Chapter 142: Online Flight

Chapter 142: Online Flight

Whoosh!!

The moment this comment appeared, the live stream room erupted in chaos. Though Wandering Souls preferred to prowl at night, they never dared to invade residential homes. This streamer must have been cursed for eight generations to encounter a Wandering Soul in his own house!

The chat was instantly flooded with "Run fast" messages, as viewers screamed:

"Holy shit!! A Wandering Soul!! Streamer, run for your life!!"

"I'll send you a rocket, to give you a boost!"

"My god, I'm seeing a living Wandering Soul for the first time in my life! Streamer, run! Don't turn off the computer, I want to see it up close!"

Lu Yan naturally knew he had to flee. The instant he spotted the Wandering Soul, he leaped from his chair and planned to escape through the window, descending fifteen floors down the pipes. But just then, the system decided to intervene, presenting Lu Yan with a task that felt like being struck by five thunderbolts:

"Ding! Congratulations, host has triggered two side quests!"

"Side Quest One: Survive under the attack of the Wandering Soul for 24 hours without leaving the building. Success rewards an ability upgrade; failure results in immediate annihilation."

"Side Quest Two: Eliminate this Wandering Soul. Success rewards 5000 points; failure deducts 1000 points."

Lu Yan couldn't help but curse: "Damn it! Are you trying to kill me faster?!"

He was halfway out the window when he heard the system's task, immediately flipping back inside. In the cramped room, he nimbly dodged the ghost's attacks, causing objects to crash to the floor with a cacophony of sounds.

Meanwhile, the number of viewers in the live stream skyrocketed at an alarming rate. Ordinary people had never seen such a terrifying creature like a Wandering Soul; those who had were now reporting to King Yama. Wasn't this a real-life "Escape from the Tiger's Mouth"?

The top-ranking, high-traffic streamer, who had been performing a hot dance, suddenly dropped to second place. Taking her spot was a rather shabby-looking live stream. Its content wasn't particularly unique – merely a masked man being chased around his home by a female ghost.

Just that...

Other streamers stopped their dances and games, staring dumbfounded at the life-or-death chase unfolding before them. It took them a while to muster a response:

"Holy shit, bro!! You're going all out for fans, aren't you?!"

Due to the confined space, Lu Yan was repeatedly lashed by the ghost's tongue, causing his health points to plummet. The ghost's strength was clearly superior to that of the previous Fat Fish Brother; one lash could drain a hundred health points, leaving the audience watching in terror.

"It's over, the streamer is probably done for. Someone call the patrol team!"

"Are you crazy? Where would you find a patrol team in a dump like Devil City? Do you think this is Sky City?"

"Bro, here are a hundred chrysanthemums for you. Rest in peace."

Lu Yan paid no heed to the mourning comments. Since his ability upgrade, he could now unleash two bolts of lightning, but this clearly wasn't enough to take down the Wandering Soul. He needed to use his strength wisely. As he struggled to dodge, he searched for the ghost's weakness. Eventually, he noticed a slight bulge in her abdomen, as if she were pregnant, which was only slightly visible due to her voluminous dress.

Lu Yan's eyes narrowed sharply. In a spot where the audience couldn't see, he raised his right hand, conjuring a blue-violet bolt of lightning in his palm. With silent menace, he aimed it at the ghost's belly.

Upon seeing this, the ghost actually ceased her attack. Her ghastly face flashed with panic. Her form twisted momentarily before transforming into a cloud of black mist, fleeing through the door with a bang, directly into the crack of the neighboring door, leaving behind a mess.

"Boom—!"

The already flimsy door, after such a collision, shattered and fell to the ground, raising a cloud of dust.

Lu Yan, who had been chased around the room, wasn't about to let this opportunity pass. He grabbed a kitchen knife and aggressively pursued the ghost:

"Stop! Don't run!!!"

Earlier, this ghost had chased Lu Yan around his home, but now the situation was completely reversed. Lu Yan, wielding a kitchen knife, was chasing her.

The audience watching the live stream witnessed this scene, and the air fell into a deathly silence. After roughly ten seconds, someone cautiously posted a message:

"What is this guy doing?!"

Another viewer replied in a daze:

"Just as you see, chasing a Wandering Soul…"

"Haha! Who can switch the live stream camera for me! Streamer, come back!! Let us watch the excitement together!!"

"Bounty offered! Is there a hacker who can remotely control the streamer's computer?! Please, I want to watch the commotion!"

Unaware of the roaring comments, Lu Yan chased the ghost to his neighbor's door. Worried that she might continue harming others, he kicked the door open without hesitation. A putrid stench assaulted him, nearly overwhelming him, but when he saw the scene inside, his pupils constricted in shock, causing him to drop the knife.

"Clang—!"

A crisp sound echoed, unusually prominent in the silent hallway.

