Chapter 58: Confronting the Apparitions (3)

The two of them failed to notice that the figure’s toes were pointed directly at them.

Zhang Yao and Zhao Rou, their faces pale with fear, left the table, edging toward the wall farthest from Li Lili. Pressing their backs against its cold surface brought a measure of fragile reassurance.

"Why are you… standing so far away from me?" Li Lili, too, noticed their odd behavior. As she questioned them, a sudden suspicion dawned, and she glanced over her shoulder. There, as she feared, stood a shadowy figure, its form shrouded in darkness, the acrid stench of burnt flesh flooding her nostrils.

Just as Li Lili let out a terrified scream and tried to flee, a pair of hands encircled her waist. Those arms were slender—unnaturally so—and pallid to the point of excess. Suddenly, a weight pressed upon her shoulder, and a ghastly face, wide-eyed and deathly pale, twisted into a gruesome smile, appeared before her. The features, handsome in a strange way, became all the more chilling in this nightmarish setting.

Though its mouth did not move, a hollow voice echoed, "Lili, I like you so much. Come keep me company…"

As the figure wrapped its arms around Li Lili’s waist, its neck draped over her shoulder, their eyes locked. It could only manage this grotesque posture because its neck had been twisted backward, stretched and contorted so that it had grown unnaturally long and limp, as soft as a strand of noodles.

"Qian… Qian Qian Feng!" Li Lili stammered as she stared at the rigid, ashen face, those lifeless gray eyes fixed upon her, making her knees buckle with terror. She struggled to pry Qian Feng’s hands away, but to no avail. Meanwhile, Zhang Yao and Zhao Rou seized the opportunity to edge along the wall toward the door, intent on slipping quietly out of the room.

"Didn’t you love me? Didn’t you want to be with me?" The distortion of its neck lent Qian Feng’s voice a rasping quality, utterly unlike his living self. And as it spoke, the smell of burning flesh overwhelmed Li Lili.

With a crash, the door to the room was flung open. Zhang Yao and Zhao Rou had escaped. The figure behind Li Lili made no attempt to stop them, merely letting them flee without hindrance.

"Zhang Yao! Zhao Rou! May you both die miserable deaths!" Li Lili, realizing they had fled, screamed curses after them.

"Come! Become one with me." The figure behind her dipped its head, and with a single bite wrenched a chunk of tender flesh from her left shoulder, swallowing it whole. Blood soaked Li Lili’s clothes, and the agony of being devoured alive by a ghostly specter drove her to wail in despair.

"It hurts—don’t eat me! Please, I’m begging you!" Snot and tears streamed down Li Lili’s face. Trapped in the ghost’s embrace, she was utterly powerless to escape, and could only beg for mercy from Qian Feng’s face before her.

But the figure paid her no heed. Its hands, which had encircled her waist, suddenly plunged into her flesh, tearing away two strips of white, tender meat.

The pain was so intense that Li Lili nearly fainted, but a surge of black, vengeful energy invaded her body, snapping her mind back to cruel awareness. This sinister force held her fast, rendering her paralyzed from the neck down, while the pain at her waist surged like a tidal wave.

Driven by agony and the goading energy, Li Lili found a desperate courage. She bit down hard on the figure’s twisted neck, tearing off a chunk of blackened flesh, sinew still clinging to it.

"I’ll fight you with everything I have!" Swallowing the foul, rotten meat, she bit again furiously at the creature’s neck.

The figure seemed utterly indifferent to her attacks. After devouring the two strips of flesh from her waist, it tore off two more, chewing them leisurely.

Blood pooled across the floor; Li Lili’s lifeless body collapsed into it, eyes wide in terror. She was not eaten to death, but frightened to death. To witness one’s own body being torn apart and consumed, bite after bite, was a horror beyond any human mind’s capacity to endure.

After her death, the Qian Feng-like figure vanished from the room. The bloodstains on the floor slowly faded, leaving Li Lili’s corpse, rigid and etched with terror, lying on the floor, yet with no visible wounds.

Those watching the video went pale as well, their stomachs churning in revulsion at the live broadcast of such ghostly slaughter.

In the meantime, the person in charge of the ghost livestream was roaring with rage—now a female student had died on camera, a broadcasting disaster. How could he possibly explain this to the company?

