Chapter 4

Xie Chi raised her head and stared at the ceiling without saying a word. There was something unusual about her constitution that prevented her from learning any Taoist arts or techniques. Whenever she accompanied her senior and junior martial brothers to perform rituals, she relied entirely on physical force to exorcise ghosts.

That was probably one of the reasons she’d been chosen for the livestreaming assignment.

However, even she had sensed the sudden change that occurred just now. Something was taking shape directly above her head.

The young man had evidently noticed it as well, although his attention had initially been drawn to whatever was inside Xie Chi’s bag. His expression was extremely grave, and upon closer inspection, there was even a trace of panic in his eyes. “What’s going on… How could this happen…”

The young man gave Xie Chi a shove. “Hurry up and leave! Get out of here! Go as far away as you can!”

Naturally, the viewers in the livestreaming room couldn’t sense things like the gathering of yin energy. Hearing his words, they all burst into laughter.

‘He’s actually pretty convincing…’

‘These days, scammers wouldn’t dare come out and show off without a few special tricks up their sleeves, okay?’

‘Hello, I’m Qin Shi Huang. I took the elixir of immortality and never died. I have ten billion tons of gold buried in the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor. I urgently need 2,000 yuan to buy some tomb-robbing equipment. WeChat Pay or Alipay transfers are both fine. Once I reclaim my throne, I’ll reserve the position of Lord Wu’an for you!’

‘Hahaha, I’m the King of Hell. Send money.’

However, the expressions of the two people in the corridor were growing increasingly serious. Carrying the young man’s peachwood sword, Xie Chi headed straight toward the elevator.

Strangely enough, the power hadn’t gone out, and the elevator appeared to be functioning normally. Yet when Xie Chi pressed the button, the doors showed no sign of opening.

She immediately turned and ran toward the stairs. The young man hurried after her, shouting anxiously, “What are you doing?! Hurry up and leave! If you don’t go now, it’ll be too late!”

Previously, Xie Chi had always assumed that the problem was on the third floor. After all, most of the people who reported seeing strange things had encountered them there. It wasn’t until that sudden change a moment ago that she realized something was wrong.

As she climbed the stairs, the bone-chilling sensation followed her like a shadow, persisting all the way until she reached the fourth floor.

The two of them arrived on the fourth floor almost one after the other. The young man had been chattering incessantly, but the moment he saw the scene before him, he immediately fell silent.

A thick layer of yin energy covered the floor, resembling the fog produced by dry ice on a stage. However, this yin energy was grayish-black, like a dark cloud weighing heavily on the young man’s heart.

Moreover, the yin energy was still moving. It flowed toward the depths of the corridor, converging on a room located roughly above where Xie Chi had been standing on the third floor.

The viewers in the livestreaming room were dumbstruck. For a brief moment, the screen was almost completely devoid of comments. A scene like this wasn’t something that could easily be explained away as a scammer’s trick.

After all, the young man hadn’t been to the fourth floor before, and [read the original at bailiantales.com]there was a good chance he hadn’t even known anyone was inside the building.

Unless, of course, Xie Chi and the young man were working together and had staged the entire thing.

It wasn’t that nobody suspected this. However, most Chinese people tended to maintain a half-believing, half-doubting attitude toward supernatural matters. After witnessing such a scene with their own eyes, it was difficult for them to remain calm.

Xie Chi fell silent for a moment, feeling that she ought to say something at a time like this. She had to take her job seriously, after all. After struggling for quite a while, she finally offered a stiff explanation.

“This is probably a problem with medical dry ice. Maybe there’s a room on the fourth floor specifically used to store dry ice, and something went wrong with the storage conditions, causing it to turn into fog… As for why it looks gray, perhaps something else got mixed into it.”

“Ghosts don’t exist in this world. We have to believe in science.”

To tell the truth, her explanation was stiff, awkward, and even somewhat clumsy. It wasn’t particularly convincing. However, given the circumstances, there really wasn’t any better explanation available, so quite a few viewers reluctantly forced themselves to believe it.

The young man stood beside her with a deeply disapproving expression. He opened his mouth to speak, only for Xie Chi to promptly cover it with her hand.

Xie Chi narrowed her eyes. Unfortunately, her ability to change the subject was just as poor as her explanations. “Let’s go farther ahead and take a look. Maybe we can figure out what’s wrong. Dry ice wouldn’t leak for no reason.”

The young man looked terribly aggrieved. He wanted to speak but couldn’t get a word out.

Only after Xie Chi was certain he wouldn’t blurt out anything [bailiantales.com]inappropriate for the time being did she release him. The two then continued forward.

Xie Chi had already formed a suspicion earlier. Ever since entering the hospital on the first floor, she had encountered only a few scattered ghosts. None of them had been particularly powerful. They were all weak little things, completely inconsistent with the extraordinary density of yin energy throughout the hospital.

There were only two possible explanations. The first was that an enormous number of ghosts had gathered inside the hospital, producing a considerable amount of yin energy.

The second was that a fairly powerful malicious ghost was hiding somewhere inside.

She had suspected the second possibility all along. Now that she’d seen the condition of the fourth floor, she could more or less confirm it.

The two of them stopped halfway down the corridor because something was blocking their path.

It was a woman wearing a hospital gown, its hem covered in bloodstains. She held a bundle wrapped in white swaddling cloth in her arms. When she raised her head, she revealed a ghastly bluish-white face.

The light from Xie Chi’s phone happened to fall directly on her face, giving the viewers in the livestreaming room quite a fright.

The young man, however, was delighted. “See? I told you!”

He strode forward and seized the female ghost by the collar. “I told you there were ghosts here! I’m not a scammer!”

