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“What exactly is a ghost?”

Taking the place of Zhao Mingyue’s shadow, Bai Yu felt an odd sensation, one she had never experienced before, prompting her to internally question the nature of her new existence.

Becoming a ghost felt bizarre; her body was both present and absent, light as air, with strands of something drifting within her. These thread-like entities were the foundation of her body, keeping her hollow form from vanishing.

It was as if her physical form had become a substance between liquid and gas, with countless red threads locking this material into what now constituted her body.

The skills of a ghost, such as controlling blood threads and black mist, possessing shadows, floating, and short-range instant movement, were all instinctively learned upon her transformation into a fierce ghost.

Before Zhao Mingyue summoned her, Bai Yu was in a blood-red world devoid of direction, distance, or time, wandering aimlessly, not even knowing if she was moving or standing still. It was Zhao Mingyue’s call that allowed her to see the light of the real world.

However, becoming a ghost was not a pleasant experience. Her senses were greatly dulled; her sense of smell was faint, and her taste was gone entirely. Touch was reduced to feeling everything as cold.

It’s worth mentioning that upon becoming a ghost, the profound sensation she felt was coldness.

Not the kind of cold one feels when stripped and left in the snow, but rather a cold that seeps into every pore like thin needles of ice, despite wearing heavy cotton clothes that fail to retain warmth.

The difference is that the former makes one feel on the verge of freezing to death, with a body that feels hot before the end, while the latter is a slow death without the immediate threat of freezing, but with a persistent chill that erodes you bit by bit, eventually giving the illusion that even the soul is frozen.

This metaphor isn’t quite accurate, as it applies to the living.

Even for the latter, wearing heavy cotton clothes, the premise is that you must be alive, with body heat. The cold is from the outside in.

But she was different; she had no body heat. The unbearable cold came from within.

The outside world was bright and warm, yet she couldn’t touch it.

It wasn’t that she didn’t dare; she couldn’t. For her, whose soul was freezing, the warmth of the outside world was toxic. Even if she froze to death, stepping into the sunlight wouldn’t bring warmth, only rapid dissolution.

To put it differently, living people bask in the warmth of the sun, while ghosts die in the cold of the shadows.

Bai Yu now understood why ghosts were often mad and irrational.

It wasn’t that they lost their humanity after death; rather, it was their lucid minds that drove them to insanity. Not everyone has the willpower to withstand the cold, and even if they could endure it for a day, what about a week, a month, a year? Eventually, they would break.

Worse still, ghosts not only had to endure the pain of the cold but also their own grudges.

Those who committed suicide might relive the agony of their death every time they closed their eyes, over and over. Murderers would see the lingering spirits of those they killed, whispering their names, uttering vile curses.

This is why most people who die naturally don’t become ghosts, and if they do, they don’t linger long before dissipating. Those who die unjustly or by suicide, with deep obsessions, remain as malevolent spirits.

“They can’t stand the cold, nor can they bear their own grudges and obsessions, of course, they become irrational malevolent ghosts,” Bai Yu thought, her mind interrupted by the countless ghosts with bloodied faces or severed heads and torsos that appeared in her mind.

These “without limbs” and “ghosts” were all game participants she had killed. She liked using knives, and the wounds on these ghosts were inflicted by her.

These obsessions lingered in her mind, calling her name, cursing her with the most venomous words. It felt like many people whispering rapidly and softly in your ear, an unbearable annoyance.

Normally, a malevolent ghost’s obsession is one or two things, either their own suicide or the people they killed.

Bai Yu was different; she had killed too many, so many that their curses were indistinct, like the buzzing of flies.

“Shut up!”

As if blood burst forth, silence returned to Bai Yu’s ears. She needed to think about her future plans, and she needed silence.

In the bedroom, Zhao Mingyue seemed to sense something and suddenly opened her eyes.

The room was pitch black, with nothing to be seen. On the bedside table, Miss Rabbit sat quietly with her head down, next to a black cell phone and a rabbit phone with two cracks on the screen.

A snow-white arm emerged from the covers, and her delicate hand grabbed the phone charging by the bed, lighting up the screen. The dim light of the screen illuminated Zhao Mingyue’s somewhat haggard face.

Her eyes were bloodshot, and her lips were slightly pale.

“It’s four-thirty… Ah, the agony, I still have to go to work in the morning, what should I do?” She buried her head in the covers, in pain.

She couldn’t sleep, really couldn’t. As soon as she closed her eyes, she saw the swollen, rotten face of the upstairs neighbor.

Her first “ghost encounter” in life was so impressively overbearing.

Her mind was a mess. She hadn’t found her sister, and it seemed she had also opened the door to another world. She had to remember that there was still a fierce ghost living in her shadow!

Thinking of Bai Yu in her heart, Bai Yu was also thinking of her.

“My mission target is Zhao Mingyue. Her special identity means no participant will compete with me, but that’s limited to participants. It doesn’t mean people in this world can’t. The mission is to gain the corresponding character’s favor. What if this character is conquered by another character in the world first?”

Recalling various details, Bai Yu narrowed her eyes.

“In that case, in addition to being wary of the game participants, I also have to be careful of the male lead. It’s normal for the female lead’s original match to be the male lead.”

“So I have to find a way to kill him. Those maniacs must be thinking the same as me.”

“There are only five characters for them to choose from, which means at most only five can win. While eliminating the surrounding competitors, Zhao Mingyue is their primary target.”

“After all, killing the female lead would make it easier to conquer the male lead.”