Never Respond!

Fang Xiu woke from sleep once more. The madness on his face had faded, replaced by a stillness like stagnant water.

He repeated his earlier routine: getting dressed, washing up, using the bathroom, eating, and then leaving home.

Once again, he saw the eerie creatures filling the sky, along with the adorable little girl eating a lollipop.

Ignoring everything, he left the residential complex and headed out onto the street.

The streets were crowded with pedestrians and bustling with traffic.

People hurried to work or school, utterly oblivious to the eerie creatures all around them. Some even had creatures resembling snakes with human heads draped over their shoulders, yet they remained completely unaware, laughing and chatting with the people around them.

Sometimes, ignorance really was bliss.

Fang Xiu scanned the code on a shared bicycle by the roadside, planning to ride around and study these eerie creatures. To kill them, he first had to understand them.

Of course, studying them did not mean staring at them. If they noticed, his only option would be death rollback.

Fang Xiu could only pretend to wander aimlessly while observing his surroundings.

He wanted to see whether the eerie creatures were everywhere, and whether they had a source.

Ding!

A crisp notification sounded.

Fang Xiu stopped the bicycle and took out his phone. It was a message from his work group chat.

His manager, Wu Dahai, was tagging him.

"Fang Xiu, do you know what time it is? Why aren't you at work yet? How many times have you been late this month? Do you even want your bonus?"

He opened with a barrage of questions, his tone aggressive and oppressive, as though a boss were standing right in front of him, demanding answers.

The old Fang Xiu would already have been apologizing in a panic.

But now, Fang Xiu could hardly be bothered with such mundane matters.

In this hellish world, he only wanted to uncover the truth and then take revenge.

Working a peaceful, steady job was a luxury he could scarcely afford.

Imagine having to pretend every day that you could not see the eerie creatures around you, constantly watching your every move, knowing you could be eaten the moment you slipped up. Under those conditions, staying alive was hard enough, let alone going to work.

Just as he was about to close the group chat and ignore these mundane matters, he suddenly remembered the three-digit balance in his bank account.

If I want to uncover the truth about this world, a few hundred yuan definitely won't be enough. I can't just ride a shared bicycle everywhere.

This city might be full of eerie creatures, but other cities might not be. I'll need to take high-speed trains, maybe even planes, and all of that costs money.

The previous owner of this body apparently still had an unpaid commission. If I can collect it, it should keep me going for a while.

With that thought, Fang Xiu decided to visit the company once more, quit, and collect his commission.

He had considered using death rollback to win a lottery jackpot, but after thinking it over, he abandoned the idea. He just did not have that kind of luck. Besides, unless circumstances demanded it, he really did not want to die again. Dying was genuinely unpleasant, even after he had done it so many times.

The city Fang Xiu lived in was called Green Vine City, and his company was located in its development zone. There was a villa complex there called Hundred Willows Academy, where he worked as a salesperson in the sales office.

He had sold a villa six months earlier, but his commission had never been paid.

Fang Xiu began typing a message in the work group chat.

"I'm quitting. I'll come to the sales office this afternoon to settle the commission from my last sale."

Once he finished typing, he hit send.

Fang Xiu's words were blunt, with little in the way of pleasantries. He sounded like a clueless rookie fresh out into the working world, the sort who could easily offend people.

But he did not care. He could not be bothered with social niceties. He only wanted efficiency, not to waste time on this. He wanted to resolve these mundane matters as quickly as possible and get on with his own business.

The moment he sent his message, the group chat exploded.

Manager Wu, in particular, kept frantically tagging him.

"Fang Xiu, what is that supposed to mean?? Didn't I tell you last time? Commissions will be paid at the end of the year. If you quit now, you won't get a single cent!"

Fang Xiu glanced casually at the message. Rather than reply, he simply closed the group chat.

Then he rode the shared bicycle straight toward Hundred Willows Academy.

His home was a long way from Hundred Willows Academy, a two-hour bus ride, but he was in no hurry. He intended to take a good look at the city.

Fang Xiu rode slowly, seemingly wandering without purpose, but his attention was focused entirely on the eerie creatures around him.

The farther he rode, the more kinds of eerie creatures he saw, each stranger and more bizarre than the last.

Gradually, he began to notice a pattern.

These eerie creatures could see humans, but humans could not see them.

The eerie creatures fell into roughly two categories.

One category lacked reason. Hideous and grotesque, they only knew how to roar madly or attack the humans around them without pause. Yet they were like air, utterly unable to affect anything nearby.

The other category consisted of humanoid eerie creatures that pretended to be your coworkers, classmates, relatives, and so on, staying by your side and talking to you.

Of course, humans could neither see them nor hear them speak.

Clearly, his wife belonged to this second category.

The second category had some distinctive traits. Most resembled humans, and some even looked completely human.

They seemed to be trying to become part of your life. Even though people could neither see nor hear them, leaving them like outsiders, they still worked hard to stay by your side.

This puzzled Fang Xiu. Why were these eerie creatures so obsessed with playing roles? They clearly could not affect reality, yet they persisted in staying beside people.

Recalling everything his wife had done, Fang Xiu formed a theory.

These eerie creatures were testing whether humans could see them. After all, as long as someone could see them, they could attack.

No!

Fang Xiu immediately rejected his own theory.

Testing was probably only one part of it.

Normally, once an eerie creature had confirmed that a human genuinely could not see it, it should move on to another target and test someone else. That would be the most efficient approach.

Yet his wife had not left after failing.

And it was not just his wife. Along the way, Fang Xiu had seen many humanoid eerie creatures stubbornly clinging to a single person, desperately talking to them even though that person could not hear them.

Why was that?

Suddenly, a flash of insight struck Fang Xiu, and a chilling thought surfaced in his mind.

They were becoming part of people's lives!

That's right!

That had to be it!

Why else would my wife be playing a role?

If eerie creatures wanted to test whether humans could see them, they could simply frighten them by appearing suddenly or doing something similar, rather than playing roles.

So the only possibility was that they were trying to become part of people's lives.

But what were they trying to achieve?

Work backward from the outcome.

The eerie creatures' goal was clearly to eat people, so everything they did was preparation for that.

Could it be... that becoming part of people's lives helped them make contact with humans?

The eerie creatures seemed to exist in an incorporeal state. When humans could not see them, they remained incorporeal. Only once both sides had confirmed that they could see each other did the creatures become solid.

Why did it have to be sight?

No!

Perhaps hearing would work too.

He could see and hear the eerie creatures, while other people could do neither.

Both hearing and sight conveyed information.

Once an eerie creature confirmed that a human could receive information from it, the two could interact.

So the eerie creatures were probably becoming part of people's lives to make humans receive that information-or, in other words, perceive their existence.

Becoming part of their lives must accelerate this process. Otherwise, the eerie creatures would have no reason to do it.

At that moment, Fang Xiu abruptly realized that perhaps some people's auditory hallucinations and tricks of the eye were not illusions at all.

If someone happened to hear their name being called, or heard someone speaking, only to find no one around, it was very likely that an eerie creature was becoming part of their life.

The more deeply it became integrated, and the longer it stayed, the more likely a human would be to occasionally pick up a signal without realizing it!

And the more signals they received, the greater the chance that the eerie creature would manifest!

So, never respond!