The once-bustling Jiangcheng University had now turned into a dead, icy landmark.
Song Mo floated slowly along the main road, leaving no trace behind.
“Clack, clack, clack.”
Armed police officers carrying live ammunition walked past her, the metal parts of their riot guns glinting with a cold light.
She even took a wide lap around the temporary command center.
According to her initial estimates, the artificial lake stage should have claimed at least two lives—
Tan Moli was in poor health, and Zhou Shengsheng was arrogant and conceited.
But things did not go as she had expected.
Tan Moli, the physically weakest one, was actually the first to complete the check-in mission, while the arrogant Zhou Shengsheng simply had a stubborn hold on life.
In truth, this batch of players had stood a real chance of being completely wiped out.
When the ever-burning candle in the Lake-Center Pavilion went out, she had spent twenty Screenwriter Points to use the 【Butcher】 class card on Zhao Weilai.
It was originally just an experiment, but she hadn't expected Zhao Weilai to actually awaken in a desperate situation, driving a pole straight into the water ghost's eye socket and saving Tan Moli in the process.
—The girl was practically a superhuman.
Still, that gray card was originally a random drop anyway. Using it to cultivate a special spectator could be considered putting it to good use.
Song Mo stroked her chin.
Another green class card lay in her inventory. Its quality was slightly better than Liu Guilan's Clay Sculptor class, so it should also be a practical card.
Actually, she had originally favored Weng Yang—the girl was calm and observant. Paired with a Physician class, she might have become the core of the team.
Fu Qinqin wasn't bad either. Though she looked quiet, she was actually meticulous and bold, daring to take risks and make tough choices at critical moments.
But since both of them had already left the Instance, Song Mo didn't want to waste an opportunity to obtain a skill.
Unlike the players, she could see the complete Instance information—just like building stats in a construction mini-game:
【Instance: 《Campus Ghost Stories》】
【Status: Running (Hour 28)】
【Remaining Surviving Players: 4/6】
【Unlocked Classes: Butcher (Gray) x1, Clay Sculptor (Blue) x1】
【Estimated Screenwriter Points Earned from This Instance: 1,500】
【Current Number of Ghosts in Instance: 3 (water ghost, The Jumping Ghost, The Toilet Ghost)】
【Instance Materials Obtainable: Rouge Mud, Water-Python Grass, shadow moss, gold ingots, RMB, Low-Grade Material, Green-Tier Class Card, items...】
...
The numbers were not actually that great.
Out of the ten people who entered, only two had died so far. The mortality rate wasn't even half, indicating that the difficulty was on the lower side, making it suitable as a beginner's Instance.
“It is a beginner-level Instance, after all, meant for practice—we can consider raising the difficulty for the next one, A'zhu.”
Song Mo called out softly. A faint black mist rippled in the air behind her, and one of the twin ghosts dressed in red appeared behind her:
“Master.”
“Keep an eye on the Instance. Report to me immediately if there are any unusual developments,” Song Mo instructed. “Particularly regarding that Liu Guilan, as well as the official response afterward.”
“Yes,” A'zhu replied with a bow, his figure merging back into the black mist.
Song Mo touched the hollow cavity at the back of her head.
She always felt that ever since she had returned from the dead, the part of her that belonged to a "human" seemed to be dwindling.
As for the things from her past world—the joy, anger, sorrow, laughter, and banter... thinking back on them now, they felt blurry, as if separated by a sheet of glass.
Her emotional fluctuations were pitifully scarce, and she felt only a fleeting trace of pity for the loss of human lives.
—She didn't know whether this change was good or bad.
But she wanted to live.
Song Mo knew exactly what she wanted.
...
Outside the gates of Jiangcheng University, the family members of the missing persons had still not dispersed.
An elderly person sat on the roadside steps, weeping in front of a camera.
Quite a few reporters were held back outside the cordon, holding up their cameras and snapping rapid photos of the area beyond the school gates from time to time.
The phone in her pocket vibrated.
Song Mo pulled it out and tapped the screen.
On the Weibo hot search list, the hashtag #JiangchengUniversityGasLeak# hung at the very bottom, marked with a gray "Recommended" tag.
Clicking on it, she saw that Jiangcheng University's official account had released a brief announcement.
The general gist was that an old pipeline on campus had ruptured, posing a risk of a gas leak. Faculty and students had been evacuated in an emergency, and there were currently no casualties while they worked to eliminate the hazard.
The comment section, however, wasn't buying it.
【A gas leak requires sealing off the entire school? They won't even let people into the surrounding neighborhoods?】
【If it's a gas leak, call the fire department. Why are the ones entering all military and police...】
【My younger brother goes to school there. He called and told me he didn't smell any gas at all. They were kicked out in the middle of the night, and they weren't even allowed to take their luggage.】
【Can an insider tell us if that kind of thing happened again? I've already packed my bags and am preparing to leave Jiangcheng.】
【Evacuating tens of thousands of students... just how big of an incident is this? I heard some of the missing people have already been found?】
【If they were found, the officials would definitely announce it. Something's wrong. This is way too suspicious.】
【Now you know why we Jiangcheng residents are buying glutinous rice, right? Things have been happening every single day this month. We're scared to death.】
...
The comments refreshed rapidly. Just as Song Mo loaded a few, they were deleted completely in the next second.
The hashtag was also dropping down the rankings at a visible rate, vanishing entirely from the list within a minute.
