Chapter 41: The Show Begins
Bai Yu’s kick was no joke—it could send a fully grown man flying several meters away, so you can only imagine how much power she packed. Thankfully, Lu Liangting had a sturdy build; otherwise, he would definitely have been sent sailing into the sunset.
Immediately after Bai Yu’s kick, Lu Liangting stumbled back right into Li Nan, knocking him to the ground. Talk about an unintentional game of human dominoes!
With Zhang Lin out of the picture, the Black Shadow felt confident it could take out Lu Liangting with ease. Bai Yu had the same thought, but to everyone’s surprise, the Black Shadow didn’t move a muscle. Under the dual pressure of Bai Yu and the Red-Clothed Female Ghost from the fifth floor, all it wanted was to skedaddle out of there—no time for dilly-dallying!
Rubbing his head, Lu Liangting quickly sprang back up, putting some distance between himself and Li Nan. He glanced over to see Li Nan’s face twisted in a delightful mix of terror and confusion. He turned his head to look at Bai Yu.
The kick had landed squarely on his chest, and it was still a bit sore. He couldn’t quite wrap his head around why Bai Yu had kicked him in the first place.
“Maybe it was to save me from the ghost? I was less than five meters away from her when she came charging at me. Yikes, I was in serious danger,” he thought.
Little did he know, Bai Yu kicked him toward Li Nan purely to let him deal with Li Nan—or, you know, get him taken out entirely. Just a casual strategy!
“She was watching from the hallway, hiding in the shadows. If that’s the case, she must know I’m searching for her. So why doesn’t she just pop out?”
Holding his chest, Lu Liangting’s mind was all over the place. He had contemplated this when he came by at noon and even rambled like a madman in the hallway, talking to himself just for her benefit.
If she could show up at such a critical moment, how could she not hear him?
But every single time she appeared, it was always during critical moments to save the day before vanishing into thin air.
Yet, the ghosts that had saved him were ordinary specters. This Red-Clothed Female Ghost from the fifth floor was different—she was the strongest entity in this haunted building, filled with a grudge that surpassed any ordinary ghost.
“I’ve got to find a way to save her!”
Ghost-on-ghost battles only concluded when one was devoured by the other.
In his line of sight, the furious female ghost lunged at Bai Yu again, black mist swirling around her, suffocating Bai Yu’s form. Her fingers, sharp as blades, radiated with an overwhelming sense of grudge.
These grudges were her power, stemming from all the tragically dead souls who had never found peace in this building.
The fight between ghosts is a contest of resentment, the fundamental nature of a ghost. Thus, their battles were usually simple: endless consuming of one another.
Of course, technique wasn’t totally useless. Bai Yu’s power of resentment didn’t match that of the Red-Clothed Female Ghost, but her combat experience was light-years ahead.
She stepped back just in time to dodge the ghost’s claws, as tendrils of bl**d coalesced into a long, red hook blade from her elbow. While evading, she slashed down at an odd angle, neatly clipping the ghost’s fingers, turning them into even thicker black mist.
The ghost, piqued, lifted her head, inhaling the black mist, ready to scream it out. But Bai Yu suddenly took a step closer, diving right into her bubble of horror.
Suddenly her hook blade vanished, and bl**d transformed into chain-like tendrils, coiling around her delicate arms and fists. Sure enough, the specter swiped at her from the side. Bai Yu raised her chained arm to block it while her free hand slammed into the specter’s face, preventing her from shrieking.
The ghost was evidently taken aback that Bai Yu dared to get so close. Her wild hair fell away from her eyes, now wide with shock.
Pfft!
bl**d surged from Bai Yu’s palm, its jagged spike plunging into the ghost, sending the thing flying. In that instant, the spikes exploded within her body.
The eruption scattered thousands of red threads, spreading throughout the small segment of the corridor.
Black mist gushed out from the now-grounded ghost, overflowing until the specter became entirely transparent and vanished.
From the moment Bai Yu arrived to when the ghost met her demise, it couldn’t have been more than ten seconds.
Everything happened way too fast.
At this moment, Lu Liangting was still wondering if he could go up and calm down the Red-Clothed Ghost from the fifth floor or perhaps persuade her to run. But before he could even devise a single step in his strategy, the battle was already over…
“Uh…”
His mouth hung open in shock. Even someone as accustomed to all things supernatural as Lu Liangting was momentarily dumbfounded. For a flash, he even questioned whether his eyes were playing tricks on him.
But lo and behold, the ghost was indeed gone, and that seemingly frail ghost was still standing there.
In Lu Liangting’s eyes, Bai Yu stood still, the bl**d threads scattering in the corridor swirling towards her, as if being irresistibly drawn in.
Her silhouette, delicate and fragile, igniting a fierce desire to protect within him.
Yet this delicate frame had just executed an extraordinarily fierce move, slaying the strongest ghost in the building.
“She looks… different somehow…”
In his memory, Bai Yu had messy hair, an ordinary ghostly appearance, wearing a bl**d-stained white dress, with skin paler than any normal being.
Now, though? Her hair was neatly styled with a cute red bow, forming adorable pigtails. Her dress? Clean as a whistle, devoid of bl**d, just pure white.
If nobody had mentioned she was a ghost, you might think she was just a young girl who wandered out of her house in the middle of the night.
Bai Yu hadn’t noticed the gazes from Lu Liangting and Li Nan; she was fixated on the hallway.
The ghost was gone, but the black mist lingered; the foul stench was momentarily absent, replaced by an odor identical to the previous one, creeping up from the fifth floor toward the fourth floor.
Before long, the Red-Clothed Ghost Xiao Lian descended the stairs from the fifth floor, appearing unscathed at the corner of the fourth-floor hallway.
Ghosts, especially formidable ones like Xiao Lian, had unique abilities—it wasn’t fair to compare them to your average specter.
In contrast, most typical ghosts would have been obliterated in those few exchanges, yet the Red-Clothed Ghost Xiao Lian clawed her way back from Room 506 in under fifteen seconds, reemerging on the fourth floor.
Spotting Bai Yu still standing there, Xiao Lian lunged forward, exuding the same raw resentment as before—no fear, no hesitation.
The end result? The same as before. Bai Yu dispatched the ghost in a flash.
Taking her out wasn’t hard; the real problem was that killing her didn’t mean getting rid of her permanently. To make matters worse, the black mist kept assaulting her!
“Clearly, I have to retrieve her child from that school. Otherwise, taking her down is just a giant hassle…”
“Tonight’s not the night for a showdown; the key lies with Lu Liangting.”
“This kid nearly bit the dust tonight. I refuse to believe no one came to save him.”
With that, Bai Yu glanced back at Lu Liangting, then at Li Nan. Something flickered in her mind before she disappeared into the shadows of the hallway, slipping back into Zhao Mingyue’s figure.
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Sorry for being late!
Had to make the long drive back home today—traffic was a nightmare!
Seriously, it was exhausting!
Once I got back, I had a quick dinner and crashed, only to wake up at 8:30 with a pounding headache. But here I am, pushing through to update QAQ
Oh, and I’ve got another chapter coming up in an hour; I’m pulling a mini all-nighter to finish it.
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