Chapter 344: Me and the Person from the Netherworld, a Pair of Conjugate Ghosts?

With lightning reflexes, Qi Suian grabbed the ankle of the female ghost pouncing on Pan Fan.

She was truly ferocious; her pounce was so powerful she was practically flying. Otherwise, Qi Suian wouldn't have been able to grab her ankle.

After grabbing her, he immediately slammed her left and right, but it did nothing to stop her ferocious assault. It looked like she wouldn't rest until she had killed Pan Fan.

"Divorce Letter, Divorce Letter, Divorce Letter..."

Qi Suian began to mutter the words repeatedly, thinking he might be able to draw her hatred toward himself, allowing him to observe more.

It failed, however. The ghost completely ignored Qi Suian.

Apparently, it was because Qi Suian lacked the corresponding contamination. Thus, after she lost her mind, the female ghost theoretically couldn't see him anymore.

The only reason Qi Suian could see her was due to his act of observation, which was causing the truth to surface.

Meanwhile, the contamination on Pan Fan had also intensified, and he had fallen into some sort of hallucination.

'One after another, you're all such a handful.' Qi Suian immediately let go.

At this point, there was no meaning in continuing the stalemate.

The female ghost immediately pounced on Pan Fan.

At the critical moment, Pan Fan snapped out of it as if waking from a dream.

It wasn't Qi Suian's doing. The contamination on his body had created a stimulus—likely effects like a piercing pain or an icy chill—that quickly pulled him out of the hallucination.

This scared Pan Fan half to death. The mutated female ghost was not a pretty sight, her face deathly pale and covered in pits.

Her neck was stretched grotesquely long, and her tongue hung out in a long strip.

'Looks like she died by hanging.' Qi Suian instantly deduced the cause of death.

The ghost didn't transform all at once. The closer she got to Pan Fan, the more she resembled her appearance at death.

Pan Fan shuddered and dodged instinctively, narrowly avoiding the attack.

'The contamination resistance from a survivor's unique nature can actually fight against the rules.'

'Or is it that the intensified contamination, combined with his talent, is what produced this effect?'

If it had been Qi Suian, he would have been unable to evade the lock-on and the ghost would have grabbed him by the neck.

But that would have been the extent of it. He couldn't dodge attacks, but he could ignore them.

Survivors were the exact opposite: they could dodge, but they couldn't take a hit.

If Pan Fan were actually hit by the ghost, he would die without a doubt.

"Senior, help me!" Pan Fan cried for help, his heart filled with regret.

'Why did I have to butt in when it was none of my business? Now look, I've dragged myself into this mess.'

'This ghost is repaying kindness with hatred. I wanted to help her, and in return, she wants to kill me.'

"Can't help you," Qi Suian said bluntly.

"When she was lucid, there was a chance. Not anymore. Now she's just running on a rigid program."

Qi Suian's observation abilities were limited; he had no way to interrupt it.

"If all else fails, just run faster and find a place to hide," Qi Suian offered as a constructive suggestion.

Pan Fan's expression soured. Then he suddenly remembered the Divorce Letter in his inventory and quickly took it out.

It had to be said, it was a good idea. But instead of stopping the ghost, it seemed to provoke her even more, pushing her directly into the next phase.

Her entire body began to rot, her clothes turning to tattered rags.

She didn't even chase him directly anymore. Using an ability akin to teleportation, she appeared before Pan Fan in an instant.

From her rotting head, her mouth unhinged like a snake's, opening several times its normal size as she lunged to bite Pan Fan's head.

Qi Suian swiftly closed in on Pan Fan and pulled him aside, allowing him to dodge the ghost's bite.

Having just escaped death, Pan Fan was nearly scared out of his mind. He turned, shoved the Divorce Letter into Qi Suian's arms, and scrambled away.

'Decisive, indeed.' Qi Suian waved the Divorce Letter in his hand, and the female ghost's head bobbed up and down along with it.

She seemed to have regained a sliver of lucidity, but she didn't dare to take it.

'She can't see me, so she only sees the Divorce Letter waving around in mid-air.'

'For a ghost, isn't this a paranormal event in itself?' Qi Suian snarked to himself.

He casually tossed the Divorce Letter to her.

As expected, the female ghost dodged it, not daring to reach out and catch it.

Only after the Divorce Letter landed on the ground and lay still did she cautiously pick it up.

After picking it up, her appearance gradually returned to how she looked when Qi Suian had first entered.

Then she was startled again, because she could see Qi Suian once more.

"Y-You're a ghost!!!" Clutching the Divorce Letter, the female ghost scrambled away just like Pan Fan had, cowering in a corner and trembling.

For a moment, Qi Suian was at a loss for words.

"Reciprocal ghosts, are we," Qi Suian quipped.

He really was a special case.

When a ghost lost its mind, it was the ghost.

But when that ghost regained its sanity, in its eyes, Qi Suian became the ghost.

The observation was mutual.

"Let's talk. What's the deal with your Divorce Letter?" Qi Suian asked calmly.

Because Qi Suian had no contamination on him, speaking the keyword didn't trigger the ghost's transformation.

"If you don't talk, I'll strip you naked, hang you upside down from the attic, and give you a hundred lashes," Qi Suian threatened directly.

If she really didn't talk, Qi Suian was fully capable of doing just that.

