Chapter 106: The Past Life of the Ghost in Room 302...
"I... I didn't know this was your place." The boy hugged the life-sized teddy bear in his arms tightly, feeling a little guilty. "I thought it was just a safe spatial rift. I'm trapped in the dungeon, and there are ghosts chasing me... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I want to compensate you, but I don't have any money and I can't stay here for long."
"Don't worry, I can help you stay here for a long time." Zhou Fangdong revealed a kind smile. "You don't need to worry about clearing the dungeon anymore, nor do you need to worry about being exploited by the main god... You should have noticed that your points system is unusable here, right?"
The boy fell silent.
The strange landlord was right; the power of the supreme god is isolated here.
He couldn't use the points system to contact the main god, nor could he even use the storage space. All he could use were his own skills... Therefore, he never dared to stay in this 'safe house' for long before.
Although returning to the dungeon would mean being chased by ghosts and monsters, this apartment also has its share of ghosts and strange things. Each time, I need to use skills to clear the area to get a little breathing room.
The only slightly better thing about this apartment compared to the main god dungeon is that it doesn't have dungeon rules or countdown restrictions.
In this situation, the strange landlord actually demanded that he stay there permanently...
Living here means you don't have to worry about the main god or the dungeon rules, since you're dead and there's nothing to worry about anymore.
Although he was internally cursing, the boy didn't dare to resist on the surface. He just nodded obsequiously, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, trying to get away with it.
As a player who has experienced many dungeons, he knows very well that even if you verbally agree, it is considered to have made a contract with an unknown entity, and this kind of mistake cannot be made lightly.
Zhou Fangdong didn't care whether he agreed or not; he had just asked casually to go through the motions.
The players in the God's infinite flow game are all high-quality tenants—they are highly adaptable to monsters and have many skills to deal with them, so he doesn't need to worry about them at all. Those who happen to fall into his hands are his; he will absolutely not let go of such useful tenants.
Compared to the two floors below, the ghosts in the rooms on the third floor are particularly scary and troublesome, so it's a good idea to put this player into the next room on the third floor as a tenant.
"By the way, what should I call you?" Zhou Fangdong asked.
"Just call me Xiao Lei," the boy replied listlessly.
Because he had a fellow player with him, for safety reasons, Zhou Fangdong decided to stop repairing the collapsed area on the fifth floor and pulled Xiao Lei back.
Seeing that the landlord was leading him towards the elevator, Xiao Lei finally started to struggle: "No! That's extremely dangerous! Don't go there, at least don't take me there—"
The elevator is the most dangerous place; he had personally tested it with his teddy bear skills—was the landlord taking him there to kill him and silence him?
Xiao Lei acquired his teddy bear skill in an amusement park instance, where he played the role of an amusement park worker wearing a teddy bear uniform and handing out balloons.
After killing the ghost who was also wearing a teddy bear costume and handing out flyers at the door, he obtained the teddy bear costume from that ghost.
After using this skill, the teddy bear costume he is dragging will inflate and stand up. Its function is like a low-cost scapegoat doll, which will take the initiative to eliminate danger for its owner.
The teddy bear will rush to a place it perceives as dangerous, find the entity that might endanger its owner's life, then hug that entity, detonate the yin energy within itself, and perish together with it.
This skill has a cooldown of only fifteen minutes, making it a very useful skill that has helped Xiao Lei avoid many dangers.
While he was resting in this apartment, every time he used his skill, the teddy bear would rush towards the elevator.
There was even a time when there were several ghosts around him, but the teddy bear didn't even look at them and rushed straight into the elevator... This shows how dangerous elevators are.
Hearing Xiao Lei's wails, Zhou Fangdong paused for a moment.
Xiao Lei is right, elevators are indeed very dangerous, and it's easy to encounter ghosts or alien projections coming down from upstairs.
Zhou Fangdong dares to take the elevator casually because he has a teleportation skill; if he senses something is wrong, he can teleport back to his room.
But he's currently with a player. If they encounter danger and he teleports away, leaving this guy behind... well, that's a bit of a trap.
With that in mind, Zhou Fangdong did not stop in front of the elevator, but skipped it and walked directly into the stairwell, heading towards the staircase.
