Chapter 53

Using a tenant’s room to initiate Instance Erosion required a progress bar. While the interface was loading, Zhou Fangdong kept the window open and checked his mission panel.

The progress for Side Mission 4, “Find the Cleaners,” had changed to (5/5).

Zhou Fangdong felt relieved. He turned to Quan Wuming’s duo and the three others—including Qian Duolai, who had stumbled his way upstairs—and instructed, “Clean up these Flesh Ganoderma fragments in the second-floor corridor. Pile them together in the corner of the hallway; I’ll come to collect them in a bit.”

The five of them nodded simultaneously.

The paper-mache heads on Qian Duolai and his companions were quite sturdy; even with the exaggerated nodding, their heads didn’t fall off again.

Zhou Fangdong teleported back to his room and began focusing on the system’s live broadcast of Hong Zhong and Xiao Xiaoyu’s situation.

Inside a ward of the abandoned hospital.

Hearing Hong Zhong say he wouldn’t leave, Xiao Xiaoyu was bewildered. “The Main God’s Supernatural Instances are extremely dangerous. You…”

She was interrupted by Hong Zhong before she could finish. “There are still ordinary people trapped here. I’m going to save them all.”

Xiao Xiaoyu suspected something was wrong with her hearing. “How can you possibly save so many people alone? You have no idea how dangerous an instance is! We don’t have the Points System on us right now, and we don’t even know the survival route for this instance!”

Hong Zhong’s voice was firm. “As long as we clear out the ghosts and the cultists, the instance will be safe. Then we can slowly lead them out… I won’t stand by and watch the people kidnapped by the Sigu Society die in here.”

As he finished, his tone shifted. He handed his car keys to Xiao Xiaoyu and said earnestly, “If you have a way to leave, then go. Do it as quickly as possible. I’m afraid things will change if you delay too long. I’m enough to handle things here.”

Xiao Xiaoyu took a deep breath.

Having spent a long time in Supernatural Instances and seeing all sorts of people who would do anything to save their own skins, this was the first time she had met someone so… so stupid…

Dammit!

Xiao Xiaoyu slapped away Hong Zhong’s hand holding the car keys and spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m not leaving. I’ll stay with you! What kind of big talk is a guy who’s never been in a Supernatural Instance before spouting? Talking about clearing all the ghosts when you can’t even tell them apart—this ward is full of unawakened ghosts! Let’s get out of here, fast!”

Hong Zhong froze. He didn’t doubt the truth of Xiao Xiaoyu’s words for a second and pulled her out of the ward at top speed.

Before coming here, Xiao Xiaoyu had already told Hong Zhong about her [Yin-Yang Eyes] ability. He trusted her judgment.

However, the ‘patients’ on the hospital beds who were having their blood drawn and flesh harvested looked like humans. They had human vital signs, showed no abnormalities, and even his detection devices hadn’t triggered any alarms.

—In this so-called Main God’s instance, was the ghosts’ ability to disguise themselves actually this strong?

Xiao Xiaoyu seemed to know what he was thinking. “Don’t use your common sense to identify ghosts in the Main God’s instances, and don’t let your eyes deceive your perception. In these instances, not only can normal-looking humans be ghosts, but your teammates could be ghosts, and even a table or a chair could be a disguised monster… Don’t you have those portable detection devices? Keep them on. Don’t worry about wasting power.”

Hong Zhong gave a bitter smile. “I’ve had them on the whole time. The detection gear is useless in the instance.”

He scanned the surroundings and said to Xiao Xiaoyu, “We should be in the inpatient area on the third floor. Judging by that ward just now, I suspect there are real survivors on this floor, which is why those ghosts can mimic patients so perfectly. I’ll take you to the doors of the other wards. I’ll need you to use your [Yin-Yang Eyes] to help distinguish which rooms have living patients.”

Because Xiao Xiaoyu moved slowly, Hong Zhong picked her up again, tucking her under his arm like a shoulder bag.

Xiao Xiaoyu was used to it. Due to her mobility issues, her feet barely touched the ground in almost every instance.

They patrolled the third floor and eventually found a ward at the end of the corridor.

This ward contained living people.

There were ten survivors in total. They looked just like the ‘patients’ in the previous ward; most were strapped to hospital beds with restraints, IV needles in their hands, and neat incisions on their arms where flesh had been harvested.

The only two not restrained were a refined-looking man in his thirties wearing glasses and a hospital gown, and a middle-aged man lying on a bed with his eyes closed, blood still flowing from his arm.

