The Beauty with Terrible Luck Falls in Love with a Ghost - Chapter 7

The next day, the midday sun filtered through the gaps in the curtains and fell on Zuo Lihua’s face. Her eyelashes, delicate as tiny fans, fluttered slightly as she slowly woke.

She frowned, feeling dizzy and with a sore throat. Instinctively, she reached for her phone, only to find it had automatically shut down due to a dead battery.

She must have fallen asleep while watching Pleasant Goat the night before, and the chill of the night had given her a cold.

Pushing aside the thin blanket, she got out of bed and opened the curtains.

The intense sunlight flooded the room without restraint. Zuo Lihua shielded her eyes with her hand and, keeping her arm raised, turned and walked out.

It was daylight, time to get down to business.

After leaving the bathroom, Zuo Lihua headed straight downstairs.

She rummaged through her bag for the charger, plugged it into the nearest socket, and turned on her phone. To her surprise, it was already noon.

Almost immediately, she noticed something off.

Ning Dongbang was always efficient. He had promised to send someone over today to set up the internet, and by all accounts, the workers should have arrived between eight and nine in the morning. If they couldn’t make it, she should have been notified. There should have been missed calls on her phone, yet all she saw were a few promotional texts from her mobile carrier, proof that the signal wasn’t too weak to receive messages.

Even if Ning Dongbang hadn’t called her himself, her assistant, Sun Xiaoyang, should have tried to reach her a few times. But there was nothing.

It was as if the company had forgotten she existed overnight.

The battery charged quickly. In the short time she had been lost in thought, it had already reached ten percent.

Without hesitation, Zuo Lihua unplugged the charger, grabbed her phone, and headed outside.

In the courtyard, the signal improved slightly. She dialed Ning Dongbang’s number.

The wait felt unusually long. Listening to the ringtone, Zuo Lihua idly scanned the yard. She couldn’t tell if it was her imagination, but the colors in the garden seemed more vibrant than the day before.

Just as the call was about to disconnect, someone finally answered.

Ning Dongbang seemed to be somewhere noisy, the background static was heavy.

“What’s up, Lihua?” His tone was casual, as if he were asking whether she’d eaten.

“Brother Ning, why didn’t the internet technician show up?” Zuo Lihua got straight to the point.

Ning Dongbang didn’t respond immediately. It sounded like someone had approached him, and there was some commotion. About five or six seconds later, his voice came through again: “I already checked. The signal in that villa is fine, it was already installed. Just wait a bit longer.”

“How much longer am I supposed to wait?” Zuo Lihua frowned. “And what about the internet? I don’t have any. Oh, and the water’s not working properly either.”

Ning Dongbang seemed to sigh. “Everything’s in order, Lihua. The landlord renovated the place intending to live there himself.”

Zuo Lihua grew increasingly uneasy. “But I can’t use any of it right now.”

“Give it a couple of days. I’ll look into it.”

“A couple of days?!” Zuo Lihua couldn’t believe her ears. “Are you serious? Give me the contact info, I’ll handle it myself.”

She was a public figure embroiled in a baseless scandal, not serving a prison sentence. How could she possibly manage without internet?

“Lihua.” Ning Dongbang’s tone suddenly turned stern. It was the same tone he used whenever she tried to refuse work she didn’t want to do. Even over the phone, Zuo Lihua could picture his furrowed brow and the unyielding expression on his face.

“Stop messing around. I’m quite busy here, and besides, you’ve had nothing going on lately, right? Just rest well and wait for the company’s arrangements. They’ll contact you when the time comes.”

The tone was serious, but the content was dismissive.

Zuo Lihua felt the same frustration as when a job interview fails and the HR representative gives vague, non-committal responses.

A wave of irritation rose from deep within her. “Fine, go ahead with your work then. I’ll contact Xiaoyang instead.”

After hanging up, Zuo Lihua glanced at her phone’s remaining 7% battery and dialed her assistant Sun Xiaoyang’s number.

Beep, beep, beep…

This time, the call went unanswered until it disconnected automatically.

Zuo Lihua stared at the screen in disbelief. Sun Xiaoyang not answering her call, this had never happened before.

What was going on?

