Evil As Humans, page 36
“Leave it to me!” Hu Tao floated valiantly to the middle of the room.
One second, three seconds, ten seconds; everyone remained motionless.
Hu Tao turned her bloody face and said, “Okay, now what should I do?”
Yin Ren, Ghost: “……”
Yin Ren: “Attack them?”
“Oh, I’m not very good at fighting.” Hu Tao laughed awkwardly. “I just died and didn’t receive continuing education after death…”
“Sister, just treat them like they’re your enemy.”
Yin Ren felt helpless. He put his hand behind his back and quietly performed a spell. He decided to give Miss Hu Tao some help—if it was just a small illusion, it shouldn’t be too noticeable.
Seeing the ghosts in front of her gradually change their appearance, Hu Tao stopped laughing. She slowly tilted her head and stared at the ghost closest to her without saying a word. The blood on her body was getting thicker.
With strong evil qi accompanied by cold killing intent, Hu Tao felt like a severe winter storm, especially with her clothes and hair swaying violently. In the next second, she flashed in front of the ghost and grabbed its chest.
Ghost: “Wait—”
Squish.
Hu Tao tore open the ghost’s chest. The “flesh and blood” full of evil qi were torn by her like a vegetable leaf.
Under her hands, the thousands of fingers were like grass being ripped up with a slight pinch. The sound of flesh being torn was endless.
Squish.
The four faceless ghosts weren’t spared either, as they were torn meticulously by her. Hu Tao looked like she was sorting out her clothes as the remnants of those evil beings were neatly packed into a pile by her.
Squish.
She tore the ghostly remains into small pieces and chewed and swallowed them carefully. She hummed a small tune as the room’s walls gradually turned black and red.
When those eyes full of hatred turned around, Yin Ren had already stepped back without leaving a trace.
…What exactly did she see?
It seemed that compared to Zhong Chengshuo, he still needed to get to know this one better. Yin Ren sighed and lifted the illusion.
“…Enough, sister. Calm down,” he said. “That’s enough.”
On a bloody Sunday, except for the five ghosts, only Zhong Chengshuo was injured.
When he came back from his run that night, Yin Ren was already waiting upright in front of the game console. Zhong Chengshuo finished tidying up, and he sat down beside him. Out of some kind of habit, he subconsciously sniffed when he was close to Yin Ren.
Zhong Chengshuo: “……”
Zhong Chengshuo’s face distorted a bit. “…What did you eat tonight?”
“Luosifen mixed with 82-year-old evil spirits.”
“……”
“I’m just joking.”
At the other end of Haigu, upstairs of “Xiaohe Supermarket”.
Lu Xiaohe helped massage her mother’s body with a smile. “Mom, let me tell you, my new colleagues are so fun.”
Xiaohe’s mother leaned quietly on the bed. Under the torture of cancer, she was a little thin and out of shape. However, her facial features were quite similar to Lu Xiaohe’s, and her eyes were full of brilliance.
“Happy with work?” Xiaohe’s mother’s tone was relaxed.
“Yes, today I even saw them wail in the group chat, saying they wanted to get off work early so they can play games—haha, I told you my position isn’t hard, right? I don’t have to work overtime like they do.”
Hearing “game”, Xiaohe’s mother smacked her lips. “It’s a pity your father is out. Otherwise, the three of us could still play poker.”
“He can’t get off today.”
“Let’s play for a while?” Xiaohe’s mother propped herself up. “What kind of games are there in the store? The one where we can play together like we used to.”
“Oh,
Lu Xiaohe got up to get the console.
The plot was simple—a prince was taken away by Death. Players needed to collect various materials and hand them over to the palace magician so he could resurrect the prince’s soul.
It focused on “offline scenes” and was mainly a game aimed at families and gatherings. The management, exploration, and combat systems were comprehensive, but the process was too long and didn’t meet the actual needs. At first, many small shops bought the console and planned to rent them to students to play, but the business was bleak.
Xiaohe Supermarket was one of the unlucky businesses.
Lu Xiaohe kept the game. Starting a few years ago, they would play together on weekends. Later, when Xiaohe’s mother’s health deteriorated and Lu Xiaohe joined Shian, they forgot about it.
“When did we last play this?”
After turning on the console, Lu Xiaohe slowly checked the save archives.
“Yes, yes! Haha, we haven’t finished the novice village mission yet. Come on, mom. It’s time for us to rescue the ‘harassed girl’… Do you remember the controls?”
“Who do you think I am? Of course I remember.”
On the rough screen, two characters stepped into the mission scene. Beside the girl NPC with braided hair, a rogue NPC was laughing…
[Haha, bitch. You’re here now but want to go back?]
* * *
The author has something to say:
Comrade Xiao Zhong asked for help overnight: What should I do if my partner is marinated in luosifen? Help!
Evil As Humans Ch34
Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
* * *
Chapter 34: Crossing
Monday.
Yin Ren looked at Lu Xiaohe in shock—after not seeing her for a weekend, she had dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep and looked a bit like Minister Fu.