Perhaps due to the darkness, the man next door finally turned on the lights. In the dim light of the living room, one wall was lined with glass jars filled with pickled vegetables, about the height of an adult's calf. However, they didn't contain pickles but the corpses of newborn infants, not long after birth.

They still retained the curled positions they had in their mothers' wombs, umbilical cords partially attached, some shriveled, some rotten, their facial features yet to fully develop, remaining as blurred shadows.

On a worn wooden bed lay a woman, her limbs chained, her eyes blankly staring at the ceiling. Layers of dirt, accumulated from days without bathing, covered her skin. She wore a soiled, unrecognizable color of a spaghetti strap dress. Her legs were weakly spread apart, beneath her a pool of blood and amniotic fluid, dark and foul-smelling. She muttered in a monotonous voice, "No more births… No more births…" as if a walking corpse.

Lu Yan felt a sense of disbelief creeping in. As he cautiously entered the room, he heard faint cries of a baby coming from a small partition. Behind a curtain, he saw the neighbor man, whom he had encountered earlier today, squatting on the ground with his back to him. In front of him was a bathtub containing a frail infant, still covered in blood, unable to even open its eyes. Its feeble cries were muffled, its wrist tightly gripped by the man.

The neighbor man gently cooed to the infant, deeply engrossed, unaware even of Lu Yan kicking the door open. The eerie nursery rhyme sent shivers down spines:

"Good baby… don't cry… Give your life points to Daddy… Daddy will give you candy…"

"We'll go live in Sky City… Sky City has the sun… Grandpa Sun smiles cheerfully…"

As he sang, the man clung tightly to the infant's wrist. His life points visibly surged, while the baby's grew weaker until its cries faded away.

Why did the heavens choose time as humanity's currency? To this day, no one could provide an answer. We only know that once anything is given value equivalent to "currency," it possesses a destructive force capable of toppling mountains and collapsing seas, easily shattering the most fundamental human morals and values.

In this world, everyone worked tirelessly to earn the time necessary for survival. Only infants, from the moment of birth, were granted an eighteen-year reprieve. Yet, the man exploited this loophole, treating it as a bargaining chip.

The outer living room is filled with countless infant corpses, while the inner compartment conceals a female corpse that has long since decayed. The small rental apartment is shrouded in an eerie atmosphere, truly making one feel the essence of what is called Devil's City, and what is referred to as a purgatory on earth.

"Fuck you, you beast!"

Without a moment to spare for further thought, Lu Yan rushed forward and kicked the man to the ground with a single blow. He had never imagined that the neighbor living next to him was such a beast. No wonder he could hear the crying of a child every day; no wonder the man boasted about moving to Sky City soon. It turned out that he had been forcing the woman to bear children for him, only to steal all their life force!

Ignoring the man's agonized cries, Lu Yan unleashed a barrage of punches and kicks with all the strength he could muster in his life. His eyes were bloodshot and terrifying. It was only when the man lay motionless on the ground that his brain, consumed by rage, began to cool down a bit. Not knowing what came to his mind, he rushed to the side of the woman who had been imprisoned outside.

The other end of the iron chain was nailed to the wall, and due to long-term neglect, more than half of the nail was exposed. Lu Yan approached, intending to unshackle her, but as soon as the woman heard the clanking of the chains, she was like someone who had received an immense shock, suddenly screaming madly: "Ahhhh!!! Ahhhhh!!! Don't come closer!!! Don't come closer!!!"

Her terrified scream seemed to provoke something, and suddenly a scarlet tongue shot out from under the bed towards Lu Yan, carrying with it a swift and fierce sound of the wind.

"Bang!"

Lu Yan rolled on the spot, swiftly evading the attack. As he looked closely, he realized that the ghostly woman had been hiding under the woman's bed. However, it seemed that she had misunderstood Lu Yan's intentions, her terrifying pale face cracked into pieces, her mouth torn apart, and she crawled out from under the bed in a twisted posture, furiously launching an attack on him.

"Fuck!"

Lu Yan turned and fled, engaging in a life-and-death chase with the female ghost in the hallway. He had initially planned to use the same trick, summoning lightning to strike her abdomen, but he did not anticipate that she was at the brink of fury and completely unafraid of his attack. The lightning that struck her was as ineffective as a mere tickle.

Oh no, oh no!

Oh no, it's over! Oh no, it's over!

Just as Lu Yan felt his life was about to be surrendered here today, the man he had knocked unconscious finally awoke. He rose from the ground, clutching his bleeding forehead, and staggered to his feet, only to find that the century's worth of life points he had painstakingly accumulated had been reduced to ninety-eight years by Lu Yan's earlier blow. He couldn't help but stare in horror: "My life points!"

He shook his head in a fit of madness: "No, no, no, it's not possible. One must accumulate a century's worth of merit to be qualified to enter Sky City, not a single day less!"

