Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 2: Becoming Roommates

Fang Xiu opened his eyes and saw an upright ground.

After a few seconds, he realized he was lying on the ground with his right cheek pressed against it… Wait, this development felt a bit familiar.

In the dim moonlight, he saw that he was surrounded by dark shadows of trees. In the distance, the mountains undulated endlessly, like a vast sea.

From within the shadows came the sound of trickling water; a river flowed nearby. The water was dark and dull at night, and Fang Xiu could only see the white stones protruding from it.

A sharp pain throbbed in his temple, and Fang Xiu groaned as he sat up. Something heavy was pressing down on his thigh. As he saw what it was, his recent memories flooded back into his mind.

……

The paper figure gave Fang Xiu a shovel.

Fang Xiu decisively started digging. Unfortunately, he couldn’t follow the ghost hand to its source. The ghost hand was black, gray, and translucent below the wrist, blending into the ground like a shadow.

So, Fang Xiu turned to the paper figure again and asked, “Do you have a flowerpot?”

The expression on the paper figure grew increasingly complex. It seemed to want to say something but stopped. In the end, it turned to an incense burner and dug out a funeral pot used for burning paper money.

A pot is a pot; the difference wasn’t significant. Fang Xiu wielded the shovel and began his grand plan of transplantation.

Faced with this simple labor scene, everyone momentarily forgot their fear, watching intently alongside the surrounding malicious ghosts. After ten minutes or so, Fang Xiu managed to scoop the ghost hand along with the soil into the pot.

“Sorry for keeping everyone waiting,” Fang Xiu said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. In the center of the funeral pot, the ghost hand hung limply.

The eerie atmosphere of summoning the fierce ghosts completely collapsed, and the paper figure seemed somewhat resigned. It allocated rooms in the small courtyard on the spot, saying that they would discuss serious matters after everyone survived the night.

It said this while glaring at Fang Xiu.

Fang Xiu was unfazed. It wasn’t his fault that the ghost hand wouldn’t move. He held the funeral pot tightly, surveying his new room.

According to the paper figure, he had to stay here for an extended period before leaving.

The room was square-shaped, compact but well-equipped with a wardrobe and a desk. The bed was against the wall, quite spacious, and the headboard was next to a glass-partitioned shower room.

A standard studio apartment.

However, three things made him uncomfortable: the room had no windows, no toilet, and an old offering table was placed at the entrance. The table was made of old wood with chipped paint, and there were suspicious stains on its surface. Fang Xiu wiped off some dust in disdain and decided to place the funeral pot on the bedside table.

He couldn’t mistreat this hand. A good impression was the first step to a friendly cooperation.

Fang Xiu stared intently at the potted plant—no, the ghost hand.

This room was less than twenty square meters. Even couples would find it cramped to live together. The others, forced to share rooms with fierce ghosts, must be under a lot of pressure.

His ghost, however, was great. It didn’t take up space and was pleasant to look at. The ghost hand was about the same size as his hand, probably a hand belonging to a male, so sharing the room wouldn’t be inconvenient.

“Hey brother, want to chat? If you’re willing, just move a bit,” Fang Xiu tried to strike up a conversation.

The ghost hand didn’t respond.

Fang Xiu nodded. “Then I’ll sleep for a bit. Goodnight.”

After being dragged around in the middle of the night for so long, he was tired.

The paper figure had asked them to survive the night, not necessarily to come to an agreement tonight. Just in case, Fang Xiu moved the ghost hand to the side of the bed. Gently, he pried open its five fingers and interlocked them with his own.

He was a light sleeper. This way, he would know as soon as it moved.

……

The memory ended here.

The trial of “surviving the night” had begun quietly. It seemed he didn’t sleep as lightly as he had thought, Fang Xiu introspectively noted.

The funeral pot containing the ghost hand was pressing down on his leg, feeling heavy and real. The pot was covered in incense ash, and the dirt dug out from the courtyard was still there, but the ghost hand was nowhere to be seen.

This made him a bit nervous.

The paper figure had only mentioned “being killed by the ghost if negotiations failed” and “forming a pact with the ghost if negotiations succeeded”. It didn’t mention that the fierce ghost would silently vanish. Did it get upset because he had held its hand?

Whether this was an illusion or reality, he had to find the runaway ghost hand first.

The moonlight was better than nothing. It was so dark that he couldn’t see his own hand in front of him. A faint light flickered at the end of the river, like an invitation.

Fang Xiu stumbled along the riverbank toward the light, stepping deeper and shallower as he went. The sound of a suona drifted eerily from all directions, making his head spin. Fortunately, the sound of the river was clear and distinct, and the white stones in the middle of the river clustered in threes and fives, serving as makeshift markers.

However, Fang Xiu’s pace gradually slowed down.

He had woken up barefoot. The ground was covered with sharp stones, which occasionally dug into his feet and tore away his flesh, and even seemed to burrow into his wounds.

Oddly enough, he felt no pain.

Unconsciously, his feet became a bloody mess, his footsteps changing from dry “tap-tap” sounds to a sticky “squelch-squelch”. As the blood kept flowing, his strength quickly waned. His body felt like a sack of meat, numb and heavy.

Fang Xiu roughly grasped the nature of the “trial” ahead of him—

With every step he took, his flesh would wear away a little, like a game with a limited number of moves.

The problem was that this place was too vast and pitch dark. If he took a wrong turn, he could only wander in the darkness until his feet were completely ruined. Then he would have to crawl on the ground until he turned into a pile of minced meat.

The design concept was quite malicious, but the process was really tedious. Fang Xiu couldn’t help but sigh.

The sound of the suona grew louder and louder, as if it was trying to penetrate his brain and squeeze his mind out through his ears.

