Chapter 57 The Unsealed Back Building of the Apartment (Bonus Chapter at 14,000 Words) Disguised as Evil...

Important features unlocked... [Disguised as an evil god interface]?

Zhou Fangdong opened the system panel and found the newly unlocked function.

The interface is also entirely pixelated. The upper part of the panel features a small animation: a pixelated figure who looks very much like him sits in a shrine with his eyes closed, and below him is a huge group of bald pixelated figures constantly worshipping the shrine.

The worship screen is divided into four functional sections, but only two are currently lit up: one is "Ritual Inquiry" and the other is "Fake Oracle".

[Ritual Inquiry] This function opens a map of Linjiang City, displaying the locations where all members of the Bone-Bone Society performed rituals. Any ritual involving the power of an evil god will be shown, including but not limited to summoning rituals, blessing rituals, and resurrection rituals.

The "Disguised Oracle" function not only has the literal meaning, but can also steal all the offerings used in the ritual while modifying the oracle.

It seems there are new hunting spots besides the main god dungeon.

"System, how do I activate the remaining two functions?"

[Each point unlocks one, requiring the consumption of two more clean, unrevived evil god clone cores.]

The host can check the [Ritual Inquiry] function daily to find out which cultists are performing a ritual to awaken an evil god's avatar, and then steal it using [Disguised Oracle].

[Please note, host, that in the [Disguised Oracle] interface, you can only modify rituals that have not been responded to by the evil god. If you respond to the same ritual as the evil god at the same time, there is a risk of being discovered.]

Zhou Fangdong opened the Linjiang City map under [Ritual Inquiry] and asked, "Which dot, the red or the blue dot, represents the one that hasn't been responded to by the evil god?"

The blue dots represent rituals that were not responded to by the evil god.

"What is required to use the [Disguised Oracle] function?"

Using the [Disguised Oracle] function once costs 1000 Ghost Coins. Please choose your ritual carefully.

You really need to choose carefully... This price is right in the 'it hurts a little, but I can grit my teeth and pay for it' state. When choosing [Disguised Oracle], you have to make sure that the offerings for this ritual are worth 1,000 ghost coins.

[Ritual Inquiry] The dots on the map are mostly in the suburbs, surrounding the city center in a ring shape. There are only a few dots in the city center, but they are all red, indicating that the evil god has responded to them.

I'll take a closer look at these spots of light when I get back to my room tonight.

It seems like we just unlocked something called a [new device for detecting and eliminating evil god contamination], and the system says it's installed in the hallway...

Zhou Fangdong was standing in the second-floor corridor, and he could still faintly hear the sounds of the four investigators packing their luggage in room 201.

He looked around and finally locked his gaze on the end of the corridor, where a light gray metal cabinet almost blended into the wall.

This thing is definitely new; he didn't notice it when he went upstairs.

Zhou Fangdong walked to the metal cabinet, and just as his hand touched the handle, a pop-up window suddenly appeared in the system:

This facility's functionality has been synchronized to the system page and can be viewed in the rental preview interface.

Zhou Fangdong opened the rental preview interface and found that a new feature, "[Liwan Apartment Common Area Decoration]", had been added.

After clicking on this renovation feature, you'll see the unlocked floor plan of the first and second floors of the apartment. The interface details state that this feature can stabilize the yin energy in the corridor and detect and purify evil spirit contamination.

The higher the decoration value, the stronger the purification ability.

It's very similar to the home renovation mini-games I used to play. If this feature didn't cost money, Zhou Fangdong could play on this page all day.

The decoration categories are [ceiling], [walls], [floor], and [decorative items].

Zhou Fangdong opened the [ground] and took a look. There were all kinds of flooring materials and colors on it, and the cheapest one only cost 5 ghost coins.

Just as he was dragging the 5-ghost-coin floorboard to try and renovate the second-floor hallway, he realized that the price was 5 ghost coins per floorboard...

Zhou Fangdong tried laying out a corridor floor in the preview interface.

The screen shows that a corridor requires 1,500 floor tiles, with a total price of 7,500 Ghost Coins.

...It's outright robbery! He only has 11,610 ghost coins left. After finishing one corridor, he won't have many ghost coins left.

Let's talk about renovations later when we have more spare money.

As Zhou Fangdong was about to close the interface, his gaze fell on the [decorations].

After a slight hesitation, he clicked on [Decorations]—he wanted to see if there were any lamps for sale.

When Zhou Fangdong picked up the four investigators, he realized that the apartment corridor was too dark for human tenants, especially the stairwell, where it was almost impossible to move forward without the lights on, and the patterns of the mummified corpses on the stairs were also not visible.

So he wanted to buy a few lights to put in the hallway.

The [Decorative Items] section does sell lamps, and the lowest-priced one is within his budget.

The huge crystal chandelier in the apartment's entryway costs at least 300 Ghost Coins. Judging from the preview, this 300 Ghost Coin chandelier is not as luxurious as the apartment's original one; it doesn't have layers of tassels and rhinestones, but just a few strands of crystal chains hanging from a light bulb shaped like a candle.

The lowest tier wall lamps that can be installed on the hallway walls cost 50 Ghost Coins each and are the basic round design.

Although they're all a bit plain, they're functional enough. I'll replace them with nicer ones when I have more money later.

Zhou Fangdong spent 300 ghost coins to buy a crystal chandelier and six small wall lamps, which he placed in the stairwell.

After purchasing and decorating, Zhou Fangdong glanced at the small decorations such as green plants, paintings, and carpets, and suppressed his desire to buy them with strong willpower.

Damn it, they actually used these fancy little things to lure him into spending his virtual currency...

