Chapter 16 : Chapter 16
Chapter 16: Is This Female Ghost Saving Me?
Bai Yu had already guessed Xia Han’s identity. The skull tattoo on the back of her neck was far too conspicuous, and Bai Yu had only seen that tattoo on one person before.
That person’s name was Jason. He was also a madman, ranked twenty-third. He had at least several hundred lives on his hands. Jason also had a peculiar hobby when it came to killing—he would slice the skin off the victim’s face and collect it, sewing those faces onto his human-skin trench coat.
That trench coat was very famous among the participants of the game. It was not only because of its terrifying appearance, but also because its attributes were utterly abnormal. It could inflict mental attacks on enemies, allowing the resentful spirits from the faces sewn onto the coat to assault the opponent.
With her chest pierced through, Xia Han struggled to twist her head around.
“Y-You… who are you?”
Bai Yu gave her a strangely familiar feeling, but she could not recall who it was for the moment.
She had too many enemies. Several names flashed through her mind, yet none of them seemed to use chains as a weapon.
“I want to know… what grudge do I have with you?” Xia Han spoke while slipping one hand into her pocket, trying to take something out. Unfortunately, Bai Yu gave her no chance at all. Pressing her body tightly against Xia Han, countless blood threads surged out from her body. In the blink of an eye, hundreds of blood threads stabbed forward.
Xia Han’s body suddenly arched, as if she were enduring immense pain. Her mouth opened wide while one blood thread after another clung to her delicate face, thick with heavy makeup. They looked like countless tiny tentacles, continuously wriggling into her mouth.
Not even a sound of pain escaped her lips.
It was extremely eerie. Xia Han’s mouth was stretched wide open, her body twisting desperately, yet not the slightest sound came out.
The whites of her eyes gradually turned blood-red, and the intensity of her struggle became weaker and weaker.
Her hand had already slipped into her pocket. Having lost all strength, she inadvertently pulled out a small black wooden box from the pocket, and it fell onto the ground.
“Let me tell you… I am—”
Bai Yu’s voice sounded beside her ear. Xia Han gathered the last trace of strength in her body and rolled her eyes to look at Bai Yu.
However, Bai Yu’s voice abruptly stopped before she could reveal her identity.
Xia Han’s eyes widened.
She had never imagined that she would die in such a way. Even worse, until the moment of her death, she still did not know who had killed her.
The blood threads loosened, and Xia Han’s corpse collapsed weakly onto the ground. There was not a single wound on her body, and even the injury from when the chain had pierced her chest had strangely disappeared.
Bai Yu curled her finger, using the blood threads to hook the box from the ground.
The box was not large—smaller than the size of a palm. Bai Yu frowned. This was something Jason had tried to use to save his life before dying, so it certainly was not simple. The material of the box was not important. What mattered was whatever was inside it.
After putting the box away, Bai Yu returned along the same path.
Xia Han had already been dealt with.
Now there was still one more person she needed to eliminate.
Lu Liangting.
Lu Liangting was the male protagonist of this world, while Zhao Mingyue was the female protagonist. If no external force interfered, the male and female protagonists would inevitably end up together.
She absolutely could not allow that to happen.
Because Zhao Mingyue was the key to her mission.
If she wanted to prevent the female protagonist from being conquered by the male protagonist, the method was very simple. As long as the male protagonist disappeared from this world, the female protagonist naturally would not be conquered by him.
Returning to the fourth floor, Bai Yu even went back to check on Zhao Mingyue.
Zhao Mingyue’s situation was not very good.
The man’s room reeked with a terrible stench. The environment was extremely poor. Worse still, for some unknown reason, spiritual fire had begun burning inside the room.
Zhao Mingyue only had two choices—either give up, or find the key before she was burned alive.
The flames were extremely strange. From inside the room, they had actually begun spreading outward. In at most half an hour, the entire fourth floor would be engulfed.
There was another point worth mentioning.
This fire had been set by the female ghost on the fifth floor. Night after night, she tortured the man living in the room on the fourth floor, forcing him to die in the fire again and again. Every single night, he had to relive the suffering he experienced before dying.
