“You never intended to die with her at all.”
Fu Songcheng sneered. “You just wanted to see her give up her life for you, to satisfy your pathetic, twisted self-esteem. A person like you isn’t even as good as an animal.”
“No! You’re talking nonsense! Nonsense!”
Fang Yu, his most secret, filthiest thoughts laid bare, shrieked like a dog whose tail had been stepped on.
He jabbed a finger at the red-clothed female ghost, his expression turning hideous with extreme fear and guilt. “She was the one who was sick! She was the one with no stress tolerance! I kindly kept her company—she was the one who wanted to jump! Why blame me?! I don’t owe you anything! You slut, if you want to die, don’t take me with you!”
That sentence was the last straw that broke the camel’s back.
Fang Yu’s quibbling and refusal to repent thoroughly enraged the female ghost.
“Ah—!!!”
A scream of utter agony burst from the female ghost’s mouth, a sound that seemed capable of piercing the soul.
The surrounding black qi surged in an instant, like countless furious venomous snakes, lunging out and wrapping dead around Fang Yu’s neck, wrists, and ankles.
“Urk… cough cough…”
Fang Yu was yanked up, both feet dangling. He desperately clawed at the black qi around his neck, but it was useless.
His eyeballs began rolling back, his tongue lolling out, a choking gurgle-gurgle sound coming from his throat.
The female ghost didn’t strangle him immediately.
Her pale hands slowly, firmly, closed around Fang Yu’s right hand flailing in the air.
Just as they’d promised that day on the balcony.
Gripped tightly together.
The next second, the female ghost flung herself backward.
The black qi wrapped around the two of them, and like a black meteor, in an attitude of utter resolve, plummeted straight down from the fourth-floor window.
Thump—!!!
A dull, scalp-numbing crash sounded in the garden below.
The entire corridor fell silent in an instant.
The suffocating pressure and chill that had weighed on everyone’s hearts receded like a tide with that crash.
Though the shattered light tubes in the corridor didn’t come back, the moonlight outside could finally pour in through the windows, dispersing that despairing darkness.
The system’s cold notification sounded in every player’s mind:
[Ding! Hidden side mission: The Overdue Promise (Completed).]
[NPC Fang Yu is dead. The vengeful spirit’s obsession has dissipated.]
In the first-floor garden, there was one more corpse.
Fang Yu’s corpse.
His limbs were folded beneath him in an extremely twisted posture, a large pool of crimson blood slowly spreading beneath him.
His eyes were wide open, refusing to close in death, his face still bearing the extreme terror of his final moment.
And the red-clothed female ghost had completely vanished.
It was finally over.
Lu Xiao looked at the empty windowsill with a complicated expression, then turned to Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting.
“She… just left like that?”
Lu Xiao’s voice was still a little hoarse. “She didn’t attack us.”
“I told you, she didn’t want to kill.”
Fu Songcheng turned around, the moonlight falling on his refined profile, making him seem especially calm. “The hearts of depression patients are often filled with self-loathing and self-attack. They have a strong self-destructive tendency, but rarely do they turn the blade’s tip on others. They swallow all their pain into their own stomachs, until it bursts.”
Fu Songcheng paused, his gaze sweeping over 402’s empty doorway, and continued, “She became a vengeful spirit only because she had an unfinished wish.”
“So I had Huaiting clear the garbage in 402, then called to change the renovation hours.”
Lu Xiao suddenly understood, a flash of realization crossing her eyes.
“The reason 402’s player died first wasn’t because the female ghost wanted to kill everyone. It was because at first, the female ghost couldn’t find Fang Yu, who was protected by the system, so she could only attack the neighbor who was still occupying the public corridor after her death.”
Yu Huaiting put away his greatsword and walked to Fu Songcheng’s side, picking up the thread. “Yes. So we conveyed our apology to that girl—cleared the corridor, canceled the unreasonable noise, and gave her a clean, quiet environment.”
Here, Fu Songcheng let out a soft sigh.
“Hopefully the original heroine of this story, in another world, never met people like Fang Yu.”
Outside the instance, the livestream’s bullet comments had already exploded.
[Holy crap… my scalp is numb. This instance’s plot is actually…]
[Whose story is this instance? Too oppressive.]
[Wasn’t there a pretty shocking incident in reality before? The one about the suicide pact jump—the man backed out at the last moment, the woman fell and died, and the man got to live on fine. Didn’t expect this real event to be moved into an instance by the system.]
[Holy crap, I remember now! When that news came out back then I was furious! And that guy later claimed he was innocent!]
[What happened to that guy in reality afterward? Was he sentenced?]
[No… this kind of thing is hard to define as murder legally—at most moral condemnation. I think he later moved to another city, changed his name, and kept living.]
[Damn it, it’s true—good people don’t live long, while scum lasts a thousand years! Wonder if he dreams of that girl when he wakes at midnight!]
[May he rot.]
[May he rot.]
[May he rot for life after life.]
In the livestream room, the screen was filled with the same sentence floating by, carrying the most genuine fury and curses of thousands upon thousands of viewers.
Inside the instance.
There were still four hours left until the instance ended.
But the greatest threat—the NPC female ghost—had already vanished. The remaining time posed no life-threatening danger to the players; they only needed to quietly wait for the countdown to end.
Lu Xiao rubbed her faintly throbbing temples, glanced at the corridor, and sighed. “No matter what, we survived. Let’s tidy up this building again.”
Fu Songcheng raised an eyebrow and pointed downstairs. “Tidy up? The two corpses in the garden—one from 402, one Fang Yu’s—you go move them?”
Lu Xiao’s mind involuntarily conjured the two mangled, bloody masses she’d seen downstairs, and her stomach churned.
She closed her eyes in her miserable fate and pretended nothing had happened.
Whoever wants to move them can move them.
“I’ll do it.”
Du Yunhao, who’d been leaning against the corner saying little, suddenly straightened up, coughed twice, and fished out something like a small spray can from his system backpack.
“I’ll go downstairs and deal with it, and clean up the bloodstains in the corridor while I’m at it.”
Du Yunhao said, tossing the spray can item in his hand.
Hearing this, Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting turned their heads at the same time, their gazes lingering on that spray can for a second—then the two quickly exchanged a subtle glance.
Fu Songcheng lifted his chin slightly.
The corner of Yu Huaiting’s mouth curved into an imperceptible arc, and he winked at Fu Songcheng.
Standing to the side, Lu Xiao took the whole scene in.
She looked at Du Yunhao, utterly unsuspecting and even a little eager to show off in front of the team, then at the two bandits already scheming in their hearts about how to “rob the rich and devour the black.”
Lu Xiao actually understood their look in an instant.
She swallowed, silently shifted her gaze away, and said nothing.
Not only did she not warn him—she even secretly, wickedly looked forward to it: Steal it. Hurry up and steal it.
Your own suffering is sad, but an enemy’s loss makes up for it.
“Then… thanks for the trouble.”
Lu Xiao forced down a smile and said to Du Yunhao with a straight face.
“It’s nothing.”
Du Yunhao, utterly unaware he’d been targeted by two bandits, turned with the spray and headed downstairs.
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