"Crack!"
A crisp shattering sound rang out as the bloodstained phone beneath Qin Feng's foot broke into four pieces, and the soul-rending shriek came to an abrupt halt.
Yet the cold, resentful aura did not dissipate because of it.
After one second of silence, the resentment filling the entire dormitory erupted with almost manic fury!
"Zzzzt—zzzzt!"
Every electronic device in the room instantly went berserk.
The incandescent light on the ceiling stretched everyone's shadows across the walls, twisting them into grotesque shapes.
With a pop, the computer monitor in the dormitory switched on by itself, its static flickering wildly.
Even the tiny indicator light on the charger in the corner burst into a blinding red glow, emitting an overloaded electrical whine.
Resentment converged from every direction, with only one target—Qin Feng.
The phone that had been crushed to pieces actually lit up again, nourished by the resentment.
Countless strands of black resentment, thinner than spider silk, crawled out through the cracks in the screen and reassembled into a line of bloody words.
[You're next.]
Liu Kai and Zhang Wei, slumped in the corner, witnessed this supernatural scene with their own eyes.
Their fear did not fade after being saved. Instead, it seized their hearts with even greater despair.
They understood.
This man was not a savior. He had not resolved the disaster—he had enraged it.
"W-We're... finished..." Zhang Wei's lips trembled, his face ashen. "He pissed that thing off. We're all going to die here!"
Yet Qin Feng, standing at the center of the storm, showed not the slightest trace of fear.
The corners of his lips slowly curled upward, revealing an almost mocking, amused smile.
All urban legends are essentially systems of self-operating rules, Qin Feng sneered inwardly. Brute force is only the worst option. To deal with rules, the best approach is not to fight them, but to dismantle their logic from within...
He even had the leisure to turn back to the two students, who had been scared out of their wits, and say in a tone as relaxed as if he were answering a question in class, "Don't be afraid. Stand farther away. You might get blood splashed all over you."
He paused, pointed at himself, then at the phone overflowing with resentment, and grinned.
"Watch closely. This is what professional communication and customer relationship management look like."
Before his words had even faded, he actually bent down and unhurriedly picked up the largest piece of wreckage from the floor, still attached to the receiver.
He ignored the black resentment flowing across it.
He raised the fragment to his ear and cleared his throat.
In an extremely calm, professional tone of complaint, Qin Feng spoke clearly. "Hello? Is this the Ghost Call after-sales service center?"
"My name is Qin Feng. I'm a potential customer for your Death Notice service. Yes, I'd like to file a complaint."
The resentment throughout the room froze.
Even the flickering ceiling lights paused strangely for half a second.
For the first time, the bloody words frantically flashing across the shattered screen lagged.
A complaint?
A prey about to be killed by its rules was complaining about its business capabilities?
Not even the most cunning Legend Hunters recorded in the Special Cases Department archives had ever heard of such a move—let alone a ghost.
Qin Feng ignored the urban legend's "crash" and continued with his "complaint."
"First of all, I'm complaining about your business process.
Notice, execution—the process is rigid, utterly unoriginal, and completely ignores users' individual needs. The user experience is terrible!" His voice carried the pained disappointment of someone frustrated by its failure to improve.
"'You will fall from a great height'?
'Electricity will burn your nerves'?
That's way too blunt, man!
There's no suspense or artistry at all. It sounds like lousy dialogue from a third-rate horror movie.
Can't you be more subtle? More artistic?
For example, 'You will have an intimate zero-distance encounter with Mother Earth,' or 'You will experience a faster-than-light cellular Joule heating treatment.'
See? Doesn't that instantly sound classier?"
"And your UI design—that bloody text. Can't you change the font?
It never changes. People are sick of looking at it!
Make some paid skins. Gothic style, Cthulhu style, whatever! No creativity!"
"Bad review! Definitely a bad review!"
The bloody words began flickering madly at an unprecedented speed.
The resentment accumulated in the dormitory building surged violently, and the lights throughout the hallway began flashing on and off.
It tried to intensify its rule-based curse upon Qin Feng. That deathly shadow capable of causing phantom pain descended once more.
But this time, it discovered in horror that its power had become sluggish and uneven. Qin Feng's crooked nonsense had severely disrupted its most fundamental operating logic!
Liu Kai and Zhang Wei were dumbfounded.
Their mouths hung open as they stared blankly at Qin Feng, who was giving a phone fragment a well-reasoned, logically clear "business complaint" that even included optimization proposals.
They felt as though an invisible hand had seized their brains, forcibly rewriting the worldview and common sense they had built since childhood.
This guy... was giving a life-taking Vengeful Ghost "user experience optimization feedback"?
Who the hell was crazy in this world?
Qin Feng ignored the urban legend's rage, as well as the ghost-struck expressions on the two students' faces.
He slowly lowered the phone fragment. Then, beneath the increasingly confused and furious "gaze" of the urban legend, he took out his own brand-new smartphone, its screen still lit.
He raised the phone to his ear, a cruel, devilish smile appearing on his face, and sneered coldly at the core of that resentment.
"Looks like your company's pre-job training is inadequate. Your new employee's business skills are deeply concerning."
"Don't rush. As your chosen premium customer, I'll personally teach you a lesson today."
"I'll teach you what a real... Life-Taking Call is."
Qin Feng's words—"I'll teach you what a Life-Taking Call is"—were like a spark falling into a powder keg, completely igniting Ghost Call's fury.
It abandoned all its fancy rule-based notices.
To hell with procedures! To hell with user experience! This human had to die!
"Bzzzz—!"
All the resentment in the dormitory building was drained in an instant, converging into a torrent of information that transformed into hundreds of millions of phone rings exploding in Qin Feng's mind at once!
Every ring carried a different death curse, attempting to overwhelm and tear apart his mind with the most terrifying information overload.
Wherever the shockwave passed, paint silently peeled from the walls, and a faint, glass-shattering wail echoed through the air.
This was pure, unreasonable spiritual annihilation!
Liu Kai and Zhang Wei in the corner were merely brushed by the aftershock of that mental assault. Their eyes rolled back, and they instantly fainted.
Yet Qin Feng, facing that torrent head-on, neither dodged nor retreated.
Within his Spiritual Sense, that so-called mental attack was nothing more than a chaotic, disorganized mass of "curse data packets."
The smile on Qin Feng's lips only widened.
"Excellent. Now it's my turn to give you... a performance evaluation."
Before you continue