Her first thought was that something must have happened at the company.

After all, she was a top-tier celebrity at the peak of her popularity. Even if a scandal broke out, the company’s first reaction would be to suppress it, not abandon her completely.

Zuo Lihua scratched her head, utterly bewildered, and returned to her room.

After plugging in her phone to charge, she noticed the plate of soy sauce fried rice she had made yesterday had transformed into a truly pitiful sight.

“This…” Her eyes widened as she stared at the plate, stunned.

Was the weather here so extreme that food turned dark after just one night?

And not only had it darkened, but it had also dried out???

“What a strange villa.” Zuo Lihua muttered to herself, her face expressionless as she headed to the kitchen to wash the plate.

Not only was there no internet here, but even food spoiled unusually fast.

She then casually cooked another meal, noodles with a topping of tomato and fatty beef rolls, fragrant, savory, and visually appealing.

She placed it on the same coffee table, opposite the oversized 80-inch television, which unfortunately remained unusable.

Zuo Lihua bit her spoon, gazing longingly at the TV. Eating alone without some variety show to watch made the food feel significantly less enjoyable.

Suddenly, her eyes caught a small white box.

She paused, the box looked somewhat familiar.

Without overthinking it, Zuo Lihua stood up and walked over.

The box was hidden deep behind the TV cabinet, tucked away in such a manner that she would never have noticed it if not for the specific angle.

The box was relatively new, free of dust, and felt heavy in her hand. She recognized it, a signal jammer.

No wonder she had no signal! So that was it!

Having identified the root of the problem, Zuo Lihua angrily dismantled the jammer.

This thing had isolated her from the world all night, leaving her feeling utterly lonely.

Ning Dongbang probably had no idea about this. No wonder he thought she was being unreasonable, and she had nearly lost her temper at him. Thankfully, she had held back and hung up instead.

A flicker of guilt surfaced, but then she reconsidered: if Ning Dongbang hadn’t been so dismissive, she wouldn’t have gotten angry in the first place. So, she definitely wouldn’t apologize for hanging up on him!

Having justified her actions, Zuo Lihua let out a long sigh and continued inspecting the cables.

For certain reasons, she had a habit of double-checking things. What if the signal jammer wasn’t the only issue? She didn’t want to run back and forth between her phone and the TV, the living room was too large for that.

Kneeling in front of the TV cabinet, Zuo Lihua rummaged through the cables, almost burying half her body inside.

After untangling the wires, a severed blue cable fell out, blatantly appearing before her eyes.

Her slender, well-defined fingers picked up the broken blue wire.

It was an Ethernet cable, its cross-section clean, as if it had been deliberately cut.

Zuo Lihua frowned.

If a signal jammer could still be explained away as something left behind by accident, this severed Ethernet cable wasn’t so easily justified.

It felt as though someone was intentionally isolating her from the outside world.

…Was it Ning Dongbang?

The moment this thought surfaced, Zuo Lihua quickly dismissed it.

To be fair, since signing the contract, Ning Dongbang had treated her well. She shouldn’t suspect him over trivial matters without evidence.

With this in mind, she suppressed her doubts and focused on sorting out the situation at hand.

The Ethernet cable connected the router and the modem, both right in front of her. All she needed to do was unplug them.

She didn’t have a spare cable, so she had to repair this one. Though troublesome, it wasn’t impossible.

Zuo Lihua sat directly on the floor, retrieved a repair kit from the TV cabinet drawer, cut open the Ethernet cable, meticulously reconnected the eight internal wires, and wrapped them with tape to prevent short circuits.

It was a delicate task, requiring patience and straining the eyes. Under normal circumstances, most people would simply buy a new cable rather than go through the tedious process of repairing one like she was.

As a humanities student, she should have been clueless about such things. But as luck would have it, in the drama she had filmed, the female lead had helped the male lead reconnect wires. As the actress, Zuo Lihua had specifically researched the process.

This was her first time putting that knowledge into practice.

Half an hour later, gazing at the repaired cable, Zuo Lihua rubbed her sore eyes, feeling a profound sense of accomplishment.

She plugged the cable back in, and the router’s fault indicator light immediately went out.

