Li Yafei ran downstairs for her life, flight after flight, not daring to look back.
The corridor was pitch black, with subdivided flat doors lining both sides, one after another.
Some doors let out a dim, yellowish light through their cracks, while others were completely dark.
The clothes hanging on the clotheslines swayed back and forth, casting shadows on the wall that looked like hung human skins.
Li Yafei ran until she was out of breath, her lungs burning like fire.
She didn't know how many floors she had run down when suddenly, a dull thud echoed from the stairwell corner ahead.
Once, and then again.
It was highly rhythmic, like something being slammed against the ground.
Was it another monster?
Li Yafei's heart tightened, and she instinctively hid behind a half-open door.
The door was slightly ajar, leaving just a crack that was enough to see the open space at the corner.
In the corner space, a small folding stool was set up, and someone was sitting there with their back to her.
It was an old woman wearing a black cloth shirt with a side fastening, her hair graying and tied up in a round bun.
Her back was to Li Yafei, her waist slightly hunched, holding a black women's cloth shoe in her hand.
The sole of the cloth shoe was densely studded with small iron nails.
The old woman raised her hand high, then slammed it down onto the ground, stroke after stroke.
“Thwack.”
“Thwack.”
“Thwack!”
Two yellow paper dolls lay on the ground, their faces drawn with cinnabar, written with mirrored names and birth charts, and a large red 'X' marked on their chests.
At the old woman's feet lay a cracked wooden memorial tablet, blank and pitch-black.
Her voice was sharp and thin, dragging with a long, drawn-out tone, sounding increasingly bizarre and eerie:
“I beat your villain head, beat you till you can't even draw a breath!
I beat your villain hand, beat you till you can't hold a single coin!
I beat your villain foot, beat you till you trip and break your leg!
I beat your villain belly, beat you till you purge and rot away!
I beat your villain lung, beat you till you cough to death!
I beat your villain soul, beat you till you never rise again—”
...
Over and over, her speed grew faster and faster, like a fast-forwarding videotape. It sounded distorted, completely unlike a sound a living person could make!
The sole of the shoe slammed down—thud, thud, thud—each strike heavier than the last.
Li Yafei shuddered.
It was villain hitting.
Many housewives in Hong Kong believed in this.
When people felt they had bad luck or were plagued by backstabbers, they would go to the City God Temple or near the Wong Tai Sin Temple to find an old woman to beat the villains for them. It was said to be highly effective.
When she was bullied by her classmates in the past, her grandma had also taken her to beat villains.
But now, in the dead of night, in the underworld, an old woman was beating villains all by herself.
No matter how she looked at it, it was incredibly eerie.
Li Yafei shrank behind the door, not daring to make a single sound.
Just then, A'kai and A'le caught up.
...
...
The two thugs ran panting, their eyes fixed only on Li Yafei ahead, completely failing to notice the old woman sitting at the corner.
“You fucking bitch! Let's see where you can run!” A'kai cursed, striding over.
He was running too fast to look where he was going and kicked over the memorial tablet at the old woman's feet.
With a loud clatter, the cracked wooden tablet wobbled and fell flat.
The sound of the villain hitting stopped abruptly.
The corridor instantly fell dead silent.
Panting, A'kai looked down at the tablet and spat indifferently. “What a piece of junk.”
Just as the two were about to take another step,
the old woman sitting on the folding stool slowly turned her head.
A ghostly green firelight reflected on her face—half of it was pale green, the other half ash-gray.
Her eyes were extremely cloudy, glinting with a creepy green light as she stared dead at A'kai and A'le.
Suddenly, the corners of her mouth stretched wide into a grin.
Her mouth split all the way to her ears, revealing pitch-black, completely toothless gums:
“You two young lads, why are you being so naughty?”
“If you bully my granddaughter, you must pay with your lives.”
Li Yafei, hiding behind the door, was stunned.
A'kai sneered. “Crazy old hag, playing ghost. Who the hell is your granddaughter? I'll bully her if I want to. What can you do about it?”
With that, he raised his foot to kick away the paper dolls on the ground.
A'le laughed along. “At your age, you should stay home instead of running out here to scare people. Believe it or not, we'll beat you up too!”
The two didn't notice anything wrong at all.
The old woman didn't say a word. She slowly withdrew her gaze and looked back down at the two yellow paper dolls.
Then, she raised the black cloth shoe in her hand once more.
“Thwack!”
The nail-studded cloth shoe slammed down hard. This strike was heavier than any before.
“I beat your punk foot, beat you till you trip and break your neck!”
No sooner had the words left her mouth than
A'kai's raised foot suddenly slipped violently.
He must have stepped on something slick, for his center of gravity shifted backward, and he fell straight down the stairwell.
“Ah—!”
A short, sharp scream.
“Crack—”
The crisp sound of bones snapping echoed from below the stairs.
Then, silence.
A'le froze on the spot, the smile still frozen on his face. “A-A'kai?”
He called out with a trembling voice, but received no response. He had no choice but to shuffle forward a couple of steps and crane his neck to look down.
The stairwell was pitch black; he couldn't see a thing.
Only a heavy stench of blood seemed to slowly drift up.
“A'kai? Are you okay? Don't scare me!”
His voice shook. The old woman's cloth shoe fell again.
“Thwack!”
“I beat your punk face, beat you till your pores bleed so you can't show yourself!”
A'le suddenly felt an itch on his face.
He reached up to scratch it, only to feel a damp wetness. He touched a handful of liquid.
Wet.
A'le raised his hand and looked; his hand was covered in red.
His pores were oozing blood.
Densely packed tiny beads of blood were seeping out of every single pore on his face, neck, and the back of his hands.
