Life Path

"Lao Zou, Lao Zou, can you hear me?

"If you're still alive, hurry up and say something."

A hoarse, indistinct voice belonging to another middle-aged man came through the walkie-talkie.

These taxi drivers all had their own circle. It wasn't convenient to contact each other by phone while driving, so they used their walkie-talkies to talk about nearby traffic, fares, gas stations, and the like.

The taxi driver stopped at a red light and replied impatiently,

"I'm taking a fare. If you've got something to say, spit it out.

"Lao Huang, quit beating around the bush."

The voice of the man called Lao Huang came through the walkie-talkie, sounding anxious:

"Don't take any fares near Pingshui Apartment.

"Something's wrong there. An entire floor of an apartment building is dead. It's probably that kind of evil spirit. A lot of residents noticed something was off and fled with their families.

"Tell the guys nearby, too. Don't drive over there until the evil spirit's gone. It's no big deal if old men like us die, but if we accidentally come into contact with an evil spirit and bring it home, infecting our kids, we'll regret it for the rest of our lives."

Gao Tian's heart began to turn cold.

Pingshui Apartment was where he had been.

He hadn't expected the thing to be so vicious. It probably hadn't found him on the Third Floor and had started venting its fury.

Lao Zou impatiently replied, "Got it," over the walkie-talkie, then hung up.

The red light ahead turned green, and the taxi continued on.

Silence settled inside the car for a while.

At last, the driver, Lao Zou, spoke first, his voice hoarse:

"Is that evil spirit dangerous?"

Of course, he had seen that Gao Tian had fled from the area around Pingshui Apartment. His face had looked terrible when he got in the taxi. It was obvious something had been chasing him.

At first, the passenger had wanted to go to the police station, but then he'd suddenly changed his mind. Clearly, even that supposedly safe place was no longer safe.

There was no point hiding anything now.

Gao Tian said, "It's dangerous...

"I provoked something I shouldn't have. It chased me the whole way."

The taxi went around the overpass ahead instead of driving onto it, heading toward the edge of the main road as it gradually slowed down.

The driver cracked the window open and lit a cigarette.

"Young man, you heard what they said earlier. We've all got wives and kids. It's not easy supporting a family. I'm the only breadwinner at home. If I die out there, they won't have money for tuition or living expenses.

"I've heard a little about those things, too. They're vicious. We can't afford to provoke them.

"Try to understand. There's a park up ahead. I'll drop you off there. I'll take you this far, but no farther."

Gao Tian said nothing. He took out his phone to pay.

He had promised to pay double the fare and had no intention of welshing on it.

The driver turned around and pressed his calloused hand against Gao Tian's phone.

"Don't pay. Don't pay.

"This ride's on me.

"I'm really sorry, young man. If I were twenty years younger, maybe I'd have gotten fired up and taken you onto the highway, ready to fight that evil spirit no matter what.

"But I can't do that now. The older you get, the more afraid you are of dying. When I think about going home to my nagging wife and my two daughters, who are going through their rebellious phases and won't listen to me, I'm too scared to die."

Gao Tian got out and shut the door. The older man behind the window didn't hurry off. He looked at the young man in front of him with pity in his eyes.

The older man knew full well that if he drove away, the young man he was leaving behind was certain to die.

He looked about the same age as his own daughter.

Gao Tian looked at the driver, too.

"You seem to know quite a bit about those things."

Driver: "I wouldn't say I know much.

"I drive all over the city every day. I've seen a lot, and I hear plenty from the other guys in the fleet. I've learned about quite a few things the news has covered up.

"Truth is, this kind of crazy stuff happens every day. These things are showing up more and more often. It probably won't be long before the TV and the internet can't keep it hidden anymore.

"I'm working myself to the bone to save money, driving from morning till night. I want to save up a big sum and, before things get completely out of control, at least send my two daughters somewhere safe overseas."

Gao Tian still wasn't ready to give up.

"Tell me, would calling the police help?"

The older man slowly shook his head.

"It won't help. Once they set their sights on you, it's a Death Path. What can ordinary people do against them?

"The police catch criminals and settle disputes between the living.

"They aren't alive, so the police can't do anything about them."

Gao Tian said, "Then who in this world can deal with them?

"Monks? Taoist priests? Pastors?"

Driver: "I don't know.

"Maybe the army.

"When society is on the brink of total panic and collapse, that's when the army will finally mobilize in full. They'll be the last hope for ordinary people like us..."

The car window rolled slowly back up.

Gao Tian lifted his head and watched the taxi disappear into the distance as if fleeing.

Beneath the pool of light cast by the streetlamp, only Gao Tian's lonely figure remained.

The park was already rather secluded, and hardly anyone came there. On top of that, it was the middle of the night. After walking for about five minutes, he hadn't seen a single person.