Success!

“Ah… finally! I’m reconnected to the world.” Zuo Lihua sighed with relief, her heart and eyes brimming with the joy of achievement.

Behind her, a human-shaped shadow stood, craning its neck to peer inside along with her. Had Zuo Lihua turned around at that moment, she would have come face to face with the shadow.

The plate of noodles on the table, once aromatic and appetizing, had now transformed into a black, tar-like, sticky mass.

The shadow seemed bored. Its withered, thin arms wrapped around either side of its head and twisted back and forth, effortlessly unscrewing its own head. Adopting a bowling ball-throwing stance, it hurled the head out the window.

The head hit the windowsill and tumbled out through the open window.

Hearing the noise, Zuo Lihua tilted her head to look but only caught a fleeting glimpse of something dark.

It moved too fast for her to see clearly, but she vaguely spotted something resembling an eyeball.

She froze for a moment, then scrambled to her feet, her heartbeat accelerating uncontrollably.

Could it be…?

She shot up abruptly. The shadow behind her instantly pressed against her back. In two quick strides, she rushed to the window, leaning out to peer down.

Two black, withered arms, like dead branches, quietly settled on either side of her head, mimicking the exact motion used to twist off its own head moments before.

Below the window were dense shrubs, neatly trimmed on the surface but a tangled mess of roots underneath, making it impossible to see clearly.

Fortunately, the window wasn’t high, just an arm’s reach away.

Stretching her body as far as she could, she carefully parted the surface shrubs and searched meticulously, her pink eyes gleaming brightly, like two translucent pink crystals.

The pitch-black head lay beneath the shrub, its eyes turned upward, watching Zuo Lihua’s every move through the gaps in the roots.

Zuo Lihua held her breath, searching slowly, then her movements halted abruptly, as if someone had pressed a pause button on her entire being.

Through the parted branches, the head stared coldly back at her.

The arms on either side of her head tensed slightly, the warm blood vessels beneath her palms pulsing rhythmically.

Just as the pressure intensified, Zuo Lihua parted her lips and let out a soft sound: “Meow?”

The arms froze instantly.

Her cheeks flushed, her pupils dilated with excitement, Zuo Lihua rose onto her tiptoes, trying to shift herself a little further out.

“Are you a little black cat? You’re so dark and cute!” The girl’s voice was gentle and delicate, as if afraid of startling the other.

“Um, do you have an owner? Are you a little kitty with no one to care for you?” If one listened closely, there was a hint of shyness in her tone.

“Come home with me, okay? I’ll take care of you…” Seeing that the other hadn’t moved, Zuo Lihua pressed on eagerly.

She had no idea if the creature could understand human speech. The light was too dim for her to see clearly, all she could make out was a round, dark shape, neither too big nor too small.

It didn’t seem like a dog, dogs weren’t this agile. And it was too large to be a rat. After weighing the possibilities, Zuo Lihua concluded it must be a cat.

Heaven knew how desperately she wanted a cat. Zuo Lihua was an incurable cat lover, but due to her parents and work constraints, she had never been able to keep one. All she could do was anonymously donate to organizations that helped stray cats, virtually “adopting” them online while daydreaming daily about finding her destined little stray.

In her mind, cats were angels sent to Earth, beautiful and fragile. If she didn’t adopt a cat from a pet store, someone else would, but stray cats were different. Their living conditions were harsh; if she didn’t rescue one, it might meet a tragic end within minutes.

Now that a cat had come to her doorstep, it would be a waste not to take it in.

Zuo Lihua poured her heart into coaxing the creature, using every sweet word she could think of, too absorbed to even notice the sudden drop in temperature around her.

The black shadow clinging to her back slowly lowered its hands, then wrapped them around her neck instead.

As Zuo Lihua continued speaking, she began to feel her collar tightening uncomfortably.

“…Little kitty, please don’t leave, okay? I’ll go cook some cat food for you.”

The shadow scratched its back lightly.

“Promise me you won’t go. Whoever leaves is a puppy.” With those words, Zuo Lihua turned and dashed toward the kitchen.

The shadow clung tightly to her back, making her slender frame seem as if it were carrying a heavy burden.