The damage to the apartment staircase has been repaired, and it will no longer swallow up tenants at night.
Zhou Fangdong, who possessed a sandalwood memorial tablet, was not a high-level vengeful ghost that needed to be trapped by the staircase, so the two of them easily made their way down to the first floor via the stairs.
Xiao Lei went from struggling desperately at the beginning to completely giving up now, his expression numb and blank, like a salted fish that has lost its dreams.
To be honest, this landlord gave him a more terrifying feeling than the God himself.
If he tried to run away, the landlord would be watching him. Just one glance at him was enough to make Xiao Lei feel like he couldn't muster any thought of resistance.
This can no longer be called deterrence; it's practically mind control...
Zhou Fangdong led Xiao Lei all the way to the entrance of the 104 convenience store.
Apartment tenants don't go out at night, but the convenience store remains open 24 hours a day, since the ghost employees don't need to rest.
The convenience store's glass door remains closed at night, just like the other tenants' rooms. However, unlike the tenants' rooms, there are no wall lights at the convenience store's entrance.
There were no vacancies in the apartment, and it was still some time before dawn, so Zhou Fangdong planned to leave Xiao Lei at the convenience store and ask the Long-Tongued Ghost and the Wedding Dress Ghost to keep an eye on him.
After room 302 is cleaned up, put him in room 302.
Xiao Lei stared in horror at the convenience store, which resembled a miniature replica.
The convenience store's rules were being played at the entrance and over the loudspeaker. Xiao Lei never expected that the apartment he considered a safe haven would be so chaotic, with ghosts and unknown creatures everywhere, and even dungeons scattered all over the place.
This is terrifying! Luckily I didn't come down from the 5th floor, otherwise I probably wouldn't be able to get back like I am now.
Zhou Fangdong took out two incense sticks from his inventory, giving one to the long-tongued ghost and the other to the wedding dress ghost, instructing them to keep an eye on Xiao Lei and not let him leave the convenience store.
Then he patted Xiaolei on the shoulder and said, "You should rest well in this convenience store. I'll come over during the day to sign the rental contract with you."
"Everything in the convenience store is free, you can eat as much as you want, just ask the cashier to enter your order before you eat. Don't think about escaping, and don't do anything that would confuse the ghosts... These two ghosts can't communicate normally with humans, and if they misunderstand your intentions, they might hurt you."
"The convenience store rules are posted on the wall. Following these rules shouldn't be a problem for you, right?"
Xiao Lei nodded in despair.
He glanced blankly at the long-tongued ghost with festering skin and deformed limbs in front of the cashier, then at the tall, red figure that flashed past behind the shelf, and at the zombie Taoist priest who walked past the convenience store's glass door, exuding an unusually terrifying aura and with a ferocious appearance, holding a wooden sword.
Xiao Lei gave a bitter smile.
Any one of these three could be a dungeon boss on its own.
How can he escape? How can he possibly escape? Is there any way for him to survive?
Xiao Lei dragged his teddy bear and chose a corner furthest away from the two ghosts, where he faced the wall and became withdrawn.
After settling Xiao Lei in, Zhou Fangdong teleported to room 103.
The special tenant watchlist shows that Mu Yuechan has returned.
Mu Yuechan didn't linger outside. After finding the human traffickers, she tied them all up like dumplings and brought them back to her apartment.
To Zhou Fangdong's surprise, in addition to these human traffickers, Mu Yuechan also brought back a video recorder and a large number of discs.
Noticing Zhou Fangdong's gaze, Mu Yuechan explained, "I didn't rob ordinary people's homes. These DVDs were found in the home of a human trafficker... I smashed the ones you bought for me last time. I was bored in my room by myself, so I wanted to find some modern dramas to watch."
With the internet so readily available now, DVDs are more for collectors than for general entertainment.
Zhou Fangdong picked through the discs one by one, and after quickly going through them once, he felt relieved.
That human trafficker was a bad person, but he had good taste in collecting films; they were all classic kung fu movies, nothing he couldn't watch.
Zhou Fangdong put down the disc and said to Mu Yuechan, "When it gets light, could you please put all these people outside room 301 for me?"