The man in glasses sat on his bed, staring blankly as the middle-aged man bled. Next to him were bandages, scalpels, and other medical instruments.

The medical tools were all laid out as if someone had vanished in the middle of using them.

Hong Zhong rushed to the bleeding man’s bedside and used the nearby bandages to stop the bleeding.

The man in glasses just watched vacantly, muttering neurotically, “Sigh, what’s the use of stopping the bleeding? Life is just a cycle, a constant process of losing things. Even if you stop the bleeding here, the blood will just leak out from somewhere else…”

Xiao Xiaoyu was exasperated. “Stop with the sentimentality. We’re here to save you. If you have time for that, why don’t you tell us the general situation here?”

Supernatural Instances created by the Main God in the real world would set survival and death routes based on real-world conditions. Having finally encountered a conscious survivor, Xiao Xiaoyu hoped to get some useful information from him.

But the neurotic man in glasses didn’t respond to her. He continued to stare at Hong Zhong’s bandaging. “Sigh, why bother? He’ll just get hurt again after the bandage is on. To solve it once and for all, why not just amputate?”

Xiao Xiaoyu finally realized that this man in glasses was actually no different from the unconscious patients… they were all completely devoid of reason.

Hong Zhong couldn’t listen to any more of it. “Don’t be so pessimistic. We’ll help you escape the control of those cultists.”

The man in glasses sighed again. “Sigh, so what? Everyone dies in the end. Living is just the process of walking toward death. There’s no difference between dying early or late. So why don’t we just follow the guidance of fate and face death calmly?”

Xiao Xiaoyu lost her patience completely. “Shut up. Say one more word and I’ll stab you to death myself so you can face it right now.”

“Sigh…” The man adjusted his glasses and let out a long sigh, wisely choosing to stop talking.

Hong Zhong stood up and walked around the other beds, checking the condition of the other survivors.

Those strapped to the beds were still alive, but they were all in a deep coma.

Hong Zhong looked at the only conscious man in glasses. After a moment of deliberation, he asked, “Are you the only survivors in this hospital? Are there others? Just answer my question, don’t say anything useless.”

“Sigh…” A bitter smile appeared on the man’s face. “The others have already been liberated. Only we few remain in this world, enduring its many pains.”

“However…” The man hesitated, as if unsure whether he should speak.

Hong Zhong pressed him, “However what?”

The man continued, “However, this wasn’t my original ward. We ‘medicinal primers¹‘ were kept one to a room, scattered across different floors. Just now, a white light flashed, and we all inexplicably appeared here.”

Just as the man finished speaking, Xiao Xiaoyu suddenly whipped her head around to look at the side wall of the ward.

She seemed to see something through the walls, her face turning pale as she muttered, “So this instance is in siege mode…”

Hong Zhong frowned deeply. “Siege mode?”

“To put it simply, it’s like a tower defense game. Before the ghosts fully manifest, we need to gather resources within the instance, scout the spawn points, and set traps outside our base to hinder their advance. We have to prevent the survivors in the base from being killed—success or failure in this kind of instance depends on how many survivors are left standing at the end.”

Xiao Xiaoyu’s expression was grim. “If the Points System were still active, I could have deduced this much sooner… Now, the ghosts in the other wards have already begun to manifest. For the survivors’ safety, we can’t stray too far from this room. We’ll have to hold the line right at the door.”

Hearing this, Hong Zhong immediately rushed out of the ward.

Their ward was at the very end of the corridor. In the distance, numerous figures could already be seen swaying and staggering toward them.

Hong Zhong quickly pulled a roll of yellow cordon tape from his backpack and began stringing it across the hallway at high speed.

This tape was used to seal off anomaly zones during missions; it had the effect of blocking supernatural forces. Setting it up outside the ward should slow down the approaching ghosts.

Inside the ward, Xiao Xiaoyu wasn’t idle either. A knife appeared in her hand out of thin air, and without hesitation, she hacked off her own lower leg.

This knife was a companion tool to her Soul-Tripping Lock; whenever she needed to retrieve the lock, the knife would appear for her to use on her leg.

Xiao Xiaoyu pulled a transparent chain from the flesh of her calf, tossed the useless limb aside, and sat on the floor waiting for the leg to regrow.

Inside an instance, she could have multiple Soul-Tripping Locks active at once if she didn’t use them immediately. The skill’s cooldown was tied to her leg’s regeneration speed; once the leg grew back, she could cut it off again to extract another lock.

This mechanism only existed within instances; players couldn’t cut off their legs to prepare locks in advance before entering.

