Chapter 140: Ghost-Attracting Constitution

Before setting out, Yin Zhen had drawn a new Talent after upgrading her Silver Card Identity.

[Yin Yang Eye]: You can see them now, but seeing them might not necessarily be a good thing.

Because of this, Yin Zhen saw the woman the moment she reached the second floor.

Bathed in the dark red halo of the emergency lights, the woman lay horizontally between two steps. Her long hair draped down, obscuring most of her face. Her head was tilted to one side as if her neck had been snapped, and her limbs were folded at impossible, gruesome angles.

Sensing someone below, her head violently snapped around. Half of a deathly pale face peeked through her hanging hair before she began scrambling down the stairs on all fours at a terrifying speed.

“Open the door!” Bai Qiang shoved the head nurse backward toward the tightly shut entrance of the second floor, taking a swift step to shield them both.

Though Bai Qiang couldn’t see the entity, her spiritual power detected a bone-piercing chill pressing down from the stairs above. She fished the roll of blood-stained bandage out of her pocket and hurled it upward. It unraveled in midair and snagged on the stair railing. The female ghost paused. Tilting her head, she stared at the fluttering bandage and stopped moving.

In typical horror movies, during a life-or-death moment that requires opening a door, the characters either couldn’t find the key or would drop it on the ground. However, despite the head nurse’s legs trembling violently, years of her professional career had honed her hands to be exceptionally steady. From a ring of over a dozen keys, she accurately pinched the one labeled for the second floor, slid it into the keyhole, turned it, and pushed the door open in one seamless motion.

As the door gave way, the head nurse rushed inside first, closely followed by Bai Qiang and Yin Zhen.

Just as Yin Zhen crossed the threshold, an ice-cold hand clamped around her ankle. She looked down. The twisted woman had already crawled right to her feet, lifting her pale face to expose dark, hollow eye sockets staring blankly back at her.

A massive surge of Strength violently yanked Yin Zhen backward. She crashed to the floor and was dragged out. Bai Qiang blindly grabbed her wrist, stopping her from being pulled down the stairs. Ying erupted from the shadows but passed harmlessly through the female ghost’s body, unable to grasp anything.

In the blink of an eye, the ghost crawled atop Yin Zhen. Charred, blackened hands pressed against her chest as that horrifying face inched closer and closer. Yin Zhen’s pupils contracted sharply. Her body felt frozen solid, rendering her completely paralyzed.

Her Cannon Fodder’s Intuition exploded with a warning once again. She clearly “saw” her own limbs being simultaneously snapped by an invisible Strength, her neck twisted backward, resulting in her death.

When fear reaches its absolute peak, it transforms into pure rage. This fury slammed into the deepest scar on Yin Zhen’s soul. Breaking free from her invisible shackles, she slapped her hand directly over the ghost’s deathly pale face.

The ghost’s shrill scream shattered the emergency lights in unison. As the hatred and wrath accumulated within Yin Zhen’s Inheritance surged outward, the ghost began to crumble, starting from her face and disintegrating inch by inch into black ash.

Bai Qiang hauled Yin Zhen through the doorway. The head nurse slammed the iron door shut with quick reflexes and leaned her shoulder against it, gasping heavily for air.

Yin Zhen lay on the floor while Bai Qiang knelt beside her, drenched in cold sweat. Black fingerprints lingered on Yin Zhen’s ankle, but as she stared at her own palm, a slow, eerie smile crept onto her lips.

The sight of that smile sent a shudder down Bai Qiang’s spine. She couldn’t help but feel that Yin Zhen sometimes harbored a sense of tranquil madness—she had nearly died, yet she was actually smiling.

“You’re clearly unluckier than me, so why did that ghost attack me first?” Yin Zhen suddenly asked.

Bai Qiang frowned. It was true—when encountering danger, the cannon fodder was supposed to die first. They had entered the doorway almost simultaneously, and the female ghost’s angle of descent was noticeably closer to Bai Qiang. Why had she specifically bypassed her to grab Yin Zhen’s ankle?

“A very powerful ghost also appeared in Ward 414 last night,” Yin Zhen added, “and it came straight for me.”

Bai Qiang lacked the necessary information to deduce the cause, but Yin Zhen had practically figured it out.

Originally, she had just been spouting nonsense to Wei Yang, claiming her grandmother said that as long as she wasn’t afraid, those foul things couldn’t hurt her. But Wei Yang had later validated this, correcting it to: “As long as you aren’t afraid, they won’t be able to find you.”

Then there was the immense sorrow Yin Zhen had felt when the ghost accompanying Wei Yang touched her. Combine that with the fact that Wei Yang exclusively consumed angst-ridden novels and tragic dramas…

Putting it all together, Yin Zhen hypothesized that the ghosts in this world were attracted to extreme emotions—perhaps even feeding on them. Extreme fear, extreme sorrow, and the extreme hatred and wrath residing within her Inheritance.

