Chapter 30

"Right, why did you want to follow me in the last instance?"

When they entered the instance settlement, Su Cheng hadn't had time to ask. Now was a good chance to voice the question on her mind.

Mu Ling answered frankly, "I just wanted to see whether following you would let me leave the train... as long as I could leave the train, I'd have a chance to go back."

Mu Ling and the ghost passengers on the train were like earthbound spirits, trapped on the train and unable to leave.

They could only leave through special means.

Su Cheng nodded in understanding. Seeing that Mu Ling was still somewhat confused about the instances, she simply gave her a brief explanation of the apartment.

Now that Su Cheng and Mu Ling were bound by a contract through the apartment, they were in the same boat. There was no need to hide many things.

"How interesting..." Mu Ling's voice was ethereal, with a distinctive weakness compared with a living person's voice. "But I don't seem to be able to come out. It seems I need your permission..."

Su Cheng hadn't expected that she also had control over Mu Ling entering and leaving the wooden bead. "Wait a moment. Let me figure this out."

Su Cheng tried to sense the wooden bead on her wrist. After focusing carefully, she could actually see Mu Ling inside it, dressed in yellow.

Mu Ling had regained her appearance from when she was alive and looked much less hostile.

She could also see Mu Ling's information.

Name: Mu Ling

Identity: Remnant soul

Sex: Female

Age: 22

Status: Weakened

Skills: [Bizarre Threads (on cooldown): Long hair formed from resentment, supple and sharp, capable of entangling and strangling targets], [Shared Senses: Can share sight, hearing, and smell with the contract holder]

A faintly visible lock trapped Mu Ling inside the wooden bead. Su Cheng tried to sense the lock, and once it opened, Mu Ling floated out.

If she made the lock close, Mu Ling would be sucked into the wooden bead and trapped inside.

After emerging from the wooden-bead bracelet, Mu Ling looked around curiously. "The death qi here is so heavy... and the qi I can absorb is very sparse."

"Qi?"

Mu Ling raised a hand to gesture. "Ghosts have to absorb the qi of heaven and earth to consolidate their souls. I can only use Bizarre Threads to fight after absorbing enough qi."

"But you probably can't see qi. Death qi is black, and the qi I can absorb looks like mist, only more ethereal..."

Su Cheng nodded and asked in puzzlement, "If ghosts can absorb 'qi' to consolidate their souls, can humans absorb it too?"

"I don't know. I've only been a ghost for three years."

Mu Ling had died on the train at nineteen. Three years later, when she met Su Cheng, she was still only a weak female ghost, and her knowledge was limited.

"All right."

Su Cheng continued shoveling the weeds beyond the two-square-meter area with her shovel. Suddenly remembering the two beak-masked doctors, she looked at the floating Mu Ling.

"Those two probably haven't gone far yet. Follow them and take a look. We can try out your Shared Senses skill while we're at it."

Mu Ling tilted her head slightly. "Okay."

Mu Ling could turn invisible, float quickly, and pass straight through objects. These traits were extremely useful for tracking and searching.

After activating Shared Senses, Su Cheng felt dizzy for a moment, then found she could freely switch between her own perspective and Mu Ling's with a mental command.

Through Mu Ling's eyes, Su Cheng saw herself dressed in white protective clothing. Seeing herself through someone else's eyes felt novel.

The human and the soul could communicate through thought. Sharing senses with Mu Ling was like having an extra soul-form double.

As Mu Ling left, Su Cheng experienced the sensation of floating, her whole body light and free from gravity's hold.

When she encountered trees and weeds, she passed straight through them as though through phantoms, without feeling a thing.

Following the direction Su Cheng had given her, Mu Ling soon spotted the two conspicuous beak-masked doctors.

Su Cheng put on the translator from her smart bag. Now she could understand what they were saying.

"Was that a divine messenger who descended just now? Why did she distance herself from us? Has God abandoned us?"

"I don't know... but since she could appear out of thin air, I can't think of any possibility other than her being a divine messenger."

"Why would God send down this disaster? What did those suffering people do wrong?"

"Do not question God! We only need to believe in Him. God has His own arrangements... we simply haven't grasped His intentions yet."

Mu Ling followed the two beak-masked doctors to a village.

No one came to greet them. The village was silent, with occasional coughs sounding out.

A young child hid in a corner and secretly poked their head out, watching the two strange visitors curiously.

The whole village exuded an air of death.

The two beak-masked doctors exchanged a glance and entered a house first.

The house was filthy and chaotic. Dried blood stained the floor, along with foul-smelling excrement... flies and mosquitoes circled, while rats scurried about freely in search of food.

Four people lay motionless across the bed inside. Their bodies were as thin as sticks, their dark purple skin covered in red rashes.

Three of the four had already died of illness. Only the woman lying on the far right was still alive. She was weak and in pain, drawing in more breath than she let out.

