As his fingertips touched the thick, hard book cover, Su Er propped his head up in thought.
Though he was seated in the innermost row by the window, he instantly felt the gaze of every other player fall on him.
Some of their eyes were even more anxious than his own, blatantly urging: Hurry up and flip it.
The corners of Su Er’s mouth lifted slightly. He raised his eyes and looked at Ji Heng.
“Now then, please enjoy my performance… the Great Living Ghost Trick.”
The moment the words left his mouth, he flipped the page cleanly and decisively. The book stopped at page 130, where a set of words stood out boldly in the center—
Calling the Soul.
Though printed in standard black-and-white, the phrase seemed almost alive, leaping straight into the eyes.
The sound of breathing in the classroom seemed to diminish at that moment.
Su Er closed the book and sat quietly in place, waiting for the unknown horror to arrive.
With everyone keeping utterly silent, their senses became razor-sharp—it felt as if even a leaf falling outside could be heard.
Tap. Tap, tap.
The stillness of the hallway was broken by slow, heavy footsteps that grew steadily clearer—something was definitely approaching.
“Three…”
Ji Heng suddenly spoke. Su Er let out a puzzled “Hm?”
“At least three ghosts are coming.”
His voice wasn’t loud, but in the silence, everyone heard it.
A younger girl cast a sympathetic glance at Su Er—only to realize that he didn’t look the least bit resentful, as though he had expected this from the start.
Su Er didn’t even sigh. He immediately began calculating how to survive being surrounded by multiple ghosts.
His physical power wasn’t high, so brute force was out of the question. Since the game tailored the Book of Answers based on a player’s strength, the only thing he could rely on now was his charisma.
No—charm alone wouldn’t be enough to handle that many ghosts.
Lowering his eyes slightly, Su Er quickly analyzed the most viable path forward: he would have to manipulate the relationships between the ghosts themselves.
The next moment, the door opened!
The first thing he saw was a pair of soft-soled cloth shoes. A middle-aged woman in her forties stepped inside. She had a graceful neckline, a round face, and gave off a kindly air.
Behind her came a stern-faced man with upright features.
The last was an elderly man, plainly dressed and keeping his head bowed the whole time.
Both the woman and man wore rings, suggesting they were husband and wife.
As the three approached, a thin layer of frost spread across the classroom floor. The temperature plummeted.
The girl who had been worried about Su Er earlier didn’t have much physical power either, and had felt a kind of unspoken kinship with him. Now, she felt her entire body freeze like a wooden statue, waiting for the knife to fall.
A sharp pain only brushed past her—the ghosts didn’t stop by her seat. They walked straight toward Su Er.
The middle-aged woman looked sorrowful. In a hoarse voice, she said, “Master, please save my child!”
Su Er frowned. The ghosts didn’t seem to see anyone else, and their memories appeared fragmented—like game NPCs, endlessly repeating the same lines no matter how the world changed.
“Ghosts are born from obsession. Not all of them retain full awareness,” Ji Heng’s voice drifted over. “Verbal manipulation won’t work on them.”
Su Er understood now: this type of ghost fixates on one idea and won’t budge.
The woman urged, “My child’s waiting to be saved!”
Her fingernails, mottled with corpse spots, had grown grotesquely long and looked ready to reach out any second. Su Er stood up. “Take me to see her.”
The woman automatically slowed her pace and fell behind. Su Er, trapped between the three, was pushed forward by the cold draft behind them.
Once the ghosts left the room, the temperature slowly returned to normal. Seeing what happened to Su Er, the other players now hesitated before flipping their own books—clearly, the path to survival wasn’t limited to just one option.
Perhaps there were other ways besides flipping pages.
The player seated in front of Ji Heng had briefly met him in a previous instance. Turning around, he said, “I heard you two are close.”
“Pretty close,” Ji Heng replied, for some reason curling his lips slightly.
“That was clearly a whole family of ghosts—hard to deal with.”
Ghost families were notoriously hard to provoke. Injuring one often caused the others to go berserk in retaliation. Yet Su Er had left without Ji Heng giving him any kind of protective item.
The man wasn’t exactly worried for Su Er—he just wanted to observe and learn in case he encountered something similar.
“Family is best,” Ji Heng said cryptically.
“Best?” The man was confused. “What’s good about that?”
“They’re tidy. Neat and complete.”
Left speechless, the man gave a bitter smile and turned back around.
Ji Heng, meanwhile, reflected on the phrase Calling the Soul written on the page and shook his head.
Where evil spirits tread, the temperature always drops.
In the hallway, Su Er trembled slightly. He wasn’t particularly scared—just cold. These three ghosts were like walking refrigerators. He clearly saw a fly clinging to the wall twitch weakly as they passed, then fall lifelessly to the floor.
The group moved unimpeded all the way to the rooftop.
“Master, we’re here,” the woman said.
She pointed to a girl standing by the railing. “It’s been three days. My child hasn’t eaten a bite or said a word. It’s like she lost her soul.”
Su Er didn’t respond. He stepped closer for a look—and saw that the girl’s skin had already started to sag, her body emitting the stench of decay.
It wasn’t that she’d lost her soul. She’d lost her life.
The silent and withdrawn man comforted his sobbing wife: “Once the master finishes calling the soul, the child will come back.”
The night sky suddenly brightened.
Ghosts drifted around like floating lanterns, giving off a faint glow. All of them stared at Su Er, their eyes brimming with schadenfreude.
Souls couldn’t be called back. Another poor soul was about to join them!
“We’ve met plenty of fake masters before,” the middle-aged woman sobbed intermittently, completely unaware of the strange happenings around her. “Luckily, they all got what they deserved. This master is clearly the real deal.”
