Nan Zhi knew.
Chen Ping had been a good man during his lifetime.
His colleagues had all said the same.
“He was a good guy.”
A look of sympathy surfaced on his colleague’s face, speaking with a touch of regret:
“You know the type—the office pushover who's nice to everyone.
He never offended anyone, nor did he suck up to anyone. Helping people write code or working overtime was routine for him.”
Chen Ping had been neither a moral paragon nor a model of supreme virtue.
He was just like millions of ordinary people.
He never committed any great evil, occasionally took minor advantages in daily life, and the worst thing he had ever done was probably browse a few adult websites.
He would secretly gloat over finding money on the street, and feel perfectly content when his monthly bonus landed in his bank account.
Conscientious and diligent, living his life earnestly and wholeheartedly.
Even after committing suicide and turning into a vengeful ghost, he hadn't committed any unforgivable atrocities.
Even after being whipped black and blue with willow twigs by Master He, he seemed to harbor no desire for revenge.
Unlike the depictions in countless literary works, Chen Ping still retained a certain degree of sanity as a “human.”
Yet judging from the intent revealed in his demeanor, Chen Ping had already begun viewing that young woman from earlier as his “prey.”
He wanted to devour humans.
He craved flesh and blood.
Just like the Painted Skin Ghost that had been slain.
Could a good person, after being dead for only a year, transform so completely into a monster that craved flesh and blood?
Nan Zhi examined him closely.
Unlike the Chen Ping she had seen during the day, the ghost before her now was enveloped from head to toe in a sticky substance.
Viscous, chaotic, and tyrannical.
Chen Ping’s face shifted continuously—one moment a vicious ghost, the next a human face.
—The “humanity” and “ghostliness” within him seemed locked in struggle.
Yet Chen Ping didn't bare his fangs at Nan Zhi; instead, he grew increasingly awed and submissive.
Watching the deferential vengeful ghost, Nan Zhi understood:
Under the effect of the 【Paper Skin Garment】, he had mistaken her for one of his kind.
And one whose power far surpassed his own.
—It was just, wasn't this attitude a bit too deferential?
Seeing the vengeful ghost slit open his belly to offer candles and ingots from amidst the black ash—items meant only for ghostly consumption—Nan Zhi was caught between laughter and tears.
She refused Chen Ping’s offer once more:
“I don't like eating these things.”
Is she... unwilling to spare him?
Covered in blood and tears, Chen Ping felt entirely numb as another wave of terror washed over his face.
He finally understood how the woman he had treated as prey earlier had felt.
Others were the cleaver, while he was the meat.
Right now, he was that fresh meat on the chopping block, stretching out his neck to await slaughter.
He dared not even harbor a single thought of resistance.
Otherwise...
Chen Ping glanced at the knife in the woman’s hand, feeling as if a boundless sea of blood were capsizing above him, filled with the screams and cries of countless living beings.
What was more, two extraordinarily ferocious Greater Ghosts had once died beneath this blade!
The bone-chilling cold coursing through him was an instinctive warning triggered by sensing the death of his kind.
He couldn't run.
Running meant death.
He couldn't disobey her.
Otherwise, he would die.
Though he didn't know where a ghost went after dying, Chen Ping knew that whatever agony awaited was something he desperately wished to avoid.
He wished he could violently slap himself a few times.
That's what you get for failing to suppress your bloodlust!
That's what you get for losing your mind and insisting on harming people!
Now look at the mess you've made—drawing in a Greater Ghost and bringing utter catastrophe upon yourself.
Now, the only thing he could do was pray.
Pray that the Greater Ghost before him was merely looking for some fleeting amusement,
and wouldn't choose to tear him to shreds and chew him to pieces.
Nan Zhi found Chen Ping’s reaction somewhat odd.
Yet she didn't dwell on it, shifting to another topic instead:
“Why have you refused to reincarnate and instead stayed here causing trouble?”
Chen Ping lifted his head and darted a quick glance at the hem of her skirt, only to feel an overwhelming surge of malevolent energy bearing down on him.
Dressed like this.
Speaking with such archaic diction, too.
Could she be an ancient ghost who had lived for hundreds of years?
He weighed his words, trying his best to answer in terms she would understand:
“Senior, it's not that I don't want to reincarnate, but... I have no idea how to leave this place at all.”
