“What about me?” An old, trembling voice rang out. The security guard’s eyes were wide open, and the wrinkles on his forehead squeezed into several uneven grooves. “Are you saying I’m dead too?”
He suddenly pulled out the electric baton from his waist, stiffly pointing it at Bai Lixin and Zhao Jia, “You two ghosts, don’t come any closer!”
“You’re the ghosts, not me, I’m a human, I’m a human!”
As if he had been stimulated by something, he suddenly screamed, turned around, and fled in panic.
Zhao Jia hadn’t recovered from the heavy blow of death, and was still sitting there in sorrow. Bai Lixin glanced at Zhao Jia, then followed the security guard out.
The security guard stumbled to the location of the elevator. He looked at the elevator with the number 1 on it, then looked back at Bai Lixin who was chasing him, cursed, and rushed into the dark staircase.
When Bai Lixin reached the entrance of the fire escape, he could no longer see the security guard, only the rapid footsteps echoing, amplified several times by the unique structure of the staircase.
Soon, a panicked figure appeared at the lower stairs.
The security guard clung to the railing of the stairs, looked up at Bai Lixin standing at the entrance to the staircase in horror, screamed, and then turned around and ran upstairs again.
After a few seconds, the security guard’s figure appeared at the lower stairs again.
The security guard saw Bai Lixin and ran upstairs again.
After running back and forth like this several times, the security guard finally walked down the stairs while gasping for breath, supporting his knees with both hands and breathing heavily, “What are you trying to do!”
Bai Lixin: “Tired from running?”
The security guard was tired and angry, and his initial fear was overwhelmed, “I’m exhausted, I’m not running anymore, do whatever you want.”
Bai Lixin: “You’re sweating on your forehead, right? Why don’t you take off your hat?”
The security guard shook his head, “No, I can’t take it off.”
“Why can’t you take it off?”
The security guard looked a little puzzled, but still shook his head, “I can’t take it off, it’s my work hat.”
“…” Bai Lixin fell silent for awhile, and then spoke in a calm tone, “Then, why don’t you touch the back of your head?”
The security guard looked at Bai Lixin with confusion but still obediently reached back and touched.
His palm touched the wet hair, and something sticky, different from sweat, stained his fingers.
The security guard withdrew his hand with confusion, and between his pale fingers, a bright red stained his fingertips.
“Ahhh!” The security guard’s pupils suddenly widened, his body stumbling backward, hitting the wall behind him, “Blood, blood, there’s blood.”
Bai Lixin: “Yes, there’s blood. What happened? Think about it carefully.”
The security guard’s eyes were filled only with the sticky blood.
The redness surged in his vision, stimulating his brain.
Fragments of broken memories kept crashing into his mind.
Blood.
Bright, glaring lights.
Rushing vehicles, harsh and bitter honking.
A puddle of blood, there was blood everywhere.
The noisy crowd, the roar of cars.
The sound of ambulance…
He remembered.
He died, a long time ago.
On the way to work, he saw a child about to be hit by a car in the middle of the road, and he instinctively rushed out.
At that moment, his body floated lightly into the air, and then he lost consciousness.
When he woke up again, he was already in front of the office building.
Work.
Right, he still needs to work.
He still has work to do.
He slowly walked into the office building…
The security guard finally calmed down, staring blankly at Bai Lixin: “Am I really dead?”
Bai Lixin: “Looks like you remembered. Come on, let’s go back to the lobby first.”
The security guard’s eyes were somewhat hollow. He nodded blankly, obediently following Bai Lixin back to the lobby of the office building.
By this time, Zhao Jia’s emotions had also calmed down, and he gradually accepted the fact that he was already dead.
The three of them gathered together, looked at each other, and finally burst into laughter.
Zhao Jia: “It’s unbelievable. After all that, it turns out we’re the ghosts. I can’t believe I died from exhaustion. This way of dying is really ridiculous. When my friends and family attend my funeral, they must be cursing me for being an idiot, actually working myself to death.”
The security guard: “I’m the one who’s ridiculous. With my old bones, being alive was good enough, but I died trying to save someone. How could there be such a fool in the world? My family will scold me when they arrange my funeral. Where would you find a fool who trades his life for a stranger’s.”