There are quite a few human traffickers, a total of nine. It would be very troublesome for Zhou Fangdong to carry them one by one.
After returning to his room from room 103, Zhou Fangdong had just lay down on the bed and closed his eyes to rest for a while when the familiar system pop-up appeared:
[Dynamic Event: Night Attack of a Hundred Demons (Countdown: 7 days)]
Zhou Fangdong opened his eyes and was immediately teleported to the third floor.
First, we need to clean up room 302 as soon as possible and get that player named Xiao Lei to sign the rental contract.
Just as Zhou Fangdong reached the third-floor tenant corridor, he happened to see the door of room 301 open, and charred, ghostly hands reached out from the door, dragging the human traffickers into the room.
He was initially worried that Mu Yuechan might become obsessed with movies, but to his surprise, she took his request very seriously and delivered the human traffickers to his door at daybreak.
Zhou Fangdong arrived at room 302 and pushed open the door.
After seeing the scene inside room 302, Zhou Fangdong was shocked again. He took a step back, and after confirming that he was in the third-floor corridor, he frowned and walked in.
The scene inside room 302 was actually the lobby on the first floor of the Liwan Apartment.
...It was the first floor of an apartment building that had been abandoned for many years and had not yet been renovated by Zhou Fangdong.
The door to room 302 seems to have become the main entrance to the Liwan Apartments.
Inside the room, directly opposite the main entrance is the elevator. A crystal chandelier, which looks luxurious but is covered in cobwebs and dust, hangs from the very high ceiling. Its chains are rusty. The long-tongued ghost used to love swinging on it.
There were dark red bloodstains on the carpet in front of the door, which stretched all the way to the elevator directly opposite the door.
The floor tiles were broken, dust and debris were everywhere, and the walls were covered in graffiti... Being in room 302 gave Zhou Fangdong a feeling of being out of touch with time.
This must be the ghost realm of the room, since the ceiling height of the third-floor room couldn't possibly be as high as the first-floor lobby.
The ghost realm shows the lobby on the first floor of Liwan Apartment. Did this ghost die at the entrance of the apartment?
While Zhou Fangdong was observing room 302, a task panel pop-up window appeared simultaneously:
Side Quest 16: Clean and rent out Room 302
① Find the ghost hidden in the room
② Eliminate the ghostly aura in the room and help the ghosts break free from their cycle of obsession.
③ Clean the room and tidy up the house.
④ Discard the damaged furniture and buy new furniture.
⑤ Figure out the patterns of the ghosts' killings, draft a rental agreement, and find tenants to move in.
Side Quest Rewards: 800 Ghost Coins, 2000 Experience Points, 1 Random Skill Point
Rooms 302 and 301, like other rooms, also need to have their ghostly domain eliminated.
Just as Zhou Fangdong was about to take out a kerosene lamp to dispel the ghostly aura, the scene before him suddenly changed.
A group of young men with bruised and swollen faces ran out of the elevator hallway.
They all held rags and knelt in the entryway as if they couldn't see Zhou Fangdong, frantically wiping the bloodstains on the floor. They cried as they wiped, their expressions terrified, their facial muscles contorted more frightening than a vengeful ghost.
Zhou Fangdong counted them; there were 13 people in total, the oldest of whom looked to be only seventeen or eighteen years old.
The young people buried themselves in scrubbing the floor, but they couldn't get the bloodstains off.
This continued for a few minutes, and then another noise came from the hallway.
Zhou Fangdong, who had used the [Heavenly Eye] skill as soon as he entered, narrowed his eyes slightly and looked in the direction from which the sound came.
It was a rather large young woman, who looked to weigh around 200 pounds, and she was leading a dog with a human face on a chain.
Zhou Fangdong could see very clearly that this woman was the ghost in room 302.
Unlike the charred corpse ghost in room 301, which hid in the ghost realm, it came out openly and directly.
After it came out, the young men who were wiping the floor began to beg for mercy and kept kowtowing.
But the female ghost didn't react at all; she simply released the human-faced dog she was holding.
The human-faced dog bit the young man closest to it, and the thirteen young men were thrown into chaos, arguing and fighting among themselves, eventually escalating into a frenzy of biting and tearing at each other like wild dogs.
