Chapter 51

Until she suddenly witnessed a faceless white figure strangling Su Xiaoxiao and three others with a rope.

She fought with the white-clad figure, and the moment the boning knife pierced the white-clad figure's chest, the same wound appeared on her chest.

It turns out the white figure was an illusion.

She was misled by it and committed suicide.

At the moment her heart ruptured, a mechanical voice from the system echoed in her mind:

[Unfortunately, resident 1216 died in the instance. The system will confiscate all your points and assets.]

[Thank you for your stay... Unbinding in progress... Unbinding successful.]

Su Cheng's hand holding the boning knife trembled slightly. She lowered her head; her body was in the same soul form as Mu Ling's.

So the reason she could no longer sense Mu Ling was because she was already dead...?

How could she have died so easily?

She had already navigated through one challenge after another, just getting on the right track, how could it all end so easily...?

Su Cheng didn't want to believe it, yet those unbelievable memories of her death were so vivid.

The excruciating pain of the knife piercing his heart still lingered in his chest...

Cold drops of blood dripped from her head, sliding down her face from her forehead, just like Su Cheng was crying.

She touched the liquid on her face and belatedly stepped back.

Su Xiaoxiao's voice was weak above her head; she was still shedding tears of blood as she trembled and said, "Accept reality, we're all dead. We've all become ghosts, and who knows when we'll vanish."

Su Cheng shook her head with a grim expression, touching the jade pendant around her neck.

She remembered that the Red-Fog Female Ghost was more powerful than the ghosts of the passengers in the carriage, thanks to half a jade pendant.

And she had a whole one.

So what if it's a ghost?

Then she'll become the strongest demon.

She could barely accept that she had stumbled and died, becoming a ghost, but she couldn't accept Su Xiaoxiao's idea of disappearing.

She could wait, just like Mu Ling. Waiting to one day meet an apartment resident who came here to do a dungeon quest, and then leave with that person.

"It doesn't matter if the process is a bit troublesome, it doesn't matter if I have to wait in this instance... As long as we can achieve our goal in the end, I can afford to wait."

Su Cheng stroked the jade pendant, murmuring softly. The unease and anxiety in her heart were slowly soothed with the soft murmur.

"Su Cheng, what are you saying? Are you... crazy?"

Su Cheng had calmed down and stopped ignoring the voices trying to bring her to reality. She sat down beside her own corpse.

She looked at her own unseeing face as she died, and realized that she was no different from others; she too died with eyes full of resentment.

Su Cheng touched the jade pendant around her neck, trying to establish a connection with it.

She remembered Mu Ling saying that ghosts could become powerful by absorbing energy.

She closed her eyes and sat in meditation, focusing her entire being on the Twin Fish Jade Pendant, intending to rely on it for cultivation.

The voices of Su Xiaoxiao and the other three faded away, and she seemed to have lost her hearing... she couldn't hear anything anymore.

The jade pendant emitted faint light and began to heat up, as if it were trying to break through some invisible barrier.

It was getting hotter and hotter, so hot that Su Cheng almost dropped it. But she didn't; she held on tightly, as if grasping at a chance to live.

The warmth spread from her palm to her entire body, and the faint light gradually enveloped her.

Spiderweb-like cracks appeared on the invisible barrier.

The crack spread until there was a "bang!"

It finally shattered.

The surrounding temperature suddenly rose, and cool snowflakes landed on Su Cheng's eyelashes. She heard a sound.

"Su Cheng! You're finally awake! I was so worried!"

It was Mu Ling's voice.

Su Cheng looked around in confusion, feeling dizzy from the rush of blood to her head.

Her legs were entangled in a root system, and she was hanging upside down from the trunk of a huge locust tree.

Their hair and faces were covered in snow.

Besides her, there were four others, including Su Xiaoxiao. They kept their eyes closed, motionless, trapped in some kind of nightmare.

Looking around, one could see skeletons hanging from every thick branch.

Su Cheng blinked and looked at her thigh. The roots were like living snakes, tightly coiling around her prey. There were also new green shoots and thorns on the roots.

Because of the upside-down position, the legs suffered from ischemia and hypoxia, and in the cold weather, the thorns piercing the skin only caused a numb pain.

But the slight tingling pain made Su Cheng breathe a sigh of relief.

Ah, she's not dead, so she doesn't have to be a ghost cultivator anymore.

A note from the author:

none

Chapter 51

Seeing that Su Cheng was still somewhat dazed, Mu Ling became even more anxious, "How are you? Are you awake or not?"

Mu Ling witnessed Su Cheng and Su Xiaoxiao walking towards a huge locust tree as if possessed. No matter how much she pricked them with needles or shouted, she couldn't stop them.

Until Su Cheng was hoisted from the tree, she, who had been tearing at the locust tree branches, was suddenly locked into a bracelet.

Mu Ling immediately realized that Su Cheng's consciousness was in mortal danger.

She and Su Cheng are one; if Su Cheng cannot wake up, she will also be affected.

Either they're reclaimed by the apartment complex, or they die together.

