“A Painted Skin Ghost?! Where the hell did that come from?”
With a toothbrush in her mouth, Nan Zhi nearly smashed the tablet in her hand.
“What kind of decent game has monsters that sneak-attack players in the middle of the night?! Isn't this setting a bit too absurd?!”
Staring at the dreary grey screen, she was on the verge of breaking down:
“Players don't even get invulnerability while AFK? What is this supposed to mean—players have to sleep with one eye open???”
If things were like this, how was she supposed to keep having fun in the game?
Did the game designers lose their minds?
Or did Honghe Technology not pay their employees enough overtime?
How on earth did such an outrageous game setting even get approved??
You're just a single-player game!
She flipped through the player log from when she was AFK:
【Cultivator drifts off to sleep...】
【The night grows late. The night watchman strikes his gong. At the dead of night, owls screech strangely, and heavy footsteps seem to echo across the courtyard.】
【“Painted Skin Ghost” entered the room.】
【“Painted Skin Ghost” killed “Nan Dazhuang”.】
【“Painted Skin Ghost” killed “Chen Jingui”.】
【“Painted Skin Ghost” killed “Nan Ye” and flayed her skin.】
【“Painted Skin Ghost” heavily injured you.】
【“Painted Skin Ghost” gouged out your heart.】
【Cultivator has died.】
【Fortune is fickle, just as the moon waxes and wanes. Brave cultivator, fear no hardship!】
【Cultivator, please keep up the good work! Bravely conquer the immortal path!】
No matter how Nan Zhi looked at it, the black exclamation marks at the end of the text felt like pure mockery.
“Painted Skin” was a story from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, telling of a malicious ghost who painted upon human skin to disguise itself as a beautiful woman, seducing scholars to gouge out and eat their hearts.
Even though later generations often adapted the “Painted Skin Ghost” into a lonely, kindhearted, and gorgeous female demon yearning for love, that couldn't mask the fact that it was originally a heart-devouring evil ghost.
“I remember the Painted Skin Ghost was considered a Greater Ghost in Strange Tales.”
Nan Zhi spat out the foam from her mouth and pondered:
“Those black footprints at the Qiao house must have been left by it. Did I trigger some special mechanic that caused the Painted Skin Ghost to kill me?
No wonder nobody on the internet has played this game before. The freedom is too high, and the difficulty is punishingly steep.
When the player dies, it even automatically reloads to a previous save. Without patience, nobody could ever play this game.”
Nan Zhi spat out the rest of the foam, ordered takeout on her phone, and squeezed back onto the sofa to continue grinding the game.
...
【Cultivator has died.】
【Cultivator revives. The game automatically reloads.】
Accompanied by a brisk, cheerful sound effect, ripples spread across the gray filter on the screen like a pebble dropped into a deep pool.
The game character opened her eyes. The lively Nan Ye stood right before her.
Not far away, Qiao Dalang, his face etched with worry, was dumping spoiled tofu into a bucket.
“You want to catch a ghost for my family?”
“Don't make fun of me. What ghosts? That's just gossip from outsiders. If there really were a ghost, how come I haven't seen one?”
The dialogue was identical.
Nan Zhi glanced at the upper right corner of the screen. The time displayed the hour of the Dragon, exactly seven o'clock in the morning, syncing with real time.
The dead of night, mid-third watch, was midnight.
Which meant that, excluding the time spent dead, from midnight back to seven in the morning of the previous day, the game had rolled back a full seventeen hours.
Beside her, Nan Ye stepped forward and said indignantly:
“If my Eldest Sister says your house has a ghost, then it has a ghost! We came with good intentions to solve your trouble—how can you be so ungrateful?”
Nan Ye's lines hadn't changed either.
Nan Zhi stared at the young girl. The two were standing very close, close enough that she could even see the faint bluish veins beneath the girl's pale neck.
Although the game didn't show an NPC death cutscene, the words “flayed her skin” made it clear that her death must have been excruciatingly painful.
“Eldest Sister, why are you staring at me?”
Crept out by the stare, Nan Ye couldn't help shivering. “Could it be... is there something wrong with me?”
Nan Zhi shook her head.
This game wouldn't set up an inexplicable cause of death for no reason.
Therefore, the “Painted Skin Ghost” could only have been picked up at the Qiao family's residence.
Which meant the Qiao household truly was haunted, and the troublemaker wasn't the grey rat spirit.
