Twisted Hell

That strange white oval-shaped object was a woman's face!

It clung to the Third Floor's ceiling, wearing a bizarre smile as it flashed past at incredible speed, quickly disappearing into the darkness.

Thinking about it carefully, her posture in the darkness had been utterly bizarre.

When people walked normally, how could their heads possibly be pressed against the ground? The only way that could happen was if the woman was lying flat on the floor with her whole body.

But if she was lying flat, how could she move so fast? Was this woman a crab, able to scuttle sideways at high speed?

There was no doubt that the woman laughing eerily upstairs was a Ghost—and a particularly bizarre one at that. Gao Tian immediately ordered all the hired thugs to retreat. He wasn't just worried about their safety. If those cannon fodder were killed on the stairs, the woman upstairs would come down and kill him first.

The middle-aged man had weathered plenty of storms in his time. The moment he heard Gao Tian's roar from downstairs, he sensed something was wrong. He retreated while drawing his gun and firing repeatedly at the strange outline wriggling toward him through the empty air.

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At the same time, the woman's laughing face on the Third Floor finally emerged completely—

A long, snow-white neck, as long as a python, supported a thin, pancake-like face that stretched out from the Third Floor and leered at Gao Tian downstairs and the people on the stairs.

Her neck was not only pale and slender, but also extremely flexible. Like a boneless snake, it twisted and turned without stopping, seemingly trying to choose a target. A distorted smile remained fixed on her unremarkable face.

The hired thugs were so shocked by the sight that they could hardly bear it. How could a normal person's neck stretch this far? The body connecting her neck to her face remained hidden in the darkness on the Third Floor, its true form still unseen. Shou Hou and the others who had gone up first had probably already been killed silently in the dark.

The three men on the stairs fired repeatedly as they retreated toward the Second Floor.

Countless bullets whistled into the woman's suspended face, spraying up blossoms of blood. Yet her face maintained a faint, world-weary expression. Her wounds swallowed the bullets and healed at incredible speed, as if she hadn't been affected at all.

In their shock, the group quickly emptied their pistols. When they pulled the triggers again, all they heard was the weak click of an empty chamber.

The middle-aged man's hands were trembling violently. He fumbled for a fresh magazine, but after several tries, he still couldn't get it into his pistol. His hands were shaking far too badly.

Bang, bang, bang.

From the Third Floor, two irregular round objects came tumbling down, bouncing awkwardly as they rolled and left long trails of blood across the stairs.

They were Shou Hou and San Hu's heads. Their necks had been severed cleanly, and their faces wore cautious expressions, as if they hadn't yet realized they were dead.

After hearing the gunshots on the Second Floor, Gray Wolf and the others rushed up from downstairs as fast as they could. They, too, were utterly shocked when they saw the extraordinarily long neck slowly stretching down from the Third Floor, with the woman's resentful face at its end.

Strangely, the woman's face simply stopped between the Third and Second Floors. She watched the people below in silence, smiling, but for the moment, she made no move to attack them.

"Bullets... Bullets barely do a thing to this thing."

Standing amid a floor littered with bullet casings, the middle-aged man gritted his teeth and warned Gray Wolf and Crocodile in an almost hoarse voice.

Gao Tian was also wondering why the woman on the Third Floor hadn't attacked and killed them yet. Could there be some Killing Rule they hadn't triggered?

Would she attack only if they entered the Third Floor?

Just then, his phone let out several notification chimes in quick succession. They were all messages from the Jialan Society Chat Group, conversations with Ghost Users. Unfortunately, everyone's attention was fixed on the woman's face protruding between the Third and Second Floors, and Gao Tian had no time to check his phone.

[Living Person Apartment]:

Something's happened. Someone's broken into my Old Home.

[Ghost Infant]:

WTF?

What are the odds? Could it just be some passing kid or a vagrant who wandered in by accident?

[Living Person Apartment]:

No. My pot was placed on the Third Floor, and these people have guns. They're obviously after it.

[Ghost Cave]:

@Living Person Apartment Are they Ghost Hunters from another province? How did they find out where your Old Home is?

Do you want me to go over? I can move around freely for now, but it'll take me three hours to get to Hengzhou.

[Living Person Apartment]:

@Ghost Cave There's no need to worry for now.

When I left my Old Home, I had a feeling something would happen there, so I raised a Ghost and left it on the Third Floor.

Besides, I also cut off a part of my Ghost Domain and left it behind at my Old Home.

Anyone who enters, even a top Ghost Hunter, will definitely be trapped inside the Ghost Domain. In the end, the Ghost will kill them.

No one will be able to take my pot alive.

