Chapter 26: Chapter 26: Investigating Xu Yuan

[Memory Ghost]:

The mission is complete.

After your corpse reanimated, I stuck the Ghost Transformation Spear in it, and it fell apart again.

[Living Persons’ Apartment]:

Thanks.

You can keep that Ghost Transformation Spear for yourself. Consider it payment for the mission.

It’s useless for the living, but it’s quite useful for us ghosts.

If you see some living person you like the look of, just spear them. They’ll instantly turn into a ghost and come down here to keep you company.

Hahaha.

...

Xu Yuan’s words sent a chill down Gao Tian’s spine.

’These guys really don’t give a damn about human life.’

’Then again, they’ve been ghosts for years. They’re a completely different species from humans now, even if they were once human themselves.’

’It’s hard to imagine that the malevolent ghost in the group chat now was, over twenty years ago, the little boy who swore to drive out all the ghosts in the world.’

...

[Memory Ghost]:

One more thing.

Your corpse was headless, but it ended up growing the head of a young woman who is now parasitizing your body.

That woman is a very popular celebrity right now...

[Living Persons’ Apartment]:

That celebrity is a ghost. I knew that even when I was alive.

Now she’s appearing more and more on all kinds of big screens, and her face is becoming deeply ingrained in many people’s minds.

What she’s planning, I don’t know yet. She seems harmless for now, but she must be struggling to suppress her inner urge to kill.

After all, a ghost is a ghost, and it’s impossible for a ghost not to kill.

With that stunningly beautiful face, that ghost must be setting up some terrifying grand scheme. When she finally makes her move, I can’t imagine how devastating it will be.

[Memory Ghost]:

How did you lose your head at Sapphire Mall?

Did another malevolent ghost take it?

...

After Gao Tian typed that line, he had expected that, given Xu Yuan’s personality and status in the chat group, he would say something like, "I’ll get it back once I’ve recovered my strength."

He never expected that, a moment later, Living Persons’ Apartment would reply with such a message.

[Living Persons’ Apartment]:

Falling into that thing’s hands... I’m afraid I’ll never get it back.

With my power back then, very few malevolent ghosts in this world could have killed me. But it just had to be one of them.

That thing... you can’t even mention its name. Let’s not talk about it in the group.

...

...

After the chat ended, Gao Tian lay in his private bedroom in the Living Persons’ Apartment.

It had now been three days since the end of the second green-text mission. Boss Jin had been generous, paying him a large sum of money as a reward for his contributions.

The third green-text mission wouldn’t arrive for about three weeks. During this time, the injury on his hand healed quickly, and he also made some new friends in the apartment.

TAP, TAP.

From upstairs, came the sound of a rolling marble.

Gao Tian lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling.

He hadn’t forgotten that he had deliberately chosen a room on the third floor. In the Living Persons’ Apartment, the floors above the third were not for living residents. Only ghosts lived up there.

Gao Tian had been tricked once before by the little girl in the photograph. She had altered his memories, luring him upstairs to be "reunited" with his "parents." It was an unpleasant memory. Even though he had been lucky enough to escape and obtain the key item—the black card—he had no plans to go upstairs again anytime soon. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

The marble began to roll back and forth from the same spot on the fourth-story floor, making an unbearable scraping sound. There was also the sound of bare feet running around, interspersed with the bell-like laughter of children and their nonsensical babbling.

Fortunately, these sounds never lasted long. They would occur for about three to five minutes each day, then quickly disappear.

Over the past few days, Gao Tian would sometimes be sound asleep only to be jolted awake by the ear-splitting scream of a woman or the crying of a baby from the fourth floor. But as soon as he opened his eyes and saw nothing but the empty ceiling above, the shrieking from the fourth floor would quickly fade.

A resident with an average mental fortitude, knowing full well that ghosts lived upstairs, would probably be driven mad by all these chaotic noises.

But Gao Tian’s goal was to uncover the secrets of the Living Persons’ Apartment and get out alive. Therefore, training his mental resilience, gradually getting used to the presence of ghosts, and accepting them as a part of his daily life were all necessary exercises.

After the sound of the rolling marble from upstairs stopped, Gao Tian closed his eyes and drifted back into a deep sleep.

...

In the afternoon, Gao Tian put on running shoes and sweatpants, preparing to leave the Living Persons’ Apartment for a five-kilometer endurance run.

