147 The City of Chaos (11)

Low-level Chaotic City

The employee's fingers gripped the iron cage bars so tightly that he looked at Qin Fu'an as if he wanted to devour him alive.

"You're asking for it!!" it roared fiercely, then suddenly pulled open the cage and was about to drag Qin Fu'an out.

Just like when he casually lifted that pig off the slaughtering table before, it was very strong. Just by reaching out, one could already imagine the disheveled state of Qin Fu'an when he was dragged out of the cage.

but--

It couldn't be moved.

Not only did it fail to move, it also nearly fell into the cage due to losing its balance.

Once it had regained its footing, the way it looked at Qin Fu'an was completely different.

The snake, which it was staring at, had its beautiful, cold, and fierce vertical pupils gradually turning a dark, deep green, like a deep pool that could easily drown a person.

When it finally sensed the deadly danger and panicked, it let go and tried to escape, but the snake's tail, which it had been ignoring all along, had already silently pierced its heart.

A sinister heart.

It struggled painfully, letting out angry and desperate howls.

"Look." Qin Fu'an waved his hand, conjuring a water mirror that clearly reflected its current appearance. "Doesn't it look like the pig you just killed?"

The monster no longer had the strength to open its eyes and examine the surroundings closely.

It doesn't understand why its abilities fail with this person, or why the rules are ignored by the other party.

Why am I so powerless to resist this inmate?

Is he a containment agent far exceeding Class A?

But this person didn't even have a badge on his chest that signified a high-ranking containment officer.

Having lost most of its vitality and forced to revert to its original form, the A-level eerie creature collapsed to the ground, its thoughts abruptly halted.

Qin Fu'an disdainfully withdrew the tip of his tail. The power of the rules here was collapsing, and the "animals" locked in cages around him were disappearing one by one. He looked down at the person lying outside the cage.

It is indeed a person.

To be precise, this ghost is a humanoid ghost.

Except for the fact that his face was different from the employee's, everything else was the same; he looked just like a human.

They don't even have any mechanical or animal parts on their bodies, belonging to a "niche group" in the chaotic city.

The rich aroma of braised dishes lingered in his nostrils once more. The illusory realm of rules that Qin Fu'an was in shattered like a mirror. Finally, Qin Fu'an's vision blurred, and when he looked again, he was sitting in his original spot.

At his feet was that eerie humanoid body, barely breathing.

Qin Fu'an didn't rush to take it in, but first looked up and surveyed the situation inside the store.

The place was a complete mess.

The customers who were sitting in their seats eating braised dishes before entering the illusion have now become dismembered corpses.

If you look closely, you can see the missing parts of their bodies, which are laid bloody on the plate of braised dishes on the table.

For example, if a customer orders pig's head, the head is cut off, sliced ​​into pieces, and piled on a bone plate.

Qin Fu'an looked around and finally fixed his gaze on the only "living ghost" in the shop.

The pig-headed man was startled by his gaze and quickly put on a fawning smile, leaning closer: "It's over so quickly? You truly are worthy of your reputation. I knew this guy was no match for you..."

As he spoke, he took the opportunity to kick the strange creature on the ground to vent his anger.

I'll braise your head, you bastard! I'll kick you to death!

"Is he the owner of this shop?" Qin Fu'an looked down at the person on the ground.

The pig-headed man nodded hurriedly: "Yes, yes, you're so smart, you guessed it right away! He's that scoundrel boss!"

Qin Fu'an wanted to ask a few more questions, so he didn't interrupt the pig-headed man. Instead, he gestured for him to sit down opposite him and talk.

Ignoring the gruesome corpses and rotten flesh scattered throughout the shop, the pig-headed man, under Qin Fu'an's deliberate or unintentional guidance, spoke with extraordinary enthusiasm.

Finally, it became melancholy again, "This job fell through. It seems that it's not easy to survive in this kind of low-level chaotic city. Next time, I'll try to find a job in the intermediate level to make a living."

Basic? Intermediate?

Qin Fu'an had a guess in his mind, but he didn't ask about it. Instead, he casually asked, "Do strange creatures also need to work to make a living?"

"Of course!" The pig-headed man had a lot to say about this. "Don't underestimate me just because I'm a ghost. Even ghosts need to eat, wear clothes, and pursue some material and spiritual needs, right?"

Qin Fu'an raised the corner of his eye slightly and listened quietly.

"You know about the Ghost Realm, right? The Ghost Realm is a world of its own, a place where all of us ghosts can survive. But this Ghost Realm is polluted and eroded every year. We are ghosts, not pollutants. Once polluted, we basically only have one way out: death..."

"No one knows when this pollution started. By the time we realized it was deadly, many parts of the Ghost Realm had already been contaminated."

During his pause, Qin Fu'an asked, "What kind of pollution?"

The pig-headed man paused, somewhat reluctant, but under Qin Fu'an's gaze, he still answered honestly: "Like this shop, the Ghost Realm is this street, and this problematic shop is the pollution. Once it is polluted, all the ghosts within the pollution range will suffer. Some can come out alive, some will have their personalities drastically changed, and some will simply disappear from the Ghost Realm."

This situation seemed somewhat familiar to Qin Fu'an.

Just like players chosen by the game, low-level players spread "pollution" when they enter the game, dragging innocent people around them into it.

He didn't interrupt the pig-headed man, so after explaining the pollution, the pig-headed man continued to complain: "The Ghost Realm is very large and vast, but we Ghost Mouths are actually not many, so at first no one paid attention to the pollution. Anyway, we don't need such a large territory, so what's the point? As a result, in recent years, the pollution has gradually eroded most of the Ghost Realm."

"All the ghosts are forced to concentrate more and more, causing more trouble, but most of them still want to survive. They don't want to live long, just like you humans, wanting everything and buying everything?"

"Do you know how much a person is selling for in our Ghost Realm right now? It's ridiculously expensive! All the Ghost Coins I've earned in a year aren't even enough to buy half a person! If this continues, sooner or later we'll either be killed by pollutants or starve to death by exorbitant prices."

The pig-headed man was clearly full of resentment; when he talked about being hungry, his round pig eyes were practically glowing green.

"If you can't afford people, what do you usually eat?" Qin Fu'an asked with a smile.

The pig-headed man, with a sullen face, muttered, "I don't know what it is. Anyway, just when we were getting hungrier and hungrier, a new kind of food suddenly appeared in the Ghost Realm. We don't know what it is, or even what it looks like, but one meal of it can keep us full for half a year."

After saying that, it sighed with a mix of melancholy and gratitude: "I've heard from many great demons that the Lord of the Demon Realm brought that thing to us because he was afraid we little demons would starve to death."

"Is that stuff tasty?" Qin Fu'an asked with a hint of curiosity.

The pig's face scrunched up. "It's disgusting, extremely disgusting. I don't even know how to describe it. No ghost likes to eat that stuff. It's like eating grass—bitter and astringent. The worst part is that after eating it, every ghost becomes strange, like they've gone mad. It takes a long time for them to recover."

"Most importantly, after eating it, we will soon forget what it looks like and what happened when we ate it. It's even stranger than the bizarre. We don't know where our king got it from, but if it weren't for this thing, we would probably have starved to death long ago."