Chapter 178: Rule-Based Horror: No Entry for the Living

Gao Tian stared at her for several full seconds. "You're Shunjin City's Eighth Young Master?"

"Just an empty title," Qin Zhuguang said.

"It's just peers flattering each other. Don't take it to heart."

"Did you come as an avatar?" Gao Tian asked.

"I promised Ye Jiu I would come in person," Qin Zhuguang replied.

"If only an avatar came, wouldn't I be breaking my word?"

"So the one standing here is the real you."

Qin Zhuguang rolled her eyes. "Is that not allowed?"

Gao Tian still found it hard to believe.

At fourteen years old.

Xu Yuan had just had his eyes gouged out.

Old Man Sun was still playing with mud in his hometown.

But the fourteen-year-old Eighth Young Master was already the core of Shunjin City's defense system, a prominent figure at home and abroad, and the leading figure of Xia Country's younger generation?

Absolutely insane.

No wonder Old Man Sun had said to trust the wisdom of later generations.

The younger generation truly was more insane than the last.

Moreover, Gao Tian now saw Ye Jiu in a whole new light.

He had asked if there were any suitable ghost hunters. Ye Jiu had replied, "Would inviting the Eighth Young Master for you be enough?" At the time, Gao Tian's first reaction was that the guy was being passive-aggressive and mocking him.

It was the equivalent of not being able to pay next month's rent and asking a friend to borrow a few hundred for an emergency, only for the friend to casually ask, "How about I lend you a few hundred million? And how about I call the world's richest man over for you to meet?"

Then, just as you hung up the phone, secretly feeling annoyed, a few hundred million suddenly hit your Alipay account. Pushing open your door, you heard the sound of helicopter propellers outside, and the world's richest man's private butler asked you if this dilapidated old residential complex had a place to land.

Qin Zhuguang pulled two black death beetles from her pocket. They looked like scorched stones, their six legs tucked tightly beneath them, with claws as sharp as fine needles. She walked up to Gao Tian, stood on her tiptoes, and pressed them against his clothes. The beetles' six limbs tightly gripped his clothing.

"You know how it is. I'm the ultimate line of defense for all the ghost hunters in Shunjin City.

"I snuck out secretly. No one knows.

"If they knew Shunjin City's cornerstone had run off, the higher-ups would go crazy. Shunjin City isn't safe without me for even a second. The Black Cross Company and the White House would go crazy—they'd suspect Xia Country was planning a sneak attack on America. The whole world would go crazy.

"So, let's move fast. Try to visit all the Inner World scenic spots you want to see within an hour."

In his heart, Gao Tian's evaluation of Ye Jiu had completely changed.

He slightly regretted having such a terrible attitude toward him before.

Ye Jiu had merely wanted Gao Tian to go to Shunjin City, meet a VIP, and have a chat. He hadn't made any unreasonable demands.

His slipping away that day in Minghai City was also unavoidable.

Two top-tier heavyweights like Old Man Sun and Xu Yuan had been clashing head-on. If Ye Jiu had been stubborn enough to stand in the middle and tank it, he would have reincarnated by now.

Once this Inner World trip was over and matters were settled, Gao Tian decided he would head to Shunjin City immediately.

He would collect the belongings Old Man Sun had left behind and also meet this 'VIP' Ye Jiu had mentioned.

The Eighth Young Master—no, Qin Zhuguang—looked at the residents faintly visible in the distance of the Old District. "The reason this site was born is very special. Previously, in the real world, the Supernatural Disaster Bureau dealt with it. Many people died, and in the end, it alarmed a senior veteran who reluctantly stepped in to resolve it.

"I thought it had been completely quelled. I never expected it to reignite in the Inner World."

Gao Tian asked, "Eighth Young Master, do you know the background behind the Old District's creation?"

No wonder he couldn't find a single thing about it online, no matter how hard he searched.

Since it was something the Supernatural Disaster Bureau had handled, all related files on the internet must have been wiped completely clean.

Qin Zhuguang nodded.

When discussing matters related to the supernatural, the childishness on her face vanished, replaced by maturity, confidence, and professionalism. "That was back in the two-thousands. In a small coastal town, a chemical plant leak caused a massive number of nearby residents to die in their sleep overnight.

"Although it was a severe accident, it hadn't yet escalated to a supernatural incident. The aftermath took two years to handle—compensations were paid, and sentences were handed down. Things gradually calmed down. Those matters had nothing to do with the Supernatural Disaster Bureau.

"However, two years after the accident, strange things kept happening to the surviving residents of that town.

"The victims who had originally died were, one after another, returning to their jobs.

"They had absolutely no idea they had been declared dead. Some were also very confused by their missing memories of those two years.

"From their perspective, they had merely gone to sleep. When they opened their eyes, two years had passed in the outside world.

"They didn't have the slightest memory of the chemical plant leak, either.

"For the residents of the Old District, this was incredibly good news. In that tragedy two years prior, many of them had lost parents, husbands, children, and friends. They originally thought they were separated forever by death. They never expected that, under the influence of some unknown force, those victims would gradually return to the Old District.