Song Mo wasn't surprised.
She had already familiarized herself with the authorities' standard operating procedures.
Suppressing hot searches, finding excuses, evacuating crowds, and sealing off the scene—the entire sequence was executed with seamless efficiency.
It was like that at Taiping Cemetery, and it was the same this time.
It was just a bit of a hassle for her.
She had originally thought that since the university town had a high volume of foot traffic, setting up an Instance here would allow her to filter out quite a few promising spectators and players.
Instead, the authorities had cleared the area directly, evacuating tens of thousands of students and faculty overnight.
The massive campus was now as empty as a ghost town. Aside from the military and police, even a living creature was hard to spot.
The Instance she had painstakingly written had been defeated by the speed of the official response.
Dammit.
She had to work overtime to write a new script again.
The great Screenwriter Song let out a whimper, covered her face, and drifted away.
...
The alleys of the old town were narrow and deep. Most of the streetlights were broken, leaving only a few dim, yellow lamps to illuminate the potholed concrete road.
Just as Song Mo drifted through the window into her rented apartment, a sudden sharp sound echoed from downstairs—the sound of a bowl shattering.
She glanced at the time. She was right; it was the middle of the night.
Then came the muffled cursing of a man, followed by the shrill crying of a woman and a child.
Song Mo had excellent hearing and could hear everything perfectly.
Liu Laosan was beating his wife again.
With a loud bang, the security door downstairs was kicked open.
With a cigarette dangling from his mouth, Liu Laosan stomped down the stairs, deliberately making heavy footsteps in the stairwell.
The stairwell was dead silent. No one made a sound, as if everyone was fast asleep.
A look of disgust crossed Song Mo's face—she didn't have much of an emotional response to Liu Laosan, much like how a person felt seeing a cockroach in a corner.
Stepping on it felt too filthy, but leaving it alone was an eyesore.
...
“Master.”
A soft voice sounded beside her, carrying a hint of cold, lingering resentment.
A'yan drifted out, dressed in red. Her face was pale, and wet tears of blood hung from the corners of her eyes.
She stared at Liu Laosan's receding figure, her eyes brimming with a deep, inseparable malice as her fingernails involuntarily grew longer:
“A piece of trash who only knows how to bully his wife and daughter is nothing but a plague on this world.”
A'yan's voice was soft and exceedingly obedient. “Should this servant handle him for you? I'll swallow him whole, ensuring not even a bone is left behind. No one will ever find a trace.”
Song Mo turned her head to look at her.
The red-clothed female ghost lowered her eyes, her long eyelashes casting shadows over her eyelids.
Two streaks of bloody tears slid down her cheeks, dripping onto the floor and corroding tiny pits into it.
A red-clothed fierce ghost had also been someone pushed to the brink when she was alive.
When she was living, she too had screamed until her throat was raw, yet no one came to save her.
—Thus, upon seeing someone like Liu Laosan who took pleasure in abusing others, the resentment within the fierce ghost became utterly uncontrollable.
“Kill him if you want to.”
Song Mo pulled out the chair in front of her desk and said lazily, “But even if you kill him, that mother and daughter's lives will only get slightly better, and they certainly won't be grateful to us.”
The resentment around A'yan grew even heavier.
She knew her master was right.
But she just hated it.
She hated these abusers who preyed on the weak, and she hated even more those living people who submissively accepted their fate and didn't dare to fight back.
It was like looking at her former self.
Song Mo glanced at her, taking in her reaction.
Her fingertips unconsciously stroked her cuff as her mind suddenly took a turn:
What was she thinking just now?
Oh, right. Why did she care whether Cao Fang was grateful or not?
She wasn't a philanthropist.
She was just a lousy screenwriter. What she wanted was material and emotion.
A thing like Liu Laosan...
...was like a predator clearing away the rotting meat around its den to avoid attracting flies.
She lived upstairs, and hearing the commotion downstairs every day was honestly getting annoying.
Clearing him out on a whim was no big deal.
Besides, it could let A'yan vent some steam and provide some material.
Even the smallest mosquito was still meat.
“Go ahead,” Song Mo said calmly, uttering words that were downright bloody. “Don't make too much noise. And bring his soul back while you're at it. I've always wanted to see the difference between a soul and Low-Grade Material.”
A'yan snapped her head up. A bright light instantly burst from her eyes, and her tears of blood flowed even more freely.
“Thank you, Master! You are truly kind-hearted!”
Her voice carried an uncontrollable excitement. With a flutter of her red dress, she vanished out the window.
Song Mo scratched her head.
Rather than letting such garbage pollute the air, it was better to recycle him into material.
She crossed her legs and began to ponder her next script.
Liu Laosan's situation had actually given her some inspiration.
The authorities could seal off venues, evacuate crowds, and suppress hot searches.
But they couldn't seal away human desire, nor could they block out human despair.
There were too many things humans feared: poverty, hunger, disease...
Every day in this world, there were people driven into a corner with nowhere left to turn.
The authorities could stop ordinary people, but what if the players entered the Instance of their own accord?
Once those miraculous items from the Instance appeared in reality—like the Rouge Mud, for example—there would surely be people who would try every means possible to get their hands on them.
—She could use "granting wishes" as bait to fish for players who were willing to risk their lives.
Song Mo tapped her finger lightly in midair. A drop of ink fell, forming the words "Make a Wish."
The ink bled outward, resembling a drop of blood.
Rate on N.U.