Meanwhile, the Twin Fish Jade Pendant on Su Cheng's body had been glowing ever since she was bound, slowing down the speed at which the locust tree branches wrapped around her, giving Su Cheng time and opportunity to wake up.

"Don't worry, she's really awake."

With a slight thought, Su Cheng unlocked the bracelet, allowing Mu Ling to emerge.

Before the locust tree branches could wrap around her upper body, Su Cheng took out a boning knife, bent over, and swung the knife to cut off the branches.

She fell to the ground and only then could she see the locust tree clearly.

Its trunk is large enough for twenty adults to encircle, and its rough bark protrudes, forming the shape of an old man's face.

It looked exactly like the tree spirit Su Cheng had seen in the game; its dense branches resembled both its hair and its limbs.

Was it actually a locust tree spirit?

Its empty eyes locked onto its prey that had suddenly broken free.

"Whoosh whoosh whoosh--"

Hundreds of branches, resembling long whips, sprouted from the trees from a distance of thousands of miles!

They all moved in unison, like a volley of arrows aimed at Su Cheng!

Mu Ling stood in front of Su Cheng, her face grim. In her battle-ready state, she exuded ghostly energy and looked fierce.

After activating the skill "Bizarre Threads," her black hair grew longer, and the dense strands blocked and snapped the branches!

Su Cheng quickly cut the branches binding her legs. The branches were covered in sharp thorns, which left behind red, prickly marks on her legs as they fell off.

She quickly drank a vial of nutrient solution.

My legs have been bound for too long, causing a lack of blood and oxygen, and they are still stiff.

Although her legs were covered with needle marks, she didn't feel much pain, only an unusual soreness and numbness that made it impossible for her to stand up immediately.

Mu Ling and the locust tree fought back and forth, with Mu Ling constantly absorbing the yin energy leaking from the locust tree branches.

But the locust tree, having absorbed countless human flesh and blood, was completely unafraid of the black-haired female ghost. It effortlessly split its branches, seeking the opportune moment to strike its prey deadly...

Su Cheng rubbed her legs back and forth with her palms to speed up blood circulation. After a dozen seconds, she regained consciousness and stood up unsteadily.

She took out a chainsaw and went to help Mu Ling chop the sharp branches, only to find that after one branch was chopped off, it split directly into two at the fork!

She quickly switched back to the boning knife. The boning knife wasn't as convenient as a chainsaw, but the branches it cut couldn't fork again.

Su Xiaoxiao and the others were hanging from the tree. Except for Su Xiaoxiao, the other three were almost completely wrapped around the heads by the extending branches.

Su Cheng wanted to get closer to them, but was blocked by a hundred or so branches.

These branches seem endless; after hundreds are cut off, new shoots will rapidly grow into new branches.

But the scariest thing is that Su Cheng has returned to the space she was in before.

The surrounding environment around her shifted between light and darkness.

She saw her own corpse again, and she sat meditating beside it as a spirit.

As she sat there in a daze for a while, it was as if she had just woken from a dream, and her soul seemed to have become faint.

"Su Cheng, you're already dead. That was all a lie," Su Xiaoxiao said helplessly.

"Accept reality. If you can't accept the fact that you're dead, you'll be utterly destroyed!"

Zhou Yang smiled wryly and said, "No one wants to die, but if a ghost can't accept its own death, it will become obsessed with its imagination, and eventually it won't even be a ghost anymore..."

He sighed deeply, "Wake up, don't make the wrong choice!"

"Su Cheng!"

Mu Ling's cries and the burning hot jade pendant pulled her back into the world of being attacked by locust tree branches.

She seemed to be at the boundary between two spaces.

Both sides were telling her that the other dimension was an illusion.

Su Cheng leaned towards believing she was alive, but a thought kept creeping into her mind: Are you sure? Can you really be sure what you're seeing isn't an illusion?

If you make the wrong choice, you might really be annihilated!

Can you really accept that you can't even be a ghost?

Su Cheng couldn't suppress these thoughts; she could only repeatedly remind herself of them.

The space she is in now is real, and she is a living person.

But the repeated hints seemed like self-deception, an inability to accept the truth... It was as if she lived in her own world, unwilling to be woken up.

"Pfft!"

The locust wood stalk pierced through Su Cheng's chest, and the sharp pain made her face turn slightly pale.

As she swung her hand and severed the branch from her chest, a thought unexpectedly popped into Su Cheng's mind:

It turned out that being pierced through the chest was much more painful than I remembered.

In my memory, being stabbed through the chest with a boning knife was also very painful, but that pain felt more like a replica of the Perception I had when I was injured before.

However, the pain caused by different injuries to different parts of the body is not the same.

This is the real, piercing pain in my chest.

The foreign object pierced through her ribs at lightning speed, causing the ribs to crack with unbearable force, while the object remained embedded in her flesh!

Su Cheng pulled out the remaining branch from her chest and discovered tender white buds sprouting from it, gnawing at her flesh and attempting to grow inside her...

Blood soaked through her cotton-padded coat, yet Su Cheng was subtly feeling the real pain.