A few steps away, there was a willow tree. Fang Xiu leaned against its trunk in exhaustion, deciding to rest for a bit.

He was still far from the faint light. The blood loss was happening too fast; he couldn’t leave it unchecked. He had to find something to pad his feet.

His underwear fabric was too soft to be useful, and his pants were too thick and tough to tear apart. His T-shirt fabric was just right, but he really liked this red T-shirt…

Something gently brushed his face.

Fang Xiu then noticed that the tree had long since withered. What he had assumed to be willow branches were actually strips of white cloth hanging down. Among the white cloth hung a dozen shriveled skeletons, wearing faded burial clothes, swaying in the breeze.

One pair of skeletal feet dangled just a few centimeters above Fang Xiu’s head.

Facing this eerie tree with its floating white cloth and dangling corpses, Fang Xiu held his breath, his heart pounding.

Good lord, what had he seen?

…It was a wild bandage!

“Excuse me,”

Fang Xiu tried to suppress his excitement, as he cautiously addressed the skeletons hanging from the tree. He gently plucked a few strips of white cloth. The cloth felt unnaturally cold to the touch, but it seemed clean and was thick enough.

He took back his earlier statement. This giant escape room wasn’t so boring after all; it had some unexpected surprises.

Fang Xiu sat down by the river and began to treat his wounds using the running water.

Perhaps it was because he had been walking in the dark for so long, but his eyes gradually adapted to the darkness. Fang Xiu dug out a handful of sharp fragments from his wounds, only to realize in shock that they were actually yellowed human teeth.

No wonder they tried to dig deeper into his flesh.

Disgusted, Fang Xiu threw the teeth into the water, causing a small ripple.

The white stones in the middle of the river seemed to be disturbed and floated closer… Narrowing his eyes, he looked carefully. They looked more like human heads than stones.

Their skin was swollen, with the lower half of their faces submerged in the water, revealing only bulging eyes. Drawn by the scent of blood in the water, more and more heads gathered, quickly closing in on Fang Xiu’s bleeding feet.

The river was pitch black and the heads clustered together densely, looking like maggots on rotten flesh.

What to do? Fang Xiu thought. He hadn’t finished cleaning his wounds yet.

He had a funeral pot, but it was meant for retrieving the ghost hand. If he washed his feet with it and then used it to hold the ghost hand, that would be too much.

...Oh, right. It’s said that beasts are afraid of banging sounds, but what about wild human heads? Suddenly struck with inspiration, Fang Xiu grabbed a bone and tentatively tapped the edge of the pot.

Bzzz—

Though the funeral pot was made of clay, it emitted a piercing and chilling sound with great resonance.

The nearby heads recoiled, squeezing together with the newcomers, keeping a distance of about an arm’s length from the pot. Hundreds of eyes were glued to Fang Xiu.

Bzzz—Bzzz—

The sharp sound spread across the water’s surface, chilling him to the bone. With just a light tap, the pot vibrated as if it were alive, its echoes lingering for a long time.

No wonder it was a product of the underworld—it was incredibly effective. Fang Xiu let out a sigh of relief and quickened his pace to clean his wounds.

His heels had already worn down to the bone, with several teeth piercing through his toes. Fang Xiu highly suspected that as long as the teeth were still scattered along the path, even padding his feet with cloth wouldn’t last long.

He had a strange feeling that he was being chewed up by the entire space.

When this mountain ground him into pieces, his teeth would also scatter across the ground, ready to bite into the feet of someone else.

If he didn’t want this fate, he’d have to find a branch to hang himself from, so his feet would stay off the ground, at least leaving his body intact. Alternatively, he could jump into the river and potentially become part of the army of heads… Wait, the army of heads?

Fang Xiu glanced at the tree on the riverbank, then at the mass of heads in the water, and suddenly had an idea.

Meanwhile, in a certain room of the Disaster Relief Tower.

The paper figure was holding a bronze mirror, constantly observing the scene within. The mirror showed Fang Xiu’s image.

The view in the mirror was very clear; it not only reflected the hanging corpses and the heads but also countless other evil spirits in the distance—hundreds of eyes were fixed on Fang Xiu, waiting for him to get lost or make a mistake.

Honestly, the paper figure was more concerned about the ghost hand than Fang Xiu himself.

The lottery tube had exactly one hundred sticks, each representing a registered fierce ghost known to the underworld and memorized by the paper figure.

Yet it didn’t recognize the ghost that Fang Xiu had drawn.

Fang Xiu was the seventh to draw, leaving ninety-four sticks in the tube. The paper figure could identify every remaining stick, meaning Fang Xiu had somehow pulled out a nonexistent one hundred and first stick.

This was bizarre, incredibly bizarre. Such a thing had never happened before, and it needed to be carefully observed and reported in detail.

…That was, if Fang Xiu could survive the night.

This was just the preliminary screening. Fierce ghosts would use illusions to test the summoner. If they were compatible, they would form a pact; if not, the ghost would eat them—a simple and brutal process.

According to the rules of the Disaster Relief Tower, the illusion should display the original setting of the fierce ghost. It might be an abandoned house, a desolate grave, or at most, a palace.

However, the illusion that Fang Xiu was in seemed to stretch endlessly, with a rich underworld ecosystem. This was completely abnormal. There shouldn’t be any other evil spirits in the original illusion of a fierce ghost.

There was only one explanation: something had gone terribly wrong with the ghost summoning.

Whatever Fang Xiu had summoned, it was very, very ominous.

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The author has something to say:

Mr. Bai has made a 5% appearance in the literal sense, but the two have already achieved the milestones of “ten fingers interlocked” and “sharing the same bed” √ 

They’ve just met and are already playing a warm game of hide-and-seek, how lovely (…

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