And for some reason, Professor Li Nian was also sitting in their office.
Professor Li had his arms crossed across his chest and was expressionless. He turned the thermos cup in his hand and lowered his gaze to the ground, not even bothering to look at them.
Were the big leaders of Shian so idle? After Fu Xingchuan tortured them physically yesterday, was his partner about to torture them mentally? Compared with Fu Xingchuan, who wasn’t a science post, Yin Ren didn’t know which person was more difficult to deal with.
“You guys are here.” Lu Xiaohe had two cans of energy drink in her hand. “Friends, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?”
Yin Ren: “Bad news.”
Zhong Chengshuo: “Good news.”
The two looked at each other.
Yin Ren: “…Okay, let’s go with the good news first.”
Lu Xiaohe shook the remote control weakly. The original screens full of data were cut into a bunch of game screens.
The game screen was rough, and there was no modeling, like a pseudo-3D effect made with pixels. The game art was barely passable, belonging to the classic style of painting without experience or merit.
“The good news is that I know what happened to Wu Tao and Wu Pengpeng.”
Lu Xiaohe wiped her face and nodded to Li Nian.
“Look at this picture.”
She showed a screenshot of two cute female characters doing tasks. They seemed to be confronted by a certain heinous NPC, and in the dialogue box was the phrase: “Haha, bitch. You’re here now but want to go back?”
Lu Xiaohe zoomed in on the NPC’s smooth face—because it was a pixel-like 3D effect, there were no bumps on the NPC’s face; only drawn facial features.
“This is an NPC unrelated to the plot, and it’s a set of henchmen from the gangster boss.” Lu Xiaohe tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I checked the code. He only has this one line in the entire game. Does this sound familiar?”
“As for the marks on Wu Pengpeng’s body…
Lu Xiaohe brought up the photos they took. The mark was exactly the same as the mark in the game.
In other words, If Wu Pengpeng hadn’t run fast enough that day, they would have found more than just one corpse pile.
Zhong Chengshuo sat upright. “Then Wu Tao?”
“Seeing this, my mother and I studied passionately yesterday. The way to die in this game is quite lazy.” Lu Xiaohe changed the picture to a video.
On the screen, two female characters were hacking, stabbing, fighting, and killing monsters in various ways. Defeated or destroyed items turned into regular little piles of pixels with drops scattered around them.
Item markers were marked on top of the pixel pile to indicate the nature of the pile.
Debris would be marked with a “stone” marker, while materials would be marked with a “leaf” marker. As for the defeated people and monsters… A white skull was used as their marker.
Extremely neat piles of particles, neatly surrounded by debris, and a skull on top of the minced meat.
The corpse pile in the early hours of that morning was only a pool of blood.
Zhong Chengshuo’s expression froze for a second. “Could it be that Wu Tao’s death scene—”
“Yes, that death scene wasn’t some cult ritual. I guess Wu Tao was just, uh, defeated.” Speaking of this bizarre guess, Lu Xiaohe’s own tone also became hesitant.
“In the game world, the defeated NPCs will appear again after resetting… but there’s no reset in the real world.”
Yin Ren nodded.
People could not come back from the dead. Even in the metaphysical world, this was still an unbreakable iron rule.
At most, the dead would become mindless corpses or, more rarely, ghosts. After that, the corpse would decay and break or the ghosts would weaken and disappear, and then there would be no “after”.
For thousands of years, people studied immortality and resurrection, but it was like chasing the moon in the water or the flower in the mirror*.
*Metaphor referring to something that can be seen but not touched.
“In other words, someone is using the same methods as this game to influence others and even kill people.”
Zhong Chengshuo rubbed his lower lip. “I have heard of
“Yes, this game had a mediocre reputation, and its sales weren’t exactly skyrocketing. I know what you want to ask. The game itself is fine—its production team has been disbanded long ago, and the producer at the time switched to selling barbecue. This was even in the news.”
Lu Xiaohe drank the remaining half of the energy drink, and her eyes became a little straighter.
“When I came to work today, I had a comprehensive physical examination as soon as possible. The results were completely normal. All these materials were obtained from my game, so… the information… should be solid.”
The amount of information on the screen was huge. There were many rules that needed to be verified, one by one. It seemed that Lu Xiaohe spent the night organizing the report.
Yin Ren: “…What’s the bad news?”
Lu Xiaohe was yawning halfway when she froze on the spot. She closed her mouth, stopped talking, and looked at Professor Li, who had remained silent the entire time.
Professor Li cleared his throat. “Human cognitive abnormalities shouldn’t interfere with reality.”
Yin Ren: “?” This was too abstract, so he couldn’t understand it.
He slowly titled to Zhong Chengshuo, who understood and whispered, “Just like Gao Mengyu before, people with cognitive anomalies only have problems with their own perceptions, and it doesn’t affect the real world.”
“Cognitive abnormalities are very common. Most of them have nothing to do with ‘evil things’. Many patients in Haigu Mental Hospital have this symptom.”
