Chapter 41 : Chapter 41
Chapter 41: The Show Begins
Bai Yu’s kick landed solidly.
The sheer force behind it was enough to send a grown man flying several meters through the air. One could easily imagine just how terrifying that strength was. Fortunately, Lu Liangting was rather sturdy; if it had been someone else, the kick would have caused serious injury.
Behind Lu Liangting stood Li Nan, who had already been quite close to him. When Lu Liangting was kicked away, he crashed directly into Li Nan and knocked him to the ground.
With Zhang Lin no longer restraining it, the shadow could have killed Lu Liangting with ease at that moment. Bai Yu had thought the same.
Yet the shadow did not make a move at all. Under the combined pressure of Bai Yu and the red-clothed Female Ghost on the fifth floor, the shadow only wanted to leave as quickly as possible and had no desire to waste time.
Clutching his head, Lu Liangting quickly got up and distanced himself from Li Nan. From the corner of his eye, he glanced at him. Seeing Li Nan’s terrified and chaotic expression, he turned his head and looked toward Bai Yu.
That kick had landed directly on his chest. His ribs still ached faintly, and he could not quite understand why Bai Yu had kicked him.
‘Maybe she was trying to save me from the Female Ghost. I was less than five meters away from her, and she had just rushed over. That position was extremely dangerous.’
That was what Lu Liangting thought to himself.
What he did not know was that Bai Yu had kicked him toward Li Nan purely so he would hold Li Nan back—or perhaps be killed by Li Nan. Nothing more.
‘She has been watching from the corridor all along, hiding somewhere I could not see. If that is the case, then she should know I have been looking for her. But why has she never come out?’
With one hand covering his chest, Lu Liangting’s expression became extremely complicated. He had thought the same thing earlier at noon when he came here. For that reason, he had stood in the corridor talking to himself like a madman, but in truth, every word had been meant for her to hear.
Since she could appear at such a critical moment, how could she possibly not hear his voice?
But she was always like this—appearing only when danger was at its peak, saving his life, and then disappearing without a trace.
However, the ghosts she had saved him from before were ordinary ones. The red-clothed Female Ghost on the fifth floor was different. She was the strongest presence in this haunted building. The depth of her resentment was something those ordinary ghosts could never compare to.
‘I have to find a way to save her!’
A battle between ghosts would only end when one of them devoured the other.
Within his line of sight, the berserk Female Ghost lunged at Bai Yu again. Thick black mist spread across her body and invaded Bai Yu’s form. Her ten fingernails were as sharp as blades, each one brimming with immense resentment.
That resentment was the Female Ghost’s power. It came from all the people who had died miserably in this building and could never find release.
When ghosts fought, they competed with the strength of their resentment. That was the very foundation of their existence. Therefore, battles between ghosts were usually simple in process—they merely devoured each other endlessly.
Of course, that did not mean techniques were useless. Bai Yu’s resentment was weaker than that of the red-clothed Female Ghost Xiaolian, but her combat experience far surpassed the other’s.
She stepped backward to avoid the ghost’s claws. Threads of blood condensed at Bai Yu’s right elbow, forming a crimson hook blade. As she dodged, the hook blade slashed downward from a bizarre angle. The tips of four of the ghost’s fingers were instantly severed and dissolved into thicker black mist.
The Female Ghost lifted her head in fury. She inhaled the black mist into her stomach and prepared to roar it back out. At that moment, Bai Yu suddenly stepped forward and deliberately closed the distance.
The hook blade on her arm vanished. The blood threads instead condensed into a chain as thick as two fingers, wrapping around her slender arm and fist. Just as expected, the ghost’s other claw swept toward her from the side. Bai Yu raised the chain-wrapped arm to block it, while her free hand suddenly pressed against the ghost’s face, which was about to scream.
The ghost clearly had not expected Bai Yu to approach her so directly. Beneath the tangle of messy hair, her eyes widened.
PUCHI!
A sharp spike formed from blood threads in Bai Yu’s palm and stabbed forward. Bai Yu used all her strength to shove the woman backward, and at that very moment the blood spike exploded inside her body.
The burst of blood threads scattered like thousands of red strands, spraying throughout the small corridor.
Black mist poured from the ghost’s fallen body as if it were free, spilling out relentlessly until the ghost’s body turned completely transparent and vanished...
From the moment Bai Yu appeared to the moment the ghost was killed, the entire process had taken no more than ten seconds.
Everything had simply happened too quickly.
Behind her, Lu Liangting was still wondering whether he could step forward and calm the Female Ghost on the fifth floor, or persuade her to escape. But before he could even think of a plan—before he could even consider the first step—the battle had already ended...
“This...”
His mouth hung half open. Even someone like Lu Liangting, who had seen countless ghosts before, was momentarily stunned. For an instant, he even suspected that his eyes were deceiving him.
Yet the truth was right before him. The Female Ghost was indeed dead, and the ghost who appeared fragile stood quietly in place.
In Lu Liangting’s eyes, Bai Yu stood silently while the blood threads scattered through the corridor gradually gathered back into her body.
Her back looked so delicate, so fragile—enough to awaken the instinct to protect her in anyone’s heart.
Yet it was precisely that delicate body that had just used brutally efficient techniques to kill the strongest ghost in this building.
“She seems... different somehow...”
In his memory, Bai Yu had always appeared disheveled—like a typical ghost. Her hair had been messy, her white dress stained with mottled blood, and her skin unnaturally pale.
But now, her hair was no longer tangled. It was neatly arranged, even tied with a red butterfly ribbon into two adorable low twin ponytails behind her head. Her dress was no longer stained with blood, leaving only pure white.
If no one mentioned that she was a ghost, one might think she was simply a little girl who had wandered out in the middle of the night.
Bai Yu did not notice the gazes behind her. At that moment, she was staring at the corridor.
The Female Ghost had disappeared, but the black mist had not dispersed. The stench of decay in the corridor had only vanished briefly. Now the same foul odor as before was rapidly approaching again, seeping from the fifth floor toward the fourth.
Sure enough, before long, the red-clothed Female Ghost Xiaolian walked down the staircase from the fifth floor and appeared at the corner of the fourth-floor corridor, completely unharmed.
Ghosts—especially special and powerful red-clothed Fierce Ghosts like Xiaolian—possessed their own unique abilities. They could not be compared to ordinary ghosts.
The attacks from earlier would have completely killed an ordinary ghost. Yet the red-clothed Fierce Ghost Xiaolian had crawled out of Room 506 in less than fifteen seconds and reappeared on the fourth floor.
When the red-clothed Fierce Ghost saw Bai Yu still standing there, she showed no fear or hesitation—just as before. Wrapped in dense resentment that had almost become tangible, she lunged forward again.
The outcome was naturally the same as before.
Within a few moves, Bai Yu killed the ghost again.
Killing her was not difficult. The problem was that she simply would not stay dead. Even worse, the black mist was continuously invading Bai Yu’s body.
“It seems I still need to go to that high school and bring her child back. Otherwise killing her will be far too troublesome...”
“There is no need to fight her tonight. The key point still lies with Lu Liangting.”
“This kid has almost died here tonight. I refuse to believe no one will come to save him.”
With that thought, Bai Yu glanced back at Lu Liangting, then at Li Nan. A vague idea formed in her mind.
Before the Female Ghost could appear again, Bai Yu vanished from the corridor and slipped back into Zhao Mingyue’s shadow.