The man in glasses watched the little girl guarding the door decisively hack off her own leg. His gaze drifted down to his own calf, and he pressed his lips together tightly, silently resolving to stay as quiet as possible.

When Hong Zhong finished setting up in the corridor and returned to the ward, he opened the door to find three severed legs lying on the floor. He jumped, thinking a ghost had attacked the room.

“Don’t worry, it’s just me using my skill,” Xiao Xiaoyu explained.

Looking at the three severed legs, Xiao Xiaoyu sighed softly, thinking to herself what a waste it was.

If her Wugu Doll were still here, she could have fed these three legs to it and cursed at least three powerful ghosts to death.

Once Hong Zhong was inside, Xiao Xiaoyu laid the three Soul-Tripping Locks across the doorway as the final line of defense.

“It’s okay, don’t worry. We just need to hold out for a while. Just a little longer,” Xiao Xiaoyu said, though it was unclear if she was comforting Hong Zhong or herself.

Now, all hope rested on that unfathomable Landlord. She hoped he could control his ghosts and come to their aid in time.

Xiao Xiaoyu had personally experienced the Funeral Parlor instance and had seen how terrifying the Ghost Infant that appeared there was.

She wasn’t worried at all about the Landlord’s ghosts being too weak to crush the instance; her only fear was that the Landlord hadn’t realized they were in danger yet.

Seeing that everything was prepared, Hong Zhong picked up Xiao Xiaoyu—who was immobile due to her missing leg—and placed her behind him. He pressed a button on his chest, and a retractable harness resembling a baby carrier appeared, firmly strapping Xiao Xiaoyu to his back.

Hong Zhong then gripped two guns, facing the ward door directly and observing the situation through the small window.

The sound of heavy objects hitting the floor and the tearing of fabric echoed. Though the figures in the distant corridor were slow, they continued to advance.

…The cordon was working, but it likely wouldn’t hold for long. He would have to shoot the ghosts the moment they came into range.

While Hong Zhong was focused entirely on the door, Xiao Xiaoyu, positioned behind him, suddenly noticed something wrong.

In Xiao Xiaoyu’s vision, the Yin Energy surrounding the patient Hong Zhong had just bandaged was exploding. In the blink of an eye, it had surged to the level of a B-rank ghost!

Just as Xiao Xiaoyu was about to shout a warning, she saw the pessimistic man in glasses pick up a nearby scalpel, slice his own wrist, and let the blood drip into the patient’s mouth.

The Yin Energy rapidly dissipated, and the patient’s condition stabilized.

Xiao Xiaoyu looked toward the man in glasses in shock.

She suspected her vision might be failing her…

Xiao Xiaoyu always judged people’s movements based on fluctuations in supernatural power and Yin Energy. She found it hard to believe that the man who had been muttering things like ‘saving them is useless,’ ‘better to amputate,’ and ‘might as well die’ would actually harm himself to save a comrade who was turning into a ghost.

The man in glasses sighed listlessly. “Sigh… don’t look at me. This guy is a lost cause. Even my blood won’t be able to suppress it for long.”

“If I were the only one in this ward, I wouldn’t have bothered with this mutating fellow… After you guys leave, just let nature take its course. Perhaps dying at the hands of someone who shares the same fate is my ultimate destiny.”

Once he started talking, he couldn’t seem to stop. Perhaps because Xiao Xiaoyu was strapped to Hong Zhong’s back and seemed less intimidating, the man began to wax philosophical again:

“Sigh, what do you think the world after death is like? Is this world just someone’s dream? Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly²—what is real, and what is a facade? Do we really die when we die? Or is death just waking up from a dream and moving toward another way of living?”

The small spark of touched emotion in Xiao Xiaoyu’s heart vanished instantly. She said sternly, “Great philosopher, stop talking. You’re going to distract Hong Zhong.”

“I’m not a philosopher. I’m a doctor.”

“Fine, Doctor. Please shut up.”

“I used to be a doctor, but I’m not anymore. My name is He Yansheng.”

“Hong Zhong, put me down. I’m going to sew this guy’s mouth shut.”

“Something’s wrong…” Hong Zhong, who had been staring out the door, spoke with a puzzled tone. He actually did put Xiao Xiaoyu down.

Hong Zhong pulled the ward door open slightly and pointed at the ghosts outside. “Look. Does it look like the ghosts in the corridor are… disappearing?”

And he wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but the lights in the corridor seemed to be turning red.

The moment Xiao Xiaoyu’s feet hit the floor, before she could check the corridor, she noticed her shadow beginning to stretch rapidly.

