Chapter 11

Zhou Fangdong looked around blankly.

One second he had been lying on his soft bed, and the next, he appeared in this strange room.

He hadn’t paid much attention to what the System was saying just now, only vaguely catching something about a roleplay function…

Who was the System making him play?

Zhou Fangdong began calling out to the System in his mind. However, no matter how much he harassed it this time, the System did not respond, as if it were no longer inside his body.

This made Zhou Fangdong panic slightly. He began to carefully recall the System’s recent words.

The System seemed to have told him to play the role of a tenant? It also mentioned that successful roleplay would grant Experience Points, which could unlock skills and such…

Did “tenant” refer to someone who had previously rented a unit in the Liwan Apartments?

Zhou Fangdong looked down at his short arms and legs. So, the tenant he was playing this time was a child? For that matter, what exactly counted as a successful roleplay?

The room he was in was very small, about five or six square meters, looking like a converted storage closet. A tiny single bed and a small table took up the entire space.

There was no mirror in the room. Assuming the table was a standard height of about seventy centimeters, he was currently a head taller than the table… Based on his height, his current body should be that of a five or six-year-old child.

Just as Zhou Fangdong walked to the door to try and open it, he suddenly heard the sound of an argument coming from outside.

The sound of two sets of footsteps echoed, one after the other, as if people had entered the apartment. Then came a woman’s shrill voice:

“The news has already broken! The building behind us is full of dead people! Not ashes, but actual corpses lying in ice coffins!! If we don’t move now, are we supposed to stay here with those dead bodies forever?”

“Move? You tell me, where can we move to?” a man’s deep voice said irritably. “Tell me, where in all of Linjiang City is the rent cheaper than here? Even a broken shack in a shantytown costs more than this! Where can we go?”

“Staying here isn’t an option either! So many people have died already; maybe we’ll be next!” The woman’s voice began to take on a sobbing tone. “Are you even a man? Can’t you think about me and the child for once…”

A crisp slapping sound rang out, and the woman suddenly went silent, leaving only the sound of low sobbing.

“You bitch! Don’t you dare mention that money-losing brat you birthed!” The man’s voice grew increasingly violent. “You’re a fool who believes every rumor. I told you those murders have nothing to do with the bodies in the back. If they died, it’s just their bad luck! Those bodies aren’t even in the same building as us. It’s not like I’m asking you to sleep while hugging a corpse, so why can’t you live here?”

“But…”

“No buts! Either keep living here, or we get a divorce! I’ve had enough of you, you non-laying hen. You can’t even give me a son, so what are you good for? All you do is cry all day long. You’ve cried away all my financial luck!”

The words were followed by the heavy slam of a door. The man’s voice vanished, leaving only the woman’s weeping outside the room.

Zhou Fangdong, who was pressed against the door eavesdropping, suddenly felt a pang of distress in his heart.

This wasn’t his own emotion, but one generated by this child’s body… fear, grievance, guilt, and a deep-seated, barely perceptible resentment hidden in the depths of the heart.

Just then, Zhou Fangdong noticed the woman’s sobbing outside had quieted. Immediately after, the sound of high heels approached his direction.

He grew nervous and took a step back, his body pressing tightly against the table.

The door opened, and a haggard-looking woman in a floral dress appeared before Zhou Fangdong.

Seeing him standing on the floor, the woman’s eyebrows shot up, and she delivered a sharp slap directly to Zhou Fangdong’s face.

“Didn’t I tell you to go to sleep?! Were you eavesdropping on me and your father again? So young and already failing to learn anything good, doing nothing but these sneaky, low-life things!”

The woman vented all the frustration she had received from the man onto the child.

Zhou Fangdong was dazed by the slap.

His face burned with stinging pain, a metallic taste of blood filled his mouth, and his ears buzzed so loudly he couldn’t hear anything. He could only see the woman’s crimson mouth opening and closing like a man-eating monster.

