The World Suddenly Became Unsafe

It took a villain to grind another villain down!

Those words seemed to carry a powerful magic.

The three Ghosts instantly lost their tempers—in the sense that they no longer had any.

They looked at one another, unable to find a single reason to argue back.

[Confidence from Song Jinnan, Wu Xiuxiu, and Song Ling +3]

[Collect ten instances of Positive Emotions elicited by you (3/10). Reward: Charisma Three]

That worked too?

Even being a villain could give other people positive encouragement. Lesson learned!

Lin Bai looked with satisfaction at the three Ghosts, who had returned to human form. What an innocent family. You know, before I came along, you didn't have any enemies...

Never mind. Better not provoke them any further.

After all, we now had a common enemy. We'd gone from opposing sides to comrades in the same trench. That was a good thing.

The Emotion System not only supplied the Ghosts' names, but also their latest emotional states, allowing Lin Bai to clearly track the changes in their thinking. At last, he no longer had to worry about whether the Ghosts would play dirty behind his back.

Lin Bai sighed in relief. "You three, I've turned this place into a restaurant. I'll use it for business during the day, and you can come out at night. That way, we can pretty much stay out of each other's way. As long as we coexist peacefully, the harm you've caused will gradually fade. Once the neighbors return, the sins you committed before will gradually fade away too."

"Would that really work?" Wu Xiuxiu asked hesitantly. Their prolonged isolation had left them with an instinctive fear of the outside world. Besides, humans and ghosts walked different paths.

"You don't come out during the day anyway." Lin Bai smiled. "Besides, prolonged isolation isn't good for developing a healthy personality. Little Ling is still young. She needs contact with the outside world. It'll help her grow..."

"No, big brother, you're not a bad person," the little Ghost, Song Ling, said, her eyes lighting up. "You're a good person."

What an excellent judge of character!

Lin Bai nodded with a smile, obligingly adding a gentle expression.

"I killed someone. I'll turn into a Vengeful Ghost." Song Jinnan looked troubled and full of regret. "Once I lose my true nature, it'll be bad for everyone."

"Remember what I said earlier?" Lin Bai asked with a yawn.

"..." The three Ghosts looked puzzled. They had spent the whole evening listening to him talk. Who knew which sentence he meant?

"A Vengeful Ghost is born from what's in your own heart." Lin Bai smiled. "You think killing someone will turn you into a Vengeful Ghost. But what if the person you killed wasn't human?"

Song Jinnan froze.

"Go take another look at the person you killed," Lin Bai prompted.

Truthfully, he didn't know how the game's respawning mechanics worked either. Long Xi's death was also an opportunity to learn about the players' characteristics.

Song Jinnan floated away, then returned a moment later with a damaged cleaver and a handful of copper coins. His expression was strange, and his words tumbled out incoherently. "Shopkeeper, he... that person disappeared. He was there just now, but in that tiny bit of time, his body vanished. All that was left was this cleaver and these copper coins..."

Looking at the cleaver in his hand, Lin Bai instinctively raised his guard. Ghosts could throw things out of the shop. If Song Jinnan lost his head and hurled a cleaver at him, that would be a terrible bargain.

Long Xi, who stood six feet tall, had been like a doll in his hands. A cleaver thrown with that kind of strength would certainly pack a punch.

However.

Lin Bai's worries were unnecessary.

Song Jinnan's thoughts were entirely occupied by Long Xi's inexplicable disappearance. Killing Lin Bai by throwing the cleaver had never even occurred to him. He wasn't that kind of person either.

Whoosh! Whoosh!

Wu Xiuxiu and Song Ling vanished after him.

A moment later, they returned. The little Ghost, Song Ling, wore a look of disbelief as she glanced nervously around. "He really disappeared. What if he turns into a ghost too?"

Watson, you've spotted the blind spot!

Lin Bai glanced at her without responding.

When players died, their bodies vanished and their possessions dropped. That matched the mechanics of most games...

In other words, even during the beginner stage, death wasn't without its losses.

This was a pretty good mechanic. Getting back the cleaver he'd invested was a small matter. Later, if he ran out of money or magical treasures, he could find ways to harvest players.

Now that's a road to riches!

Lin Bai smiled. "Old Song, give me those things! You can put your heart back in your belly now. You killed him, but he isn't actually dead."

Song Jinnan carefully placed the cleaver and copper coins by the doorway. "I don't understand."

"How should I put it? They're a special group of people." Seeing Song Jinnan obediently hand over Long Xi's belongings, Lin Bai breathed a sigh of relief and explained, "Like the old Taoist who trapped you here, they possess some miraculous abilities. They're still very weak, but even so, they're beyond your current ability to kill."

"..." Song Jinnan sank into thought.

Lin Bai looked up at him and said earnestly, "But don't think this means you can kill people without restraint. You can't distinguish the Chosen Ones from ordinary people. If you kill even one ordinary person by mistake, what Song Ling described could very well happen. They could turn into a ghost too and become trapped in this shop. You'd find yourselves mired in endless trouble..."

A third ghost coming between husband and wife?

