The moment Nan Zhi stepped into the office, she immediately sensed a tense atmosphere unlike anything before.
In the office, not a single person was working diligently. Everyone was huddled together in small groups of two or three, their expressions a mix of thirty percent fear, thirty percent curiosity, and forty percent suppressed excitement.
Everyone was discussing something.
And with utter seriousness.
“Nan Zhi, Nan Zhi!”
Naturally, Zhang Qiuyu was among them.
Spotting Nan Zhi, she immediately pulled her over, bursting with eagerness to share what she had seen and heard with her workday partner: “Something huge happened, do you know?!”
“Yawn—”
Nan Zhi rubbed her bleary eyes, still looking half-asleep. “What’s up? A financial crisis? Company layoffs? Did the Loch Ness Monster crawl ashore, or did a volcano erupt in the cherry blossom land?”
“Aiya, neither! By the way, why are you so tired? Did you go dig up landmines last night?”
Zhang Qiuyu’s enthusiasm wasn’t dampened in the slightest. She was practically dancing with gestures, overly excited:
“Let me tell you, something huge went down over the past two days!
Didn’t someone from the advertising company downstairs resign the day before yesterday? They claimed they ran into a ghost, but at first, some people didn’t believe it.
Well, last night, even the building’s property security guards ran into a ghost!!”
At this point, Zhang Qiuyu took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down:
“Last night, the building security was on routine patrol when they found a bunch of burned-out candles and paper money scattered all over the staircase.
Curious, they followed the trail of candles upstairs to take a look, and then!
On the twenty-seventh floor, they ran into a female ghost dressed in ancient clothes, burning paper money in the stairwell while constantly calling out Chen Ping’s name!
The security captain was scared out of his wits, but he still braced himself and went up to catch her, only for the woman to vanish in the blink of an eye!!”
Getting increasingly agitated as she spoke, Zhang Qiuyu slapped her thigh and eagerly held up her phone screen for the people around her to see:
“A brave guard actually took a video, and screenshots of it have gone completely viral in the group chats!”
On the small phone screen, a somewhat blurry photo had been enlarged several times:
The photo was shot from a low angle, looking upward.
In the dim, murky stairwell, the emergency exit light cast an eerie green glow onto the ground, illuminating the carpet of paper money.
The candlelight, small as a bean, flickered with a greenish hue. Several erratic beams of flashlight converged, highlighting an exceptionally bizarre figure.
A woman in ancient attire had her hair bound up. In one hand she held a yellow chicken, and with the other she scattered paper money, her sullen face exuding pure gloom.
“Chen Ping—”
“Chen Ping—”
“Chen Ping—”
The woman drifted forward lightly, tossing out a handful of paper money with every call.
One by one, the candles snuffed out.
Paper money fluttered through the air.
The woman’s shrill voice echoed in the stairwell for a long time.
In the dead of night, a single woman.
Leading a yellow chicken, scattering yellow paper, and calling out the name of a person who had died long ago.
Utterly uncanny.
Utterly oppressive.
“Holy shit... look at her feet!”
The camera shook; the person recording seemed to have noticed something, causing the entire video to tremble.
The woman noticed the person filming. She tilted her head slightly, revealing a pale, bluish-white face completely devoid of humanity.
Pitch-black pupils without a single speck of white rolled slightly upward as her mouth curled slowly, slowly into a smile:
“Hehehehe...”
Beneath her fluttering hem was a pair of embroidered shoes floating above the steps.
The video cut off abruptly at this point.
Nan Zhi sucked in a breath of cold air.
The surrounding colleagues also gasped in unison.
Her colleagues gasped because, even through a mere video, they could still feel gusts of ghostly wind and a bone-chilling cold.
Nan Zhi gasped because...
In such a tense situation last night, she never imagined someone would actually remember to record a video!
She had indeed taken quite a risk last night.
Although donning the 【Paper Skin Garment】 allowed her to take on the appearance of the Painted Skin Ghost, Nan Zhi was still fundamentally human.
As a human, she could still die.
If those guards had been just a little bolder and swarmed her yesterday, she wouldn’t even have had room to run.