"Shortly after the anomaly occurred, some local residents made report calls, and the materials were submitted to the relevant departments. But the old residents of the entire district had lived there for generations. They were basically all old neighbors and friends who knew each other.

"They were fiercely protective of the resurrected victims. They absolutely refused to admit there was a problem. The Supernatural Disaster Bureau sent people into the Old District to investigate, but they faced a lot of obstruction and hostility."

Gao Tian said, "People can't come back from the dead. These returnees were ghosts, right?

"Wait, no. If they were ghosts, how did they hold back from killing people? They even lived peacefully with their living relatives for a while."

Suddenly, Gao Tian realized a chilling fact. "It was obsession.

"It was the lingering obsession the returnees had before they died."

Qin Zhuguang said, "Compared to what happened next, the chemical plant leak wasn't even worth mentioning.

"Because their Killing Rule was highly unique."

The cause behind the birth of every site in the Inner World was unimaginably twisted.

Ordinary supernatural incidents didn't have the qualifications to form a site.

They were essentially strictly selected by the Inner World.

Even someone as strong as Old Man Sun didn't dare casually enter Longshu Temple. It wasn't until Gao Tian and the others risked their lives to probe the problems inside that he stepped in and settled things with absolute finality.

"Every time these ghosts awakened, they had no idea they were ghosts. They would live their lives following the exact normal routines they had when they were alive.

"Even though the living residents tried their best to avoid discussing the accident from two years prior, the truth couldn't stay buried forever. There were news reports, TV stations, the abandoned chemical plant, and timelines that simply didn't match up.

"Furthermore, the returnees themselves were completely out of place in a normal person's life.

"It wasn't until they realized they were already dead that they triggered the first 'expansion' of the Old District.

"No one knows what happened inside the district. But one thing is one hundred percent certain: the trigger point of the expansion was those dead people remembering they were dead.

"The consequence was that the entire town—over thirty thousand living residents, the survivors of the chemical plant leak—all died overnight. They all turned into ghosts together.

"The Old District's area expanded further, increasing by about a hundred square kilometers.

"The Supernatural Disaster Bureau sent many ghost hunters and paid a massive price to barely halt the Old District's expansion.

"After the situation temporarily calmed down, the people inside the Old District all returned. They likewise identified themselves as living people, just living their leisurely daily lives in the slow-paced district.

"From their perspective, this was just a hometown with pleasant scenery, a slow pace, and somewhat isolated from the outside world."

No wonder "No Entry for the Living" signs were hung everywhere at the entrance to the Old District.

It was to prevent unknowing ordinary people from wandering into such a massive town by mistake.

Of course, initially, these slogans were just simple slogans. They weren't a Rule-Based Horror.

The story of the Old District did not end there.

It had only just begun.

Qin Zhuguang continued, "The cause of the second expansion was a group of petty reporters from a newspaper. They bribed the gatekeeper outside the Old District, somehow bypassed the surveillance cameras, and snuck into the Old District to explore.

"Traffic is money. Some people do a few fake haunted house explorations and can easily make five figures a month. Let alone the fact that the ghosts in the Old District were all real. They didn't know who they were, imitating the normal lives of regular people, operating like that for over a decade.

"Once that footage was edited and released, it would absolutely explode in popularity. There are always people who aren't afraid to die who'd dare to go in.

"No one knows what those reporters did inside the Old District. The final result was that the over thirty thousand people in the entire district remembered they were dead again. This time, the expansion was even more tragic than the last.

"The Supernatural Disaster Bureau paid an unimaginable price. They even had to dispatch a senior veteran heavyweight to personally enter the Old District to end the expansion. The Old District's area expanded several times over again, and the number of residents inside reached one hundred thousand.

"Similarly, these one hundred thousand residents who were unaware of their own deaths continued their normal lives in the Old District.

"The next expansion of the Old District... perhaps even at the national level, it will be very difficult to suppress.

"To prevent similar things from happening again, that heavyweight managed with great difficulty to pacify the Old District. Before leaving, he left behind a special supernatural power, which is the yellow 'No Entry for the Living' warning line you see.

"As long as a living person enters the Old District, they will be killed immediately.

"This Rule-Based Horror was created with good intentions.

"The heavyweight did this out of goodwill to prevent any more living people from walking into the Old District, arousing the suspicion of the one hundred thousand residents inside, making them remember they are dead, and triggering a third expansion."

Did the Supernatural Disaster Bureau still have such a powerful senior?

Gao Tian asked, "Was it Senior Old Man Sun?"

"No," Qin Zhuguang replied. "That senior died long before I joined the Supernatural Disaster Bureau. I didn't know him either."

That made sense.

During the great battle in Minghai City, if the Supernatural Disaster Bureau still had any founding ancestors or hidden sect-like foundations, they would have stepped up long ago. They wouldn't have just watched Old Man Sun fall without doing anything.

Those working in the supernatural field had very short average lifespans. Living to a natural old age was already a miracle.

Old Man Sun's generation was already completely dead.

The story of the Old District did not end there.

On the contrary, it only escalated.