When the woman saw the two strangers, her lips moved, but no sound came out.

"Don't be afraid. We're here to save you."

The two beak-masked doctors examined the woman's body with the wooden sticks in their hands. Her condition was little better than that of the three dead people. Her limbs were swollen, and her consciousness was clouded...

"All we can do now is our best. We'll remove the toxins from your body through bloodletting..."

The two beak-masked doctors found a knife and cut open the skin on the woman's limbs while reciting the Bible. Bright red blood flowed into a basin...

The woman's eyes widened, and hoarse gasps came from her mouth. She didn't resist, hoping amid her pain that she would get better...

"This won't save anyone at all."

Mu Ling spoke to Su Cheng through their mental connection.

"Their medical knowledge is limited. They don't know it's useless... go look somewhere else."

Su Cheng sighed softly. With the two beak-masked doctors coming into such close contact with patients, it wouldn't be long before they fell ill too...

Mu Ling floated around the village, passing through the villagers' houses one after another.

Almost all the villagers were already infected and showing symptoms: red spots on their skin, coughing, fever...

Corpses wrapped in white cloth lay outside the front door or in the backyard of every house.

Besides the villagers' bodies that hadn't been dealt with in time, there were also dead livestock.

The surviving villagers, tormented by illness, had no strength to deal with them. They could only leave them to rot and stink, attracting flies.

Rats brazenly scurried through the streets in packs.

Beneath one straw shed, dried human excrement covered the ground. It was utterly disgusting.

Most of the surviving villagers had dirty, tangled hair and seemed disinclined to bathe or groom themselves.

Su Cheng recalled that the book she had read earlier also mentioned that some old-fashioned religious believers considered bathing a blasphemy against God.

They regarded not bathing as an act of holiness and devotion... perhaps the native inhabitants of this instance did too.

That was precisely why the plague could spread so quickly in such filthy surroundings...

"There's a cellar here."

Mu Ling slipped into the cellar. It was pitch-black inside, but as a ghost, she didn't need light to see.

Five sacks of potatoes, ten sacks of wheat, and three jars of pickled vegetables were stored in the cellar.

But rats had chewed through all the sacks, leaving plenty of potatoes and wheat scattered on the ground.

"Squeak, squeak..."

Several rats darted between the rice sacks. After the homeowner fell ill, the rats had taken over and made this their new home.

Mu Ling moved away from the dark rats in disgust, her gaze falling on the potatoes.

"Do you want these supplies?"

"We can't take them."

Although the rats had mostly visited the wheat, fleas or flea eggs that had fallen off them as they crawled around could still be on the potatoes.

The risks of bringing the potatoes back far outweighed the benefits.

Su Cheng did want supplies, but she was even less willing to bring back hidden dangers.

Mu Ling said, "I saw some eggs just now... eggs should be better than potatoes."

Eggshells were smooth, making it difficult for fleas and flea eggs to cling to them. As long as the shells weren't damaged, they were safer than potatoes.

"Eggs should be fine."

Since the things in the cellar were unusable, Mu Ling floated out without any reluctance and flew from memory to a glass-fronted cupboard in one of the houses.

There were only two corpses in the house, and they seemed to have been dead for some time. An indescribable stench of decay filled the room.

Mu Ling paid no attention to the smell. After becoming a ghost and leaving her body, she had watched her own flesh and that of the other passengers rot and stink. Her deteriorated sense of smell had become immune to this odor.

The stench transmitted through Mu Ling was much fainter, but Su Cheng still found it very unpleasant, so she simply cut off their shared sense of smell.

With some effort, Mu Ling found a clean bamboo basket amid the filth and placed the fifteen eggs from the glass-fronted cupboard inside.

Besides the eggs, Su Cheng also spotted several bottles of liquor on top of a cabinet and asked Mu Ling to bring those along too.

"I need to go back. My body seems to have gotten a little thinner again..."

Mu Ling examined her hands and feet, looking somewhat puzzled.

Su Cheng analyzed the situation. "Has this never happened before? Is it because you've spent too long in daylight?"

"Before, I only got thinner when part of my soul body was forcibly eaten during fights. The sun makes me uncomfortable, but it isn't enough to hurt me... maybe there's too little qi here for me to absorb."

"Then hurry back."

"Okay."

Carrying the bamboo basket, Mu Ling followed her sense of Su Cheng's location, floating all the way back without obstruction...

Author's note:

This instance isn't as exciting as the last one.

Chapter 30

After Mu Ling returned to Su Cheng's side, she set the basket on an open patch of ground and slipped back into the wooden bead, saying helplessly, "There's really too little qi here... I'm going to sleep for a while. Call me if you need anything."

"Okay."

The bracelet flashed twice, and their Shared Senses connection broke. Su Cheng didn't disturb her. Instead, she took out some alcohol and thoroughly sprayed the eggs and liquor in the bamboo basket from a distance.