“What exactly is a ghost?”
Occupying Zhao Mingyue’s shadow was an incredibly strange sensation, an experience she had never had before. The question rose involuntarily in Bai Yu’s mind.
After becoming a ghost, she felt extremely bizarre. Her body was still there, yet it also seemed to be absent. It was very, very light, like a mass of air. Some wisps and threads drifted within her form. These thread-like things were the foundation of her body, tightly locking her hollow form together and preventing her from dissipating into nothingness.
It was as if her flesh had transformed into a substance somewhere between liquid and gas, and countless red threads bound this substance, thus forming her current body.
The skills a ghost possessed, like controlling Blood Threads and Black Mist, Shadow Possession and Levitation, or short-distance teleportation—she had instinctively mastered these the moment she became a Fierce Ghost.
Before Zhao Mingyue summoned her, she had been in a world of blood-red. There was no direction, no distance, and no time. She could only wander aimlessly, not even knowing if she was walking in place. It was Zhao Mingyue’s summons that allowed her to see the light of the real world.
However, being a ghost was not a pleasant experience. Her senses were drastically dulled. Her sense of smell was very faint, her sense of taste had vanished entirely, and her sense of touch registered every object she contacted as ice-cold.
It was worth mentioning that the most profound sensation after becoming a ghost was coldness.
Not the cold of being stripped naked and thrown into an icy landscape. It was more like wearing heavy, padded clothing, yet being unable to retain any body heat, as wisps of freezing air continuously seeped into every pore of her body, like countless needles of ice.
The difference between the two? In the former, you feel you could freeze to death any moment, perhaps even feeling your body burning up right before the end.
The latter is a slow death. There’s no immediate sensation of freezing to death, but the bone-chilling cold never vanishes. Like a festering sore, it erodes you bit by bit. Over a long period, you get the illusion that even your soul is being frozen solid.
Perhaps this metaphor isn’t entirely appropriate, because it’s based on the living.
Even in the latter scenario, wearing thick cotton clothes presupposes you are a living person, with body heat and temperature. The coldness comes from the outside in.
But she was not a living person. She had no body heat. That tormenting, excruciating cold came from the inside out.
The outside world was bright and warm, but she couldn’t touch it.
It wasn’t that she didn’t dare, but that she couldn’t. For someone whose very soul seemed frozen, the warmth of the outside world was like a deadly poison. Even if she were to freeze to death, stepping into the sunlight would bring not a shred of warmth, only the rapid approach of absolute dissolution.
To use another metaphor: the living are warmth under the sun, while ghosts are cold dying in the shadows.
Bai Yu now understood why ghosts were always insane and irrational.
It wasn’t that they didn’t retain their humanity after death. Quite the opposite; it was precisely because their minds were too clear that they lost their reason. Not everyone has the Willpower to endure this cold. Even if you can hold on for a day, what about afterward? A week, a month, a year… eventually, anyone would break.
What was even more fatal was that ghosts not only had to suffer the agony of the cold but also their own Resentment.
Someone who committed suicide might only need to close their eyes to relive the pain of their death, over and over. A murderer, after death, would see the Residual Grudges of those they killed. They’d appear before their eyes, whisper in their ear, stay by their side, murmuring your name, uttering the most venomous curses.
This was precisely why those who died naturally rarely became Wraiths, and even if they did, they wouldn’t linger long before dissipating. Those who were wronged, those who committed suicide, those with profound obsessions—they would remain, becoming Evil Ghosts.
“They can’t stand the cold, nor can they bear their own Resentment and obsessions. Naturally, they become irrational Evil Ghosts.” Bai Yu’s train of thought broke off. In her mind, countless Evil Ghosts surfaced—some covered in blood, some decapitated, some cleaved in two.
These “incomplete” ghosts were all Game Participants she had killed. She liked using a blade, and the wounds on these ghosts were all inflicted by her.
These Residual Grudges lingered in her mind incessantly, shouting her name, cursing her with the most vicious words. The sensation was like being surrounded by a crowd of people whispering rapidly and shrilly in your ear. It was maddening.
Normally, an ordinary Evil Ghost might have one or two Residual Grudges: the ghost of their own suicide or the ghost of someone they killed.
But Bai Yu was different. She had killed far too many people. So many that when they cursed her, she couldn’t even make out what they were saying. It was just a swarm of buzzing flies.
“Shut up!”
As if a Blood Aura exploded outward, Bai Yu’s ears were instantly cleared. She needed to think about her future plans, and she needed quiet.
On the double bed in the bedroom, Zhao Mingyue seemed to sense something and abruptly opened her eyes.
The bedroom was pitch black and empty. On the nightstand, Miss Rabbit sat quietly with her head lowered. Beside her lay a black phone and another rabbit-shaped phone with two cracks across its screen.
A snow-white arm emerged from the quilt. Her slender hand grabbed the charging phone and lit up the screen, its dim light illuminating Zhao Mingyue’s somewhat haggard, pretty face.
Her autumn-water eyes were tinged with bloodshot lines, and even her cherry lips looked somewhat pale.
“4:30 already… ugh, this is torture. I have to work in the morning too… what am I going to do?” She buried her head under the covers, miserable.
She couldn’t sleep. She really couldn’t. The moment she closed her eyes, she saw the bloated, rotting face of her upstairs neighbor.
Her first “encounter with a ghost” in life had left her far too deeply shaken.
Her mind was a mess. She hadn’t found her sister, and it seemed she had opened the door to another world. She had to remember that there was a Fierce Ghost currently residing in her shadow!
As she thought of Bai Yu in her heart, Bai Yu was also thinking of her.
“My quest target is Zhao Mingyue. Her special status means no other participants will compete with me for her. However, that only applies to participants. There’s no rule saying characters within this world can’t do so. The quest is to gain the corresponding character’s affection. But what if this character is won over first by another character native to this world?”
Recalling various details, Bai Yu narrowed her eyes.
“That means, aside from being wary of other game participants, I also have to be careful of the Male Lead. The Female Lead’s original partner is the Male Lead; that’s only normal.”
“So, I need to find a way to kill him. Those lunatics will definitely be thinking the same thing.”
“Only five characters are available for them to choose. That means, at most, there can only be five winners. While eliminating opponents around them, Zhao Mingyue is also their primary target.”
“After all, killing the Female Lead is the best way to capture the Male Lead.”
