Chen Ping knew he was dead.
After all, a living person couldn't possibly lose this much blood.
Nor could they wander around a building late at night while dragging a broken arm and leg behind them.
Some say a name is actually the shortest curse.
A person's fate is often decided from birth by just a few short characters.
His entire life had been just like his name, Chen Ping—utterly ordinary.
An ordinary elementary school, an ordinary high school, a decent enough university, and a job so mundane it couldn't be any more average.
He had joined this game company right after graduation and stayed for twenty years.
Like the life trajectory of many others, he had married, had a child, possessed a happy family, and carried a heavy burden of car and mortgage payments.
His achievements were neither high nor low, and his savings were neither much nor little.
If no accidents had occurred, he might have lived like that forever.
And then?
Then he died.
His death was quite horrific.
He fell from the twenty-seventh floor and landed on an outdoor advertisement billboard on the seventeenth floor. His skull was shattered, and his spine was snapped in two.
Fortunately, he couldn't remember the pain of his death.
He had been waiting—waiting for the legendary Ox-Head and Horse-Face to take him away.
But nothing came.
There was no Black and White Impermanence as he had imagined, nor was there an Underworld like in the movies.
He was trapped between the seventeenth and eighteenth floors, unable to leave.
Unable to communicate with people, unable to leave, and unable to truly die.
Day after day passed.
Chen Ping felt like he was going insane.
In fact, he wasn't far from losing his mind entirely.
One day, he regained consciousness from a daze and found himself clutching a bird in his hand.
It was a sparrow, the kind seen everywhere, often resting on the billboard.
Its tiny head had been crushed into a pulp, its black bead-like eyes covered in a layer of haze, its broken body and snapped feathers matted together.
It was a bloody mess.
That was only the beginning.
Ants, cockroaches, butterflies, moths, sparrows...
Even larger pigeons.
The moments of clarity Chen Ping experienced became fewer and further between.
Every time he opened his eyes, he felt an unbearable thirst in his throat, and an endless malice in his chest that wanted to pour out.
Why?
Why was I the one who died?
Why haven't I disappeared?
Why, why, why, why, why?
He lurked beneath every light, staring with blood-red eyes, greedily and urgently peering at the living people in the building.
Chen Ping even began to fantasize about the pleasure of tearing open their throats, plucking out their veins with his fingertips, and gulping down their flesh and blood.
He no longer had the capacity to think about what kind of thing he had become.
Chaos, evil, disorder.
Chen Ping needed more blood.
Clearly, small things like birds and insects could no longer satisfy him.
Everything Master He had done only restored his sanity for a brief moment.
He was only clear-headed for a short while before realizing his hand was already around Master He's neck.
The warmth of human skin fascinated Chen Ping.
He could even feel the countless streams of fresh blood flowing beneath that thin layer of skin.
Tear it open.
Tear it open.
With just a gentle tear, he could drink his fill of that sweet...
For some reason, Chen Ping didn't follow through.
He fled in a panic, the violent impulses in his heart having nowhere to go.
Harming people was not his intention.
But when night fell and the darkness once again shrouded this steel forest...
The bloodthirsty instinct suppressed deep in Chen Ping's heart seemed to quietly awaken once more.
He suppressed it for two days before finally locking onto a young woman working late.
Young and healthy.
Most importantly, her heart was beating slowly inside her chest.
Chen Ping could barely contain the ecstasy in his heart.
Of course, that was if a ghost could still have emotions.
He struggled even as he craved fresh flesh and blood.
Facing the woman's terrified expression, Chen Ping even began to fantasize about the beautiful scene he would see when he pierced through her heart.
Bright red and passionate.
It seemed that his persistence in being "human" was going to end tonight.
Two figures seemed to appear beside Chen Ping.
One was roaring, telling him to stop:
You are a human, not a beast!
The other was whispering in his ear, quietly tempting him:
Eat her, eat her.
In the end, instinct triumphed over reason. Chen Ping chased the woman, impatiently pouncing toward his prey of the night.
Then, the unexpected happened.
Ding—
The elevator doors slowly opened, and a woman stood before Chen Ping.
It was a woman.
A very beautiful woman.
She looked somewhat frail, as if she would fall over if the wind blew.
Against such a woman, Chen Ping could easily pierce her heart with a single finger.
But...
The woman's entire body seemed to be shrouded in a thick, viscous black mist that wouldn't dissipate.
Countless strands of black-red killing intent and resentful energy were intertwined, wrapping tightly around her. Beneath her calm, waveless eyes, an endless darkness seemed to be hidden.
The woman held a knife the length of a forearm, and the bloodstains on the tip were not yet dry.
Chen Ping seemed to hear the wails of countless creatures before their deaths.
He felt as if he saw a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
The woman's lips curled up into a dark and terrifying smile.
Her voice was melodious and pleasant, but in Chen Ping's ears, it was as sharp as a soul-reaping hook:
“Excuse me, do you have a wish?”
As the woman spoke, the air almost froze into ice.
A bone-chilling cold swept through the entire elevator lobby.
What is this!
What kind of thing is this!
Chen Ping wanted to turn and flee, but the woman's gaze remained fixed on him.
Endless malice pressed down on him like a massive mountain.
The wails and screams of the creatures on the knife's tip grew louder, echoing before his eyes like a scene from hell.
If the resentful energy on his body was a single drop of water...
Then the resentful energy and killing intent intertwined on the woman before him were a surging, restless river.
How many lives must have been taken to possess such powerful resentful energy!
Chen Ping's entire body froze, with only one thought in his mind:
If I defy her orders, I will die.
I will die.
I will definitely die.
Chen Ping didn't know if a ghost could die a second time.
But he was absolutely certain that the woman before him was not an existence he could resist.
She was like a higher-level predator within a pack.
The only thing he could do now was flip over and show his belly to demonstrate his loyalty.
—As for her asking if he had a wish?
Could it be that the living person from just now was the prey she had her eyes on?
The woman wanted to kill him, which was why she asked that.
His reason returned, and Chen Ping immediately withdrew all the resentful energy from his body, becoming as docile as a venomous snake that had its fangs pulled.
“H-Hello, my name is Chen Ping.
I'm sorry, I've only been dead for a year. I didn't know this building was your territory.
If I have offended you, please forgive me. I will accept any punishment, truly!!
I beg you to be merciful and forgive me this once.”
Chen Ping said urgently:
“This is my first time being a ghost, but I know the rules, I know them!”
With that, he reached into his own stomach and pulled out items one by one, placing them before the woman:
Yellow copper coins.
Golden ingots.
White candles that emitted a sickly green glow.
As soon as Chen Ping brought these things out, the air was immediately filled with the scent of burnt paper money ashes.
“Are these... enough?”
He stared at her eagerly, trying to see even the slightest hint of hesitation on the woman's face.
The woman smiled cryptically, her pitch-black eyes shifting as she spoke with an ambiguous tone:
“I don't like eating those things.”
She doesn't like eating offerings?
Could it be...
The thing she wants to eat is me.
Am I going to die again?
Chen Ping fell further into despair.
Rate on N.U.
