He Wuning held the cup of milk tea in his hand for a moment, then slowly put it back.
He withdrew his gaze expressionlessly. Though he didn’t say a word, Yi Luo somehow read a silent “Why should I bother worrying about someone like this?” from his face.
“Ahem.” Yi Luo cleared his throat, holding back laughter as he followed behind him. “I was joking.”
He Wuning didn’t turn around. The two gradually walked deeper into the building.
Behind them, the main door closed on its own with a creaking “squeak.” Both of them instantly turned back in alert—but there was nothing there.
Yi Luo shrugged. “Looks like they’re not taking customers today. We’ve booked the whole place.”
He Wuning frowned. Yi Luo glanced at him and tentatively said, “How about you walk behind me?”
He Wuning stared at him in silence, took a deep breath, and flexed his fingers around the long blade one by one. He glared at Yi Luo. “I don’t think this needs explaining, but it seems you’ve misunderstood something.”
“I’m not afraid of ghosts.”
Yi Luo nodded vigorously. “I know, I know.”
Then he stepped forward. “So I’ll walk in front?”
He Wuning began to suspect they might actually be speaking two different languages.
Yi Luo chuckled. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. Haven’t you heard? Ghosts usually come from behind. Since you’re not scared, I’ll leave my back to you.”
He Wuning: “……”
Watching Yi Luo stride confidently ahead, he ultimately kept quiet. Rubbing his temple, he unexpectedly found himself missing Q-chan—at least Q-chan would have made a sarcastic comment or two by now.
They continued forward. The interior space of this house didn’t match its exterior at all. They had already walked a long distance, yet there was still no end in sight.
Even the ghosts had stopped appearing.
There was no visible end ahead, yet behind them the door they had entered through remained clearly in place, radiating an inexplicable sense of presence.
Yi Luo looked around curiously. “What’s this supposed to mean? That ghost chickened out? Wants us to go back the way we came and refuses to show itself?”
“Maybe.” After walking for so long, He Wuning was starting to grow impatient. “I’ve heard of monsters having attack ranges, but since when do they just hide? Isn’t that a violation?”
He had already opened his communicator. “Hold on. I’m reporting it first.”
Yi Luo was stunned into laughter. “Are you just tired from walking? Why are you so fired up?”
“Hmph.” He Wuning snorted coldly and quickly typed out a message to the Voice of the World.
Voice of the World: “Report received. Please wait.”
“Detected that the monster has not engaged in attack behavior against players within its attack range for an extended period. Report verified. Issuing warning. Forced manifestation for 3 minutes.”
Yi Luo’s eyes widened. “…That actually works?”
The door behind them suddenly lifted at one corner. A half-transparent head poked in from outside, its voice grinding with suppressed anger. “Humans, you—”
“Oh? You’re out? Coward?” Yi Luo grinned and raised his gun, but this time the other party didn’t give him a chance to aim. It lunged forward, trying to slash both of them with its claws.
“I’m not a coward.” The Prankster Ghost hung upside down from a rickety old chandelier. Half of the chandelier was already bald of bulbs; out of perhaps dozens, fewer than ten still lit. Now, serving as the ghost’s foothold, it creaked and swayed precariously.
The two instinctively stepped apart—the chandelier’s lighting might be terrible, but crushing someone wouldn’t be a problem at all.
“Hmph.” The Prankster Ghost’s face twisted. It was clearly the first time it had ever been reported by players for not attacking. Gritting its teeth, it said, “Interesting. Humans, you’re more interesting than I imagined.”
“It seems you’re eager to die.”
“But I’m curious—are human brains single-threaded? Is ‘move forward’ the only option in your heads?”
“Turn around and look!” it suddenly screamed hysterically. “Turn around! Open that door!”
“Normal people would think something’s obviously wrong inside and there might be ghosts. If there’s still a door behind you, shouldn’t you hurry and open it to escape?! Why do you keep walking inward? Are you planning to traverse the entire area on foot?!”
“Do you know how hard I worked waiting behind that door to ambush you?!”
“And you reported me! Is there something wrong with your brains?!”
He Wuning: “……”
Yi Luo’s lips curved upward, barely holding back laughter.
He Wuning sighed, frowning slightly. “This is the first time I’ve met such a noisy ghost.”
Yi Luo was intrigued. “You’ve met other ghosts?”
He Wuning shot him a glance, not understanding how his focus always managed to go so wildly off-track.
“In horror movies. In ghost stories.” He Wuning looked at the Prankster Ghost, which was practically smoking from anger. “It’s usually people who scream. This is the first time I’ve seen a ghost this furious.”
“That’s true.” Yi Luo nodded in agreement. “The more it yells, the less scared I feel. It’s just funny.”
He Wuning lifted his long blade and assumed a combat stance. “That’s because you weren’t scared to begin with.”
The chandelier’s swaying grew more violent. The Prankster Ghost looked down at them from above. As it trembled with the chandelier, it seemed as though the entire old building was shaking along with it.
He Wuning sharpened his hearing and scanned the area. “Here it comes.”
The chandelier suddenly tore free from the ceiling, hurtling toward them with astonishing force. After they dodged, the chandelier crashed into the ground with a deafening boom—then slowly floated back up from the crater.
The Prankster Ghost itself had no physical form, but to increase its attack power, it had wrapped its body around the massive chandelier, making it part of itself.
“Hee hee hee.” It put on a sinister grin. “You were just complaining that I wasn’t attacking. Now I’m going to come at you like a raging storm. Even if you beg me to stop, I won’t.”
Its gaze darted back and forth between them. Yi Luo narrowed his eyes. “Is it just me, or does this guy look way too sleazy?”