The human-faced dog that initially sparked the fight was trampled under their feet, again and again, until the human face on the dog's body was crushed into a bloody mess, unrecognizable.
Zhou Fangdong watched the bizarre fight unfold before him, then turned his gaze back to the enormous, malevolent ghost and used [Soul Drain] on her.
After receiving 800 ghost coins, Zhou Fangdong saw the ghost's past life.
Looking at those fragments of memory, Zhou Fangdong's brows furrowed more and more tightly.
The life of the female ghost in room 302 can be summed up as "kindness is taken advantage of" and "good people don't get good rewards".
Due to genetic reasons, this girl has a high appetite and is prone to gaining weight. Her figure has been rather plump since childhood, which is far from the mainstream aesthetic of 'beauty'. She basically has no friends of the same age.
In addition, having lost her parents at a young age, she was afraid of being alone and desperately longed to have friends like everyone else.
So she started trying to please others.
From junior high to high school, through observing people's expressions and reactions, she learned to actively use her body as a source of amusement, and would further mock herself in order to cater to others' teasing.
The female classmates all found her very interesting, and the male classmates also got along well with her, which made her more accepting of her way of making friends.
Although she sometimes feels sad when she's alone at night and recalls some of the excessive teasing during the day, she feels that this is the price of friendship... It's worth it to exchange one's own embarrassment for the laughter and acceptance of those around them.
During holidays, none of the "friends" she made at school would ask her to go out. So she would use this free time to help out at nursing homes, reading newspapers to the elderly, cutting their nails, and pushing them around in strollers. She would also volunteer at welfare homes, taking care of children who were as lonely as herself.
After graduating from high school, her grandmother, who had been taking care of her, passed away. She did not continue her studies but instead found a formal job as a caregiver in a nursing home.
It was during this time that the girl met the man who would change the course of her life—a good-for-nothing hoodlum.
At first, the hoodlum treated her very well, and she fell for him after a few sweet words, throwing herself into this 'love' as if grasping at a lifeline.
However, after dating for a month, her boyfriend revealed his true colors.
This parasitic man lived in the house her parents left her, constantly asking her for money under various pretexts before going out to squander it on his debauchery.
Under his constant barrage of threats like, "Besides me, who else would want an ugly, fat guy like you?" and "You'd better treat me better, or I'll leave you," the girl, who had lacked love since childhood, was completely manipulated. Afraid of losing her only support, she became even more subservient to her boyfriend, always obliging to his every whim.
Later, her boyfriend joined a local low-level gang and went even further, bringing more than a dozen of his brothers into the girl's home.
The old house that held memories of my parents has been transformed into a chaotic gang stronghold.
The girl didn't say much, but silently cleaned up the cigarette butts and bottles scattered on the floor, washed the mountain of dirty clothes, and used her meager salary to buy groceries and cook for them, taking meticulous care of her boyfriend and his brothers.
However, her efforts were not met with gratitude.
In the eyes of these thugs, the girl's diligence and occasional advice were a way of disciplining them and showing them contempt.
After all, for these young people who have already started their lives in the underworld, their parents don't care about them, and now they have to be controlled by a 'fat woman' after they've already started their lives in the underworld. It's an insult to them.
As a result, the boyfriend's gang members started verbally abusing the girl and physically assaulting her at the slightest provocation.
The girl remained timid and hesitant, not daring to resist... because these were her boyfriend's brothers, and upsetting them meant upsetting her boyfriend. For her, if she lost her boyfriend, her world would truly be empty.
Then one day, at a party, the drunken thugs mentioned the Liwan Apartments.
At that time, the Liwan Apartments had been sealed off by the Control Bureau due to the numerous murders and constant paranormal events.
Those thugs, with ill intentions, wanted the girl to go to Liwan Apartment to see if it was really haunted.
To please her boyfriend and his friends, she left home amidst a chorus of cheers, even though the director of the supervisory bureau had been repeatedly urging citizens not to go out at night on the news.
Of course, because of the censorship bureau's blockade, the girl didn't even get inside the Liwan Apartment; she just stayed outside for one night.