This was why the coughing ghost had sought her out last night, and why the female ghost just now had ignored Bai Qiang to single her out. It also explained how she was able to use the Strength of her Inheritance to obliterate the entity. The ghosts were drawn to the extreme hatred and rage within her Inheritance. Because her hatred and rage possessed greater Strength than the ghost, the entity had been unable to devour it and suffered a fatal backlash instead.

The Strength of the Inheritance was a double-edged sword in this world. It cursed Yin Zhen with a Constitution that acted as a magnet for ghosts, but it also granted her a lethal method to destroy them.

However, a person’s emotions couldn’t remain endlessly full. They could be overdrawn and altered by new experiences. This was undoubtedly why Wei Yang never let go of her tragic novels and angst dramas. She needed to continuously stimulate her own extreme sorrow to keep the ghost beside her powerful.

Yin Zhen wondered what would happen if Wei Yang’s emotions ever lacked the Strength to match the ghost. She might just get devoured by it. Or rather, Wei Yang was actively feeding the ghost with her extreme sorrow. Yin Zhen was very curious about how Wei Yang had established a connection with that ghost and how she managed to command it.

Rolling her ankle to test it, Yin Zhen stood back up and briefly shared her theory with Bai Qiang through the team’s chat channel.

Once Bai Qiang understood, she took a deep breath and consciously began suppressing her own fear. Unlike Yin Zhen, she didn’t have an Inheritance and wouldn’t constantly emit an “aroma” that lured monsters.

“What’s the situation outside? Can we still head upstairs?” Bai Qiang asked softly.

“I’ll go take a look,” Yin Zhen replied. “Keep the door open and wait for me here.”

Bai Qiang nodded in agreement. The head nurse stared in utter disbelief. Was this woman a wicked stepmother? How could she let a child take such a risk?

Using her body to prop the door open, Bai Qiang raised her flashlight to sweep across the pitch-black corridor. “Why is this floor so quiet? Did all the patients and medical staff go to the first floor?”

The head nurse finally realized something was amiss and shone her flashlight toward the nurses’ station.

RATTLE… RATTLE…

The squeaky wheels of a dilapidated trolley echoed from the darkness.

“Patients… ward rounds…”

At the sound of that raspy voice, Bai Qiang immediately pointed to a nearby ward and ordered the head nurse to hide inside. Craning her neck, she glanced toward the outer stairwell, not daring to leave her post just yet. She was terrified that if she walked away, the door might mysteriously lock itself, leaving Yin Zhen in mortal danger.

On the other side of the door, Yin Zhen tiptoed stealthily upward. The emergency lights along this flight of stairs had almost entirely died out, leaving only one hanging by a thread. It flickered every few seconds, casting the stairwell in alternating flashes of light and oppressive darkness.

Not daring to turn on her flashlight, she relied solely on the strobing light to navigate the steps beneath her feet. The doors to the third floor were shut tight, their glass panes caked in a thick layer of dust.

Yin Zhen continued her ascent. As she rounded the stairwell corner, she stopped dead in her tracks. In the stuttering glow of the emergency light, she spotted a massive, dark lump piled on the steps just four or five paces away.

It was a mound of corpses!

Charred limbs were fused together like melted candle wax, making it impossible to distinguish whose arm or leg belonged to whom. Several skulls were half-sunken into the crispy shells of torsos. Their faces had completely burned away, leaving only hollow, pitch-black mouths and eye sockets.

Under Yin Zhen’s gaze, the grotesque mound was disturbed. The charred head closest to her slowly twisted around. The entire pile of corpses then began to convulse. Several fused arms ripped themselves free from their carbonized shells and reached toward her.

Holding her breath, Yin Zhen slowly backed away. One step. Two steps. She retreated until her back bumped against the third-floor doors.

BANG!

The sudden, thunderous impact right behind her jolted Yin Zhen, covering her in a cold sweat.

A hand slammed against the glass of the door at her back, quickly followed by a second, a third, a fourth… Countless hands began frantically pounding on the dust-covered glass, resembling an endless horde of trapped souls trying to smash the doors open and break free.

Ying sprang from the ground and hugged Yin Zhen’s leg tightly, its shadow body shaking like a leaf.

Forcing down her rising terror, Yin Zhen silently crept back down to the second floor. The head nurse was already hidden in the nearest ward. Bai Qiang was holding the door open with one hand while frantically waving at Yin Zhen with the other.

Yin Zhen slipped through the doorway, and Bai Qiang gently pulled the heavy iron door shut. The two leaned against the back of the door, listening to the squeaking noises drawing closer.

“Patients… ward rounds… running around… die…”

Before the two of them could dash into a ward, the word “die” abruptly exploded right behind Bai Qiang. Yin Zhen watched in horror as a nurse with a scorched, blackened face raised a blood-caked syringe and ruthlessly plunged it toward Bai Qiang’s back.