At the thought of the silver-tongued Long Xi becoming a ghost, Old Song immediately felt that his wife and daughter were no longer safe. Too terrifying!

The black mist winding around Song Jinnan stirred. "I won't..."

Until he became strong enough, Lin Bai had to coexist peacefully with the three Ghosts. Naturally, he didn't want them turning into uncontrollable Vengeful Ghosts. He had to wrap them in layer upon layer of shackles. Fortunately, the old Taoist had laid the groundwork for him in advance. Hoodwinking these kindhearted ghosts couldn't have been easier.

"But Long Xi said he'd come back to get rid of us," Wu Xiuxiu said worriedly. "What if he comes back?"

"I'll handle it." Lin Bai yawned again. It was already past midnight. Even with four extra points of spirit, he still couldn't withstand the heavy drowsiness.

"What if you're not here?" Wu Xiuxiu pressed anxiously. "We come out at night. You should be asleep then..."

"If you feel like throwing him out, throw him out. If you don't, play hide-and-seek with him!" Lin Bai glanced at them and smiled. "There are two floors in there. When he comes through the door, go upstairs. When he goes upstairs, go downstairs. Don't tell me you still use the stairs to move between floors!"

"For the time being, he can't do anything to you, and you can't kill him either. But he has more important things to do. He won't waste his time on you more than a few times. Once he knows he can't kill you, he'll naturally leave.

"Of course, remember the most important point: don't talk to him at all. None of you look particularly clever. The more you say, the easier it'll be for him to find a weakness..."

Fine, then!

The three Ghosts stared at Lin Bai in astonishment. They truly hadn't expected him to come up with an idea like that.

It couldn't help making them wonder whether cooperating with someone like him would really allow them to deal with that Taoist master and his formidable powers.

And what did "for the time being" mean?

Did that mean that, given enough time, this Long Xi would find a way to destroy them?

Good grief!

Not only had they acquired a powerful enemy who would arrive in seven years, they now had another enemy who would keep growing stronger...

They had been minding their own business at home. Before a single night had passed, why had the world suddenly become so dangerous?

However, Song Jinnan and his family had been trapped in the shop for three years without contact with the outside world. Their thinking had become somewhat rigid, and they couldn't come up with a better solution on the spot. They could only nod helplessly.

"That's settled, then. I'll find somewhere to sleep. You can get on with whatever you were doing!" Lin Bai yawned again and headed back to the Inn, bleary-eyed, to recover his energy.

The Respawn Point.

[Long Xi] searched every pocket on his body but failed to find a single copper coin. His expression turned ugly in an instant. "Everything on you drops when you die? What the hell kind of mechanic is that? Isn't that forcing people to delete their characters and start over?"

Returning to where his corpse had fallen at the inn to retrieve the dropped coins and cleaver was clearly unrealistic. He couldn't beat the Boss inside at all. Going back would just be feeding himself to it.

Ask the shopkeeper to reimburse him?

Thinking of that NPC's stinginess, it was almost certainly impossible.

Besides, how could a Chosen One who couldn't even afford a meal win an NPC's trust?

The game had hunger and fatigue meters. Once hunger reached its threshold, fatigue would rise sharply, and resting alone would no longer be enough to recover.

In other words, if he wanted to keep playing on his [Long Xi] account, he had to solve the problem of food before his hunger meter ran out.

Otherwise, he could only delete the character and start over!

After turning it over in his mind without finding a suitable solution, [Long Xi] opened the forum and posted a plea for help: "Dropped all my money after dying. How do I survive without deleting my character?"

Immortal World attracted enormous attention. Shortly after his post went up, it received a flood of replies.

"Delete your character! There's no other way."

"Steal. As long as your technique is good enough, you won't get caught. Whatever you steal is yours. Your name won't turn red, and nobody will come after you." [Ding Gouzha]

"I don't recommend robbery. A level-one character has limited stamina. You might manage against a woman or a child one-on-one, but if you run into a burly man, odds are you'll get caught and handed over to the authorities." [Step on Your Right Foot with Your Left and Ascend]

"This trash game has gone mad chasing realism. Die once, and everything drops, no matter how much you're carrying. I seriously suspect the developers just don't want people coming back to life after death and creating unnecessary panic in society. Cherish life. Stay away from smashing, looting, and robbery." [Jing Buyi]

Most people's methods were impractical. Half skeptical, [Long Xi] logged out and contacted [Qian Mantun], who seemed somewhat reliable. For three hundred bucks, he obtained an exclusive secret guide.

"Find somewhere deserted, take off your clothes, and hide them. Kill yourself. After respawning, you'll have an extra beginner shirt that won't disappear when your corpse despawns.

"Repeat this process, then find a pawnshop and pawn the extra clothes...

"Testing shows that dying eight times gives the best return. You can farm over eight hundred copper coins from the Novice Village pawnshop.

"If you have too many clothes, the return drops sharply as the number you pawn increases. The effort won't be worth the income. A friendly reminder: make sure you die in one go, or you'll be the one suffering. Remember that. Remember that."

"..." Reading the guide in his hands, [Long Xi] couldn't help slapping his thigh. "Brilliant! Fleecing the developers! This guy's a fucking genius!"