Su Er’s lips twitched—he’d been shoved into the spotlight out of nowhere.
The ghosts, however, grinned wide: “Come keep us company.”
Soft whispers, like incantations, repeated endlessly.
Su Er’s eyes swept across the ghosts one by one, then he chuckled. “Perfect timing—saves me the trouble of flipping through the book again.”
Smiling on the surface, he quietly pulled out an electric shocker and zapped the closest ghost without hesitation.
The ghost who had been enjoying the misfortune quickly disintegrated into smoke. The others scattered in a panic. However, they were bound to the rooftop and weak in strength—otherwise, they would’ve taken revenge on the couple long ago.
With the stun gun in hand, Su Er became like an executioner, harvesting ghost after ghost.
The middle-aged woman even forgot to cry, staring at the stun gun in Su Er’s hand with a hint of fear.
The most inconspicuous elder suddenly focused his previously dull gaze. His fingers curled into claws and shot toward the stun gun’s edge. The instant he touched it, he screamed, the smell of scorched flesh rising from his skin.
Su Er sneered. He had brandished the stun gun openly, precisely because he anticipated the ghosts would try to snatch it. This device was a natural nemesis of ghosts—even the flower near Mister Rose’s ear dimmed when trying to snatch it from Su Er. What chance did a low-level ghost have?
The only option was to kill him first and try again.
Unfortunately, even in this scenario, ghosts still had to follow the script to kill. Until the soul-calling failed, Su Er was confident he was safe.
“It’s time to call the soul,” the injured old man murmured, while the woman’s voice turned shrill.
Su Er didn’t delay. “What’s her name?”
“Chen Chen.”
He knocked twice on the railing, making a dull tapping sound. Su Er opened his mouth: “Chen—Chen—”
He dragged out the tone dramatically, like a serious soul-calling ritual.
The corpse remained unresponsive.
Su Er moved closer to the girl and secretly infused her with ghostly energy using the stun gun.
The scattered ghosts hadn’t provided much energy, but he’d harvested enough of them—hopefully it would be sufficient.
No normal corpse would remain standing, unrotten despite the stench. Su Er suspected some force had been binding her power.
Before long, the girl’s fingertips trembled.
As the last trace of ghostly energy entered her, the girl slowly raised her head and hesitantly called out, “Mom…”
“She’s back!” The woman sobbed in joy, hugging her tightly. “You really came back! Look at you, so skinny. Why wouldn’t you listen and eat properly?”
“Listen?”
Something inside the girl snapped. She suddenly shoved the woman against the railing, her eyes bulging. “You stormed out of the parent-teacher meeting just because I got one bad grade! You beat up my deskmate over that stupid crush! You forced me to change my college major—why should I listen to you?!”
The woman dropped her gentle act, grabbing her daughter by the throat: “I gave up my stage career and got stretch marks giving birth to you! My youth, my dreams… You have to inherit all of it!”
The girl, now revived, was stronger. She flung the woman aside and coldly stared at the two other ghosts.
The old man babbled, staring at his daughter-in-law on the ground: “Told you girls had no loyalty. Should’ve given her away and had another. Look at her now!”
The silent man tried to speak but couldn’t get a word in.
Su Er shrank back and held his breath, trying to reduce his presence.
Love and hatred among close family were often the most intense. The four ghosts descended into a chaotic brawl. The mother couldn’t overpower the girl and suddenly clawed at her husband’s face, screaming “coward!” The old man tried to defend his son and rushed in to slap the woman… Everything was pure chaos.
Flesh flew, and with a heavy thud, a corpse-spotted bony arm was torn off and landed right in front of Su Er. On the other side, half of the girl’s face was torn, but she ignored the pain and bit chunk after chunk from the woman’s leg, snarling, “Dance, huh? Let’s see you ever dance again!”
Su Er felt a chill to his core.
Ji Heng had once said that obsession, when amplified, becomes malice. Now Su Er truly understood.
Seeing they were losing, the husband and wife teamed up again to deal with the mad girl.
Su Er watched coldly—until something about the scene jolted his heart violently. A wave of déjà vu washed over him.
“Why are you using your left hand when everyone else uses their right?”
A voice surfaced in his memory, quiet but laced with unbearable pressure—soft, yet roaring. A hazy image flashed before him, but he couldn’t grasp it again.
Finally, after the heart palpitations faded, the rooftop bloodbath seemed to come under control.
While the clams and the crane fought, the fisherman profited.
Su Er came to his senses and stepped forward.
The family of ghosts ignored him, too exhausted to fight yet still trying to claw at each other. None worried about being ambushed.
Su Er cleared his throat.
The middle-aged woman finally acknowledged him, glaring with resentment: “Why did you bring back that ungrateful brat?”
Su Er raised an eyebrow. “Weren’t you the ones who asked me to?”
Her eyes turned dazed for a moment before a gleam of relief flashed through. “Right. My daughter can’t die! If she dies, who will take care of me when I’m old?”
Su Er shook his head, losing any hope for their moral compass. He pulled out an empty bottle, flashed a chilling smile at the weakened ghosts, and enunciated clearly: “Cry. For. Me.”
Finally, he had a way to fulfill the trade for 100 tears.
Thank you, Book of Answers.
Much obliged.
Classroom.
The Daoist known as Mister East Wind suddenly opened his eyes.
Just as the players thought he was about to speak, someone raised a finger and said, “Listen.”
Amid the whistling wind, a faint sobbing could be heard. A few minutes later, it escalated into wailing—sharp, piercing ghost cries echoed through the darkness.
“The ghost… sounds like it’s crying.” The weeping sounded like a frightened old cat’s screech. A female player licked her dry lips. “Why do you think… a ghost would cry?”
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