Chapter 633: Stealing a Bone (1)

"Gu Tongtong?" I stared at the little girl hiding beneath the table, my mouth hanging open in shock.

"I knew something felt off. Why did that ghost bring me here? I'm looking for the true mastermind, not a helpless three-year-old toddler!" Saving an innocent person rewarded ten points. Had I not known about the hospital's dangers beforehand, I would have been thrilled to find her. But after witnessing the terrifying monsters inside this place, I could barely protect myself, let alone escape with a burden in tow.

A bitter smile touched my lips as I recalled Gu Tongtong's missing person flyer. She was only three years old—an age where she had barely just learned to run.

The worst part wasn't the inconvenience of carrying her. My real worry was what would happen if we ran into danger. If we needed to stay quiet, what would I do if this child started crying uncontrollably?

Leave her here to feed the white fiends?

I looked at her large, teary eyes and her timid grip on the table leg. I simply didn't have the heart to do it.

"I might as well just pretend I never saw her," I muttered, turning to leave. Yet, after taking a step or two, I inexplicably glanced back.

The little girl's lips were tightly pursed, and tears clung to the corners of her eyes. She looked exactly like a kitten abandoned by its owner.

"The Two-Faced Buddha's subordinates are all psychopathic killers like Lu Xing. If I leave her here, wouldn't that be pushing her straight into the fire?" My mind flashed to those flayed monsters, and I remembered her brutally murdered parents. "She became an orphan overnight. All the misfortune in the world has fallen upon her, yet she is completely innocent."

As I stood there hesitating, the ghost girl walked up to Gu Tongtong. A skeletal hand gently brushed the corner of the toddler's eye, wiping away her tears. Gu Tongtong seemed to have already known about the ghost girl's presence. Upon seeing the spirit, her tension visibly eased.

I watched this scene unfold in disbelief. The relationship between this human and ghost was slightly different from what I had imagined.

The ghost girl held Gu Tongtong's arm with one hand and pointed at me with the other, as if trying to persuade her.

About a dozen seconds later, under the ghost girl's urging, Gu Tongtong actually stepped out from behind the table.

"You can see ghosts?" My eyes widened in disbelief. "This girl has actually opened her Yin-Yang Eyes. It's probably because she spends all day in the company of ghosts."

Young children could often see things that adults could not, but this ability typically faded by the time they turned three.

Soon, the ghost girl and Gu Tongtong walked toward me side by side. At this point, I couldn't find an excuse to turn her away even if I wanted to.

The little girl tilted her head back to look at me. She barely reached my knees and looked incredibly tiny.

We stared at each other in silence, leaving the atmosphere in the room somewhat awkward for a moment.

A few seconds later, perhaps because my expression lacked warmth or for some other reason, tears began to well up in the girl's eyes again.

"Don't cry. If you start crying, I'll leave you right here." Threats were useless on a child who didn't understand anything. I quickly crouched down to try and coax her, but as I made the attempt, I realized I had no idea how to comfort a child. I fumbled awkwardly, and in the end, it was the ghost girl standing to the side who finally managed to soothe her.

"This kid isn't afraid of ghosts, but she's terrified of the living." I was somewhat speechless, having no idea what I was doing wrong. I wanted to harden my heart and leave her behind, but I was genuinely conflicted. "I can take you with me, but you have to behave. No crying, understand?"

Gu Tongtong blinked at me. If I ignored the terrifying environment we were currently in, the girl herself was actually quite adorable.

I reached out, trying to mimic the ghost girl by rubbing her head, but Gu Tongtong dodged backward. Finally, as if realizing she couldn't escape, she put on a resigned expression, squeezed her pretty eyes shut, and reluctantly stood still.

Seeing the look of disdain that inadvertently slipped onto her face, I burst into laughter. I scooped her up and tucked her firmly under my arm.

"So light," I muttered, bouncing her slightly. It felt just like carrying a small pet. I was about to say something else when a sudden, sharp pain flared from my fingertip.

I looked down. The little brat, seemingly unhappy with being handled like this, had clamped her teeth down hard on my ring finger.

"What a fierce temper. It's good that you know how to fight back. I don't like cowardly personalities." Pulling my finger out of Gu Tongtong's mouth, I shook my hand and calmed down. "She is undoubtedly an innocent. As long as I can bring her out and survive until the livestream ends, I'll earn a ten-point reward, which is equivalent to killing a live show streamer. With her in tow, it's no longer suitable for me to keep taking risks. Securing what I already have is what matters most. After all, this is a human life."

Given my unique identity, figuring out how to settle Gu Tongtong once we escaped would also be a problem. "I'm being closely watched by the Orthodox Sects. If I don't want to expose myself, I'll definitely have to return to Century New Garden. When the time comes, I'll have to entrust this girl to someone else's care. I need to find someone I can absolutely trust to help me."

Looking down at the little girl I was carrying, I felt a massive headache coming on. "There aren't many people in Jiangcheng that I can trust, but Balding Uncle is one of them. He has an honest personality; he should be willing to help."

In truth, the first person who came to mind was Tie Ningxiang, but the scene that had occurred in the Dream Realm left me with a lingering sense of unease.