Gao Tian knew his time was up. He found a bench by the road and sat down.

The Red-eyed Person hadn't appeared yet. He didn't know when it would come to take his life. But his instinct to survive still drove him to calculate at breakneck speed, thinking through any possible way—even if the chance was only the slightest—to stay alive.

He'd read plenty of web novels and knew that in a horror setting like this, supernatural events were rarely truly unwinnable. Beneath the seemingly impossible Killing Rules of these ghosts, there was usually a hidden Life Path, giving ordinary people a chance to survive.

But web novels were one thing, and reality was another.

The protagonists in web novels had plot armor, and authors had to figure out how to make their stories last. If the Vengeful Ghosts were too impossible to overcome, the whole story would end quickly, and the authors wouldn't get any more clicks.

But the ghosts in reality were truly impossible to overcome. There was no need to give ordinary people any Life Path.

Maybe he'd just had bad luck. Maybe he'd encountered a truly unbeatable Vengeful Ghost on his very first try. The instant he clicked on the black packet in the chat group, Gao Tian had become a dead man.

No wonder Ghost Cave had been so confident. Under his plan, the living person in the group really did have a one-hundred-percent chance of dying.

Ghost Cave... That guy.

When he was alive, his instincts had been terrifyingly sharp.

Even though Gao Tian hadn't said a word in the group, Ghost Cave had still managed to single him out by sheer intuition. The excuse was so far-fetched that Gao Tian couldn't help wondering if he was cheating.

Creak, creak.

A cold wind blew past. While Gao Tian was still thinking, the empty swings at the little playground across from the bench began to sway.

Gao Tian slowly raised his head. Even though he'd been prepared, he was still filled with endless despair and fear as death approached.

Pull yourself together. Don't make humanity look bad in front of a ghost.

At some point, a figure had appeared on the swing. Through the sparse trees, the ghastly white face stared in Gao Tian's direction, grinning sinisterly.

A single eye had grown on the ghastly white face that had previously been featureless.

The eye's iris and sclera were both bloodred, but it was beginning to look more and more like Gao Tian's.

It looked like a "Gao Tian" with unnaturally pale skin, a single eye, and a bloodred eyeball.

That "Gao Tian" didn't seem in any hurry to kill him. It just sat on the swing across from him, rocking back and forth as it waited for something.

Perhaps it was waiting for its face to become exactly like Gao Tian's before coming over to kill him.

Until the Red-eyed Person had completely taken on Gao Tian's appearance, it still wasn't "willing" to kill him.

That was why Gao Tian had been able to leave the apartment complex safely and get so far away in a taxi. It wasn't because he'd escaped the Vengeful Ghost's clutches. The Vengeful Ghost had been toying with him, following close behind the whole time.

Now the new "Gao Tian" had almost finished taking shape. This pointless game was nearly over.

Gao Tian finally understood that web novels were all lies. They were all fucking lies.

Online, people claimed they could slide beneath a tiger and stab through its belly, or throw a black bear over their shoulders and knock it unconscious. In reality, it took about seven or eight strong men to hold down a starving tiger until it died.

Vengeful Ghosts were far more terrifying than wild animals, and the gap between them and humans was even greater—a chasm. Could a human really do what a web-novel protagonist did, calmly observe a Vengeful Ghost, find its weakness, and defeat it?

How could it be... Was there really no way to escape?

At that moment, it was as if lightning had struck Gao Tian's brain. He suddenly froze in place, unable to move a single muscle.

The answer might really be this simple.

The only way to survive was right in front of him, but he'd been too stupid to see it until now.

To untie the bell, you had to find the person who tied it. Why was a Vengeful Ghost chasing him? Because of that bizarre chat group full of ghosts.

Then his hope of survival was there, too.

Gao Tian glanced at the swing across from him and was astonished to see it still swaying back and forth, but the figure on it had vanished. The road nearby was empty as well. At some point, the evil spirit had abruptly disappeared again.

But he had no time to dwell on that. It was better that it had gone. He might have gained a tiny bit more time to keep struggling.

Gao Tian lowered his head and opened the chat group as fast as he could, frantically scrolling back through the chat logs to find what Ghost Cave and the others had said.

Once they'd confirmed that the living person in the group was bound to die, Ghost Cave and the others hadn't posted anything else. Clearly, he was confident in this black packet. It was a no-win trap: no matter what the living person chose, death was inevitable.

Gao Tian certainly wasn't going to beg Ghost Cave and the others for mercy.

They were determined to kill the only living person. If Gao Tian spoke up in the group and exposed his identity, he'd only die faster.

"Here.

"I found it!"

The moment Gao Tian found the hope he'd been searching for, it felt as if he'd been brought back from another world, reborn anew.