When Zhou Fangdong played games in the previous world, he could ignore equipment effects and skill combinations, but he always made sure to manage his homestead well.

What's tempting him now is an immersive 3D home decoration system.

...I can't think about it anymore.

Zhou Fangdong decisively turned off the decoration function.

As the decoration interface closes, a system pop-up window appears:

Currently, the device only has the basic function of 'increasing the decoration value and improving purification'. Full unlocking requires a complete overhaul of the Liwan Apartment garbage disposal station.

The garbage disposal station... Zhou Fangdong suddenly remembered that he had just come to find the cleaner to complete the side quest of repairing the garbage station, so he decided to go and take a look.

I didn't see those five cleaners on the first or second floor of the apartment building. They are most likely at the garbage disposal station in the middle of the building.

Just as Zhou Fangdong was about to leave the second floor, he suddenly heard someone calling him.

Looking to the side, he saw that the door of room 201 was slightly ajar, and four heads were peeking out, cautiously watching him.

Mustering his courage, Li Zhe asked, "Landlord, may we leave Liwan Apartment?"

After packing their luggage, the four investigators discovered a problem—their cell phones had no signal in the apartment, making it impossible for them to contact Hong Zhong.

I wanted to leave the apartment quietly, but I found that the strange landlord was always guarding the corridor, walking back and forth with his head down.

Just as the landlord walked to the door of room 201 again, the four investigators finally couldn't resist and risked asking him a question.

Zhou Fangdong was taken aback by their question: "You can leave the apartment at any time. I will not restrict the freedom of the tenants."

I always felt that Hong Zhong's four teammates were a bit strange. When they first entered, they posed for him in a group pose, exuding a kind of intense and passionate atmosphere that was hard to understand. Then they walked up to the second floor in that back-to-back position.

However, Zhou Fangdong was very pleased with their tacit understanding and mutual trust. At least when they were resting in room 201, they would be able to properly divide the night watch and promptly discover the location of the sick ghost in the room.

After receiving Zhou Fangdong's affirmative reply, the four investigators breathed a sigh of relief.

They couldn't wait to contact their captain.

Because Hong Zhong was busy dealing with the abandoned hospital, he only briefly told them on the phone to move into the apartment and become tenants, without explaining the purpose of doing so. Moreover, the process of becoming tenants went too smoothly, making them worry that they hadn't completed their mission.

Although they were in a hurry, the four of them watched Zhou Fangdong walk down the stairs before leaving the room.

Before figuring out the situation, they dared not have too much contact with this strange landlord.

Zhou Fangdong walked to the first floor and followed the narrow door next to the elevator to the central garden.

Sure enough, I spotted a familiar figure next to the garbage disposal station in the garden.

— Two ghosts, Quan Wuming and Ming Wuqian, dressed in sanitation worker uniforms, were carrying a bloody, mangled corpse and stuffing it into the "human waste" window of the garbage disposal station.

Zhou Fangdong was taken aback.

So that's what "human garbage" and "ghost garbage" in the garbage dump mean?

Do cleaners not only remove trash, but also people and ghosts that break into apartments?

"Wait a minute, you two..." Zhou Fangdong quickly called out to them and strode to the garbage station.

He first quickly glanced at his list of special tenants to make sure all the tenants were alright before looking at the corpse in Quan Wuming and Ming Wuqian's hands.

The reason I recognized these two as Quan Wuming and Ming Wuqian is because their bodies were intact and their heads were human heads, while Qian Duolai and the other two had paper heads.

"Where was this body found?"

This bloody, still steaming state looks like it just died... but compared to the fresh body, the corpse's face is weathered and shriveled like a mummy.

“It’s a corpse that came back to life in the back building,” the man on the left said.

For some reason, Quan Wuming and Ming Wuqian looked exactly alike, and Zhou Fangdong couldn't tell them apart.

"I don't know which ghost moved it from the back building to the front building, and it came back to life after it arrived in the front building," the person on the right added. "It was too unsightly and could easily attack the tenants, so we cleaned it up and also had Qian Duolai and his team clean the first-floor entryway that had been soiled by the corpse."

Zhou Fangdong said that the first floor was so clean when he picked up the four investigators. It turned out that it had just been cleaned.

Based on this timeline, when the strange corpse appeared on the first floor, he was in room 203 investigating Puff Ghost's conditions for murder.

...If this were the timeline, the body should have been thrown into the garbage dump long ago, and he shouldn't have stumbled upon it again now.

Thinking of this, Zhou Fangdong asked, "This isn't the first corpse you've cleaned up, is it?"

"Yes, it's the third one," the person on the left replied.

Zhou Fangdong's heart sank as he looked at the back building of the apartment complex not far away.

The main door at the back of the apartment building, which had been sealed off with wooden strips, was actually open.

When was this opened?

Tenants who possess the apartment key are protected from attacks by ghosts within the apartment, but they don't know if the key will still work if attacked by this strange corpse.

This is troublesome. There are quite a few ordinary tenants living on the first floor, such as Zhao Dawei, Duan Wenyu, and Miao Zheng... Zhao Dawei has gone to work now, and Duan Wenyu and Miao Zheng have left the apartment to do something. None of the three of them are in the apartment now.

Before they return, we need to find out why this strange corpse appeared on the first floor, otherwise I always feel like I might lose these three tenants at any time.

-----------------------

Author's Note: Thank you so much for the nutrient solution, my little angels! You're all so kind QUQ. The bonus chapter condition for nutrient solution is now one chapter for every 2,000 words. One chapter for every 1,000 is a bit too much of a burden; I'm afraid I won't be able to repay the bonus even after this book is finished (scratching head).