The two men’s eyes fell on Bai Lixin at the same time, Zhao Jia: “Brother, how did you die?”
Bai Lixin: “…”
‘Yeah, I also want to know how I “died”.’
Escape System: [Ding! Congratulations to the player for discovering the true state of the body and receiving the bonus tip. Your current status is [Spirit], which ordinary humans cannot see. You can only appear in front of people under two conditions.]
[First condition: It can be visible to specific spiritually sensitive individuals. Such as psychics, exorcists, and others with strong spiritual senses.]
[Second condition: You can temporarily maintain a human form by absorbing yin and replenishing yang.]
Bai Lixin: [How do I replenish yang and absorb yin?]
‘Use Nie Xiaoqian’s method of replenishing yin and yang?’
*Nie Xiaoqian is a female ghost in “Eternity: A Chinese Ghost Story”. Her method is sleeping with mortals.Escape System: [Well, the spirit body belongs to yin, you need to find life forms with abundant yang. Just spend more time with these life forms, and you can absorb their yang energy.]
Bai Lixin adjusted his expression: [Oh.]
‘Oh, so I misunderstood.’
He vaguely brushed off Zhao Jia’s question with a “just like that,” and refocused his attention to the clock on the wall.
It was already ten o’clock in the evening.
Zhao Jia: “Since we’re already dead, shouldn’t we go to the afterlife? Why are we trapped here? It’s not enough to enslave me during my lifetime, but they want me to work here after my death? Am I some kind of donkey for the production team? I want to go back and see my parents and my girlfriend.”
The security guard: “Yeah, I want to leave too. I want to go home and see how my wife is doing.”
Bai Lixin thought for a moment: “Let’s try again, maybe we couldn’t leave before because we had lost our memories. Maybe now that we know we’re ghosts, we can leave.”
The other two ghosts thought this made sense, and they entered the fire escape again.
After a short while, the three ghosts arrived at the 18th floor again.
They couldn’t leave.
They were trapped on the eighteenth floor.
Zhao Jia: “Could we have become earthbound spirits?”
Bai Lixin: “Earthbound spirits?”
Zhao Jia: “I’ve read about this type of ghost in supernatural novels before. They’re spirits who are bound to a certain place after death and can’t move away. They’re called earthbound spirits. These spirits will grow increasingly resentful and eventually become evil spirits.”
He muttered, “I’m already dead, and they still make me work overtime? If I don’t become an evil spirit, who will?”
The security guard nodded frantically: “Exactly!”
Bai Lixin even faintly saw a dark resentment behind the two ghosts: “…”
‘Is this resentment towards work?’
“Ding!” The sudden sound of the elevator at the end of the corridor startled them.
Zhao Jia and the security guard peeked their heads down the corridor and saw that the elevator had opened. The light from the elevator provided dim lighting for the staircase. Then they heard footsteps approaching.
Although they still couldn’t see anyone, now that they knew they were the ghosts themselves, Zhao Jia and the security guard were no longer afraid. They even started joking with each other.
Zhao Jia: “If I really become an evil ghost, the first person I’ll go after is the product manager, making us work overtime every day!”
The security guard: “Why wait to become an evil ghost? We can scare him now, right? Although living people can’t see us, we can still turn on lights and stuff, right?”
Zhao Jia’s eyes lit up, and he grinned mischievously, “Right, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go take a look. When we were alive, we let them boss us around, now that we’re dead, I have to take back control.”
The security guard: ”Exactly, let’s go together. Hey, young man, come with us.”
Compared to Zhao Jia and the security guard’s cheerfulness, Bai Lixin’s expression was calm, his gaze sharp as he stared at the entrance of the office building. As the footsteps approached, he suddenly grabbed Zhao Jia and the security guard’s wrists: “Run!”
Zhao Jia and the security guard didn’t understand what was happening, but they followed Bai Lixin, stumbling and running to the other end of the corridor.
Zhao Jia looked puzzled: “What’s going on? Why are we running?”
Bai Lixin: “The footsteps are wrong.”
From the information provided by the escape system just now, there are ghosts in this copy, as well as psychics and exorcists specialized in dealing with ghosts.