Professor Li waited for the two of them to finish whispering before calmly continuing. “Even considering anomalies, there has been no precedent for ‘fantasy interfering with reality’ before. Humans shouldn’t have this level of power. This time, the confrontation will be tricky.”
“I see,” Yin Ren enthusiastically responded. “Do you want to transfer this to a more advanced investigation team?”
Professor Li glared at him coldly. “These are only inferences, and there is no clear evidence. The C-level investigation team needs to continue their follow ups. We’ll transfer a B-level personnel to assist.”
Yin Ren’s smile gradually disappeared. “I see.”
Since everything had to continue normally, what the hell was he doing here?! Trying to form a male and female host pair with Lu Xiaohe?
As if hearing his thoughts, Professor Li said, “Fu Xingchuan isn’t free, so he can’t come here in person. I’m here to help him confirm something—Yin Ren, you made contact with a ghost master outside of Shian last night. Why didn’t you report this?”
Professor Li pulled up his sleeve, revealing an electronic dial flashing with dense data. They were all conspicuously blood red, like some kind of modified detector.
Zhong Chengshuo looked inquisitively at Yin Ren. “You really ate luosifen mixed with 82-year-old evil spirits?”
Yin Ren: “…I did encounter a ghost. It was trying to force me to change jobs, and I finally escaped.”
Professor Li: “How did you escape?”
“Two days ago, I made contact with a ghost near my residence, and she helped me.”
Zhong Chengshuo was surprised. “Is there really a ghost in Ping’an Manor?”
Yes. Two days ago, Miss Hu Tao was passionately singing karaoke in our living room. Yin Ren gave a dry laugh and continued to answer Li Nian’s question. “In short, the ghost I found ate all those other ghosts. Isn’t this considered a done deal?”
“Don’t judge whether the matter is over without authorization. All abnormalities must be reported immediately.”
Professor Li raised his eyes, as if to judge the authenticity of Yin Ren’s words. After a while, he stood up and threw a copy of
“There will be unified training later.” He walked to the door and paused. “…Now it seems that some people are quite interested in you.”
Yin Ren: “Oh God, how terrible.”
Yin Ren dared to bet his lunch that Fu Xingchuan and Li Nian were hanging around them every day, probably not because they cared about their subordinates, but it seemed he wouldn’t be clear of the label of “suspected to be in contact with an Evil Spirit” in just a few weeks.
However, there was also good news today—in order to make them more familiar with
For the first time in his life, Yin Ren felt that the word “overtime” wasn’t so bad.
As soon as it was time to get off work, Yin Ren took the initiative to carry the game console. He didn’t even plan to eat dinner in the cafeteria, wanting to rush home as soon as possible to start playing. Who would have thought the person who refused to cooperate with overtime work this time was Zhong Chengshuo.
“Is it okay if we start after 8?” Zhong Chengshuo asked apologetically.
“Why?” The excitement in Yin Ren’s steps dissipated instantly.
Zhong Chengshuo’s mood didn’t seem high either. “Blind date. I can’t push it off.”
Based on Yin Ren’s experience of watching dramas with Hu Tao, he could guess what a “blind date” was.
In the head of Lord Ghost King, a blind date was equal to the words of a matchmaker that was ordered by his parents, which meant he needed to get married soon, as marriage was a major event in life.
Yin Ren’s words gradually became calm. “These are things in life that can’t be helped. I wish you hundreds of years of harmony, early birth…”
Zhong Chengshuo: “I’m meeting with a man.”
Yin Ren: “?!”
“I don’t want to get married, but my parents arrange it too often. Last time I was a little too anxious, so I told them I like men.” Zhong Chengshuo had a vague look of despair on his face. “I didn’t expect them…”
Yin Ren was speechless. No wonder, last time he was at Zhong Chengshuo’s parents’ place, the two elders had such a strange attitude towards him.
Yin Ren rubbed his forehead. “So this is to say, you don’t want to go at all?”
“Nn.”
“That’s easy then. When the time comes, send me a message on WeChat, and I’ll call you to tell you that work has come up and you need to go.”
Yin Ren’s understanding wasn’t particularly in place, but he had seen this routine many times and was familiar with it. If it weren’t for how limited the conditions were, he would prefer the plan of “finding a child to rush in and hug Zhong Chengshuo and call him dad”.
Zhong Chengshuo exhaled with a solemn expression. “It’s okay. If it’s just a meal, I’ll probably get home by seven.”
“Where are you eating?” Yin Ren casually asked.
“Luofang House in Xizhao District.”
Yin Ren quickly searched for it and saw that the average bill was around four thousand and had a super high rating, causing his hand to tremble slightly.
HuaDiao drunken crab, roasted deer tendon in abalone sauce… It looked delicious.
“Why don’t I go with you? In case Shian suddenly has something for us. Don’t worry. I’ll sit at a different table.” Yin Ren sincerely suggested, as his eyes remained glued to all the pictures of the food. “So if the other party is difficult, I can still rush up and indicate that the situation is urgent.”
Zhong Chengshuo: “……” If he hadn’t heard the faint sound of swallowing, he would almost believe it.
