Su Jiu, Li Jin, Big Elephant Jin, and the others found trash bags in the mall and tightly wrapped up the corpse pieces they had collected. They brought them to the first-floor plaza and tried to piece them together.
On an ordinary day, curious passersby would have stopped to watch and see what these people were doing. But now, most of the people in the mall were gripped by the fear that they couldn't leave, and no one paid any attention to them.
Once all the corpse pieces were put together, they formed a complete body, missing only its head.
At that moment, Shata, who was still standing in the middle of the plaza, did something that took everyone by surprise.
She strode straight toward the enormous GG Sign. Then she braced both hands against the iron pole beneath it, her arms tensing beneath her dress. With a terrifying metallic screech, the pole creaked and groaned as she slowly, inch by inch, wrenched the entire GG Sign right out of the ground.
This was outrageous.
It was even more unbelievable than Lu Zhishen uprooting a willow tree.
The woman was only about 1.6 meters tall. Beneath the several-dozen-meter-high GG Sign, she was as tiny as an ant. Yet, incredibly, she really had grabbed hold of the sign and was slowly pulling it up!
Across the plaza, Big Elephant Jin and the others gaped at the sight. Was she even human? She had to be Superwoman.
Gao Tian was even more astonished. He knew Shata was incredibly strong and had gained a Supernatural Item that increased her strength after a Green Text Mission. But he had never imagined that this petite young woman could be so powerful.
Many of the passersby who had been watching the mall entrance were also stunned speechless by the incredible sight. They all took out their phones to record it.
In the midst of this bizarre scene, most people failed to notice that even though the GG Screen had been pulled out by its roots, and the wires connected beneath it had all been torn apart, the enormous face of the female star on the screen hadn't disappeared. Despite losing its power supply, it kept mechanically repeating the motion of applying cosmetics.
The GG Screen wasn't right. It didn't rely on electricity to play!
Jiangyang was the first to react. He grabbed a corpse piece in each hand.
"Shata thinks the head of the corpse is the female star's head on the GG Screen!
"Let's hurry over and put the headless body beneath the GG Screen!"
This was just too damn absurd.
How could the face of the female star on the GG Screen serve as the sixth piece—the head?
But Gao Tian and the others had no time to ask questions. In the distance, Shata was a tiny black speck beneath the enormous GG Screen. She staggered as she walked, as if lifting a screen dozens of times her size was an immense burden. She was struggling to hold it up.
Gao Tian, Big Elephant Jin, and the others each grabbed a leg and rushed beneath Shata as fast as they could. They pieced the headless body back together, and then Shata slammed the GG Sign down over it with a thunderous crash.
She was drenched in sweat. Clearly, pulling the GG Sign from the ground had drained most of her strength.
After that, everyone began backing away from the corpse, putting as much distance between themselves and the pieces as they could. They watched to see what would happen next.
This was a lesson from the Apartment Old Residents: just as a mission was about to end, participants were at their most distracted. Green Text Missions loved to spring a Face Jump Kill at moments like these, killing participants who were full of hope and waiting for their rewards to be tallied.
Gao Tian and the others stared at the "complete" corpse. It had a man's body, but a female star's face from the GG Sign. They had no idea whether that counted as completing the Green Text Mission.
Only a few seconds had passed, but to them, it felt like a century.
A moment later, Gao Tian and the others witnessed something unbelievable. The corpse pieces that had been scattered among the black bags began moving, drawing together like magnets and joining up.
Rotting flesh split through the black bags. The corpse pieces connected to one another, forming a new body.
The female star on the GG Sign was especially disturbing. She stopped applying makeup on the screen and slowly turned her head. Blood began to seep from her deep-set eye sockets.
Then the GG Screen went black. At the neck of the body, which had been missing its head, thick black hair began to sprout. A round head seemed to be struggling to push its way out.
The mutilated corpse accepted the female star on the GG Sign as its final Puzzle Piece.
"This is so damn fake."
Li Jin couldn't help complaining.
"How's an ordinary person supposed to get through this?"
Shata and Jiangyang were no less tense. They had indeed fulfilled the requirements of the Green Text Mission, but this mission was just too damn ridiculous.
Fetid black blood pooled beneath the corpse. As its head began to grow, its arms and legs started twitching as if electrocuted. Its movements were twisted and strange, as though it were struggling to rise from the ground.
The six corpse pieces had been stitched together. So why hadn't the Green Text Mission announced that it was over?
