Chapter 17: Zero Presence
Chapter 17: Zero Presence
The young man was engaged in an internal struggle.
Should he eat, or should he not eat?
After being a ghost for so many years, this was the first time he had felt such intense hunger, as if his stomach and intestines were twisting in pain, craving Lei Yating’s flesh and blood.
Just as he was about to open his mouth and press against Lei Yating’s neck, Lei Yating guided her primordial qi through one complete circulation and returned it all to her dantian.
The young man let out a surprised sound.
“Why doesn’t it smell good anymore?”
Lei Yating was also dumbfounded. She... she seemed to have heard a male voice?
Suddenly, a burst of warmth came from her arms. She subconsciously reached out and touched it. It turned out that the thing giving off heat was one of the talismans Nezha had given her.
Lei Yating took out the talisman.
The young man did not react much. He only felt somewhat uncomfortable. But the mute female ghost beside him let out a sharp, piercing scream.
“Who’s making that ghostly noi...”
A roommate disturbed from her peace cursed irritably, but when they clearly saw the thing making the “ghostly noise,” it was as if someone had grabbed their throats, and their voices came to an abrupt halt.
With an Pop, the bright incandescent light went out, and everyone could only use the faint moonlight to make out the situation inside the room.
A blood-soaked female ghost in white was crouched on the iron railing of a bed. Ghostly energy surrounded her, and dark red, foul-smelling tears of blood rolled from her empty eye sockets.
“G, ghost!”
“Ahhhhh!”
Several girls were so frightened that their faces lost all colour. Their high-pitched screams almost seemed capable of shattering the lightbulbs.
Lei Yating was also badly frightened.
Subconsciously, she threw out the talisman in her hand. The young man drifted backward in fright, but instead of retreating, the mute female ghost advanced, clearly enraged by her actions.
Seeing this, a trace of gravity appeared on the young man’s deathly pale face.
The female ghost had a human life on her hands, but that life had belonged to her enemy.
For all these years, to prevent herself from harming people, the female ghost had hidden on the hospital’s underground level and in the parking garage. She relied on the young man’s ghostly aura to suppress herself and maintain her sanity.
Only when she was truly bored would she go frighten people whose lifespans were nearly at an end.
Nothing had happened for all these years, but today Lei Yating’s talisman had caused her ferocious nature to erupt.
If she was not stopped, this dormitory room... no, not just this dormitory room, perhaps all the mortals in the entire women’s dormitory building would never see tomorrow’s sun.
“Stop provoking her!”
The young man spoke to stop her, but he did not expect Lei Yating to have other plans.
No one knew where she pulled out a red silk ribbon. The ribbon radiated a righteous aura that the young ghost found intensely repulsive. An indescribable violent emotion dyed his eyes red.
At that moment, a talisman struck the young man’s face, completely enraging him.
Previously only one eye had turned red. Now both eyes were completely stained crimson.
When Pei Ye opened the dormitory door, this was the scene she saw.
The mute female ghost was using her long hair to wrap around the necks of Bai Xiaoxiao, Zhou Huirong, and the others, hanging them in the air. Judging by their appearances, their eyes were nearly rolling back.
Lei Yating, meanwhile, was desperately using the red silk ribbon and talismans to fend off a young man dressed in a hospital gown.
The young man also seemed to be struggling to restrain himself, which allowed Lei Yating to hold out for quite a while despite her miserable state.
With a cigarette in her mouth, Pei Ye leaned against the doorframe and spoke, interrupting the humans’ and ghosts’ self-entertainment.
“I say, I’m standing right here, a living person. Could you all stop ignoring me with such perfect coordination?”
Could it be that Lei Yating’s protagonist halo was too dazzling, making a transparent little nobody like her impossible to notice?
Back then, Pei Ye had been a figure who dominated the scene wherever she went. Everyone’s eyes were on her.
But now?
No matter where she went, she was ignored. Her sense of presence was no different from a background prop.
Comparing the past and present truly made one want to shed a tear of sympathy.
Seeing Pei Ye open the door from outside, Lei Yating immediately made a decision and struck the young man with the red silk ribbon.
