Chapter 57

Important function unlocked… [Evil God Disguise Interface]?

Zhou Fangdong opened the system panel and found this newly unlocked function.

This interface was also entirely in a pixelated state. The upper part of the panel featured a small animation: a pixel character that looked very much like him sat in a shrine with his eyes closed. Below him was a dense crowd of pixelated bald figures constantly bowing toward the shrine.

Below the worship animation, the interface was divided into four functional blocks. Currently, only two were lit up: [Ritual Tracking] and [Oracle Impersonation].

Upon clicking [Ritual Tracking], a map of Linjiang City appeared. It displayed the locations of all rituals being conducted by the cultists of the Sigu Society. Any ritual containing the power of an Evil God would be shown, including but not limited to summoning rituals, blessing rituals, and resurrection rituals.

The [Oracle Impersonation] function did more than its name suggested; while modifying an oracle, it could also steal all the sacrifices used in the ritual.

It seemed that besides the Main God Instances, he now had new spots to farm resources.

“System, how do I light up the remaining two functions?”

[To unlock each subsequent point, you need to devour two more clean, unawakened Evil God Avatar Cores.]

[The host can check the [Ritual Tracking] function daily to find where cultists are holding awakening rituals for an Evil God Avatar, then use [Oracle Impersonation] to steal them.]

[Host, please note: in the [Oracle Impersonation] interface, you can only modify rituals that have not yet been responded to by an Evil God. If you respond to a ritual at the same time as an Evil God, there is a risk of discovery.]

Zhou Fangdong opened the Linjiang City Map within [Ritual Tracking] and asked, “Which ones represent rituals not yet responded to by an Evil God, the red dots or the blue dots?”

[Blue light dots are rituals that have not been responded to by an Evil God.]

“Does using the [Oracle Impersonation] function consume anything?”

[Using the [Oracle Impersonation] function once costs 1,000 Ghost Coins. Please select rituals to respond to carefully.]

He did indeed need to be careful… This price point was exactly at that awkward stage of “it hurts a bit, but I can pay if I grit my teeth.” When choosing [Oracle Impersonation], he had to ensure the ritual’s sacrifices were worth a thousand Ghost Coins.

On the [Ritual Tracking] map, those light dots were more numerous in the suburbs, surrounding the city center in a ring. There were only a few scattered in the city center, but they were all red, indicating they had already been responded to by an Evil God.

He would look at these light dots in more detail after returning to his room tonight.

Just now, it seemed he had also unlocked some [New Device for Detecting and Eliminating Evil God Contamination]. The system said it was installed in the hallway…

Zhou Fangdong was currently standing in the second-floor hallway. He could faintly hear the sound of the four investigators in Room 201 packing their luggage.

He looked around and finally locked his gaze on a light gray metal cabinet at the end of the hallway that almost blended into the wall.

This thing had definitely just appeared; he hadn’t noticed it when he came upstairs earlier.

Zhou Fangdong walked to the metal cabinet. Just as he placed his hand on the handle, a system pop-up suddenly appeared:

[This facility’s functions have been synchronized to the system page. You may browse them in the Rental Preview interface.]

Zhou Fangdong opened the Rental Preview interface and found a new [Liwan Apartments Public Area Renovation] function.

After clicking this renovation function, he saw the unlocked floor plans for the first and second floors of the apartment. The interface details stated that this function could stabilize the Yin Energy in the hallways and detect and purify Evil God contamination.

The higher the Renovation Value, the stronger the purification ability.

It was very much like the renovation mini-games he used to play. If this function didn’t cost money, Zhou Fangdong could play with this page all day.

The renovation categories were [Ceiling], [Walls], [Floor], and [Decorations].

Zhou Fangdong opened [Floor] and took a look. There were floorboards of various materials and colors. The cheapest one actually only cost 5 Ghost Coins.