That rat was lying.
At that thought, Nan Zhi walked straight past Qiao Dalang, barged right into the Qiao family tofu shop, and snatched the gourd ladle from Qiao Niangzi's hand.
“Aiyo, aiyo—isn't this the Nan family's eldest daughter? Why have you run into my home to play?”
Qiao Niangzi jumped in surprise. Seeing Nan Zhi holding the gourd ladle to scoop boiling water from the pot, she coaxed gently:
“Be careful not to scald yourself. Our family has sweet fruits—would you like some to sweeten your mouth?”
Perhaps due to eating tofu regularly, her skin was as fair and white as snow, surpassing even the daughters of wealthy households.
—Everyone in Dingyuan County knew that Lingbai Alley had a “Tofu Qiao,” whose wife was the far-renowned “Tofu Xi Shi.”
Without a word, Nan Zhi carried the ladle of boiling water toward the firewood pile in the courtyard. In a few quick moves, she uncovered a rat hole within and made a show of pouring:
“I'll count to three. If you don't come out, I'll tell them to pour boiling water down this rat hole. Three, two...”
“Aiyo, aiyo, aiyo! Young lady, you can't pour it! You must not pour it!!”
The grey rat spirit sporting a yellow name scrambled out, its chubby body wobbling. Its wrinkled face looked inexplicably pitiful:
“I still have an old mother and thirty-seven rat pups in my burrow! You really can't do this!”
“Confess honestly—what is your connection to that Painted Skin Ghost?!”
Nan Zhi planted her foot firmly on the grey rat's tail, speaking menacingly:
“Don't even think about fooling me with excuses about arriving at this courtyard first and making trouble just because you hated the sound of the Qiao family grinding tofu at midnight—”
Earlier, she had underestimated the game's difficulty, taking for granted that this fat rat was the true culprit behind the scenes.
Yet thinking it through carefully, if the grey rat was truly making trouble because Qiao Dalang ground tofu in the dead of night, why would it only start finding it noisy recently?
One had to realize that the Qiao family had been grinding tofu here for several years!
However, there was one thing Nan Zhi couldn't figure out.
If there really was a Painted Skin Ghost in the Qiao residence, why had no lives been lost in the Qiao family so far?
Nan Zhi would never believe a Painted Skin Ghost had suddenly grown a kind heart.
After all, in the previous round, that ghost had directly exterminated the entire Nan family.
—Well, almost, since the eldest son, Nan Yi, was working at the yamen and escaped the tragedy.
“Th-th-this, this, this...”
The grey rat spirit broke into a torrential cold sweat, its beady black eyes darting wildly as the whiskers around its snout quivered violently.
Heavens above!
How did this young lady know what it was going to say!
Most importantly, how did she know that the one making trouble in the Qiao home was a Painted Skin Ghost?!
It never uttered a word about that!
“N-n-no, it's not a Painted Skin Ghost! What Painted Skin Ghost?!”
Terrified out of its wits, the grey rat clutched its snout with both paws, trying to cover up the truth only to make it more obvious:
“I was the one who ate the Qiao family's tofu! I was also the one lying under the wall base coughing and causing trouble in the middle of the night!
I didn't say anything—I wasn't the one who told you!”
“You're afraid? That's why you refuse to tell the truth.”
Enlightenment dawned on Nan Zhi as she raised the gourd ladle in her hand:
“Think it through carefully. If you tell me the truth, I don't know whether the Painted Skin Ghost will kill you.
However, right now, your life—along with the lives of your old mother and those thirty-seven rat pups—is held in the palm of my hand.
Will you confess honestly and abandon the dark path for the light, or do you want me to catch you and feed you to a cat right now?”
The grey rat spirit instantly fell into a dilemma, its whiskers trembling ceaselessly.
That Painted Skin Ghost was exceptionally cruel. Not only did it devour human hearts and livers, but it never showed mercy to small spirits like them either.
If it learned that the rat had betrayed it...
It was feared that its entire nest of rats would not escape being skinned and flayed!
Yet... the young lady before it was also extremely fierce, and she seemed to possess real skill—she had figured out in an instant that a Painted Skin Ghost was haunting the Qiao family.
The grey rat's gaze shifted back and forth between Nan Zhi and Qiao Niangzi, its small, beady black eyes brimming with cunning.
Rate on N.U.
