Chapter 725: Going Mad

Zhang Shuxue said nothing to this. Tormented, her long-accumulated pressure and the guilt of eating "meat" erupted at last. In truth, she had always understood, but she was deliberately avoiding and suppressing it.

"Stop talking!" Her voice was shrill and piercingly loud; even the neighboring tenants could probably hear her clearly.

I looked at Zhang Shuxue. With her disheveled hair, she looked as though she had been severely provoked. I wanted her to lower her voice.

"Is it fun for you to stand on the moral high ground and accuse me? Do you think I want to be an accomplice?" Zhang Shuxue took a step back. "I'm a victim too! I just can't go back. They've taken up residence inside my body. I can't resist. I can only eat, eat continuously, to satisfy them—to satisfy these beasts!"

Crash!

Agitated, she smashed the plate of bones onto the floor. Bones covered in teeth marks rolled to my feet.

"I didn't mean to accuse you. On the contrary, I sympathize with you. I want to help you, understand?" I stepped closer to Zhang Shuxue, carefully weighing every word.

"I don't need your sympathy! You must think of me as a monster, don't you? Answer me! Don't you?!" Zhang Shuxue was abnormally agitated. I didn't know what had set her off. Thinking back, she had been perfectly cooperative right up until I mentioned finding new victims. But ever since I said that inflicting her own trauma onto others would only create a vicious cycle, she had completely changed.

Was this memory something that couldn't be brought up? Did the Red Building hide an even filthier past?

I narrowed my eyes and used Judging Eye to peer through Zhang Shuxue's hair. I suddenly noticed her gaze darting around, faintly carrying a chilling coldness.

Her gaze was wrong. It had lost its previous grievance and frailty, now mixed with strange emotions—like greed, brimming with malice and a desire to feed!

"Calm down." Zhang Shuxue was the only tenant I could win over right now; how could I just watch her be taken over? I quickly stepped up to her and brushed her hair aside. "I can save you and get you out of here. Wake up! I'm here to help you!"

Zhang Shuxue lowered her head, letting me shake her shoulders. "Help me? You make it sound nice, but you just see me as a tool to be used. Deep down, you despise me. You think I'm disgusting, don't you?"

She let out a miserable laugh. Even though she was laughing, tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. Two completely opposite emotions appeared on the same face. It was contradictory, bizarre, and yet, made her seem incredibly pitiful.

"If you really want to help me, then prove it."

Her tone abruptly shifted. Zhang Shuxue slowly raised her head, the rolls of fat on her neck smoothing out bit by bit.

I frowned slightly. "How do you want me to prove it?"

"Simple." She snatched the black plastic bag I had been carrying, licking her lips as she tore it open. "Here, eat this piece of meat! Then I'll believe you truly want to help me. I'll believe you don't find me repulsive! Come on! Eat it!"

Zhang Shuxue suddenly widened her eyes. Shockingly, fragmented black blood clots surfaced in her pupils. She grabbed the severed hand from the bag and lunged at me, frantically trying to shove it into my face. "Eat it! Eat it and I'll believe you!"

"You're crazy!" I grabbed Zhang Shuxue's arms with both hands to hold her back. She was a pitiful person too, and I didn't want to hurt her. "Did that thing possess you? Is this the obsession you mentioned?!"

Judging Eye couldn't see any abnormalities on her at all. This obsession had absolutely nothing to do with ghosts or Yin spirits. Zhang Shuxue just looked like a deranged lunatic. I couldn't tell if she had simply suffered too much trauma in the Red Building and lost her mind, or if that obsession had truly taken over her body.

"You'd better lie down." I forcefully pushed her down with both hands, grabbed a pillow towel from the bed, and stuffed it into her mouth. The woman was incredibly strong; subduing her wouldn't be easy.

My patience completely worn out, I was just about to use heavy force when a sound suddenly came from behind me—a creak.

A chill ran down my spine. I looked back to see the bedroom door being pushed open. Li Ming crawled inside, his stomach bloated several times its normal size like some kind of deformity.

His blood-congested head tilted upward, his vein-bulging cheeks facing me directly. A pair of dead, white eyes rolled side to side. His oil-leaking mouth slowly cracked open, and a gurgling sound echoed from his throat. He took a sudden, deep breath and coughed violently.

Along with a spray of bloody water, half of a severed finger that had been stuck in his throat shot out.

Looking at the scene before me, a wave of revulsion washed over me.

Li Ming had eaten too much and could no longer stand. His belly pressed against the floor as he dragged himself forward. I was genuinely afraid his stomach might explode.

His arms, completely disproportionate to his towering, distended stomach, clawed forward. To my shock, Li Ming's target was me.

Zhang Shuxue was still struggling endlessly, and now Li Ming had crawled in. Worse still, by using Breath Listening, I discovered that the entire floor had begun to change because of the commotion Zhang Shuxue had caused.

A rhythmic sound echoed from the hallway outside. It didn't sound like footsteps, but more like a head gently bumping against a door.

"Zhang Shuxue lives on the eighth floor. If I get trapped in this apartment, I won't have anywhere to run!" In her current state, I couldn't get anything of value out of Zhang Shuxue. Staying here any longer would only make my situation worse.

"No, I have to leave immediately." I had the key to Bai Ya'er's room on me; that was one of the escape routes I had left for myself.