However, just as he dragged that 5-Ghost Coin floorboard to try renovating the second-floor hallway, he realized the price was 5 Ghost Coins per tile…

Zhou Fangdong tried laying out a section of the hallway floor in the preview interface.

The display showed that one hallway required 1,500 floor tiles, totaling 7,500 Ghost Coins.

…This was absolute highway robbery. He only had 11,610 Ghost Coins in total. After finishing one hallway, he wouldn’t have much left.

Renovations and such would have to wait until he had spare cash in the future.

Just as he was about to close the interface, Zhou Fangdong’s gaze lingered on [Decorations].

After a slight hesitation, he clicked [Decorations] anyway—he wanted to see if there were any light fixtures for sale.

When he was picking up those four investigators just now, Zhou Fangdong realized that the apartment hallways were a bit too dark for human tenants. Especially near the stairwell; it was almost impossible to move forward without a light, and one couldn’t see the dried corpse patterns on the stairs clearly.

So, he wanted to buy a few lamps to place in the stairwell.

There were indeed light fixtures for sale in [Decorations], and the lowest-tier price was within his psychological limit.

For the massive crystal chandelier in the apartment entrance, the lowest tier was 300 Ghost Coins. From the preview, this 300-Ghost Coin chandelier wasn’t as luxurious as the apartment’s original; it didn’t have layers of tassels and rhinestones, just a single layer of candle-shaped bulbs with a few crystal chains hanging beneath.

As for the wall lamps that could be installed in the stairwell, the lowest tier was 50 Ghost Coins each for a basic circular model.

Though they were a bit plain, they would serve their purpose. He could replace them with better-looking ones once he was rich.

Zhou Fangdong spent 300 Ghost Coins to buy one crystal chandelier and another 300 for six small wall lamps to place in the stairwell.

After the purchase and renovation were complete, Zhou Fangdong’s gaze swept over small decorations like green plants, hanging paintings, and rugs. He used his powerful willpower to suppress the urge to buy.

Dammit, using these fancy little things to tempt him into spending Ghost Coins…

When Zhou Fangdong played games in his old world, he could ignore equipment effects and skill builds, but his home base had to be perfect.

And now, what tempted him was an immersive 3D home renovation system.

…He couldn’t think about it anymore.

Zhou Fangdong decisively closed the renovation function.

As the renovation interface vanished, a system pop-up appeared:

[Currently, this device only possesses the basic function of “Increasing Renovation Value to Enhance Purification.” Complete unlocking requires the thorough repair of the Liwan Apartments Trash Disposal Station.]

The Trash Disposal Station… Zhou Fangdong suddenly remembered that he had intended to find the Cleaners to complete the side quest for repairing the station. He might as well head over and take a look now.

He hadn’t encountered those five Cleaners on the first or second floors just now, so they were most likely at the Trash Disposal Station in the center of the building complex.

Just as Zhou Fangdong prepared to leave the second floor, he suddenly heard someone calling out to him.

Turning his head, he saw the door to Room 201 cracked open. Four heads poked out simultaneously, watching him with extreme caution.

Li Zhe summoned his courage and asked, “Mr. Landlord, may we ask… are we allowed to leave Liwan Apartments?”

After packing their luggage, these four investigators had discovered a problem—there was no signal on their phones within this apartment complex, making it impossible to contact Hong Zhong.

They had initially intended to slip away quietly, but they found the eerie landlord lingering in the hallway, pacing back and forth with his head lowered.

When the landlord passed by the door of Room 201 again, the four investigators finally couldn’t hold back any longer and took the risk to ask.

Zhou Fangdong was taken aback by their question. “You can leave the apartments whenever you wish. I do not restrict the freedom of my tenants.”

He couldn’t help but feel that Hong Zhong’s four team members were a bit strange. When they first entered, they had struck a combined pose, radiating a bizarrely intense, hot-blooded atmosphere that he couldn’t quite grasp. Then, they had maintained that back-to-back formation all the way up to the second floor.