“W-What's happening...” The expression on his face was dazed, mixed with a hint of disbelief.
His arms were also covered in blood droplets, squeezing out of his skin like dense sesame seeds.
The blood flowed faster and faster, streaming down his cheeks, blurring his vision, and dyeing his clothes red.
“Help... Help me!”
He turned to run, but his feet felt as if they were being held fast, unable to budge.
Blood trickled down his trouser legs, quickly pooling into a small puddle on the ground.
A'le's blood-soaked eyes happened to meet Li Yafei's. In the next second, he struggled to crawl toward her, stretching out a pair of bloody hands, his gaze filled with terror and pleading:
“Call an ambulance for me... Save me... Save me...”
The dark red blood dragged a long, shocking streak across the floor.
Li Yafei shrank behind the door, yet she felt strangely gratified.
In the corridor, A'kai had fallen silent. A'le was like a melted ice cream, slumped on the ground.
Li Yafei held her breath and looked out. In the next second, with a creak,
the door she was hiding behind was slowly pushed open from the inside.
A shadow cast from inside the room, slowly enveloping her.
Li Yafei's entire body stiffened as she slowly raised her head.
An old woman stood inside the doorway, wearing a blue cloth shirt and a gray apron. Her hair was graying and tied in a bun, and a warm smile graced her face.
It was her grandma.
“Ximei, did I scare you?”
Her grandma's voice was gentle and soft, exactly the way she used to coax her:
“Don't be scared, don't be scared. Come home and have some sweet soup.”
“Those two sketchy punks are already gone. They won't bully you anymore.”
She reached out her hand, her withered palm slightly cold, and pulled Li Yafei up, as if cursing those two young punks to death just now was of absolutely no consequence.
Like swatting two ants.
“Grandma... is it really you?”
“It's me, silly girl.” Her grandma smiled and gently stroked her head, her palm cool to the touch.
Li Yafei could no longer hold it in. She threw herself into her grandma's arms:
“Grandma... I missed you so much... They bullied me!”
“I was wrong... I shouldn't have been embarrassed by you in the past... I shouldn't have argued with you...”
Her grandma gently patted her back, coaxing her warmly. “Silly girl, Grandma doesn't blame you. Go on back, the sweet soup is still warm.”
—If one ignored the two corpses on the ground, whose deaths could hardly be described as pleasant, the scene was actually somewhat heartwarming.
...
...
...
In the first-floor stairwell, a flickering incandescent light shone on the blackened walls, casting several shadows huddled in the corner.
The faces of the three people were as ghastly as corpses.
The air drifted with the smell of mold and rust, mixed with a bit of paper ash. It was unclear where it came from, but it clung stickily to their throats.
It felt as though their lungs were stuffed with paper ash, and every cough tasted of mold.
“Those two ghostly things shouldn't chase after us.”
Squatting on the outermost edge was Dashui-ge, his skin dark and his lips so thick they almost curled outward.
He wore a faded black tank top, with a crooked green dragon tattooed on his arm.
On his feet were a pair of dusty rubber hose shoe covers with soft soles, making not a single sound as he stepped on the concrete floor.
The man glanced sideways at the upper-left corner of his vision, where player information only he could see hovered:
【Class: Gunslinger (Green)】
【Infinite Ammo: You obtain a pistol that uses your own blood as bullets. Its lethality is determined by the volume of blood loss.】
【Item: Silent Rubber Shoe Covers (Durability: 9/10) (The favorite shoe covers of a fishmonger when he was alive. Wearing them silences your footsteps and reduces your presence.)】
...
Dashui-ge licked his thick lips, scanned the two people behind him, and pulled his mouth into a sinister grin.
He always said that as long as a person was alive, they could always find a way out of a dead end.
Last night, he had been chased closely by the cops. Hiding in an alleyway trash can, he was on the verge of being caught when he looked up and saw a golden piece of paper drifting down from the sky.
The golden paper landed on Dashui-ge, and after a wave of dizziness, he ended up in this ghostly place.
Although there were monsters everywhere outside, he felt nothing but sheer ecstasy:
Who didn't know by now that Instances had appeared in the world?
Everything brought out from an Instance was a treasure!
He heard that on the black market, the starting price for life-prolonging items had already skyrocketed to tens of millions!
Tens of millions!
With his worthless life, how long would it take him to save up that much?
Dashui-ge smugly patted the gun in his pocket, his thick lips smacking repeatedly.
In this ghostly place, whoever had the capability would survive.
He was a superhuman now, possessing superpowers. As long as he could get out alive, wouldn't those conglomerates scramble to clear his name?
—At that time, let alone the cops, even the law wouldn't be able to touch him!
Thinking of this, Dashui-ge looked at the two people hiding to the side and spoke harshly:
“Hey, you two.”
One was a young white-collar worker wearing a professional suit, and the other looked like a student—fair-skinned and refined.
Dashui-ge lowered his voice, his tone carrying an ill-intentioned threat:
“Listen up. There are two giant things outside, over ten meters tall. They specialize in crushing people's heads. One squeeze per person, bursting their brains out.”
As he spoke, he pointed outside, and the faces of the two turned even paler.
The two shrank their necks like quails. As if remembering something, they began to dry-heave uncontrollably.
“Scared?”
Dashui-ge patted his hip. “You should be. Without me, both of your heads would've been crushed to feed the monsters long ago.”
He issued orders like he was granting them a favor:
“If you want to live, you have to listen to me. Do whatever I tell you to do. No talking back, no slacking off. Do well, and I'll protect your lives. Do poorly...”
He paused, a ruthless gleam flashing in his eyes:
“...and I'll throw you out to feed the monsters. It's not like having you two around makes a difference anyway.”
Rate on N.U.