"Anyone who eats the meat will be influenced by the obsession. Bai Ya'er frequently visits the Jinghai Urban District, so she probably doesn't eat and drink in the Red Building. She might still have her original mind, but she has a sadomasochistic complex herself. Coupled with her complicated relationship with the Painter, if I go to her now and hide in her room, wouldn't I be throwing myself into a trap?"

My mind raced, and a flash of inspiration hit me. 'Did I overlook something? When I first saw the little boy on the sixth floor, he was sneaking bites of a rotten apple. He was starving, as if he hadn't eaten anything for a long time...'

Comparing the figures of Bai Ya'er and the little boy on the sixth floor, I suddenly realized: 'Both of them are skin and bones. Their body types are completely different from the other tenants in the Red Building! If that's the case, that little boy on the sixth floor shouldn't have eaten human meat either!'

Although the little boy's behavior was bizarre, he was very afraid of Li Ming. This point alone was enough to prove they were two different types of people. Besides, the mirror behind the boy's bedroom door was also extremely strange.

'Hiding in his apartment will definitely be safer than looking for Bai Ya'er. Also, I need to investigate that mirror in his place again.' I made my decision, pushing hard to throw Zhang Shuxue onto the bed. Kicking Li Ming aside, I fled out the door.

"Don't even think about running! Didn't you say you wanted to help me? Eat it! Eat it?!" Zhang Shuxue scrambled up from the bed and lunged right at me, grabbing my sleeve in a vice grip.

"Get lost!" My expression turned cold and ruthless. Under the influence of the Good and Evil Asura Mask, killing intent had already stirred within me. Forming a hand seal, I gave a low shout, "Fate Ghost!"

Countless strands of black hair surged from my shadow. Although the Fate Ghost had not yet recovered from its severe injuries, it should have been more than enough to deal with an ordinary person in my eyes. But the reality turned out to be somewhat terrifying!

The hair strands, woven from resentment and Yin energy, were unexpectedly repelled by an inexplicable force the moment they touched Zhang Shuxue. And as this force was channeled, Zhang Shuxue's gaze became increasingly horrifying. She looked absolutely nothing like a normal person anymore; her eyes overflowed with terror and agony, just like a pig that knew its fate and was about to be served on the dining table!

"Eat! Eat it!"

"Yin energy is useless?" The ghost art was my trump card for survival. Only now did I truly begin to worry.

She clung to my cuff, still searching for the severed hand on the floor, her expression savage and deranged. How could I dare give her a chance? I kicked out, immediately tore off my jacket, and scrambled for my life.

"I need to leave first!" Retracting the Fate Ghost, I pulled open the door to Zhang Shuxue's apartment. Only when I entered the hallway did I realize something terrible had happened!

In stark contrast to the previous dead silence, a crashing "bang, bang" echoed from behind almost every door in the entire Red Building!

There was no time to carefully discern the cause of the noise. Inside the apartment, Zhang Shuxue was already charging out. I slammed the door shut behind me and, following my original plan, rushed straight for the little boy on the sixth floor.

Time was tight, so I didn't think too much. But when I reached the landing between the seventh and sixth floors, I was instantly scared into a cold sweat.

Right in front of the little boy's door stood a tall, impossibly skinny figure, resembling a bamboo pole. Its entire body was charred black as if it had been roasted over a charcoal fire. What made my scalp tingle even more was that its body was covered in the bite marks of living people!

"They're here!" The monster that had previously entered the hallway and left footprints was this exact thing. It had circled around and finally returned to the little boy's door!

I abruptly halted my steps, not daring to breathe. Forcing myself to steady my mind, I backed away step by step.

I was already being extremely careful, but the sound of my heavy breathing still caught the monster's attention.

The charred skull slowly twisted, like a tightly wound clockwork spring. The moment it saw me, I decisively retreated. I had only one thought in my head: 'Run!'

Without the advantage of time, terrain, or manpower, I absolutely couldn't afford a head-on clash with them right now. I rubbed the Ghost Ring and summoned all three ghosts. I originally wanted them to split into three directions to confuse the monster, but who would have expected that the Filthy Ghost and Seductive Ghost would show signs of losing control the moment they emerged? It seemed there was something in this building that they feared far more than the Yin-Yang Ghost Art!

"Only the Desire Ghost can barely be controlled? Forget it, I can't get to the sixth floor, but the seventh floor has a fire escape that can reach the other floors..."

Thinking quickly in the crisis, I turned and ran back, ducking into the seventh-floor fire escape. I ran for a long time before finally coming to a halt at the door of a storage room.

"Zhang Shuxue didn't leave her apartment, and that monster doesn't seem to have chased me." I tried opening the storage room door, hiding inside as I gasped heavily for air. "Ghostly entities and Yin energy seem to be useless against the people who have eaten the 'meat.' This is going to be difficult."

I leaned back against a pile of clutter, my expression complicated. "My jacket was torn off, and the Plum Blossom Brooch is still on it. There's no way to switch the perspective of the live stream anymore."

Unexpected variables kept piling up. I sighed; what was bound to happen couldn't be avoided.

Touching the Good and Evil Asura Mask on my face, I pulled out my Large-Screen Phone.

Looking at the lines of bullet comments scrolling across the screen, I hesitated for a moment before finally switching the stream back to its original perspective.

"Welcome, everyone, to the Super Thriller Live Broadcast Room. I'm sorry I'm late..."