However, their display of synergy and mutual trust was reassuring to Zhou Fangdong. At the very least, while resting in Room 201, they would surely be able to coordinate their night watch and promptly discover where the Sickness Ghost manifested within the room.

Upon receiving Zhou Fangdong’s affirmative answer, the four investigators breathed a collective sigh of relief.

They were desperate to contact their captain.

Because Hong Zhong was busy dealing with the abandoned hospital, he had only briefly told them over the phone to stay at the apartments and become tenants; he hadn’t explained the purpose behind it at all. Furthermore, the process of becoming tenants had gone a bit too smoothly, making them worry that they hadn’t actually fulfilled their mission.

Despite their urgency, the four waited until they saw Zhou Fangdong walk down the stairs before they finally left the room.

Before they understood the situation, they truly didn’t dare to have too much contact with this mysterious landlord.

Zhou Fangdong reached the first floor and followed the narrow door beside the elevator out to the central garden.

By the Trash Disposal Station in the garden, he indeed saw some familiar shadows.

Quan Wuming and Ming Wuqian, two ghosts dressed in Cleaner uniforms, were lifting a mangled, bloody corpse and stuffing it into the “Human Trash” chute of the Trash Disposal Station.

Zhou Fangdong was genuinely startled.

So that’s what the “Human Trash” and “Ghost Trash” labels on the station meant?

The Cleaners didn’t just clean up litter; they cleaned up people and ghosts who trespassed into the apartments?

“Wait, you two…” Zhou Fangdong quickly called out to them and hurried over to the station.

He first pulled up his special tenant watch list and did a quick scan. After confirming that all his tenants were safe, he turned his gaze to the corpse in the hands of Quan Wuming and Ming Wuqian.

The reason he recognized these two as Quan Wuming and Ming Wuqian was that their bodies were complete and they had human heads, whereas Qian Duolai and the other two had paper-crafted heads¹.

“Where did you find this body?”

The corpse was bloody and still steaming, looking for all the world like it had just died… yet, in contrast to the fresh body, the face was in a weathered, shriveled, mummified state.

“It’s a corpse that came to life from the Apartment Rear Building,” said the person on the left.

For some reason, Quan Wuming and Ming Wuqian looked exactly alike; Zhou Fangdong couldn’t tell which was which.

“We don’t know which ghost moved it from the Rear Building to the front building, but it came to life once it arrived here,” the person on the right added. “It was an eyesore and prone to attacking tenants, so we took care of it. We also had Qian Duolai and the others clean up the entrance hall on the first floor that the corpse got dirty.”

Zhou Fangdong now understood why the first floor had been so clean when he went to pick up the four investigators; it had just been scrubbed.

Calculating based on the timeline, when this strange corpse appeared on the first floor, he must have been in Room 203 investigating the Puff Ghost’s killing conditions.

…If that was the timeline, the body should have been thrown into the disposal station long ago. He shouldn’t have run into them doing it just now.

Thinking of this, Zhou Fangdong asked, “This isn’t the first corpse you’ve cleared away, is it?”

“No, it’s the third,” the person on the left replied.

Zhou Fangdong’s heart sank as he looked toward the Apartment Rear Building not far away.

The main doors of the Rear Building, which had originally been boarded shut with wooden planks, were now standing open.

When had they opened?

Tenants holding apartment keys were supposed to be protected from attacks by ghosts within the complex, but he didn’t know if the keys would still work when being attacked by these strange corpses.

This was trouble. Many ordinary human tenants lived on the first floor, such as Zhao Dawei, Duan Wenyu, and Miao Zheng… Currently, Zhao Dawei was at work, while Duan Wenyu and Miao Zheng had left the apartments for some unknown reason. None of the three were currently in the building.

He had to figure out why these strange corpses were appearing on the first floor before they returned. Otherwise, he felt like he could lose these three tenants at any moment.

Translator’s Notes