The King of Hell came and went (5): The real boss was

"I've actually... liked you for a long time."

At the stairwell entrance, in the quiet of the night.

Under the eyes of dozens of people, Yu Xiaohe shyly lowered her head and whispered those words.

Across from her, Gong Yao gazed mournfully out the window and said softly, "I already have a girlfriend. I'm sorry."

Yu Xiaohe raised her head, tears welling in her eyes. "If you weren't with An Ya... would you choose me?"

Gong Yao closed his eyes and turned away resolutely. "...I'm sorry."

Yu Xiaohe watched him leave, her eyes filled with sorrow.

"Cut!"

The director, pleased, wrapped up filming the confession scene. "Good! Let's go to the Rooftop and shoot the last night scene!"

Li Qing had just emerged from the storage room when he ran into the large group bustling upstairs.

He stopped to let the others pass, only for someone to catch hold of him.

"Mr. Li? What are you doing here?"

That voice alone gave Li Qing a slight headache. He turned and greeted him politely. "Mr. Gong Yao."

Gong Yao had thrown every trace of his character's reserve to the winds. He practically glued himself to Li Qing's side and chattered away. "Did you see what happened when we filmed the Table-Turning Immortal scene?"

Li Qing said, "I was in the room the whole time."

Gong Yao said, "Man, that icy gust made for such a great effect! We all thought the director had arranged it, but Director Li said he didn't know what had happened either..."

Li Qing patiently heard him out, finally finding a pause to ask, "Haven't you finished filming for today, Mr. Gong Yao? Why aren't you going back to the hotel?"

He looked past Gong Yao toward the floor below. "Ms. An Ya and Tao Lele seem to be waiting for you."

"What about you?"

"The stagehands are the last to get off work."

"Oh," Gong Yao said. He turned to An Ya and Tao Lele and waved at them with a smile. "Go on ahead! Don't wait for me!"

Li Qing said, "..."

Gong Yao said, "Come on, let's go check on Yu Xiaohe. I don't know why, but there's something about that girl that interests me."

Li Qing said, "Oh..."

He suddenly perked up a little.

Gong Yao immediately smiled. "Not like that. Don't get the wrong idea. How should I put it... it's like there's a voice in my head telling me I should like her. Pretty strange, isn't it?"

Li Qing pondered for a while. Rather than contradict him, he agreed with a rare nod. "It is. If some inexplicable thought told me to do something, I'd investigate where it came from too."

The feeling Gong Yao described might have been a trait the Dungeon Instance had assigned to the character "Gong Yao."

Gong Yao's lips curled upward. "I didn't expect you to believe me so easily. What if I said I approached you because another voice in my head told me..."

He lowered his voice slightly.

"...to keep a close eye on you, or there might be trouble."

Li Qing said, "..." That one must be Gong Yao's own subconscious.

He lifted his gaze to Gong Yao and said evenly, "What a coincidence. A voice tells me to stay away from you too, or there'll be a lot of trouble."

Gong Yao burst out laughing.

The two had already reached the Rooftop, and Gong Yao's laughter naturally drew plenty of eyes.

Only Yu Xiaohe appeared in the final scene, so most of the actors had gone back. Only Bai Cha sat watching from the sidelines, which surprised Li Qing somewhat.

When Bai Cha saw the two arrive, his gaze lingered on Gong Yao for a moment before settling on Li Qing for a long while.

Almost everyone in this Dungeon Instance had accepted the premise that Li Qing was an ordinary stagehand, but Bai Cha always seemed to regard him with a measure of scrutiny.

Li Qing felt there had to be something strange about this F-rank player named Bai Cha, so he made a special note of his ID.

Yu Xiaohe stood at the edge of the Rooftop in a white dress.

Li Qing noticed another girl with a similar build sitting nearby, also in a white dress.

After they finished filming that shot, Director Li called out, "The Safety Air Cushion is set up down below! Yu Xiaohe, are you doing this shot yourself, or should we use your stunt double?"

Yu Xiaohe bit her lip. "I... I'll do it myself!"

Li Qing looked down. The enormous air cushion completely covered the Concrete Garden below. It could hardly have looked safer.

But was that really the case?

Li Qing slowly raised his head and met the eyes of the white figure in the air-the King of Hell was already waiting nearby.

Trembling, Yu Xiaohe glanced down.

"Aah-"

She screamed, her legs giving out as she sank to the ground. After a while, she said with a miserable expression, "L-let's use the double after all... I'm really scared..."

Yu Xiaohe's female assistant immediately went over to help her up. The young woman struggled a little on her own, so Li Qing, as the nearest stagehand, stepped forward to help her support Yu Xiaohe and settle her into a chair nearby.

Once Yu Xiaohe was settled, Li Qing glanced at Bai Cha beside them, only for his gaze to suddenly freeze.

Bai Cha had looked listless just a moment ago. Now he stared at Yu Xiaohe in shock, as though he had witnessed something that shattered his entire worldview.

Just then, an earth-shaking crash rang out from below, followed by a piercing scream!

Yu Xiaohe sprang out of her chair and rushed to the edge of the Rooftop with everyone else.

Below the Castle.

Fragments of the rubber air cushion lay scattered everywhere. A girl in a white dress lay on the hard concrete, dark red blood spreading beneath her.

"Quick! Call an ambulance!!!"

It was already too late.

The King of Hell floated back up, carrying a slender strip of white light. He balled it up and stuffed it into his pocket.

Li Qing said nothing. He turned and went downstairs with the others.

When he passed Bai Cha, Bai Cha finally wasn't watching him.

He stared toward the edge of the Rooftop, looking dazed. His expression shifted between shock and delight, and his hands trembled slightly.

As a stagehand, Li Qing accompanied the stunt double's body to the hospital.

The King of Hell appeared from who knew where-with someone he could actually talk to for once, he was very fond of following Li Qing around.

"Ah, that girl really had rotten luck."

Li Qing sat in the deserted hospital corridor, his unfocused gaze resting on the clock in front of him. He said softly, "You knew she was going to die, didn't you? For her, this outcome wasn't bad luck. It was inevitable."

"No!" The King of Hell popped up right beside Li Qing's face, looking rather agitated. "She wasn't the soul I was supposed to take today!"

Li Qing's pupils finally began to contract as he looked at the King of Hell's large white face.

The King of Hell floated a step back before continuing. "I was supposed to take that girl named Yu Xiaohe."

"Hmm..."

Li Qing recalled how Yu Xiaohe had escaped death... it had all been perfectly natural, with nothing out of the ordinary.

The King of Hell said, "You don't understand! That girl's Eight Characters are very unusual. If she died, she could very well become the only Vengeful Ghost in this world!"

Li Qing froze.

Seeing no further reaction from him, the King of Hell kept rambling. "A Vengeful Ghost! Do you know what that means? I can only take away the souls of the dead, but a Vengeful Ghost can turn the living into the dead!"

The King of Hell began lamenting, babbling nonsense like, "We ghosts finally had a chance to produce someone who could make something of themselves." Li Qing let it all go in one ear and out the other.

He lowered his eyes, realizing he seemed to have found the source of this Dungeon Instance's anomaly.

The player with the problem... or rather, the player identity with the problem, might not be Bai Cha, who had acted strangely from beginning to end.

Instead, it was Yu Xiaohe, who was supposed to become a Vengeful Ghost and this Dungeon Instance's final boss.