A Yuan Reward, The Customer Asks If She's Pretty

Brain storage...

"Rumble--!"

Outside the window, a pale lightning bolt tore through the night sky of Donghai City, followed by deafening thunder.

"Qin Feng! Ultimatum!"

On his phone screen, the landlord's text message felt like a death knell.

"Before midnight tomorrow, if the rent isn't paid, I'll throw your pile of junk straight into the sewer! You can owe it there all you want!"

Qin Feng's knuckles turned white from the force, the zero balance on the screen stinging his eyes.

Before he could even close his phone, another message arrived.

"No, not even the sewers of Donghai City are a place for you!!"

He put down the half-eaten, now cold instant noodles.

His landlady's brief rent reminder was more terrifying to him than the lightning outside.

"Poverty is truly the root of all evil," he sighed, skillfully opening the delivery rider app, preparing to take a few more orders to earn enough for tomorrow's meals.

Just then, a special order popped up.

[You have an urgent order to process]

Order destination: Donghai City Fourth Psychiatric Hospital.

Delivery time: Within 44 minutes.

Order notes: None.

What caught Qin Feng's eye the most was the unusually generous tip amount—444 yuan.

"Fourth Psychiatric Hospital? If I remember correctly, it was completely abandoned ten years ago..."

This order felt sinister from head to toe.

Qin Feng's finger hovered over the "Reject" button for half a second, but his peripheral vision involuntarily flickered towards the rent reminder message.

"Damn it, fortune favors the bold. Desperate times call for desperate measures!"

Qin Feng gritted his teeth and accepted the order. For money, forget an abandoned psychiatric hospital, he'd even venture into the underworld!

He quickly put on his slightly leaky raincoat, grabbed his helmet, and shot out like an arrow loosed from a bowstring, into the pouring rain.

The electric scooter sped down the empty streets, its wheels crushing puddles and splashing gray water. The closer they got to the outskirts, the sparser the streetlights became, until they were completely swallowed by the boundless darkness.

The navigation's destination was the silhouette of a massive building, lurking in the darkness.

Donghai City Fourth Psychiatric Hospital.

The rusted wrought-iron gate was ajar, like a gaping maw ready to devour.

The graffiti on the gate, "Psychiatric patients have broad minds, intellectually disabled children have endless joy," looked eerie and ironic under the pale light of his phone's flashlight.

A chilling wind blew out from the gap in the gate, carrying the scent of long-sealed decay, mold, and pungent disinfectant, like an invisible hand gripping his throat.

"The order is to deliver to the inpatient building, room 404..." Qin Feng's scalp tingled as he looked at the information on his phone.

He took a deep breath and pushed open the heavy iron gate. The creaking sound echoed far in the dead, rainy night.

Inside the inpatient building, it was deathly silent.

The corridors were piled with overturned hospital beds and rusted medical equipment.

The plaster on the walls had peeled off in large patches, revealing dark red brick walls like dried scabs.

The beam of his phone's flashlight was his only comfort, swaying unsteadily in the darkness.

"Drip... drip... drip..."

Qin Feng's footsteps echoed in the empty corridor, each step like a beat on a heart.

He held the takeout in one hand and clutched his phone tightly in the other, the flashlight beam his sole source of comfort.

401, 402, 403... The room numbers flashed past his eyes.

Finally, he stopped before a door at the end of the corridor.

404.

Unlike the other closed doors, this one was slightly ajar, a black gap that seemed to lead to another world.

"Hello, your delivery," Qin Feng called out tentatively, his voice sounding hollow and weak in the corridor, with no response.

He hesitated, but still pushed the door open.

The room was dark, with only the occasional flash of lightning outside illuminating the interior. A tall woman stood with her back to him, by the window. She wore an old brown trench coat, her figure slender, her black hair cascading down.

"Your delivery?" Qin Feng asked again, holding out the food container in his hand.

The woman didn't turn around. The air seemed to freeze. The faint scent of blood, barely perceptible before, was now incredibly clear, emanating from the woman.

Qin Feng's scalp suddenly exploded, and a primal fear seized him.

He wanted to retreat, but to his horror, his feet felt like lead, completely unable to move!

The air around him grew thick like mercury, pressing down until he could barely breathe.

A trench coat, a mask, a derelict building—this bizarre scene...

As a seasoned urban legend enthusiast, someone who could spin tales of horror to fill three bowls of rice, countless fragmented pieces of information collided wildly in his mind, finally piecing together a name that sent a chill down his spine.

—The Slit-Mouthed Woman!

"Little brother..." the woman finally spoke, her voice hoarse, like sandpaper scraping against rusted iron sheeting, each word carrying a bone-chilling cold.

She slowly turned around.

A large white mask covered more than half of her face, revealing only a pair of eyes. There was no emotion in them, only a dead, hollow void.

"Why aren't you speaking?" The Slit-Mouthed Woman slowly walked towards him, each step feeling like it was landing on the tip of his heart. "Are you mesmerized by me, or... are you afraid of me?"

Her voice held a hint of playful mockery, and a faint smile seemed to flicker in those hollow eyes.

"Out so late, you must really need money, right?" Her words slithered into Qin Feng's ears like venomous snakes. "Answer my question, and if you get it right, perhaps I can make your death a little quicker."

She reached Qin Feng, and the mingled scent of decay and blood washed over him, nearly suffocating him.

"Do you think..."

"I... am beautiful?"

Here it comes! The classic death question!

Qin Feng's brain instantly crashed, fear flooding him like a tidal wave.

He hit the jackpot!

It really was the legendary Slit-Mouthed Woman!

What to do? What to do!

Legend had it that whether you answered "beautiful" or "not beautiful," it was a dead end!

If you said "beautiful," she would pull off her mask and retort, "Am I beautiful like this?" before using scissors to turn your mouth into the same shape as hers!

If you said "not beautiful," she would fly into a rage on the spot and kill you cruelly. If you tried to escape, that was even more suicidal!

"What, is it hard to answer?" Seeing Qin Feng remain silent, the Slit-Mouthed Woman let out a low, bone-chilling laugh.

Slowly, with a kind of flaunting malice, she pulled down her mask.

Lightning flashed across the sky again.

The ghastly white light instantly illuminated her face, and also that terrifying, gaping maw that stretched to her ears, filled with fangs!

It wasn't a human mouth, but a scar so deep it seemed to reveal bone. The edges of the scar were curled with flesh, crudely stitched together with countless stitches, as if it might tear open again at any moment!

"Clang—"

With a grating sound of metal friction, a huge, rust-stained pair of scissors, nearly half a meter long, suddenly appeared in her hand.

The tips of the scissors still clung to dark red, long-congealed blood clots.

The shadow of death enveloped Qin Feng in a way he had never experienced before.

"I'll give you one last chance," her voice was filled with offended rage. "Am... am I beautiful?"

His terrified pupils reflected in the cold scissors. The metallic tang of death, mixed with the stench of blood, brutally invaded his nostrils.

It's over... For a mere 444 yuan, my life... is ending like this?

I'm truly so poor it's earth-shattering, and my death is certainly... unique.

Just as the cold scissors were about to touch his cheek.

A cold, emotionless mechanical voice, like the first ray of light at the dawn of creation, suddenly exploded in his mind!

[Fatal threat detected... Meets host binding conditions...]

[Sin Clearing System...]

[...Activating!]