“He’s clearly trying to sound threatening—why does it feel like he’s flirting?”
He Wuning: “……”
The long blade in his hand suddenly spun in a wide arc, slashing at empty air behind Yi Luo. A small ghost yelped “Wah!” and burst into a streak of light, dropping a pile of items onto the floor.
It was a regular monster—“Ghost.” Judging from its appearance, it was probably a lower-tier variant of the Prankster Ghost.
He Wuning narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Can he control the other ghosts?”
The grin on the Prankster Ghost’s face slowly widened. He raised a hand and snapped his fingers. Despite being incorporeal, the ghost’s snap rang out clearly—and throughout the room, echoes of snapping fingers overlapped one after another.
Lampshades, vases, stools…
Everything in the hall that could lift off the ground began to float. All of them sprouted ghostly heads—round or flat in all shapes and colors—wearing the exact same sinister smile as the Prankster Ghost. They bounded up and down as they surrounded the two of them.
Yi Luo and He Wuning exchanged a glance. At the same time, they charged straight toward the Prankster Ghost—He Wuning assaulting head-on, Yi Luo covering with his gun.
Their thinking was perfectly aligned—catch the ringleader first; when hunting ghosts, grab the most punchable one first.
The Prankster Ghost flung the chandelier attached to its body like a cannonball, then took advantage of the chaos to slip into the swarm of ghosts and hide among them.
He Wuning slashed apart a flying candlestick. It had barely touched the ground for a second before it wobbled and floated back up—clearly another ghost had inherited the “remains” and rejoined the battlefield.
Irritated beyond measure, He Wuning shouted, “Passive combat! I’m reporting you!”
From within the ghost swarm, the Prankster Ghost popped its head out furiously. “What do you know?! This is pacing! This is tactics!”
The instant it showed itself, Yi Luo’s bullet shot straight into its forehead. He lifted a brow and smiled provocatively. “Hello. This is tactics too.”
The Prankster Ghost immediately ducked back into hiding. Yi Luo clicked his tongue in disappointment. “Why does this monster have zero backbone?”
He Wuning glanced at him. “Probably because ghosts don’t actually have blood.”
Yi Luo froze for a moment, then asked uncertainly, “Was that… a joke?”
The surrounding ghosts didn’t deal high damage. They were troublesome with all their bouncing around, but it wasn’t truly dangerous—just annoying.
Yi Luo dodged a toilet plunger flying at him, his expression turning complicated. “Do ghosts even need to use the bathroom? Why is this here?”
“Ghosts don’t need bathrooms, so at least you can rest assured—it’s clean,” He Wuning replied, splitting a bench in half with one slash. The two halves immediately rose into the air again.
They chased after the Prankster Ghost as it darted up and down among its subordinates, clearly determined to act like a turtle hiding in its shell—dumping the burden of battle onto its underlings, relying on swarm tactics while it focused solely on fleeing.
Of course, because He Wuning had threatened to report it, it occasionally popped out to sneak in a token attack before fleeing again.
Yi Luo grabbed a milk tea to restore his status, casually using the empty cup to knock away a scrubbing brush. He sighed. “I thought only us players liked to push the boundaries of rule violations. How come this thing is doing it too…”
“Ahh!”
A somewhat familiar scream rang out. Both of them turned toward the door that had been following them like a shadow. It had opened again, and Louis stumbled inside.
Something seemed to be chasing him from outside. He slammed the door shut—but a bodiless ghost passed straight through it, poking its head out with a cheerful “Hi.”
Louis shrieked and fell backward onto the floor, scrambling away in panic.
Yi Luo crossed his arms, clearly entertained. “Hey, wait until he turns around and sees there are even more ghosts in here than outside. Wonder what his expression will be.”
Louis did turn around. In an instant, his face went pale with terror. He squeezed his eyes shut and rushed headlong toward He Wuning and Yi Luo.
Yi Luo hadn’t expected him to be that direct. He blinked, suspicion flashing across his face. “…This kid’s acting really isn’t that good. How did he even get chosen?”
“Probably because there wasn’t anyone better,” He Wuning replied coolly. He sidestepped Louis’s collision-like “embrace” and, just before he smashed into a floating vase, hooked a hand into his collar to stop him.
Yi Luo stared in shock. “Wait—why are you helping him?”
Louis halted, then turned blankly to look at He Wuning.
He Wuning asked, “Where’s Q?”
Louis jolted as if only just realizing something. His eyes flickered. Suddenly gritting his teeth, he lunged at He Wuning, revealing a jewel-encrusted dagger in his hand.
He Wuning had been prepared; there was no way he’d be hit. He grabbed a pressure cooker from the air and hurled it straight into Louis’s arms.
“Ah!”
Louis cried out as he toppled backward, knocking several midair ghosts down with him.
He Wuning almost wanted to sigh. Suddenly, the hairs on his neck stood on end. He thrust his blade backward—but at the instant he turned around, he forcibly halted the attack.
He saw a familiar face.
Even though he recognized immediately that it was fake, that split-second of hesitation was deadly.
A quiet-looking girl’s translucent hand pierced through his heart. In that instant, He Wuning felt as though he had fallen into an ice cellar. The attack itself wasn’t fatal—but he saw a new negative status appear beneath his health bar: “Curse.”
His limbs went cold as he staggered backward. Yi Luo’s bullet instantly riddled the ghost full of holes—but it was a step too late.
Behind He Wuning, the wall suddenly split open into a door that looked like a monster’s gaping mouth, ready to swallow him whole.
Using his stiffening body, he adjusted the angle of his blade slightly. Whatever was waiting behind him, it would at least have to take one slash first.
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The author has something to say:
Q-chan: My swee—
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