Taking advantage of the young man’s evasive movement, Lei Yating slammed into Pei Ye and even gave her a push from behind, forcing her to face the fierce ghost and buying herself a chance to escape.
Pei Ye: “...”
They were dormitory roommates after all. Was there really a need to be this heartless?
She flicked the cigarette in her hand away, and it shot straight through the mute female ghost’s throat.
The female ghost was burned by the unlit cigarette. Thirty to forty percent of the yin energy around her body was burned away, and her soul body visibly became more transparent.
Clutching her head, she squatted down and trembled. Naturally, the hair that had been hanging Bai Xiaoxiao and the others lost its support.
Bai Xiaoxiao and the others fell down like dumplings being dropped into a pot, landing heavily on their backsides.
Ignoring the pain, the girls who had narrowly escaped death covered their necks and greedily gulped fresh air. After coughing violently, their eyes turned red from the strain.
They trembled in fear. Tears and snot nearly smeared across their faces.
“Brother, how about staying behind for a chat?”
Pei Ye rested one hand on the young man’s shoulder. The gesture appeared casual, but in reality she was gripping his vital weakness.
The violent emotions receded like a tide. The crimson colour faded from his eyes, replaced once more by lifeless black, and he returned to his previous harmless and innocent appearance.
As for that female ghost...
She was squatting on the ground with her head in her hands, sobbing pitifully.
“As a male ghost, running into a girls’ dormitory in the middle of the night counts as hooliganism. You should at least give an explanation, right? And you nearly killed people!”
The young man fell silent for a moment. His gaze shifted toward Zhou Huirong, who was huddled together with the others behind Pei Ye. Lowering his eyes, he muttered in a wronged tone.
“I was openly invited in. I wasn’t being a hooligan.”
Pei Ye raised an eyebrow.
“Who invited you in?”
The young ghost extended a slender finger and pointed at Zhou Huirong.
“I knocked on the window. She opened it and let me in.”
He had not been a hooligan. He had politely knocked on the window, and he had obediently waited on the lower bunk for several hours. He had not sneaked glances at the girls’ underwear or tank tops either.
After hearing this, Zhou Huirong’s face turned ashen.
When had she ever opened a window for a ghost?
Her mind was a complete mess right now. How could she remember details like that?
“Then why did you come here?”
Pei Ye asked with a smile. This ghost was actually quite polite. It would have been even better if he had not resorted to violence earlier.
The young ghost looked at Pei Ye gloomily and accused her.
“You bullied my subordinate. I came to help her recover her dignity.”
He was a good boss.
Pei Ye: “...”
When had she bullied...
Her gaze landed on the pitiful female ghost who seemed desperate to turn herself into an ostrich, and understanding suddenly dawned on her.
It seemed that during the day she had mistaken the female ghost for some kind of projection prank, pinned her into a sink, and then thrown her into a toilet and flushed her away. No wonder the ghost had come looking for trouble.
“She scared me. My reaction was only a little excessive, but it wasn’t unreasonable. You should know she was the one at fault first. As a boss, you need to be reasonable too. You can’t blindly protect your subordinates. You’ll spoil them.”
Pei Ye earnestly lectured the young man. As a boss, one could not pamper subordinates like this, much less clean up after them regardless of right and wrong. If it happened too often, they would become arrogant from favouritism and eventually provoke someone the young man could not handle, such as Pei Ye herself.
“Most importantly, you’re not my opponent. If you come looking for trouble with me, it’s fine if you can win. But if you can’t, wouldn’t that be extremely embarrassing in front of your subordinates? It would damage your authority as a boss. Don’t you think so?”
After hearing this, the young man nodded seriously.
“That makes sense!”
Pei Ye had just been about to say he was teachable when the young man said somewhat aggrievedly,
“I never intended to start with violence. If things could have been resolved peacefully, I wouldn’t have used force. This is a peaceful era now. We ghosts also believe in reason. But you living humans are so unreasonable. The mute girl cultivated her character for many years, and you almost destroyed her cultivation.”