Fortunately, the 【Paper Skin Garment】 was effective enough, and with Chen Ping keeping watch for her, Nan Zhi managed to leave the building smoothly.
Chen Ping’s activity range had also successfully expanded from the seventeenth floor to the entire building.
But one couldn’t rely entirely on luck for everything.
Nan Zhi resolved that from now on, she must be cautious, cautious, and even more cautious.
“Damn! Is this video real or fake? Is there really a ghost in the building?”
“How could a video be fake? I heard that guard resigned this morning and didn’t even dare ask for this month’s wages.”
“Wait, didn’t Chen Ping jump to his death? Where did this female ghost come from?”
“This is hilarious. The advertising company hired someone to exorcise a ghost, and they ended up dragging another female ghost back, hahaha.”
“I think it worked pretty well, didn't it? The seventeenth floor isn't haunted anymore—it just moved to the twenty-seventh floor.”
“Right, in a sense, that master is pretty amazing for driving the ghost up to the twenty-seventh floor.”
“This woman might not necessarily be a ghost, right? What if someone’s playing a prank?”
“Didn't you notice? She has no shadow and is floating above the stairs. How could that be a human?”
“Maybe she was suspended by wires from a drone? Or used some other high-tech gadget?”
“Come on. If someone really had tech like that, would they just use it to play ghost tricks?”
“Eww, it gave me goosebumps all over.”
Opinions varied wildly, and the discussion grew heated, with all kinds of theories being thrown around.
“Huh? Why was the video banned!”
Someone exclaimed in surprise, prompting everyone else to check their phones immediately.
Sure enough, tapping into the video only revealed a line of black text sitting in the center of the screen:
【Sorry, the video you are viewing has been reported and removed for allegedly spreading feudal superstition and false information. A healthy internet depends on all of us.】
Even though the video was taken down, the power of the internet was limitless.
Like a virus, the clip spread rapidly through Moments feeds. Some even analyzed the video frame by frame, trying to find traces of CGI or forgery.
The company’s main group chat grew even more lively.
Clearly, no one had any mind left for work; everyone was completely absorbed in the ghost rumors.
Over the next two days, supernatural incidents began occurring on the twenty-seventh floor as well—right where the gaming company Chen Ping used to work for was located.
...
In just a single night.
The outside of the company’s glass was covered in red, bloody handprints.
Every computer had been turned on, and in the open documents on each screen, there was only a single word:
“Injustice”
Chen Ping’s former workstation had been smashed to pieces.
The mouse had been crushed to dust, and the keycaps from the keyboard had been pried off one by one, arranged to spell out “Chen Ping,” and stuck by the stairwell entrance.
Everyone’s office chairs had been stacked one by one, piled all the way to the ceiling.
The company’s feng shui fish were all floating belly-up, and the money tree had withered and died overnight.
What made people’s hair stand on end the most was that the printers seemed infected by a virus, continuously spitting out Chen Ping’s funeral portrait.
On the stark black-and-white photos, the genial fat man curled his lips in a slight smile.
The gaming company’s boss nearly went insane.
If before, people had merely treated the haunting on the seventeenth floor as post-meal gossip and amusement,
then now, even the staunchest skeptics of ghosts and spirits actively joined in the discussions.
The haunting at the gaming company completely blew up the matter of “Hongxing Mansion Being Haunted.”
The name “Chen Ping” was being mentioned online more and more frequently.
And some old stories were dug up by onlookers and scrutinized in detail.
Not enough.
Far from enough.
Let the discussion grow even more heated.
Let there be even more people arguing back.
Nan Zhi scrolled through the messages in the company group chat, unconsciously biting her knuckles. Wanniang’s method was indeed very useful.
Paper money clearing the path, a yellow chicken leading the way.
Not only could Chen Ping leave the seventeenth floor, but his range of activity had expanded to the entire building.
Moreover, after consuming the offerings, Chen Ping seemed capable of doing much more.
As for Nan Zhi, she had done everything she could; the rest was up to fate.
...
...
Rate on N.U.