The black shadow soon occupied the entire floor, followed by a dim red glow emerging from within it. The floor of the ward seemed to turn into a pool of blood, casting a crimson light over the entire room.

In the next instant, a mangled figure slowly rose from the pool of blood.

He wore a white lab coat stained with mottled blood. His torso was ripped open, and all the internal organs in his abdominal cavity were missing. His lower jaw had been completely torn off, and his tongue hung against his neck, vibrating slightly. This movement stirred the tattered flesh hanging from his cheeks, producing a faint, airy sound that resembled speech: “…Does… it… hurt?”

“I… hurt… so… much…”

As that weak, agonized voice rang out, dozens of spikes suddenly erupted from the pool of blood on the floor, impaling his already broken body.

He looked like a sacrificial offering skewered upon thorns, using his remaining flesh and blood as an offering to some ethereal, distant god.

Because the ward door was wide open, Hong Zhong noticed that every time a spike impaled the Eviscerated Ghost, one of the ghostly figures in the corridor would vanish—this Eviscerated Ghost that had suddenly appeared in the room was helping them.

“That’s the ghost from my room!” Xiao Xiaoyu recognized it instantly. Although her eyes couldn’t see the forms of living people, she could see ghosts very clearly. “It’s the landlord! Mr. Landlord has taken action! We’re safe!!”

Hearing her say this, Hong Zhong was utterly shocked.

He had still underestimated the landlord of Liwan Apartments.

The aura this ghost emitted felt even more dangerous than The Peddler, likely at least A-rank—and yet even such a terrifying entity was completely subservient to that landlord. Was there anything he couldn’t do?

Hong Zhong realized that every time he set a mental expectation and prepared himself for the shock the landlord might bring, that mysterious man would always display even greater power that exceeded his imagination.

—His power was like an bottomless abyss; no one could see the true extent of his strength.

On the system’s real-time broadcast screen, Zhou Fangdong was controlling the Room 105 Eviscerated Ghost like he was playing a shooting gallery mini-game, rapidly sniping all the ghosts and ghost-mutated patients in the hospital.

Honestly, there were way too many ghosts in this instance. The Main God really seemed hell-bent on killing Xiao Xiaoyu. Zhou Fangdong’s finger was clicking the screen so much he felt like he was developing tendonitis; he’d never been this tired even when playing rhythm games.

Just then, Zhou Fangdong caught something out of the corner of his eye on one of the surveillance screens at the top of the system interface. On the hospital rooftop, a group of bald men who looked like cultists seemed to be performing some kind of ritual to pray for a god’s blessing.

Seeing this, he directly extended the Eviscerated Ghost’s blood-shadow range to the rooftop. Before the ritual could be completed, he showed no mercy and skewered the entire group of cultists like candied haws on a stick.

After clearing out the very last ghost in the hospital, a system pop-up appeared:

[Congratulations to the Host for successfully achieving Instance Erosion of the Main God’s instance!]

Zhou Fangdong breathed a sigh of relief.

But before he could check further, the system suddenly filled the screen with exploding fireworks, complete with 3D special effects that were incredibly gaudy.

After the firework effects faded, a pop-up with large, bold font appeared:

[Congratulations to the Host for devouring a clean, unawakened Evil God Avatar Core within this instance!]

An Evil God Avatar Core?

So that group of cultists on the roof just now was actually preparing to summon an Evil God Avatar?

A wave of lingering fear washed over Zhou Fangdong. He had killed them all without looking too closely just now; luckily he had acted fast enough. Otherwise, if the Evil God Avatar had actually appeared, who knows what might have happened.

[System is digesting the Avatar Core. System defenses are being reinforced… Apartment defenses are being reinforced… Construction of a new device to eliminate Evil God pollution within the apartment is underway…]

[Estimated time required: 6 hours]

[Instance Erosion successful! Reward: 2,000 Ghost Coins, one Guaranteed Lottery Ticket (guarantees three items)]

[Energy overflow detected, system cannot digest it in time… Excess power is being used to automatically clean and renovate rooms…]

[Room 202 cleaning and renovation complete. Ready for immediate move-in!]

[Detected that the Room 106 tenant and Room 105 tenant have simultaneously brought a half-ghost back to the apartment. It has been automatically converted into a tenant and settled in Room 202.]

[New Tenant Illustrated Guide entry unlocked: Special Tenant · The Passive Philosopher Doctor!]

[Host, please check the guide and claim your rewards!]

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Translator’s Notes