"Where is that three-star Awakened? That useless bastard—someone’s died, and he’s nowhere to be found!" The overweight supervisor stormed about, clutching his belly in the makeshift studio beside the abandoned dormitory.

"She’s not dead yet!" A voice called out, and a young man dragged Li Lili over, tossing her at the supervisor’s feet. Upon inspection, it was clear she had only fainted. Though she had been badly shaken, she was, at least, alive.

"How… how is she still alive?" the supervisor asked in astonishment, recalling the bloodless, rigid look on Li Lili’s face. Besides, that ghost would never let her off so easily—how could she have survived?

What he did not know was that several paintings had long since shrouded the entire abandoned dormitory in the young man’s illusion. Under the power of the paintings, even ordinary cameras could capture the intangible ghost and the illusion itself. It was precisely for this reason that the ghost-hunting video company had hired him at such a high salary.

This was the young man’s newly awakened ability upon reaching the three-star level—Soul Painter. By using magnetic energy as ink, his painted illusions could deceive ghosts of a lower level than himself, and weaker entities could be trapped within them.

"Even if I explained, you wouldn’t understand. Or do you wish she had died?" The young man cast a scornful glance at the supervisor. If he didn’t need the money, and if the company weren’t so generous, he’d have lost his temper long ago.

"No, no, of course not!" the supervisor exclaimed, waving his hands in denial.

"I’m going to check on the other two," the young man said, turning away from the temporary camp.

Because this was the first livestream, no one had any experience. To ensure the broadcast’s success, they’d set up a camp near the abandoned dormitory to relay events within.

Though the location was still dangerous, it was safer than confronting ghosts directly—especially with several other Awakened on guard, even if they were only first or second stars.

Inside the abandoned dormitory—

Zhang Yao and Zhao Rou were running through the fourth-floor stairwell, but the stairs seemed endless. Though the dormitory had only six floors, the pair had been running for over ten minutes without reaching the first floor, still trapped on the fourth.

Having learned of the young man’s ability, the livestream now displayed two feeds. One showed the pair endlessly shuttling between the fourth and third floors; the other showed them running downward from the fourth floor, over and over.

After more than ten minutes, both were exhausted, their sweat-soaked clothes clinging to their bodies.

"What should we do? The ghost from that room will come after us soon," Zhao Rou whispered, clutching Zhang Yao’s cold hand. Her fear had sent her heart racing, blood surging to her brain, sharpening her focus as she struggled for a plan.

"…Let’s jump out! If we leap from the fourth floor, we might survive. If the ghost catches us, you saw what happened to Li Lili!" Zhang Yao gritted his teeth. Trapped in the illusion, he believed escape lay only in jumping out of the building.

"Let’s try it," Zhao Rou said, firm after a moment’s thought.

Just then, the door of the room they’d fled creaked open. A shadowy figure emerged, and hateful eyes fixed upon them; the smell of burning flesh wafted through the air.

They both knew, without needing to guess, what this thing was.

The livestream feed cut to the dormitory doorway, where a ghost in a yellow dress floated toward Zhang Yao and Zhao Rou. This spirit had the voluptuous figure of a young woman, not unlike Li Lili, but the face would haunt nightmares for days—a face like a shattered porcelain doll, webbed with charred cracks, haphazardly pieced together with crude craftsmanship. From the seams, black fluid seeped.

Many viewers turned away from their screens, retching.

Zhang Yao glanced at the door and saw the terrifying, disgusting cracked-faced ghost. He remembered all too well that Qian Feng had died at this specter’s hands. If it hadn’t been for the patrol’s timely intervention, all three of them would have perished.

Unfortunately, the spirit hunter assigned to them was only a one-star, unable to defeat the ghost and protect them simultaneously. He had only managed to lead them to safety and report the situation.

What they didn’t know was that first-star ghosts lacked intelligence and rarely fixated on a single victim. So long as the three stayed away and didn’t provoke it, they would likely remain unharmed—unless they brought disaster upon themselves.

Of course, that wasn’t how the ghost-hunting video company presented things. The businessmen needed them to provoke the ghost to create the most sensational live broadcast. In their view, since they were paying, it was a perfectly legal transaction.