"Forget it, I'll worry about that after we escape." I walked over to the door, but when I glanced back, I suddenly noticed the ghost girl still following right behind us. I was momentarily baffled. "Are you worried about her? Can humans and ghosts really be friends?"

The ghost girl's intelligence hadn't fully awakened; she was simply acting on instinct. Perhaps she was just a benevolent spirit by nature.

"I'll definitely get the little one out of here. If you're afraid I'll harm her, I can take you with me too. Following me is better than staying here and acting as a proxy for a tiger to continue harming people." As I tried to persuade the ghost girl, my mind churned, and I suddenly picked up on a specific detail.

Before I entered the room, I had heard Gu Tongtong's voice out in the corridor. It sounded like she was talking to someone. And there was another thing: the girl was incredibly timid. Just seeing a living person like me nearly made her burst into tears, yet while staying in such a horrifying place all by herself, there hadn't been a single trace of tears on her face. That was far too abnormal!

"There has to be someone else in this room right now!"

My arm stiffened. I cast a stealthy glance at Gu Tongtong, only to find her staring at a specific corner of the room—a corner that was clearly empty.

The situation I found myself in was bizarre. To ensure I didn't miss anything, I surged my true qi and activated my Judging Eye to look toward the corner.

A hint of scarlet surfaced in my pupils, piercing through the illusions. The scene before my eyes drastically transformed.

"Bang!"

I spun around violently and slammed my back against the door, bracing myself as if facing a mortal enemy.

I wasn't making a mountain out of a molehill; the scene inside the room was simply too terrifying.

Before using my Judging Eye, it had never even crossed my mind that this room was actually crammed full of "people"!

"Yin-Yang Has an Order!" I immediately formed the hand seals for the incantation. An aura capable of commanding the ghosts of the five domains spontaneously erupted from my body. My eyes flushed red, radiating a terrifying brilliance. "Nobody move!"

Over a dozen incomplete, mangled phantoms stood packed inside the cramped wooden room. Their bodies weren't as solid as the ghost girl's, but there was no doubt about it—these things were all ghosts!

They were draped in the blue-and-white hospital gowns reserved exclusively for critically ill patients. Their faces were deathly pale, their frames emaciated, and every single one of them wore a stiff, corpse-like expression.

"Are they all proxy ghosts?" I raised an eyebrow, observing them closely. These ghosts had to be patients who had died in the hospital many years ago. Their resentment had congealed and refused to disperse. Their intense desire to survive and their terror of death had forged an irreconcilable obsession. After their deaths, this obsession had ultimately transformed them into Earth-Bound Spirits—ghosts that were permanently tethered to a single, specific location.

I had never seen a proxy ghost before, so I didn't know exactly what kind of appearance that type of creature took on. However, according to Daoist master Wan's description, proxy ghosts were supposed to be cunning and despicable.

Yet the Earth-Bound Spirits before my eyes had nothing to do with cunning or despicable behavior. The overwhelming emotions I sensed from them were despair and numbness.

Their current state likely mirrored the agonizing condition of enduring late-stage cancer.

I stared at their withered arms and their hair that had fallen out from multiple rounds of chemotherapy. Illness had hollowed out their bodies, leaving behind nothing but dry husks of skin to barely wrap their pitiful, tragic souls.

After a few seconds of a tense standoff between me and the crowd of ghosts in the room, the Earth-Bound Spirits slowly parted. From the exact direction Gu Tongtong had been looking earlier, a young woman "walked" out.

The woman looked to be only in her thirties, but she was distinctly different from the rest of the Earth-Bound Spirits. Although she also wore a hospital gown, her figure was full, and a beautiful cascade of pitch-black hair fell down her back like a waterfall. Whether it was her complexion or her demeanor, she didn't resemble a cancer patient in the slightest; more accurately, she didn't even seem like a remnant phantom.

I maintained the hand seal with one hand and silently chanted a ghost incantation.

Perhaps sensing the threat, the woman stopped two meters away from me. She waved her hand at me and slowly crouched down.

Before I could even process what was happening, my arm was bitten once again. I frowned and looked down, only to see Gu Tongtong thrashing like a little tiger, desperately trying to break free from my grasp.

"She isn't your mommy, you know." Seeing that the woman held no malice toward Gu Tongtong, I loosened my grip. The little brat scurried over to the woman's side in a flash. Standing right in the middle of that massive cluster of Earth-Bound Spirits, she didn't seem afraid in the slightest. "Has this silly girl spent so much time with that ghost girl that she thinks she's a ghost herself?"

The middle-aged woman stroked Gu Tongtong's head affectionately. Upon seeing the toddler, the numbness and deadness in the eyes of the surrounding withered Earth-Bound Spirits seemed to dissipate slightly.

They crowded around Gu Tongtong, shielding her in the center and blocking my line of sight.

It didn't take long before Gu Tongtong stepped out again, clutching a yellowed medical record in her tiny hands.

"Did they give that to you?" The Earth-Bound Spirits slowly faded away, leaving only me, Gu Tongtong, and the ghost girl in the room.

I scooped Gu Tongtong up with one hand and took the medical record from her. The moment I read the first line, a cold sweat broke out on my forehead.

"Wang Wu, male, stage three lung cancer."

Right next to the Chinese characters was a black-and-white photograph, and the person in that picture was none other than the Writer!