After all, ample stamina was a crucial factor in supernatural incidents. Some apartment residents survived missions that should have been fatal simply because they had better physical endurance than the other participants.

SCREECH—

The harsh sound of a car braking.

A Porsche Cayenne suddenly shot out from the intersection corner. The window rolled down, and a young man with bleached-blond hair and sunglasses stuck his head out, cursing at Gao Tian:

"Are you in a fucking hurry to get reincarnated?"

"If you’re not gonna use your eyes, donate them to someone who needs them, you motherfucker."

Gao Tian, who had nearly been hit, glanced at the traffic light. It was green for him. Plus, cars turning at an intersection are supposed to yield to pedestrians going straight. No matter how you looked at it, the Cayenne driver was the one in the wrong.

A normal person definitely wouldn’t have been able to swallow that insult. Gao Tian looked up, about to use his Memory Ghost ability to teach the guy a lesson. But when he saw the face of the blond young man in the Cayenne, both of them froze for a second:

"Zhao Qiang?"

Zhao Qiang was a student from Gao Tian’s grade—a rich second-generation punk.

Logically speaking, with a combined score for six subjects that didn’t even break into the triple digits, Zhao Qiang had no business being in the same high school as Gao Tian. But his family wasn’t just rich; they had astounding connections. Through a series of maneuvers, such as enrolling him as a "visiting student," they had managed to shoehorn a punk into a key municipal high school. For three years, he had skipped classes, gotten into fights, and fooled around with girls, yet he was never expelled, which just goes to show how deep his family’s connections ran.

Of course, when it came to the national college entrance exams, even his father, with all his influence, couldn’t pull strings. Word was the kid couldn’t even test into a junior college. Naturally, that didn’t stop him from living a life of debauchery and indulgence after high school graduation.

Upon seeing it was his classmate, Gao Tian, Zhao Qiang waved his hand magnanimously, indicating he wouldn’t stoop to arguing with him:

"Oh, it’s you. Forget it, forget it. For the sake of being classmates, I can’t be bothered with you. Now hurry up and get out of the way.

"Watch where you’re going next time. You won’t always be this lucky."

He started to roll up the window, ready to leave. Looking at Zhao Qiang’s profile, Gao Tian couldn’t help but laugh:

"Well, if you put it that way, I should really thank you for your generosity."

Hearing this, Zhao Qiang’s explosive temper flared up again. He rolled the window back down, took off his sunglasses, and stuck his head out, revealing a pair of sinister, narrow eyes:

"What?"

"You fucking piece of shit. I let you off the hook because we spent three years in the same classroom, and now you’re pushing your luck?"

Faced with this scoundrel, Gao Tian wasn’t angry. On the contrary, he was actually a little relieved. He had a use for Zhao Qiang.

Gao Tian took a small, transparent bag from his pocket containing half of a yellowed fingernail and shoved it right under Zhao Qiang’s nose:

"Alright, I can’t be bothered to waste my breath on scum like you. But even a pile of shit or a basin of piss has its uses if put in the right place.

"This is a fingernail from a corpse. I want you to use your connections to find the deceased’s DNA and all of his background information. Get it to me within a week if you can. The deceased’s life story, teachers, family—all of it. I need everything."

The fingernail Gao Tian handed over was, of course, one he had taken from Xu Yuan’s body.

There were plenty of rich people in the Living Persons’ Apartment, like Boss Jin. But for this kind of investigation, it was best to find an outsider who had no connection to the apartment.

Hearing the commanding tone Gao Tian used with him, Zhao Qiang could hardly believe his ears. The veins on his neck bulged:

"I say, are you fucking asking for it? Do you believe I can have you buried alive tonight...?"

Of course, Gao Tian knew the punk’s temper and didn’t expect him to obey meekly. Immediately, he activated his Memory Ghost ability on the two people in the car:

"Hey, Zhao Qiang, you seem to have forgotten about the dirt I have on you from high school.

"Don’t you remember that night? How you accidentally beat your ex-girlfriend to death, and how you begged me to help you dig a hole on the back mountain?

"You made such a nice promise back then. As long as I kept my mouth shut, we’d be brothers for life. Now, I’m just asking you to do me a small favor, and you turn on me like this?"