He dared not look at Nan Zhi again, keeping his head low as he answered:
“When I fell, I landed on the billboard outside this floor. Back then, I watched with my own eyes as the firefighters hauled my body away.
When I regained consciousness, I found myself trapped at the boundary between the seventeenth and eighteenth floors.
I can't go up, and I can't go down. My soul can only wander across these two floors.”
In the beginning, Chen Ping thought soul reapers like Black and White Impermanence or Ox-Head and Horse-Face would come to escort him on his journey.
Yet as day after day went by, aside from occasionally encountering one or two old ghosts following office workers into the building, he had never seen any others.
His range of movement was restricted strictly to the seventeenth and eighteenth floors.
Hearing this, Nan Zhi’s heart tightened, and she pressed further, “You've seen other ghosts?”
Chen Ping answered honestly:
“Yes, it was an old ghost who died in a car accident. He died three years before me and had been a ghost longer, so I called him ‘Old Ghost.’
Some of the rules about being a ghost were told to me by him.
During this past year, I've stayed here the whole time, so I haven't seen any other ghosts.”
He seemed terrified of Nan Zhi, blurting out everything he knew in one breath:
“Old Ghost said that in this world, there is no Underworld at all, nor are there any soul reapers or hells.
When people die, the luckier ones can turn into ghosts, while for others, their souls simply dissipate naturally, popping like bubbles—pop—into nothing.”
No Underworld, and no soul reapers or hells?!
Nan Zhi didn't know whether Old Ghost’s claim was true or false, yet she was still shaken by the profound implications behind those words.
Turmoil churned within her heart.
Was this still the world she knew?
There were vengeful ghosts born from suicides, yet no Black and White Impermanence, nor an Underworld.
She could cultivate and practice cultivation techniques, yet she had never seen any City Gods or Land Gods here.
In the real world, spiritual energy was thin, and immortals had never manifested miracles before mortals.
Everything seemed tinged with an eerie strangeness.
Ever since she began practicing the 《Moon-Worshiping Breathing Method》, Nan Zhi naturally understood that heaven and earth were divided into Yin and Yang.
If ghosts existed in the world, there should naturally be a destination for departed souls.
The Underworld in mythology was like a transit station.
After a person died, their soul would travel to the Underworld for transit, to be reborn and reincarnated, entering the Six Paths of Reincarnation once more.
Cycling endlessly in this manner, where Yin and Yang rotate in harmony, was how the natural order should function.
Yet in the real world, ghosts dead for two or three years lingered in the mortal realm, with no soul reapers ever coming to guide them.
This was abnormal.
How many people died on Earth each year?
These souls were supposed to enter the Underworld according to the established laws—punished where punishment was due, reincarnated where reincarnation was warranted.
Yet now, vast numbers of them remained stranded in the mortal realm.
If things continued like this, with Yin and Yang overturned and humans coexisting with ghosts, disaster would strike sooner or later.
Take Chen Ping, for example. Though he still had his sanity right now, what about one year from now? Two years?
Or even ten, a hundred years down the line?
Confused and corrupted by resentful energy, would Chen Ping eventually become just like the Painted Skin Ghost in Dingyuan County, feeding on human hearts?
When that time came, all of Huaxia—and quite possibly the entire world—would become a hunting ground for ghostly beings.
Humanity would tumble from the apex of the food chain.
Such a future was terrifying.
Merely thinking about it sent chills running down her spine.
Nan Zhi remained silent for a long time.
It seemed she needed to find time to visit the temples and Taoist monasteries of the real world to verify whether her suspicions were true.
“...I think because I died on the billboard, I turned into what novels often call an ‘earthbound spirit.’”
Seeing Nan Zhi listening intently, Chen Ping quietly let out a breath of relief.
These words were actually overheard from Old Ghost and supplemented by his own deductions.
Yet the “Greater Ghost” before him seemed quite interested in listening.
Chen Ping stole another glance at Nan Zhi, and recalling her earlier question, his heart began to pound with anticipation:
Since she asked like that...
Could she have a way to help him leave this place?
A flame of hope ignited in the vengeful ghost’s heart, just as when he was still alive.
Rate on N.U.