Gao Tian watched the corpse twitching on the ground, and a sense of foreboding stirred in his heart.
If the corpse had originally belonged to Xu Yuan, then it must be extremely unhappy now.
That head wasn't his at all. It belonged to some random woman. Anyone would be pissed.
But Gao Tian and the others couldn't go and find Xu Yuan's real head for him, either. The Vengeful Ghost who liked collecting things had taken it away. That ghost was most likely no longer in the mall. How was Gao Tian supposed to find it?
At some point, a woman in the crowd of onlookers shrieked.
"Is that black thing... standing up?"
The corpse Gao Tian and the others had painstakingly pieced together hadn't stopped for good just because they had fulfilled the mission's requirements. On the contrary, now that it had a complete body, the indescribable, rotting thing tore through the black bags wrapped around its mangled form and climbed to its feet, as if it had been given new life.
The first thing the corpse did after getting up was run toward Shata, Gao Tian, and the others across from it. At first, it staggered as it ran, then fell flat after only a couple of steps. But once it got back up, it seemed to have gained better control of its body, and its pace grew faster and faster.
It was a deeply disturbing sight. The rotting corpse's head had fully formed into the female star's beautiful, almost radiant face. Yet black liquid still seeped from its body, and it gave off a nauseating stench. The female star's face smiled mechanically as it drew closer to the apartment residents.
The distance between them began to shrink.
"What on earth is going on?
"Hasn't the mission ended?"
Su Jiu had clearly never taken part in a mission before. At this bizarre sight, she completely broke down. She dropped to the ground and stared in shock at the approaching corpse.
Boss Jin looked fat and heavy, but he was the quickest to react. As soon as he saw things were going badly, he turned and ran.
Shata remained where she was, muttering to herself.
"We were tricked.
"The Green Text Mission said that the corpse pieces would undergo Corpse Transformation at nine o'clock.
"But it never said the corpse wouldn't undergo Corpse Transformation after it had been pieced together.
"Putting all six pieces together actually sped up the transformation. She woke up before nine."
Jiangyang's jaw nearly hit the ground.
"What?
"That can happen?"
No matter how hard it was to accept, the sight of the female corpse drawing closer left them no choice. They knew they had to face reality, and in their hearts, they cursed Living Person Apartment a thousand times over.
Su Jiu was falling apart, too.
"What do we do now? I don't want to die. This isn't fair! I did exactly what the apartment asked and put the whole body together..."
Li Jin was even angrier. He cursed furiously.
"Living Person Apartment, you—"
Shata stepped in front of everyone, her expression cold.
"I'll find a way to hold it off for a while.
"If you have the ability, find your own Life Path. Figure out how to escape."
She and Jiangyang had each taken five million from Boss Jin. Since they hadn't completed the Green Text Mission, this was the only way they could make up for the loss as much as possible.
But how long could they hold it off?
Ghosts could never be killed. Even with Shata's unusually strong physique and several Supernatural Items to back her up, she couldn't hold the female corpse back indefinitely.
She and Jiangyang could stall it for a little while. Once Shata was completely out of options, she could activate her Black Card and return to Living Person Apartment. She would have no choice but to abandon Boss Jin and the other participants.
But where could Boss Jin and the others go in the little time they had?
The White Mist had sealed off Sapphire Mall. There was no way out. If they played hide-and-seek with the complete corpse inside the mall, every participant would eventually be found one by one and killed in the most brutal fashion.
It had been decided from the start. This mission had never intended to let the participants survive. Fail to find the corpse pieces, and you died. Find every piece, and you died early.
In the blink of an eye, the female corpse reached Shata. It wore a strange, mechanical smile. Shata clenched her fists, ready to fight the Vengeful Ghost. But the female corpse twisted in midair at an impossible angle, bypassed Shata, and reached for Su Jiu, who was closest to it.
The complete female corpse was only interested in the participants in the Green Text Mission. For the time being, she had no interest in killing a bystander like Shata.
As Su Jiu screamed, and the people nearby cried out in alarm, Gao Tian—who had remained silent all this time—finally seized the once-in-a-lifetime opening and sprang into action. The Ghost Transformation Spear in his hand flashed like a streak of white light, piercing straight through the corpse's back. The force of the blow was so immense that it pinned her to the ground.
Something strange happened. The moment Gao Tian's spear pierced the corpse, it seemed to crash like a machine shutting down. It lay motionless on the ground.
"Congratulations, everyone. You have completed the second Green Text Mission."
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