The man, nearly possessed, lunged to the bedside, clutching the woman's shoulders and shaking her vigorously: "Bear a child! Give me another child, do you hear me?! We're so close!"

The woman's expression was a painful and twisted one: "No... no more... no more..."

The man shouted hoarsely, "Did you hear me say I want you alive?!"

The woman's spirit was on the brink of collapse, her eyes bloodshot and terrifying in an instant. With a strength that seemed to come from nowhere, she suddenly lunged forward and fiercely bit the man's neck, causing blood to spray out in an instant.

Ahhhhhhh!!!!

Lu Yan was on the run when suddenly he heard a heart-wrenching scream coming from the next room, which startled him momentarily. For some unknown reason, the female ghost abruptly ceased her pursuit of Lu Yan, transforming her form into a cloud of black smoke and whooshing into the room.

In the documentary, it was mentioned that fierce beasts such as lions and tigers can snap a human's throat with a single bite, yet it seldom touches upon whether humans are equally capable of emulating such an act.

When Lu Yan entered the room, he was met with the sight of blood splattered everywhere on the bed. The woman, who had just been weak and numb, was now frenziedly biting at the man's throat. The blood vessels were so fragile in the face of the hard teeth, doing nothing but gushing blood outwards uncontrollably.

The man initially struggled, but as time passed, his breaths gradually weakened until he lay motionless on the bed. The woman, as if drained of strength, slipped from the bed to the floor, the iron chains, tautened by the pull, snapped with a resounding crack.

The iron chains that had bound her for over a decade could be broken with just a simple struggle.

The woman lay on the ground, her body drenched in blood, looking even more terrifying than the female ghost not far away. She slowly rolled her eyes, but instead of looking at Lu Yan, she gazed at the female ghost in the distance, her lips lightly tugging to reveal a faint, weak smile:

"Finally, I can die in peace..."

In a world where everyone yearns for survival, she longs for death, moving her lips silently:

"Finally, I can die in peace..."

"No more children..."

As dawn broke on the horizon, a slanting ray of sunlight pierced through the doorway, illuminating the bloodstains within the room. The woman finally closed her eyes slowly and peacefully.

The ferocious visage of the female ghost gradually returned to normal, gazing at the woman's corpse with a hint of sorrow. Her hollow eyes welled up with a pain that Lu Yan could hardly comprehend. After one last look at the decaying body of the woman in the small compartment, she vanished with a bang, turning into a wisp of black smoke.

Wanderers can only emerge in the night; once the first light of dawn breaks, they must vanish.

Lu Yan stood at the doorway, never having witnessed such a gruesome scene. It felt as if taking one step forward would plunge him into the depths of a human purgatory. He gazed at the woman's corpse, stunned, and uttered, "How could this have happened..."

What has become of this world?

What is the relationship between that female ghost and the deceased woman?

Lu Yan could sense that the ghostly woman possessed formidable strength. The chase within the house seemed to be a ploy to lure him to the adjacent room. However, if her intention was to save the woman, why didn't she simply kill the man instead?

"The wanderers cannot slay the ones responsible for their demise in life."

The system abruptly appeared, its black and red form so incongruent with the gory and absurd scene in the room, yet it exuded an eerie harmony: "She was killed by that man while still alive, harboring fear deep within her bones, unable to slay him in return."

Lu Yan keenly grasped some crucial information: "Before death? You mean these wanderers are actually the spirits of the deceased turned into ghosts?"

The system, in an unprecedented move, explained much: "A small fraction is, after all, not everyone turns into a ghost after death."

The wanderers are the creations born out of the world's rules; they can be a cloud, a mist, an emotion laden with resentment, or even the ghostly remnants of human souls after death, with no discernible pattern.

Lu Yan seemed to grasp the point, yet not quite: "According to what you're saying, they still possess some human emotions, at least the female ghost knew to save this woman."

The system shook its digital form: "Emotion is inherently complex, and even after death, one's memories can continue to influence them. It's not strange for a wanderer to possess this."

Lu Yan retorted, "And what about you? Do you have feelings?"

Upon hearing the words, the system suddenly fell silent for a moment, and then after a brief pause, it uttered a sentence: "I am but a program."

Oh...

Lu Yan nodded, not asking any further questions. He was at a loss about how to handle the situation before him, feeling so tired that his eyelids were fighting to stay open. Dragging his exhausted body, he returned home, planning to take a shower and get a good night's sleep before pondering the issue. However, as he passed by his computer, he suddenly noticed that the live stream was still on, with nearly half a million people online at the same time.

Lu Yan: “???”

Oh my, do these people not need to sleep at all?!!

Lu Yan settled back in front of the computer, and after a long pause, he finally uttered a sentence: "Why haven't you all gone to sleep yet?"