There were footsteps in the corridor, but they were all running away.
Only this one set of footsteps was walking towards them from the elevator.
The footsteps were steady and powerful, and each step felt like it was stepping on his heart, making it ache.
He could even feel his blood clotting and his fingers trembling.
It was fear, a ghost’s instinctive fear towards this set of footsteps.
‘Natural enemies.’
Two words appeared heavily in Bai Lixin’s mind.
The footsteps that were about to turn into the lobby of the office building paused, then started heading straight towards where Bai Lixin and the other two were running.
Bai Lixin glanced towards the dark corridor.
Sure enough, this person was coming for the three of them.
The office building didn’t have any special architectural design, and going further would lead to a dead end.
The footsteps were slow but getting closer to them.
Zhao Jia and the security guard also realized something was wrong.
Compared to Bai Lixin, who was not familiar with this place, the security guard knew this place like the back of his hand.
He quickly pointed to the side and said, “There’s a secret door over there, it’s a passage used by cleaners to transport garbage, we can go around from there.”
Bai Lixin looked in the direction he pointed, and sure enough, he saw a concealed door painted the same color as the wall.
The three of them immediately ran towards it.
Just as the security guard’s hand touched the secret door, his fingers lit up with a golden light, and then his body was heavily thrown backward.
Bai Lixin quickly reached out and pulled the thrown security guard back.
The security guard’s face was a little pale. Bai Lixin glanced at his fingers. The originally pale fingers were now a charred black.
Strange sounds gradually emerged from all around, a crackling sound like breaking glass.
Bai Lixin looked around and noticed a vague glass cover coming over them.
Kaleidoscope-like fine irregular patterns appeared on this glass cover, and everything around them became distorted and displaced.
Something was being shattered.
Bai Lixin handed the security guard to Zhao Jia, instructing them to stand behind him. He took out the scythe emitting a faint white light from his backpack, and looked ahead warily.
The shattered glass cover became increasingly fragile, until finally, with a “crack,” it all turned into powder.
The next moment, a completely different scene appeared before Bai Lixin’s eyes.
“What about me?” An old, trembling voice rang out. The security guard’s eyes were wide open, and the wrinkles on his forehead squeezed into several uneven grooves. “Are you saying I’m dead too?”
He suddenly pulled out the electric baton from his waist, stiffly pointing it at Bai Lixin and Zhao Jia, “You two ghosts, don’t come any closer!”
“You’re the ghosts, not me, I’m a human, I’m a human!”
As if he had been stimulated by something, he suddenly screamed, turned around, and fled in panic.
Zhao Jia hadn’t recovered from the heavy blow of death, and was still sitting there in sorrow. Bai Lixin glanced at Zhao Jia, then followed the security guard out.
The security guard stumbled to the location of the elevator. He looked at the elevator with the number 1 on it, then looked back at Bai Lixin who was chasing him, cursed, and rushed into the dark staircase.
When Bai Lixin reached the entrance of the fire escape, he could no longer see the security guard, only the rapid footsteps echoing, amplified several times by the unique structure of the staircase.
Soon, a panicked figure appeared at the lower stairs.
The security guard clung to the railing of the stairs, looked up at Bai Lixin standing at the entrance to the staircase in horror, screamed, and then turned around and ran upstairs again.
After a few seconds, the security guard’s figure appeared at the lower stairs again.
The security guard saw Bai Lixin and ran upstairs again.
After running back and forth like this several times, the security guard finally walked down the stairs while gasping for breath, supporting his knees with both hands and breathing heavily, “What are you trying to do!”
Bai Lixin: “Tired from running?”
The security guard was tired and angry, and his initial fear was overwhelmed, “I’m exhausted, I’m not running anymore, do whatever you want.”
Bai Lixin: “You’re sweating on your forehead, right? Why don’t you take off your hat?”
The security guard shook his head, “No, I can’t take it off.”
“Why can’t you take it off?”
The security guard looked a little puzzled, but still shook his head, “I can’t take it off, it’s my work hat.”
“…” Bai Lixin fell silent for awhile, and then spoke in a calm tone, “Then, why don’t you touch the back of your head?”