Although she did not enter the apartment or encounter any ghosts, she seemed to be plagued by an invisible misfortune, which hastened her death.
After she got back that day, her boyfriend's gangster friends started saying that she had been acting strangely ever since she came out of the haunted building, and that she must have been possessed by an evil spirit.
This became a perfect excuse, and they began to bully her even more severely.
The thugs began to beat and kick the girl without restraint, treating her like a punching bag. They even used a knife to carve insulting words on her body, claiming that swearing could ward off evil spirits and that they were helping her exorcise ghosts.
Instead of stopping her, her boyfriend joined in the 'exorcism'.
While enduring inhuman torture, the girl still clung to a faint hope that they could return to the way things were after successfully exorcising the ghost.
But patience will not earn you the devil's mercy.
Just a week later, the group, drunk and disorderly, took the girl to Liwan Apartment.
Because the paranormal events had not yet fully unfolded, the Bureau of Supervision only sealed off the area around the apartment, but the roads leading to the apartment were not blocked, so these people were able to reach the vicinity of the apartment without any problems.
This time, they climbed into the apartment through a corridor window that had never been nailed shut.
The gloomy atmosphere in the apartment was designed to ignite malice in people's hearts and make them extremely irritable. With the added influence of alcohol, the thugs shouted that they had to completely exorcise the evil spirit from the girl while punching and kicking her in the lobby on the first floor of the apartment.
The punches and kicks rained down like a storm, heavier and more frenzied than ever before.
The girl curled up on the cold ground, her pleas for mercy growing weaker and weaker, the pain in her body gradually numbing, and her consciousness drifting away.
The last thing she saw was her boyfriend's cold, smiling eyes.
...She just wanted to be loved, just wanted to have friends, just wanted to stop being alone, so why did she end up like this?
The boundless darkness completely engulfed her, and with endless resentment and confusion, she finally stopped breathing.
She died at the age of eighteen. She never understood why, despite giving everything, she received not a single bit of sincerity or tenderness in return.
...She will never understand that even the gentlest sunlight will be blinding to rats that live in the gutter.
The rats finally got their wish and released the evil spirit.
Feeling guilty for soiling the apartment with her blood, the girl, even though she had become a vengeful ghost, still wanted to clean the floor.
So she trapped the souls of these thugs in her ghost realm, making them wipe the bloodstains from the apartment's entrance floor every day.
Of course, the blood can never be wiped away, just like the crimes they committed.
These thugs are trapped in the ghost realm of vengeful spirits. They blame and beat each other every day because they can't clean the ground properly, and they perform their favorite 'exorcism' ritual.
The thug boyfriend was turned into a human-faced dog by the girl and trampled underfoot by the thugs who were fighting together.
After the thugs exhaust their last bit of strength fighting each other, they will be slowly devoured by the human-faced dog.
Then the cycle of mopping, fighting, and being eaten continues, like Sisyphus pushing a boulder, forever trapped in a death loop, never able to escape.
Zhou Fangdong looked at the thugs fighting amongst themselves in the Ghost Domain and pinched his brow hard.
...The ghost in room 302 was too gentle; the punishment was too light.
Although the ghost in room 302 has a good temper and the tenants won't easily trigger her murderous conditions, Zhou Fangdong is still a little worried.
He had prepared room 302 for Xiao Lei as the intended tenant, and he was cleaning the room so that he could move in.
Xiao Lei is a boy, and he's afraid that the ghost in room 302 will attack if it sees that Xiao Lei is male.
...Or, before he clears out another room, could we let Xiao Lei stay in the apartment convenience store for now?
As a player of the infinite flow game, Xiao Lei should be quite comfortable in the convenience store environment and get along well with the staff.
Forget about that for now. He should first resolve the issue of the ghost realm in Room 302, make the room accessible to ordinary people, and then write out the rental rules for Room 302.
Zhou Fangdong held a kerosene lamp in one hand and took out three sticks of incense for offering in the other.
The pregnant ghost on the fourth floor gave him an idea: if he wanted the ghosts in the room to not lose favor or make things difficult for the tenants, he should put three sticks of incense as offerings after dispelling the ghostly aura with a kerosene lamp.
Offering incense is really great.
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