"Who are you?"
Li Ran stared at Zhao Yingzhi, suspicion and shock in his eyes.
Zhao Yingzhi was utterly stunned, looking at Li Ran in disbelief.
The atmosphere in the elevator instantly dropped to freezing point.
Li Ran’s lips curled into a roguish grin. His pitch-black eyes showed a trace of disdain, and he said with evident boredom, “So? My acting just now wasn’t bad, right?”
Zhao Yingzhi gave him a sharp look, then finally realized he had been joking: “Okay, I admit you scared me. So you do have a sense of humor, haha.”
Ding—
The elevator arrived at the first floor.
Zhao Yingzhi stepped out, then turned back to look at Li Ran still standing inside and asked curiously, “Aren’t you coming?”
“I’m heading up to the rooftop to find someone,” Li Ran replied.
“Then I won’t keep you company.” Zhao Yingzhi waved goodbye and walked out of the building.
As the elevator doors slowly closed, the smile on Li Ran’s face gradually disappeared. He pressed the button for the rooftop.
“She’s not the real Zhao Yingzhi!”
…
…
In the community park.
Zhao Yingzhi tilted her head up and took a deep breath, basking in the long-lost sunlight.
“That was close just now. He almost saw through me.”
“I think he already did.”
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“No.”
Zhao Yingzhi seemed to be talking to herself, yet also as if she were speaking to someone invisible. Her self-dialogue was as bizarre as it could possibly get.
“That’s a shame. His flesh is a perfect vessel. Too bad this lady still prefers a young girl’s body.”
“When will you leave my body?”
“When the time comes, I’ll leave. Why the rush?”
“I helped you get out. You’d better keep your promise. Otherwise, I’d rather go down with you!”
…
…
Inside the rising elevator.
Li Ran’s expression was serious as he rubbed his chin, his pitch-black eyes flickering with complexity.
“A moment ago, the system gave me a prompt—Zhao Yingzhi has two souls in her body!”
When Yang Ping brought Zhao Yingzhi back, Li Ran saw the golden finger’s notification.
Zhao Yingzhi’s body had indeed returned safe and sound, but she had brought back an extra soul with her.
“Could there be vengeful spirits inside the Dark Palace that possess people’s bodies?”
He had always believed that all creatures in the instance followed the logic of viral infection and mutation. It’s a virus, after all—mutation from infection was normal. No matter how they changed, they were still rooted in flesh and blood.
But today, Song Linjia had turned into a porcelain doll, and Zhao Yingzhi had two souls inside her.
“It’s getting eerier by the day.”
Then again, thinking back, there had been signs from the beginning.
Players could buy equipment and use all sorts of extraordinary skills, even conjuring magic-like effects. So why couldn’t the native monsters possess strange and eerie powers too?
He had been thinking too simplistically.
In fact, even without the golden finger’s notification, Li Ran could still tell that the Zhao Yingzhi just now wasn’t the real one.
She gave herself away with just her second sentence.
She said that Yang Ping had taken good care of her and even introduced her to her family.
But back then, the golden finger had clearly said that Yang Ping only retained memories of the last day before her death.
Which meant, Yang Ping was stuck in a loop of that final day.
And on that day—it poured rain, there were a surge of orders, and Yang Ping was frantically delivering food until she died in an accident.
In that kind of chaos, how could Yang Ping possibly have taken Zhao Yingzhi home and hosted her with good food and drink?
Granted, Li Ran did slip Yang Ping a red envelope yesterday, asking her to find a place for Zhao Yingzhi to stay overnight. That much Yang Ping probably fulfilled.
If she hadn’t, and Zhao Yingzhi had nowhere to sleep, then the one who came back would’ve been a mental infected version of Zhao Yingzhi—not this one with two souls.
At least for now, Zhao Yingzhi had not been infected by the virus.
Whether that was a blessing or a curse for Li Ran remained to be seen.
Zhao Yingzhi’s return also confirmed his earlier theory—a living person can enter the Dark Palace!
Whether they make it out alive… that depends on their luck.
With Zhao Yingzhi’s return, the limited-time one-day mission in Survival II was now completed as well.
It showed that after killing the Blood Salamander, no other killers had appeared. Or maybe there were, but they either couldn't find Zhao Yingzhi in the Dark Palace or simply couldn’t enter it in the first place.
[Team Mission Complete: Survival II (Time Limit: 1 Day)]
[Completion Rewards: Eerie Power +200, Points 2000, Special Item 1]
“Zhao Yingzhi already distributed the rewards?”
Seeing the rewards he received, Li Ran felt quite relieved. It meant Zhao Yingzhi’s soul hadn’t been completely devoured yet.
“What’s the special item?” Li Ran opened his inventory with curiosity.
[Scroll: Contract Scroll (Rare)]
[Attribute: None]
[Effect: When a target is in a weakened state, enslaved, or has submitted to the player, this scroll can be used to establish a contract. The target becomes the player's contract beast, and the player can access some of the contract beast’s abilities.]
Upon seeing the Contract Scroll, Li Ran’s eyes lit up.
Especially the last part of the description—players could share the contract beast’s abilities.
The stronger the contract beast, the stronger the abilities the player could share.
“Pets and contract beasts are different, right?”
Li Ran thought of Chitong. He and Chitong didn’t have a formal contract. After Li Ran lifted the curse on Chitong, it simply chose to follow him loyally. They were more like partners, and Li Ran couldn’t give it absolute orders.
But contract beasts could be fully commanded by players. It was more of a binding agreement—and players could use part of the contract beast’s powers.
“That’s incredible.”
“But the problem now is—where do I find a contract beast?”
“Contract beast, contract beast… but does it have to be a beast to form a contract?”
“For example, could it be a native inhabitant or something?”
Li Ran checked his own stats:
Eerie Power: 1730
Points: 4100
Other stats remained unchanged.
Adding up various other buffs, he barely reached 2000 in Eerie Power.
“Ding!”
The elevator arrived at the top floor.
Li Ran stepped out and took out the Mirror of Truth.
(Mirror of Truth: A mirror that allows you to glimpse the real world. It's said that some who looked into it saw the truth and went insane.)
The day he rescued Zhao Yingzhi, Li Ran had originally planned to come here, but was delayed by a food delivery task.
He wasn’t entirely sure whether this item would trigger the rooftop madman’s quest.
There was still a staircase between the top floor and the rooftop.
The door to the rooftop was wide open, and he walked out onto the terrace without any obstacles.
As soon as he stepped onto the rooftop, a disheveled old man with wild eyes darted in front of Li Ran, as if he had already foreseen Li Ran’s arrival.
Li Ran wasn’t startled—his golden finger had already warned him that the madman was hiding behind the door.
But what puzzled Li Ran was: why wasn’t he wearing any clothes?
Li Ran couldn’t help but curse inwardly: “Definitely a lunatic.”
The madman’s hair looked like it had been blasted by fireworks—wild and frizzy. His brown eyes gleamed with manic fervor.
“Do you believe it? This world is a cage. They’re up there watching everyone. If we don’t follow the program they designed for us, we’ll be banished…”
(End of Chapter)