Although Gao Tian, still inside the old house, couldn't see the conversation in the chat group, he wasn't stupid. He knew the Evil Spirit on the Third Floor had to be something Xu Yuan had left behind. It had been raised as a Ghost to kill all the Ghost Hunters who came looking for treasure.

Seeing that the woman hanging down from the Third Floor still showed no sign of attacking, Gao Tian waited with her in a tense standoff for a moment, then began slowly backing away toward the stairs to the First Floor. He tried not to provoke her as he made his way out.

The hired thugs also pointed their guns at the dangling white face as they backed away, each trying to get out first. At a time like this, forget fifty thousand—neither five hundred thousand nor five million could persuade them to stay. What good was all that money if they were dead?

The woman watched them leave, swaying slightly in the air and laughing incessantly.

Suddenly, she stopped laughing. She parted a pair of blood-red lips, revealing a pitch-black mouth with no teeth, and began to speak:

"Li Santian...

"Li Santian.

"Li Santian!"

Her voice sounded extremely unnatural, like a machine deliberately imitating the cadence of human speech.

Who was Li Santian?

Could Li Santian have been the name of the woman Xu Yuan had raised at his Old Home when she was alive?

Gao Tian searched Zhao Qiang's memories and suddenly remembered: Li Santian was the real name of the hired thug nicknamed Crocodile. Crocodile's actual name was Li Santian.

At that moment, just like the others, he was carefully retreating from the Second Floor. Why was the woman calling his name?

After hearing his name called three times, Crocodile realized something was wrong. With a furious roar, he raised his pistol and began pulling the trigger wildly. With a snap, his head suddenly seemed to lose interest in staying attached to his neck. It split in four directions, like a watermelon sliced into pieces, and fell away from his body.

Crocodile became a headless corpse in an instant. His body hit the floor with a thud.

At the sight, the hired thugs screamed in terror. The last shred of their reason gave way, and they turned and bolted downstairs like madmen. There was no stopping them from running for their lives now.

Gao Tian rushed down to the First Floor with them. He then understood one of the Ghost's Killing Rules: anyone she called by name three times would drop dead on the spot.

Worse, the woman could automatically learn anyone's name just by looking at them. That Killing Rule was nearly impossible to overcome. Once she set her sights on someone, they had no way to escape.

As Gao Tian reached the First Floor Hall, the woman's muffled voice sounded from upstairs. It seemed she was calling someone else's name again. Who would be her next victim?

The door leading outside from the First Floor was still open. But when Gao Tian reached it, he forcibly held back his fear and didn't rush out of the White House.

Because the scenery outside the White House was wrong.

The sky, once pitch-black with a faint fish-belly white glow, had turned entirely blood-red at some point. The clouds seemed alive, slowly writhing along the horizon, while the sun and moon had become two bloody hooks hanging over everyone's heads.

Under the blood-red sky, the weeds and old furniture in the courtyard had also turned crimson. They looked less like furnishings used by the Living, and more like a sea of blood and the Bridge of Helplessness through which the dead passed on their way to the underworld.

What the hell, was this still Earth? Where had they ended up?

"Don't go out! Can't you see how strange it is out there?"

Although Gao Tian sensed an outline from the Third Floor pursuing them, his instincts told him the "world" outside the White House was even more dangerous.

At the order from their boss, "Zhao Qiang," Gray Wolf had already stopped just one step from the doorway. At that same moment, the woman on the Third Floor finished calling another name three times. The middle-aged man beside Gray Wolf hadn't even managed to leave a single last word before his body split in half from the middle. Blood sprayed over everyone.

That was enough to make even Gray Wolf ignore their boss, "Zhao Qiang." With nothing left in his mind but the desire to survive, he charged through the doorway without a second thought.

The moment Gray Wolf entered the "blood-red world" outside, his stocky, six-foot frame seemed to have its skin peeled off in an instant, exposing his multicolored nervous system and bright-red flesh. Soon, even those were slowly dissolved by the strong acid, and his intact white skeleton emerged inch by inch from inside his body. He turned his white skull one last time, trying to flee back into the house. But his whole body crashed apart with a bang, leaving only a stinking mess on the ground.

A perfectly healthy person had just been dismantled alive like that.

Now the others' desperate urge to escape the White House was forcibly brought under control.

The outside had also become a twisted world. The moment they stepped even half a pace beyond the White House, they would melt away.

But the White House wasn't safe either. The long, slender neck supporting the woman's face slowly lowered from the Third Floor, passed through the Second Floor, and floated toward the First Floor. It was obvious that the Ghost Xu Yuan had raised wouldn't let the intruders go so easily. It was coming for them.

This was hopeless. Leave the house and die; stay inside the White House and die even faster. Gao Tian was trapped in a desperate situation, unable to advance or retreat. No matter what he chose, he would die.