The female ghost was dumbfounded.

She had frightened plenty of people in this hospital before, but never once had anyone reacted like this.

As for Xie Chi? There was absolutely no way she would admit that this was a ghost. She had always been dedicated to her work.

Carrying the peachwood sword, she walked over, snatched the female ghost’s collar from the young man’s grasp, and even reached out to touch her face.

“Nonsense. If she’s a ghost, how come I can touch her?”

“Come on, tell us. Were you sent here by a competing hospital? Did they deliberately have you put on makeup and wander around frightening people at night so patients would be too scared to come here?”

Xie Chi was extremely strong. She shook the female ghost a couple of times, leaving her hair disheveled and her face filled with an expression of utter disbelief.

Young Man: …

That made sense, actually.

Ordinary people couldn’t touch ghosts. This was also why ninety percent of the people in the world were unaware that ghosts existed. To them, ghosts were intangible beings that could neither be seen nor touched.

When ordinary ghosts wanted to harm someone, they could only haunt that person continuously, using the yin energy from their bodies to erode the living person’s yang energy. This would gradually worsen the victim’s luck and weaken their health.

Of course, this referred to ordinary wandering souls and wild ghosts, especially those who had only recently died. They possessed such a thin layer of yin energy that it might take them three to five years of haunting someone just to make that person fall ill.

However, if a ghost accumulated enough resentment to become a malicious ghost, it could become visible to humans. Only more powerful malicious ghosts could be physically touched by humans or touch humans themselves, allowing them to kill people directly.

Could this female ghost actually be an extremely vicious malicious ghost whose true strength he simply hadn’t recognized?

The young man immediately became vigilant. “Step back! Let me test what we’re dealing with. Don’t let it hurt you!”

Xie Chi remained perfectly calm. “It’s fine. I’ve learned kickboxing. She can’t beat me.”

Young Man: …

She’s a ghost! Do you think a ghost is going to have a kickboxing match with you?!

Just as the young man expected, once the female ghost recovered from her shock, she raised her hand toward Xie Chi, looking utterly humiliated.

Her fingernails were grayish-black and extraordinarily long. If they left a wound on a human body, yin energy would seep through the wound and enter the person’s system.

Xie Chi moved even faster.

She grabbed the ghost’s wrist, twisted around, and executed an over-the-shoulder throw, slamming the female ghost straight into the floor.

The impact left the ghost completely dazed.

Even the swaddled bundle in her arms went flying and landed on the floor. The bundle was empty. There was nothing inside, only a clean piece of white cloth.

After pinning the female ghost to the floor, Xie Chi grabbed her by the throat.

“Let’s call the police.”

The young man could practically feel his entire system of beliefs shattering into pieces, especially his understanding of how the world worked. It had been smashed so thoroughly that there was no putting it back together.

He was beginning to seriously suspect that all the years he’d spent studying Taoist arts had been a waste of time. Apparently, learning kickboxing was far more reliable.

“Y-you… Where did you learn kickboxing… No, that’s not the point! Stay away from her! Leave the rest to me.”

The young man was genuinely kindhearted. He was still worried that the female ghost might hurt Xie Chi.

However, what Xie Chi feared most was that he would start using Taoist techniques. If that happened, explaining things to the viewers would become much more difficult.

Therefore, there was absolutely no way she would hand the female ghost over to him.

Instead, she said calmly, “I think I can keep her restrained for now. Why don’t you go farther ahead and take a look? I suspect she has accomplices.”

The young man instantly came to his senses.

He had already realized that this female ghost was merely here to block their path. Farther ahead, an evil ghost was currently taking shape. Its steadily growing aura was as conspicuous as a firefly in the darkness.

The young man hesitated for a long while before finally saying, “Make sure you keep a firm grip on that peachwood sword. I’ll be right back!”

“Mm-hmm. Hurry along.”

Xie Chi couldn’t wait to send him away.

Only after the young man hurried deeper into the corridor did she finally breathe a sigh of relief.

She adjusted the camera so that it was pointed directly at the female ghost. Then she pressed the peachwood sword against the ghost’s neck.

“You were sent here by the hospital next door, weren’t you?”

Female Ghost: ??

“Weren’t you?”

Xie Chi’s gaze turned dark and inscrutable.

More importantly, an extraordinarily terrifying aura emerged from her sleeve.

It was invisible through the camera, but the female ghost could sense it with perfect clarity.

Whatever was crawling along Xie Chi’s wrist toward her was definitely not something to be trifled with.

A very distinct thought emanated from that thing.

Hungry.

If the female ghost were still alive, goosebumps would undoubtedly have covered her entire body by now.

She resembled a cat whose fur had suddenly puffed up in alarm. If the peachwood sword ​stolen content​hadn’t still been pressed against her neck, she would have leaped up and fled long ago.

With a wolf in front and a tiger behind, she felt like a complete idiot caught in the middle.

Perhaps realizing that escape was impossible, the female ghost suddenly let out a loud sob.

Whimpering pitifully, she lowered her head before the formidable figure in front of her and humiliatingly admitted that she had indeed been sent by the neighboring hospital to pretend to be a ghost.

Xie Chi was thoroughly satisfied.

She even took the opportunity to lecture her. “You know this is illegal, right? Don’t ever do something like this again. Be a good person from now on, understand?”

Female Ghost: Waaah… I want to be a person too.

“See? There are no ghosts in this world, only people with guilty consciences and people pretending to be ghosts.”

Xie Chi felt that she had carried out her mission exceptionally well.

It was all thanks to those many episodes of Approaching Science.

The viewers in the livestreaming room: …

Something about this doesn’t seem quite right, does it?