Chapter 5 : Chapter 5
Chapter 5: Killing the Male Lead Is the Best Way to Conquer the Female Lead
“What exactly is a ghost?”
After replacing Zhao Mingyue’s shadow, Bai Yu found the sensation extremely strange. It was something she had never experienced before, and the question naturally surfaced in her mind.
After becoming a ghost, everything felt abnormal.
Her body still existed, yet it seemed as though it did not.
It was incredibly light—like a mass of air.
Something drifted faintly inside her body, threadlike strands that formed the foundation of her existence. These strands locked her hollow body in place, preventing it from dissipating.
It was as if her physical body had transformed into a substance somewhere between liquid and gas.
Countless red threads bound that mass together, forming the body she now possessed.
The abilities ghosts possessed—controlling blood threads and black mist, inhabiting shadows, floating, and short-range teleportation—were all things she instinctively knew after transforming into a Fierce Ghost.
Before Zhao Mingyue summoned her, she had been wandering through a crimson world.
There was no direction.
No distance.
No sense of time.
She could only walk aimlessly, unable even to tell whether she was moving forward or simply stepping in place.
It was Zhao Mingyue’s summoning that allowed her to see the light of the real world again.
However, becoming a ghost was far from a pleasant experience.
Her senses had been drastically weakened.
Her sense of smell was extremely faint.
Her sense of taste had disappeared entirely.
As for touch—everything she contacted felt cold.
One thing worth mentioning was that the most profound sensation after becoming a ghost was cold.
It was not the kind of cold you would feel if you were stripped naked and thrown into an icy wasteland.
Instead, it was like wearing thick cotton clothing that still could not retain body heat.
Strands of cold seeped continuously into every pore of her body, like countless needles of ice piercing into her flesh.
The difference between the two kinds of cold was simple.
The former made you feel as though you would freeze to death at any moment.
Before dying, you might even feel your body burning.
The latter was a slow death.
You would not feel as though you were about to freeze immediately, but the icy sensation would never disappear.
It clung to you like a parasite, gradually eroding your entire being.
After enough time passed, you would begin to feel as though even your soul had frozen.
Even this comparison was not entirely accurate.
After all, it described the experience of living people.
Even if someone wore thick clothing, they were still alive—with body heat and warmth.
The cold would invade them from the outside.
But Bai Yu was not alive.
She had no body temperature.
The agonizing cold she felt spread from the inside outward.
The outside world was bright and warm.
Yet she could never touch it.
It was not that she did not dare.
She simply could not.
For someone whose very soul was freezing, the warmth of the outside world was poison.
Even if she froze to death, standing beneath sunlight would never bring warmth.
It would only bring rapid annihilation.
To put it another way:
Living people existed in the warmth beneath sunlight.
Ghosts existed in the cold beneath shadows.
Bai Yu now understood why ghosts were often insane and devoid of reason.
It was not because they lost their humanity after death.
Quite the opposite.
It was because their minds remained too clear.
Not everyone possessed the willpower to endure that endless cold.
Perhaps someone could endure it for a day.
But what about a week?
A month?
A year?
Eventually, everyone would break.
Worse still, ghosts had to endure not only the cold but also their own resentment.
Someone who had committed suicide might endlessly relive the pain of their final moments.
A murderer might see the lingering resentment of those they had killed.
Those remnants appeared before their eyes, whispered in their ears, and surrounded them.
They murmured their names and cursed them with vicious words.
This was why people who died naturally rarely became ghosts.
Even if they did, they soon dissipated.
Those who died unjustly or by suicide, whose obsessions were too deep, remained behind as evil spirits.
“They cannot endure the cold, nor their own resentment and obsessions. Of course they lose their sanity and become evil ghosts.”
Bai Yu’s train of thought suddenly broke.
In her mind appeared countless ghosts—some with faces covered in blood, others with severed heads or bodies split in half.
These broken ghosts were all former participants of the game she had killed.
She preferred using a blade.
The wounds on these ghosts were all inflicted by her sword.
Their obsessions lingered in her mind.
They called her name.
They cursed her with the most venomous words imaginable.
The feeling was like having countless people whispering rapidly into your ears all at once.
It was unbearably irritating.
Normally, an evil ghost might only have one or two lingering obsessions.
Perhaps the person they had killed.
Or their own suicide.
But Bai Yu was different.
She had killed far too many people.
There were so many that when they cursed her, she could not even distinguish the words.
It sounded like a swarm of buzzing flies.
“Shut up.”
A burst of blood aura spread outward.
The voices around Bai Yu instantly fell silent.
She needed to think about her future plans.
She required quiet.
On the double bed in the bedroom, Zhao Mingyue suddenly opened her eyes, as if sensing something.
The bedroom was completely dark.
Nothing unusual could be seen.
On the bedside table, Miss Rabbit sat quietly with her head lowered.
Beside it were two phones: the black phone and another phone with a cracked screen shaped like a rabbit.
A slender white arm emerged from the blanket.
Her delicate fingers grabbed the phone charging beside the bed and lit the screen.
The faint glow illuminated Zhao Mingyue’s somewhat exhausted face.
Her watery eyes were bloodshot.
Even her cherry-colored lips had turned slightly pale.
“Four-thirty already… Ah, this is miserable. I still have to go to work in the morning. What am I supposed to do?”
She buried her head under the blanket, feeling utterly miserable.
She could not sleep.
Truly could not.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the swollen, rotting face of her upstairs neighbor.
Her first encounter with a ghost had left an impression far too deep.
Her thoughts were chaotic.
She had not found her sister.
Instead, it seemed she had opened the door to another world.
After all, a Fierce Ghost was currently living inside her shadow.
While she thought about Bai Yu, Bai Yu was also thinking about her.
“My mission target is Zhao Mingyue. Because of her special identity, no participants will compete with me for her. However, that only applies to the participants. It doesn’t mean the characters in this world won’t.”
“The mission requires obtaining the favor of the target character. What if that character is conquered by someone in the world before I succeed?”
Recalling various details, Bai Yu narrowed her eyes.
“That means besides guarding against the other participants, I also need to be cautious of the male protagonist.”
“The female protagonist’s original partner is the male protagonist. That’s normal for a romance story.”
“So I must find a way to kill him.”
“Those lunatics will definitely think the same way.”
“There are only five characters they can choose from.”
“That means at most five participants can win.”
“And when eliminating competitors…”
“Zhao Mingyue will be their primary target.”
“After all…”
“Only by killing the female protagonist can they better conquer the male protagonist.”