As for why the spiritual fire was spreading today, it was probably related to Mingyue’s mission.
Bai Yu now faced two choices as well.
The first was to stay—to remain beside Zhao Mingyue just in case, guarding against the spiritual fire as well as the headless old ghost on the third floor and that madman.
The second was to seize the time to go up to the fifth floor and kill Lu Liangting.
Just then, a figure suddenly darted out from the stairwell.
He was tall and wore a black raincoat. It looked as if he had just soaked himself in water. His entire body was drenched, with strands of hair stuck to his scalp as droplets slid down. Even his rain boots were filled with water. Each step he took produced a dull, wet sloshing sound.
The man carried a woman’s corpse on his back. The body had soaked until the flesh had turned pale and swollen, with faint traces of bone visible beneath.
With stiff movements, he arrived at the door of Room 401 and pounded heavily on the iron door.
“Hey! Is anyone there? Have you seen my wife? She got separated from me somewhere in this building.”
Whether the man had mental problems or was possessed by a ghost, Bai Yu did not know.
But the moment she saw him, an idea formed in her mind.
Behind her, the spiritual fire had already begun spreading out from the room, burning from the ceiling downward.
The walls, once painted white, were blackened again by the smoke. Yet beneath the wall’s surface, something seemed to be blocking the fire’s spread.
Bai Yu did not hesitate.
She flashed to the stairwell and rushed toward the fifth floor.
The situation on the fifth floor was no better than the fourth.
Flames were spreading everywhere. Behind six of the eight rooms, something was violently pounding on the doors—some were even crashing against them.
The doors on the fifth floor were wooden. Under the repeated impacts from those things, the doors trembled nonstop, as if they might burst open at any moment and release whatever horrors lurked behind them.
Lu Liangting was still being chased by the man.
He was very clever. He had realized that the key to the mission was finding the key to the woman’s room. As long as the door could be opened, there would be a chance to deal with the spiritual fire, and the other ghosts could also be handled.
The corpse behind that door—the woman who had died in the great fire—was the core of this haunted building.
The problem was that even though he knew where the key was, he had no opportunity to retrieve it.
The man behind him was relentlessly chasing him. In such a situation, let alone grabbing the key—if he could avoid being killed by the ghost, that would already count as a success.
“No… I have to think of something. Otherwise, even if he doesn’t catch me, I’ll be burned to death. Worse yet, the ghosts behind these doors will come out.”
Lu Liangting ran another lap around the corridor and was just about to reach the stairwell.
He was still relatively calm.
But the next moment—
A door in front of him suddenly burst open.
A ghost with its head hanging down against its chest rushed out. This ghost had not died in the fire but by hanging. The body had been discovered too late, and its neck was nearly severed by the rope.
“PUCHI!”
At that critical moment, a red chain pierced through the hanging ghost’s body and flung it away.
Lu Liangting’s pupils contracted as he came face-to-face with Bai Yu.
“Y-You are…”
He had not even finished speaking when Bai Yu suddenly rushed forward.
Lu Liangting instinctively raised one hand to block in front of him. Yet the attack he expected never arrived. Instead, a furious shout came from behind him.
Turning back, he saw the man being violently whipped away by a chain.
“She… is saving me?”
“Thank you for saving me! Wait for me here—I’ll come back to save you soon!”
Lu Liangting reacted quickly. After memorizing Bai Yu’s appearance, he hurried downstairs.
However, the moment he reached the fourth floor, he ran straight into the man carrying his wife’s corpse.
Earlier, Bai Yu had been thinking about something.
Lu Liangting was the male protagonist. Could she really kill him that easily?
Sure enough, the moment she met him just now, she confirmed it. There was something on Lu Liangting that could restrain her.
Perfect.
She might as well let him go down to the fourth floor and play with that madman. Not only might it kill Lu Liangting, it would also buy Zhao Mingyue some time.
What Bai Yu did not know was that by saving him this once, she had left an extremely deep impression in Lu Liangting’s heart.