PD -Chapter 25 The Female Ghost Who Flagged Down Cars

“Another death?”

“I bet more than twenty people have died on this damn bridge. No wonder it’s called Headless Bridge. The place is seriously cursed!”

A few truck drivers stood beside me. They seemed to travel this route regularly and were obviously familiar with the area. As they smoked, they chatted about it in a casual, offhand manner.

“Guys, you’re saying the bridge is cursed, but you still drive through here all the time, don’t you? And nothing happens to you. Seems more like a driving-skill issue to me.”

I stepped forward and handed two cigarettes to the truckers.

“Look at that car. It’s a sports car with a custom matte paint job, modified wheels, and a lowered chassis. Must’ve belonged to some street racer.”

“Brother, just one look tells me you’re not from around here,” one of the dark-skinned drivers replied as he accepted the cigarette.

The other driver also took one and lit it.

“Sure, we drive this road often, but even we avoid Headless Bridge whenever possible. If we have to pass through, we try to do it during the daytime. At night, this place is creepy as hell. The yin energy is way too strong. None of us dare cross it after dark.”

That immediately caught my attention.

Wasn’t the whole purpose of our trip to search for supernatural entities? I hadn’t expected to encounter one before we even reached our destination.

“How exactly is it creepy? Tell me about it.”

The two men were long-haul drivers who spent countless hours alone on the road. Since I showed interest, they were more than happy to talk.

“One of my buddies is a trucker too. He never believed in ghosts,” one of them began. “One night, he was hauling cargo through here. Just as he was about to get on the bridge, a Mercedes suddenly slowed down and blocked his way.

He got annoyed and flashed his high beams at the Mercedes. The moment he turned them on, he saw something impossible.

A woman with long hair, dressed in blood-red clothing, had appeared on the bridge where there had been nobody a second earlier.”

The driver took a deep drag from his cigarette as if he himself had witnessed the scene.

“Then he saw the woman open the Mercedes’ door and get into the passenger seat. At first, he didn’t think much of it. He figured she was someone the driver knew and was just hitching a ride.

But then the Mercedes stopped completely, turned off its headlights, and killed the engine, blocking the road. No matter how much he honked, the driver wouldn’t move.

With the truck’s high beams shining on the car, my buddy saw the woman in red wrap herself around the driver. He got pissed off and thought, These idiots are really having sex in the middle of the road at this hour? They’ve got some nerve.”

“He was about to get out and give the driver a piece of his mind. Then he changed his mind and decided to record the scene with his phone instead.”

The driver paused dramatically, waiting for our reaction.

“When he zoomed all the way in and finally got a clear shot of what was happening inside the car, he was scared half to death…”

“What did he see?” Liu Xiaopeng quickly asked.

“The thing in red wasn’t a woman at all.”

The driver lowered his voice.

“On the phone screen, it was a rotting corpse. The flesh on its face was full of holes, and fish and shrimp from the river were crawling in and out of them. My buddy freaked out immediately, spun the truck around, and drove back the way he came.”

He paused again.

“Want to know what happened the next day?”

“The next morning, the incident was all over the local news,” he answered his own question. “The report said a murder had occurred on Headless Bridge. The Mercedes owner had gotten out of his car late at night and was supposedly killed by a wild animal attack.”

Before we could speak, the second driver snorted.

“Look around. Does this place look like it has wild animals capable of doing that? The authorities were obviously covering up the real cause of death.”

While listening to them, I pulled out my phone and searched for the story.

To my surprise, I actually found the news article.

The incident wasn’t ancient history either—it had happened only two years ago.

“And it wasn’t just my buddy,” the driver continued. “Later on, lots of people claimed they’d seen a woman in red standing by the roadside, waving down passing cars in the middle of the night.

Locals who know the stories would never stop for her.

But there are always outsiders who don’t know any better. They see a pretty woman and start thinking with the wrong head, not realizing what kind of thing they’re actually dealing with.”

The driver sighed and crushed his cigarette beneath his boot.

“Once traffic starts moving again, get out of here. And whatever you do, don’t let strangers into your car at night.”

I chatted with them a bit longer and handed out two more cigarettes before taking Liu Xiaopeng away from the crowd. We followed a narrow path down beneath the bridge.

“Brother Han, are you planning to use the Soul Refinement Technique on whatever spirit is here?”

Liu Xiaopeng had clearly guessed my intentions.

I nodded and led him to the riverbank, stopping beneath one of the bridge supports where people above would have difficulty noticing us.

“If there’s really a supernatural entity here, we’ll deal with it before heading to that haunted house.”

As I spoke, I pulled out the EMF detector from my coat.

The moment I switched it on, the readings shot straight off the scale.

There really were signs of spiritual activity here.

“Brother Han,” Liu Xiaopeng asked quietly, “what do you think this spirit is?”

I considered it for a moment.

“A woman in red. A face riddled with holes, with fish and shrimp crawling out of them. Sounds like the resentment of a woman who drowned herself in the river.”

“How can you be so sure it was suicide?” Liu Xiaopeng frowned.

“The driver said the spirit was wearing red.”

I looked toward the bridge above as I explained.

“Based on experience, a ghost’s appearance is usually frozen at the moment before death.

For example, if a child dies and becomes a ghost, no matter how long it wanders the world afterward, it will never grow up.

The same applies to clothing. Ghosts don’t actually wear clothes. What appears to be clothing is simply a manifestation of their subconscious memory—the final image they have of themselves while alive.”

“So before she died, that woman must have deliberately dressed herself in a striking red outfit. People often do that before committing suicide. That’s why, after becoming a spirit, she retained that appearance.”

As I spoke, I glanced back toward the bridge.

The forensic examiners had already pulled the victim’s body from the vehicle.

The corpse was horrifying.

It was covered in blood, but the most terrifying feature was a perfectly transparent hole that pierced straight through the chest, as though the heart had been completely removed.

“So what do we do next?” Liu Xiaopeng asked.

After thinking for a moment, I turned back the way we had come.

“First, we’ll find a place nearby to stay temporarily. During the daytime, with so many people and vehicles around, the spirit definitely won’t show itself. While we wait, we’ll investigate the times when the entity has appeared and gather as many details as possible. Most importantly, we need information about the woman before she died. The more we know about her, the easier our operation will be.”