The security guard looked at Bai Lixin with confusion but still obediently reached back and touched.
His palm touched the wet hair, and something sticky, different from sweat, stained his fingers.
The security guard withdrew his hand with confusion, and between his pale fingers, a bright red stained his fingertips.
“Ahhh!” The security guard’s pupils suddenly widened, his body stumbling backward, hitting the wall behind him, “Blood, blood, there’s blood.”
Bai Lixin: “Yes, there’s blood. What happened? Think about it carefully.”
The security guard’s eyes were filled only with the sticky blood.
The redness surged in his vision, stimulating his brain.
Fragments of broken memories kept crashing into his mind.
Blood.
Bright, glaring lights.
Rushing vehicles, harsh and bitter honking.
A puddle of blood, there was blood everywhere.
The noisy crowd, the roar of cars.
The sound of ambulance…
He remembered.
He died, a long time ago.
On the way to work, he saw a child about to be hit by a car in the middle of the road, and he instinctively rushed out.
At that moment, his body floated lightly into the air, and then he lost consciousness.
When he woke up again, he was already in front of the office building.
Work.
Right, he still needs to work.
He still has work to do.
He slowly walked into the office building…
The security guard finally calmed down, staring blankly at Bai Lixin: “Am I really dead?”
Bai Lixin: “Looks like you remembered. Come on, let’s go back to the lobby first.”
The security guard’s eyes were somewhat hollow. He nodded blankly, obediently following Bai Lixin back to the lobby of the office building.
By this time, Zhao Jia’s emotions had also calmed down, and he gradually accepted the fact that he was already dead.
The three of them gathered together, looked at each other, and finally burst into laughter.
Zhao Jia: “It’s unbelievable. After all that, it turns out we’re the ghosts. I can’t believe I died from exhaustion. This way of dying is really ridiculous. When my friends and family attend my funeral, they must be cursing me for being an idiot, actually working myself to death.”
The security guard: “I’m the one who’s ridiculous. With my old bones, being alive was good enough, but I died trying to save someone. How could there be such a fool in the world? My family will scold me when they arrange my funeral. Where would you find a fool who trades his life for a stranger’s.”
The two men’s eyes fell on Bai Lixin at the same time, Zhao Jia: “Brother, how did you die?”
Bai Lixin: “…”
‘Yeah, I also want to know how I “died”.’
Escape System: [Ding! Congratulations to the player for discovering the true state of the body and receiving the bonus tip. Your current status is [Spirit], which ordinary humans cannot see. You can only appear in front of people under two conditions.]
[First condition: It can be visible to specific spiritually sensitive individuals. Such as psychics, exorcists, and others with strong spiritual senses.]
[Second condition: You can temporarily maintain a human form by absorbing yin and replenishing yang.]
Bai Lixin: [How do I replenish yang and absorb yin?]
‘Use Nie Xiaoqian’s method of replenishing yin and yang?’
*Nie Xiaoqian is a female ghost in “Eternity: A Chinese Ghost Story”. Her method is sleeping with mortals.Escape System: [Well, the spirit body belongs to yin, you need to find life forms with abundant yang. Just spend more time with these life forms, and you can absorb their yang energy.]
Bai Lixin adjusted his expression: [Oh.]
‘Oh, so I misunderstood.’
He vaguely brushed off Zhao Jia’s question with a “just like that,” and refocused his attention to the clock on the wall.
It was already ten o’clock in the evening.
Zhao Jia: “Since we’re already dead, shouldn’t we go to the afterlife? Why are we trapped here? It’s not enough to enslave me during my lifetime, but they want me to work here after my death? Am I some kind of donkey for the production team? I want to go back and see my parents and my girlfriend.”
The security guard: “Yeah, I want to leave too. I want to go home and see how my wife is doing.”
Bai Lixin thought for a moment: “Let’s try again, maybe we couldn’t leave before because we had lost our memories. Maybe now that we know we’re ghosts, we can leave.”
The other two ghosts thought this made sense, and they entered the fire escape again.
After a short while, the three ghosts arrived at the 18th floor again.
They couldn’t leave.
They were trapped on the eighteenth floor.
Zhao Jia: “Could we have become earthbound spirits?”
