the Lancasters.
Before the Lancasters’ terrified eyes, lody Sumrs hacked down the two Lancaster brothers and Sylvia Lancaster, one by one, as if splitting lons with a cleaver.
Then, ignoring Robert Lancaster and Elaine Hughes’s desperate pleas, she brought the knife down on their heads.
Finally, everyone in the room lay dead in a pool of blood.
When she woke up, lody Sumrs was drenched in sweat.
The dream had been utterly bizarre and grotesque. lody Sumrs lay in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling as she took a long ti to process it.
She hadn’t had these nightmares for a long ti. The Lancasters, along with the mories of her past life, had long been bundled up and swept into the trash.
Looking back on her past life now, she couldn’t understand why she had swallowed her anger and suffered in silence back then.
Perhaps it was because she had lost the family she depended on in that first mudslide. In her past life, she would often wonder if she could have saved them if she hadn’t left Mount Anworth that day.
She was constantly enveloped in imnse guilt and sorrow, like a person on the verge of drowning, and the Lancasters were like a piece of driftwood.
She had treated the Lancasters as substitutes for her own family, desperately trying to be good to them, desperately trying to make up for the regret of not being able to save her real family...
After waking up from the nightmare yesterday, lody Sumrs had let both the Leopard and Albus out of the space, letting them sleep in the room with her for company.
With the two felines, one large and one small, in the room, lody Sumrs felt much more at ease and slept soundly last night.
lody Sumrs stretched, sat up in bed, and gave the Leopard’s furry head a vigorous rub.
The Leopard was large to begin with, and after being well-fed and watered in the Arcadian Space for so ti, it had thrived. It ate at when hungry, drank from the Arcadian Stream when thirsty, and could run wild on the endless grassy plains, climb trees, and tease birds in the forest. It was so happy and healthy that its cheeks had visibly filled out.
The Leopard was also very satisfied with its current life. It nuzzled against lody Sumrs’s body, acting cute.
When it ca into lody Sumrs’s soft, fragrant room yesterday, it was like discovering a new world. It had rolled contentedly on the soft carpet.
’I love my current life so much! Compared to this, the life I led on the second basent level of the Crestview Hotel was absolute misery!’
lody Sumrs pushed the Leopard away, got up, and quickly washed up. She then put the Leopard back into the Arcadian Space and took out a large piece of beef liver to feed it.
Watching the Leopard gorge itself contentedly, lody Sumrs left the space and went downstairs, carrying Albus in her arms.
While they were eating breakfast, her grandma complained, "It’s been almost three months, and Grace still hasn’t co ho. I wonder if she’s eating and sleeping well at the factory. And Colin, too. He’s been gone for days at a ti, transporting supplies all over. Who knows when he’ll finally be done."
Grace Sutton had been working overti at the factory for the past few days, eating and sleeping there. Colin Sumrs also frequently took on supply transport missions, which involved long-haul trucking that often kept him away from ho for several days in a row.
lody Sumrs sipped her hot pumpkin porridge and comforted her grandma, "Grandma, don’t worry. Uncle and Auntie will be ho soon!"
’At the beginning of next month, a three-month-long snowfall is going to start,’ lody Sumrs thought. ’The governnt will definitely have all the cold-weather supplies distributed before then.’
Just as the family finished their al, the villa’s doorbell rang. Officer Roman Rhodes was at the door.
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