At that moment, another thought that didn’t belong to him surfaced in his mind: I should have been lying on the bed before Mom opened the door. Otherwise, Mom would think I was eavesdropping and beat me.

Zhou Fangdong was speechless.

What kind of animalistic parents were these? A misogynistic, domestic abuser for a father and a cowardly mother who only dared to take her anger out on a child?

Seeing Zhou Fangdong staring at her without a word, the woman’s rage flared even higher. She grabbed him by the neck, hoisted him up, and delivered two more slaps.

His current frail child’s body had no room to resist in the hands of an adult; he could only endure it head-on.

After a few more slaps, Zhou Fangdong was thrown to the ground, dizzy and disoriented. His swollen face pressed against the floor, and the cold sensation from the tiles allowed him to regain a sliver of consciousness.

He now reasonably suspected that the System found him too annoying and was using this Roleplay Task as an excuse to get him beaten up.

Seeing Zhou Fangdong lying motionless on the ground, the woman gave him a disgusted kick, muttering something about “it’s all your fault for not being a boy” before walking away without looking back.

This time she didn’t close the door, likely assuming that Zhou Fangdong wouldn’t be able to move under these circumstances.

That last kick, delivered by a sharp high heel, had landed directly on Zhou Fangdong’s lumbar spine. A bone-chilling pain spread from his waist throughout his entire body, causing him to curl up uncontrollably like a shrimp.

He didn’t know if the pain was causing hallucinations or if a child’s eyes were naturally pure enough to see ghosts.

Lying on the floor, Zhou Fangdong saw several charred, blackened infants crawling out from under the single bed.

The infants surrounded Zhou Fangdong, pressing their cold, soft little hands against the places where he had just been beaten.

A refreshing coolness emanated from the Ghost Infants’ hands, and Zhou Fangdong felt the pain in his body ease slightly.

There were four Ghost Infants in total. After they finished touching him, they didn’t leave. Instead, they clung to Zhou Fangdong’s body like octopuses.

Zhou Fangdong discovered that as the contact area between his body and the Ghost Infants grew, the pain racking his frame seemed to be entirely absorbed by them.

Before long, he was actually able to stand up on his own.

Just as Zhou Fangdong was about to head out to investigate, he heard noises coming from outside again. Terrified, he scrambled back into his prone position on the floor.

The man had returned. Acting as if nothing had happened, he spoke in a sickeningly sweet tone, “Honey, come here. Come with me for an interview. That wealthy businessman said that as long as we say in the interview that we’re staying at Liwan Apartments of our own free will, he’ll give us a huge sum of money.”

“Oh my god! Really?” The woman’s voice was full of pleasant surprise. “Hubby, you’re amazing!”

Lying on the ground pretending to be a corpse, Zhou Fangdong curled his lip in disdain.

What’s so amazing about that? Your precious husband is just relaying a message; it’s not like he earned the money himself.

The reconciled couple walked toward the door, hand in hand and acting all lovey-dovey.

However, before they could even step out of the room, they both let out a simultaneous scream of agony.

Realizing something was wrong, Zhou Fangdong scrambled up from the floor and pushed the door open to look toward the source of the sound.

He saw a distorted ghost clinging to the living room ceiling. Its deformed limbs, with joints bent backward, allowed it to cling to the chandelier like a giant gecko.

The creature had no skin; its bright red flesh and muscle were completely exposed. Its blood-drenched head featured a temporomandibular joint stretched wide at an impossible angle, with the mouth occupying nearly half of its face. A slimy, long, purplish-red tongue, resembling a python, slithered out of the gaping maw and coiled around the necks of the man and woman.

The couple who had just been walking out hand in hand were now like two “teru teru bozu” dolls with their necks tied together, dangling from the ghost’s tongue and swaying beneath the chandelier. They were already breathless.

Zhou Fangdong was startled by the scene before him, then suddenly realized that the ghost on the chandelier was the same one that had attacked Zhao Dawei in the hallway.

