When she went to bed, Ye Zhao turned on the lights in every room, drew the curtains shut, and left the doors open. Only after making sure the terrifying scenes from the horror films wouldn't happen did she feel a little more at ease. She lay back down and tried to convince herself to fall asleep quickly, preferably sleeping straight through until morning.
Ye Zhao had been exhausted all day, and her nerves had been taut the whole time. She soon fell into a deep sleep.
Who would have thought that in the middle of the night, she would vaguely hear a sound coming from beneath her? It sounded like fingers scratching at a wooden board. At first, it was relatively gentle, a rustling sound that was somewhat annoying. Then it grew more and more intense, more and more frantic, as though something were about to break through the bed...
Ye Zhao's faint sleepiness vanished in an instant. The sound was too close, as if only a thin bedsheet separated her from it, and it could burst through the bed at any moment!
If she hadn't been so afraid of dying, with such a timid streak, she would have been so terrified she'd gone rigid. By now, she might already have jumped straight out of bed.
I'm going crazy, I'm going crazy. What do I do now?
[Sanity Value: -10.] [Sanity Value: 60.]
A Sanity Value of 60 would cause hallucinations!
Ye Zhao suddenly felt countless pale, icy hands emerge from the bed and seize her, as if trying to drag her into an endless abyss!
In that instant, cold sweat soaked the sheets. With the last of her reason, Ye Zhao suppressed the scream about to escape her lips. A Sedative appeared in her hand. Without even looking, she plunged it into her thigh!
The sharp pain was agonizing, yet oddly soothing.
As the drug took effect, her mind, which had been at the mercy of fear, finally cleared. There were no ghostly hands on the bed. Even the scratching beneath it stopped at that very moment.
Ye Zhao's fear eased, too. She seemed not to be as frightened as before.
[Sanity Value: 100.]
So the lower one's Sanity Value, the more intense one's fear of the supernatural became, and the more one could sense its presence.
The second half of the night was fairly peaceful. Ye Zhao slept fitfully until dawn. Whenever she closed her eyes, she felt as if something were watching her. Thankfully, nothing else supernatural happened, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
The second day in the game.
Ye Zhao stood in front of the mirror and looked at the dark circles under her eyes. She splashed cold water on her face and smiled. "Another beautiful day~"
For breakfast, she made two bowls of sour-and-spicy noodles, adding extra vinegar. They were as sour and spicy as her life was full of excitement.
Thanks, Lord Ghost Messenger. Thanks, Survival Game.
It was time for her daily precognition. She hoped the Bodhisattva would bless her and let everything go smoothly.
[Using Prophet Skill. Current Prophet level: 1. Skill duration: 10 seconds.]
At a restaurant, a male employee from the kitchen carried a plate to the dining area. "Table five, your Lotus Cabbage Twice-Cooked Pork."
The woman seated at the table looked up in delight. "You can see me? You can see me?"
The male employee was horrified. The next second, the woman lunged at him. In a panic, he pulled an Exorcism Talisman from his pocket. The ghostly diner shrieked and vanished on the spot. The employee turned and ran, only to see two female customers sitting at another table five nearby.
Damn it! I got tricked!
"Boss, my dad died, so I need to go home. Can I just take today's pay?"
The boss's face darkened like the bottom of a pot. He gave the male employee sixty yuan and sent him on his way.
A female employee crouched in the back kitchen of a hot pot restaurant, washing dishes. She kept her head down, thinking that way she wouldn't run into anything supernatural.
"Quick, hurry up and wash them! We're running out of bowls up front!"
"I'm washing them, I'm washing them!" All you do is nag, nag, nag. I'm working like a beast for fifty yuan a day. What more do you want from me? She grumbled to herself, but continued washing at an unhurried pace. Suddenly, a voice came close to her ear. A sinister voice rang out: "You heard me just now, didn't you~"
The female employee: ?!
The female employee let out a scream and toppled into the basin, completely out of control. She reached for her Exorcism Talisman, only to realize she'd used up all her Talisman Paper long ago. The male ghost turned into a mass of black shadow and swallowed her.
The kitchen bustled with activity. No one noticed the female employee was gone.
A female Player lay in her rented room, playing a game on her phone. "Haha, this month is basically a vacation for me!"
She had found a place that only required one month's rent and one month's deposit, and was sharing it with someone else. She'd paid just 1,400 yuan. If she lived frugally, the remaining 1,600 would be enough for the next month.
As long as she didn't go wandering around, the chances of encountering anything supernatural would drop sharply, and her odds of surviving would be much higher.
Just then, four knocks sounded at the door, accompanied by a woman's gentle voice. "Excuse me, are you the new tenant?"
The female Player was about to answer when a sudden thought struck her. She remembered the older generation saying that only ghosts knocked four times.
Terrified, she immediately froze. A few more knocks sounded before the commotion outside finally stopped. The female Player sighed in relief, but then she grew nervous again. Whenever she got nervous, she needed to use the bathroom, and the small room she'd rented didn't have one.
After hesitating for a long while, she cautiously opened the door. She'd barely cracked it open when she saw a pale face filling the gap, its pitch-black eyes staring right at her!
"Ah!!!" Even though the female Player had been prepared, she still jumped in fright!
"You can see me, can't you?"
In a panic, the female Player pulled a Peach Wood Sword from her pocket and swung it wildly at the female ghost. The ghost shrieked and vanished on the spot...
On an overpass, a long-haired man with unkempt hair lay on the street, begging. He lay face down with his eyes closed, holding chopsticks in one hand and a basin in the other, tapping away now and then.
"Kind sir, kind lady, please spare some change, please..."
Kind passersby would give him a yuan or two. Since he was pretending to be blind, he didn't need to reply with a thank-you. He simply kept saying, now and then, "Please spare some change, please spare some change."
A ghost passed back and forth in front of him, but he didn't react at all, pretending he couldn't see or hear it...
Not until a coin dropped into the basin with a light clink.
The Beggar Player: "Please spare some change, please spare some change..."
The Passerby Ghost tried to approach. Suddenly, a Bronze Mirror was revealed at the Beggar Player's waist. The ghost was struck by its reflection, shrieked as it was repelled, and vanished on the spot.
System: [Prophet Skill use has ended.] [Prophet] Skill has turned gray. [Cooldown: 24 hours]
Ye Zhao opened her eyes and sighed softly. It seemed everyone was having a hard time.
But it turned out there were so many Exorcism Props. Ye Zhao thought of the Bronze Mirror she'd seen in the last scene, and couldn't help wanting one. If she had a Bronze Mirror like that hanging on her door, would she no longer need to worry about ghosts breaking into her room? Could she finally get a good night's sleep?
Otherwise, she'd be tense all the time. Fifteen days was a long time, and sooner or later, a ghost would catch her off guard.
The problem was that the precognition scenes were limited. She knew very little about this city, and finding that overpass would be difficult.
Ye Zhao opened her phone and started searching online for pictures of overpasses in D City.