I Am the Urban Legend

"Why is it raining so hard?"

Xu Wanyi frowned as she looked ahead.

Her afternoon class had required her to sign in, and Xu Wanyi wasn't in the habit of skipping class. Now she was stuck on campus for the evening.

She was stuck because she was supposed to meet Ah Yuan at Blue Sea and Blue Sky tonight.

Rainstorm and typhoons were problems for ordinary students.

No matter the weather, the karaoke clubs in the heart of Jiangzhou stayed open.

At the thought of Qi Yuan, Xu Wanyi couldn't help smiling.

Everything she had experienced lately felt like a dream. Scenes of unimaginable luxury had unfolded before her, giving her a taste of a life she had never known.

Qi Yuan, the young master of the Red Dragon Group.

Xu Wanyi was determined to get everything she could out of him.

She had worked so hard to leave that little town behind.

Whatever happened, she had to push harder.

But...

Something felt wrong.

Xu Wanyi had a nagging feeling she had forgotten something. Qi Yuan had behaved himself last night. He hadn't done anything.

That had come as a relief.

Her first time mattered to her. At the very least, she needed to get enough in return. Her goal had never been to become Qi Yuan's plaything. She wanted a place in the Red Dragon Group—and eventually, to be its master.

Rain poured down.

Xu Wanyi held up her umbrella. Beneath a streetlamp, she saw her shadow stretching through the dark.

Last night, in the spacious apartment beside the Jiangzhou Tower, Qi Yuan had told her she had a beautiful neck.

Like a swan on a lake.

He was right.

She really was beautiful. That long, graceful neck...

It almost reached...

The streetlamp.

Xu Wanyi gazed at it, entranced.

Not far away,

Fang Xian crouched behind a flower bed.

He watched the horrifying sight before him.

Xu Wanyi's neck had stretched to well over two meters.

Bent as it was, she resembled a walking black swan.

Her shadow twisted. Her neck looked like a snake, or a chain of joints writhing beneath the skin.

"The Ghost Story has completely clouded her mind."

For once, Fang Xian had no wisecrack.

A Ghost Story was something ordinary people couldn't resist.

Ordinary people were nothing more than toys for a Ghost Story to play with.

But Fang Xian could still sense life in Xu Wanyi. The desire on that beautiful face of hers was unmistakably human.

[Urban Legend Alert]

[Tempt the ordinary person possessed by a Ghost Story. The Ghost Story inhabiting her is among the most uncontrollable kinds and causes the greatest harm to its host.]

[As the Possession continues, a soul striving to fulfill her desires will gradually fade away.]

[Learning to give up is also a virtue for a master Ghost Story catcher.]

Give up?

Hmph.

Since when does the Urban Legend Compendium get to tell me what to do?

Fang Xian's smile faded as rain ran down his cheeks.

"Time to begin. Operation: recover the Hang-Neck Ghost."

No One Calling was connected.

In the dark, rainy night, the phone of the girl he was Following began to ring.

A sweet pop melody rang out beneath the curtain of rain.

"Who's calling me this late?"

"Could it be Qi Yuan?"

Xu Wanyi hurriedly took out her phone, but her arms were too short and her neck was too long. She couldn't make out the caller ID.

She had to bend her neck hard, curling it into an arc.

But then Xu Wanyi remembered that she had set a special ringtone for Qi Yuan. There was no way it could be...

"An unknown number."

Xu Wanyi declined the call.

As soon as she did, her phone returned to the home screen.

A black-and-white memorial portrait of a grim-faced man filled the screen, its image reflected in her eyes.

Xu Wanyi recoiled so violently she nearly dropped her phone.

What the hell is that?

Xu Wanyi caught her breath.

Who's playing a prank on me?

She immediately thought of her roommates.

She didn't get along with them. One of them could easily have done this out of jealousy.

At that thought, her anger vanished.

If she was going to take this path, she should expect people to envy her.

She stared at the man's black-and-white portrait on her phone.

For some reason, the Portrait Man seemed to look frightened.

Xu Wanyi deleted the image without hesitation.

"You really are a coward."

Fang Xian was dumbfounded.

[No One Calling—Portrait Man] looked aggrieved.

He now occupied Fang Xian's phone screen, looking thoroughly shaken.

I sent you to scare her, and you're the one who came back scared?

Fang Xian had planned to plaster Xu Wanyi's phone with the man's portrait.

Instead, her long neck had scared the useless thing away.

The man in the portrait widened his eyes as though trying to defend himself.

"Sure, a giant long neck comes right up to your face. If you wouldn't be scared, you're something else."

Fang Xian more or less understood what the man meant.

As a master Ghost Story trainer, he really ought to consider his Ghost Stories' feelings.

Fine.

Ding-dong.

Ding-dong.

Xu Wanyi felt that something was strange tonight.

Even on a Rainstorm day,

the campus shouldn't have been completely deserted.

The shops along the street had their lights on,

but there wasn't a soul inside. Even the owners were gone.

She kept glancing back, unable to shake the feeling that someone was watching her.

Yet every time she looked, there was no one behind her—only her shadow stretching longer and longer.

"Tonight feels... strange."

"No."

The pretty girl suddenly grew alert.

She had felt this before.

Xu Wanyi had felt that way in Qi Yuan's car that day.

A cold, bizarre sensation, as though something had seeped into her bones.

Xu Wanyi's breathing quickened, her chest rising and falling with fear.

She suddenly remembered the portrait.

Had it really been a prank by her roommates?

All she wanted now was to get somewhere crowded.

But...

Where was everyone?

Ding-dong.

That terrifying notification sounded again.

Xu Wanyi didn't want to open her phone. Her slender hand trembled, but curiosity made her open it anyway.

Her screen was packed with messages.

[Are you there?]

[Are you there?]

[Are you there?]

[Are you there?!]

[Are you there?!!!!]

[Are you there?!!!!!]

It was as though someone deep inside the phone was screaming the words at the top of their lungs.

Rainstorm fell onto the phone.

"Aaaaaah!"

At that point, Xu Wanyi finally couldn't hold it together anymore.

She had run into a ghost!

She dropped her umbrella and fled toward the heart of the campus. She had to get back to the dorm. Her classmates were there. There would be people there!

Xu Wanyi's terrified face was reflected on the screen, and she noticed something strange.

Why was her phone so far from her head?

Why was everything so far below her?

No—why was she so tall? She had even had to duck when she entered the campus gate.

Once she noticed one thing wrong, the rest of her certainty began to crack like an eggshell.

Xu Wanyi truly felt a chill of terror.

And then came the pain.

Pain in her neck.

At that very moment, rain came down in sheets.

At the end of the road,

a young man in a raincoat stood with a Fire Axe in hand, looking every bit like a murderer. His expression said he was fed up with the lot of them.

"One after another, all you can do is scare people. The moment something scarier shows up, I have to handle it myself."

"At this rate, I'm really going to become an urban Ghost Story."