Bai Lixin: “Earthbound spirits?”
Zhao Jia: “I’ve read about this type of ghost in supernatural novels before. They’re spirits who are bound to a certain place after death and can’t move away. They’re called earthbound spirits. These spirits will grow increasingly resentful and eventually become evil spirits.”
He muttered, “I’m already dead, and they still make me work overtime? If I don’t become an evil spirit, who will?”
The security guard nodded frantically: “Exactly!”
Bai Lixin even faintly saw a dark resentment behind the two ghosts: “…”
‘Is this resentment towards work?’
“Ding!” The sudden sound of the elevator at the end of the corridor startled them.
Zhao Jia and the security guard peeked their heads down the corridor and saw that the elevator had opened. The light from the elevator provided dim lighting for the staircase. Then they heard footsteps approaching.
Although they still couldn’t see anyone, now that they knew they were the ghosts themselves, Zhao Jia and the security guard were no longer afraid. They even started joking with each other.
Zhao Jia: “If I really become an evil ghost, the first person I’ll go after is the product manager, making us work overtime every day!”
The security guard: “Why wait to become an evil ghost? We can scare him now, right? Although living people can’t see us, we can still turn on lights and stuff, right?”
Zhao Jia’s eyes lit up, and he grinned mischievously, “Right, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go take a look. When we were alive, we let them boss us around, now that we’re dead, I have to take back control.”
The security guard: ”Exactly, let’s go together. Hey, young man, come with us.”
Compared to Zhao Jia and the security guard’s cheerfulness, Bai Lixin’s expression was calm, his gaze sharp as he stared at the entrance of the office building. As the footsteps approached, he suddenly grabbed Zhao Jia and the security guard’s wrists: “Run!”
Zhao Jia and the security guard didn’t understand what was happening, but they followed Bai Lixin, stumbling and running to the other end of the corridor.
Zhao Jia looked puzzled: “What’s going on? Why are we running?”
Bai Lixin: “The footsteps are wrong.”
From the information provided by the escape system just now, there are ghosts in this copy, as well as psychics and exorcists specialized in dealing with ghosts.
There were footsteps in the corridor, but they were all running away.
Only this one set of footsteps was walking towards them from the elevator.
The footsteps were steady and powerful, and each step felt like it was stepping on his heart, making it ache.
He could even feel his blood clotting and his fingers trembling.
It was fear, a ghost’s instinctive fear towards this set of footsteps.
‘Natural enemies.’
Two words appeared heavily in Bai Lixin’s mind.
The footsteps that were about to turn into the lobby of the office building paused, then started heading straight towards where Bai Lixin and the other two were running.
Bai Lixin glanced towards the dark corridor.
Sure enough, this person was coming for the three of them.
The office building didn’t have any special architectural design, and going further would lead to a dead end.
The footsteps were slow but getting closer to them.
Zhao Jia and the security guard also realized something was wrong.
Compared to Bai Lixin, who was not familiar with this place, the security guard knew this place like the back of his hand.
He quickly pointed to the side and said, “There’s a secret door over there, it’s a passage used by cleaners to transport garbage, we can go around from there.”
Bai Lixin looked in the direction he pointed, and sure enough, he saw a concealed door painted the same color as the wall.
The three of them immediately ran towards it.
Just as the security guard’s hand touched the secret door, his fingers lit up with a golden light, and then his body was heavily thrown backward.
Bai Lixin quickly reached out and pulled the thrown security guard back.
The security guard’s face was a little pale. Bai Lixin glanced at his fingers. The originally pale fingers were now a charred black.
Strange sounds gradually emerged from all around, a crackling sound like breaking glass.
Bai Lixin looked around and noticed a vague glass cover coming over them.
Kaleidoscope-like fine irregular patterns appeared on this glass cover, and everything around them became distorted and displaced.
Something was being shattered.
Bai Lixin handed the security guard to Zhao Jia, instructing them to stand behind him. He took out the scythe emitting a faint white light from his backpack, and looked ahead warily.
The shattered glass cover became increasingly fragile, until finally, with a “crack,” it all turned into powder.
The next moment, a completely different scene appeared before Bai Lixin’s eyes.