Fortunately, the ghost correctly understood what Qi Suian meant by "a hundred lashes" and didn't mistake it for a hundred gacha pulls.

"The Divorce Letter... it was for me. I was divorced," the female ghost said, her voice choked with tears.

"Well, that's obvious. You're the only ghost here. If it wasn't for you, was it for me?" Qi Suian said, exasperated. "I want to know why you became a ghost."

The female ghost burst into tears. In her eyes, Qi Suian was the ghost, and she was the living one.

'And now this ghost was forcing her, a living person, to admit she was a ghost. Could there be anything more unjust in this world?'

Qi Suian slapped her twice across the face. She immediately stopped crying.

"I... I don't know anything..." the ghost whimpered, clutching her cheeks.

He had to admit, this thing was quite human-like. After being slapped, her face not only turned red but also started to swell.

If she hadn't transformed to hunt down Pan Fan, Qi Suian would have thought she was a living person.

"Just say whatever you remember," Qi Suian snapped.

"I was just playing my instrument. You suddenly appeared, then disappeared, and then you slapped me twice," the ghost summarized her memory succinctly.

Qi Suian felt his blood pressure rising. "The Divorce Letter."

"If you don't start talking, I'm going to use my Great Memory Recovery Technique on you."

Have pity on a fair lady? In Qi Suian's eyes, a beautiful face was just a skeleton in disguise. He was a true egalitarian who believed in gender equality.

So no matter how pitifully she cried, Qi Suian wouldn't give her an ounce of special treatment.

In fact, if she kept quiet, he'd just stuff her into the Melting Furnace.

"The Divorce Letter is because I was divorced," the ghost said, talking in circles again.

At this moment, Qi Suian realized a problem. Could it be that Pan Fan's observation level was too low, so he hadn't gathered all the necessary props yet?

This would mean the female ghost's memory was limited to only the parts related to the props. She wasn't intentionally hiding things from Qi Suian; she genuinely didn't know.

He slapped his thigh. 'That has to be it.'

So, without hesitation, he got up, walked over, and snatched the Divorce Letter from the ghost's embrace.

"Gimme that." After snatching it, Qi Suian tucked it directly into the Tai Sui God's waistband.

The ghost was clearly unwilling to let it go, but in her lucid state, she was just an ordinary person.

Snatching the letter wasn't satisfying enough. He grabbed the female ghost and stuffed her into the Melting Furnace.

Then he searched around some more and even made off with the guqin the ghost had been playing.

'The guqin and the Divorce Letter should both be props.'

'Let me look around some more. If anything else suddenly appeared, I'll take it all.'

After taking care of things, Qi Suian left the attic. At the same time, the female ghost in the Melting Furnace also vanished.

"Respawned?" Seeing this, Qi Suian turned around and opened the door again.

The female ghost had indeed respawned, but this time there was no guqin, and she was no longer lucid.

Instead, she was staring intently at Qi Suian.

"Heartache." Qi Suian closed the door, and nothing happened.

You could say it worked, and it did, but it didn't affect Qi Suian in the slightest.

The moment the door closed, Qi Suian's heart exploded.

It regenerated in less than thirty seconds.

'So she makes hearts explode just by glaring.'

It was a good thing Qi Suian wasn't a normal life-form. If it were one of the fifth batch of survivors, they would have had no chance of survival.

Even the Contamination Resistance talent wouldn't be able to withstand it. This was arguably the most powerful rule-based attack Qi Suian had encountered so far.

And it was a jump scare, to boot... well, actually, it was Qi Suian's own fault.

If he hadn't stolen the guqin, she would most likely have been lucid and playing her instrument, instead of setting up an unavoidable trap like that.

"AI, locate Pan Fan," Qi Suian said. He still had to go find this useful pawn of a survivor.

It seemed Pan Fan had lost his mind earlier because the extreme fright had caused his contamination level to spike too quickly.

After this period of rest, assuming he wasn't dead, he should have returned to some semblance of normalcy.

But one couldn't hope for too much; it was also possible he'd gone completely insane.

The AI quickly completed the localization. Pan Fan had run to a side room in the mansion.

And because the stimulation to his Spirit from the contamination was too great, he was now unconscious.

"It has already progressed from the Spirit level to the physical." Qi Suian quickly arrived at the side room and saw Pan Fan unconscious on the floor.

A deathly pallor had appeared on his skin, similar to the ghost's.

At the same time, his tongue had elongated by about 0.3 centimeters, and his neck was faintly stretched, though the stretching wasn't as obvious as his tongue's.

Qi Suian reached out and fixed his neck. The tongue, however, was another matter.

Unless he cut it off, but Qi Suian didn't have the means to perform a painless procedure.

Besides, the tongue wasn't a big deal. The neck was being stretched; if it stretched to a certain point, he would die.

Even if his tongue grew long enough to touch the top of his feet, it wouldn't be life-threatening, so there was no need to deal with it.

"Wakey wakey. I know young people can fall asleep anywhere, but you should at least pick your spot. This isn't your house, what are you doing sleeping here?"

As Qi Suian spoke, he began waking Pan Fan up via physical means.

That's right: by slapping him across the face.

The effect was excellent. Pan Fan groggily opened his eyes. It was a good thing he wasn't in a deep coma.

Otherwise, a few slaps might not have done the trick.