"Items with special abilities aren't exactly common, but they aren't all that rare, either." The child with the adorable exterior struggled to keep looking up, yet insisted on meeting Su Bai's eyes. "Master said that if an ordinary product from the human world is steeped in the Red Moon's power for a full twenty years-in other words, left in the moonlight for twenty years-it might mutate and develop special abilities. That's also why more or less every building in the Nightmare World has something strange going on."
"Does that mean this shop is supposed to sell items with special abilities?" Su Bai looked around the completely empty shop and felt a headache coming on.
Useful items were exceedingly rare. In his previous life, Su Bai had owned a few items besides the Marriage Contract, but none of them had been particularly powerful.
In fact, even items that mutated after twenty years under the Red Moon were likely to have single-use abilities, like a Pen Fairy that could make only one prediction or a pot lid that shattered after blocking a single attack.
The reusable items Su Bai remembered had probably spent a hundred years or even longer under the Red Moon. Powerful items that could be used repeatedly were valuable enough to make players slaughter one another.
"If that's really the case, this shop might not open for business for another twenty years." Su Bai felt that if his supernatural betrothed had given him even one so-called "product," it would have been far more useful than this empty shop.
"No!" Xiao Wu pointed at Su Bai's left hand. "Master's gift doesn't stop there. The ability to turn ordinary items into special merchandise was also given to you the moment you entered the shop, madam."
Su Bai froze for a moment, then looked at his left hand. At some point, a strange mark had appeared on his palm. Only slightly darker than his skin, it looked like a Möbius strip, but the interwoven bands also seemed to bear intricate characters he didn't recognize.
The mark had appeared silently, without the slightest pain. But as Su Bai stared at it, countless unfamiliar characters seemed to swirl through his mind, slowly rearranging themselves into words he could understand.
Although Su Bai couldn't read them before the rearrangement was complete, he vaguely suspected that what had appeared in his mind might be an "instruction manual" for the mark.
"This mark can give ordinary items special abilities?"
"Of course not. Even Master can't do something like that easily." Xiao Wu immediately waved both hands. "What you need to do, boss... um, is prepare an ordinary item, then use your left hand to stuff one of those Vengeful Ghosts or resentful spirits from the nightmares outside directly into it. That way, the ordinary item you prepared will most likely mutate and develop a special ability, becoming merchandise for this shop."
"..." Coming from Xiao Wu, such a terrifying ability sounded as simple as the three steps for putting an elephant in a refrigerator.
"As the shop gains more merchandise, the white sand in the glass jar will increase, and your strength will grow along with it, boss."
Without giving Su Bai much time to digest this, Xiao Wu added, "Oh, right, boss, the mark on your hand has other uses, too. If you want to return to the shop while you're outside, all you have to do is find a door with a handle and open it with your left hand. You'll be back in the shop right away! Whether you're in a nightmare or the human world, the Mist Shop's door will always be open to you!"
"Only Master could use such a powerful ability before, but now you can do it too, madam-no, boss!" Xiao Wu looked as though seeking praise from Su Bai.
Su Bai had to admit that the shop's abilities had completely exceeded his expectations.
"But catching supernatural entities isn't exactly easy for me right now." In his previous life, ordinary Vengeful Ghosts hadn't posed much trouble for Su Bai. For the current him, however, they were definitely a major problem.
He glanced at the glass jar on the counter. The white sand lining its bottom was pitifully sparse.
Too weak.
Just then, the mysterious characters that had appeared in Su Bai's mind when he looked at the Palm Brand on his left hand finished rearranging themselves, taking the form of human writing he could understand. The method for using the mark on his hand to seal a Ghost Creature completely inside an ordinary item was also etched into his mind.
In the Nightmare World, "supernatural entities" was a collective term for all anomalies beneath the Red Moon. It included unusual buildings and items, as well as the Vengeful Ghosts, resentful spirits, and all manner of monsters lurking around players.
No one knew where those beings resembling the Vengeful Ghosts in horror stories came from. Some said they were projections of people who had died in the real world. Others said they were supernatural entities formed from dead players who had mutated. Still others claimed that human obsessions attached themselves to objects, causing those objects to take human form.
Some also said all these theories were correct. After all, the Ghost Creatures players encountered came in many varieties, with many reasons for attacking humans and many ways to destroy them. As a result, there were also many ways for players to clear a game.
In a game, you might have to fulfill certain Ghost Creatures' wishes, or you might have to follow rules laid down by others.
But most Ghost Creatures in the nightmares weren't so accommodating. More often, they were simply evil ghosts that fed on humans.
According to the "instructions" in Su Bai's mind, the mark on his hand seemed particularly fond of these purely evil ghosts. The more depraved and violent a Ghost Creature was, the more the mark seemed to like it. What the mark liked even more, however, was the fear and despair those depraved, violent ghosts felt when they were captured.
That twisted taste was much like a trait befitting evil ghosts.
Although these evil ghosts appeared to feed on humans, what they truly craved more than human flesh was the aroma of fear and despair people gave off when driven into a corner. That was why many Ghost Creatures could have eaten humans the moment they met them, yet chose instead to linger nearby, gradually plunging their victims into fear and despair before swallowing them whole and savoring the feast.
The Qipao Ghost who had been waiting patiently beside the burly Qin Ge was one example. Although she couldn't attack on the bus, she had slowly turned her body back into a paper effigy, savoring the trio's mounting terror. To an evil ghost, that sort of game was a pleasure in itself.
The more frightened humans became, the stronger the evil ghosts feeding on their fear would grow.
Conversely, if those fear-feeding evil ghosts became frightened themselves, their strength would diminish. Even Su Bai, who had struggled in the Nightmare World for ten years, hadn't known this. After all, when human players faced these evil ghosts, the only possible outcome was "kill or be killed." They had no chance to sense fear coming from the ghosts themselves.
In short, the mark on Su Bai's hand wanted him to select Ghost Creatures filled with pure malice.
Although Su Bai wasn't yet strong enough to overpower those mighty evil ghosts, as long as he could touch one while it was afraid, the mark could capture it!
The deeper the fear, the stronger the mark's binding power.
"Just what you'd expect from a gift bestowed by a 'supernatural entity.'" Su Bai looked at the mark on his hand with a bitter smile. "Is this meant to turn me into an evil ghost, little by little, too?"
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