Furthermore, the way these two were hanging from the chandelier… he remembered the three mummified corpses he had seen hanging from the ceiling in Room 104 while inspecting the first floor.

So, was he currently in Room 104? Was he roleplaying a tenant who used to live there?

Did a successful roleplay mean surviving at the hands of this ghost?

The distorted ghost seemed to notice Zhou Fangdong’s presence. After hanging the two bodies on the chandelier, it began crawling along the ceiling toward him.

Seeing this, Zhou Fangdong bolted for the open door.

Sensing his desperate urge to escape the room, the Ghost Infants on his body jumped off one by one. Like moths to a flame, they threw themselves at the pursuing ghost to block its path.

As the Ghost Infants left him, the pain from the injuries he had just sustained began to throb again.

Enduring the physical agony, Zhou Fangdong barely managed to escape the room.

The moment he stepped out the front door, he glanced back.

On the open door, a house number plate with the digits 【102】 swayed gently, flickering with a faint light.

After seeing the room number clearly, Zhou Fangdong frowned in confusion.

How could it be Room 102? Was he actually roleplaying a tenant of 102? But when he inspected the first-floor rooms, he clearly remembered that the room with the three hanging mummies was Room 104…

Before Zhou Fangdong could figure out what was going on, the scene before his eyes shifted in the blink of an eye. He was back in his own room.

The system’s electronic voice rang out:

【Roleplay failed. Please try again next time, Host.】

Zhou Fangdong sat on the bed, dazed.

How did he fail? Even though he didn’t know why hanging corpses had appeared in Room 102, he had survived the ghost’s attack.

“System, isn’t the condition for a successful roleplay to survive?”

【Roleplay failed. Please try again next time, Host.】

“Again! I don’t believe this—”

【It is now daytime. Tenants are beginning their activities. To ensure the safety of the tenants, please pay close attention to their actions and do not become addicted to games.】

【Reminder: Dynamic Task, Night Attack of a Hundred Ghosts. Time remaining: 29 days.】

Looking at the remaining time, the hot-headed impulse he just felt cooled instantly. Zhou Fangdong gritted his teeth and sullenly opened the mobile forum.

He could buy the Honest Flyers now. He needed to hurry up and hand them out to trick a second tenant into moving in to complete the side quest, and then he could properly study how to clear this Roleplay Task.

From the room number he just saw, he knew this Roleplay Task was related to Room 102. Once the second tenant moved in, he would go to Room 102 to conduct a thorough search and see if he could find any useful clues.

Translator’s Notes

• teru teru bozu: The translator uses this Japanese term to approximate the imagery of the victims. In the source text, the author describes them as ‘晴天娃娃’ (qíngtiān wáwa), which are small paper or cloth dolls hung by strings to pray for good weather. The visual of the victims hanging by their necks mirrors the way these dolls are tied and suspended.

• sneaky, low-life things: The idiom ‘鸡鸣狗盗’ (jīmíng-gǒudào) literally means ‘crowing like a cock and stealing like a dog.’ While it can refer to petty tricks, in this context, the mother is using it to accuse the child of being inherently untrustworthy and sneaky, reflecting her habit of using overly harsh, traditional idioms to berate him.

• non-laying hen: The term ‘不下蛋的母鸡’ (bù xiàdàn de mǔjī) is a common Chinese insult for a woman who is perceived as unable to bear children, specifically sons. In this context, it emphasizes the father’s view of his wife’s value being tied solely to her reproductive capability.

• money-losing brat: The original term ‘赔钱货’ (péiqiánhuò) literally means ‘goods that lose money.’ It is a derogatory term historically used by parents for daughters, reflecting the traditional view that raising a girl is a financial loss because she will eventually marry into another family, whereas a son provides labor and carries on the lineage. This highlights the father’s extreme misogyny and disappointment that the child is not a boy.