When Old Wang left the village for his first job, his father, Wang Laodie, advised him while chewing on dry tobacco, “Let’s earn money honestly, be upright individuals. If others treat you well, you should repay their kindness. But if someone bullies you…”
Street bully Brother Wang, known far and wide, interrupted, “Then beat the living daylights out of them!”
Perhaps that’s why Old Wang, faced with textbook-style workplace manipulation from the “people” on the rooftop, not only resisted their tactics but also vehemently cursed them back. He went from insulting his idiotic boss’s ancestors to the descendants of his dimwitted colleagues, reciting his creative insults one after another. When he finished, there was nothing but silence on the rooftop, with only Old Wang’s passionate monologue echoing.
Just cursing wasn’t enough for him. With a belly full of beer, he unfastened his belt, urinated freely towards the rooftop, and mumbled some nonsensical words like, “Who dares to mess with this King?” Then he left the rooftop, his swagger unopposed.
No one dared to stop him. Beneath the rooftop, a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood emitted mournful cries tinged with a sigh of relief and envy. If you looked closely, a few “people” on the rooftop wore relaxed smiles. Their figures gradually faded into nothing.
As for Old Wang…
“I went back to the duty room and fell asleep.” Old Wang still couldn’t understand why he acted so boldly back then. After cursing the heavens and the earth on the rooftop and urinating as if to mark his territory, he casually returned to the first-floor duty room and slept soundly, not worrying in the slightest that something might lurk outside the windows. He didn’t have any nightmares that night, and when he recalls the incident now, there are no psychological scars.
Every time he tells this story, it scares the listeners so much that they dare not take a deep breath, declaring that he practically cheated death.
Later, Old Wang inquired with the local elders and learned that several companies in the building had been unscrupulous, subjecting employees to harassment from superiors and cutthroat competition among colleagues. This led to several employees suffering mental breakdowns and jumping off the building in the dead of night. Since then, there had been one or two cases of suicide or accidental falls from the building each year, and the rooftop had become off-limits for the night-shift security guards.
After all, some people had witnessed numerous ghostly figures on the rooftop, wearing eerie smiles as they stared at anyone who dared to approach, luring them to jump off the rooftop, just as they had.
Strange as it may seem, after Old Wang urinated, there were no more incidents of people jumping off the building. A few months later, he quit that job and switched to working in construction with relatives from his hometown in Huai City.
Xiao Qing raised her glass and exclaimed, “I salute you for being a real man.”
To frighten malevolent spirits, one must have an even more fearsome presence. There should be no trace of fear; otherwise, they could be easily swayed.
“If I still had that kind of courage, I’d have a bright future in gaming,” Old Wang said, to which his friends nodded in agreement.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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Although Old Wang’s story didn’t scare his teammates, the shock experienced by Lei Bo, a ghost, was almost equivalent to all of their reactions combined. He remained deeply immersed in the fear of workplace manipulation on the rooftop.
After all, Lei Bo was a representative of the bottom-tier victims of workplace manipulation in unscrupulous companies. He endured overtime, harassment from superiors, and cutthroat competition with colleagues.
He even had to dig into his own pocket to achieve the company’s performance targets. He had worked to the point of physical and mental breakdown, and his life resembled a blur of being summoned to customers at the Fair Hotel, not for leisure, but for… well, the other kind of ‘service.’ One night, he was forced to drink to the point of shock, and the next thing he knew, he was a ghost drifting in room 2232.
“I think being a ghost is pretty good,” Lei Bo whispered, content with his current state. “As a ghost, you don’t have to work. You can sleep as long as you want, ignore anyone you don’t want to talk to, and never get scolded by your boss for being two minutes late. Plus, the people in the hotel are quite friendly…”
For him, this life was like heaven. Simply being able to sleep for eight hours a day made him incredibly happy. Occasionally, when the hotel guests came to seek his “help,” they were polite, and he received many offerings once or twice a year.
He used to work tirelessly, not even getting his full guaranteed minimum wage!
Lei Bo had no desire to be reborn; the thought of his miserable experiences while alive made him prefer his current existence as a spirit.
Lei Bo stood tall, wearing a defiant look of determination.
“Well, I can accommodate that,” Xu Yintang said, extending a tentacle as Little Darling, disguised as a pillow, and gestured to Lei Bo. He then took a small snack from Lei Bo’s body.
He swore that he only took a tiny bite, not even enough to get stuck between his teeth, but Lei Bo let out a scream as if he were being torn apart by a thousand knives. Tears that had just stopped welled up once more. Faced with the horrifying tentacles and terrifying mouth, along with the sudden bite, he went completely insane.
“Why… why…”
Lei Bo muttered in a hoarse and mournful voice, his pale face showing patches of purple bruises and scars. Those who had experienced Laura’s frenzy immediately became vigilant, but before Lei Bo could completely lose control, Second Treasure extended his head and gave him two soothing soul touches, forcibly pulling him back from the brink of madness.
Facing this potential enemy (a.k.a., emergency rations), Second Treasure was as ruthless as winter. Lei Bo’s body became visibly transparent, and he couldn’t stop trembling. It was as if he had been ruthlessly trampled by a blizzard.
As he looked at Lei Bo, who seemed to be in a daze, struck by madness, Xiao Qing thought of Laura, who had been driven to frenzy with just one sentence from Xu Yintang. He felt she might have grasped the root of the problem.
“Don’t say a word.”
Xu Yintang blinked and responded somewhat aggrieved, “Oh.”
After turning off Xu Yintang’s microphone, Xiao Qing gestured with her eyes for Huahua to comfort Lei Bo’s emotions. In the dungeon, they needed to unite all available forces, even if it meant turning enemies into allies. While Lei Bo appeared to be timid and had little combat capability, after living in the hotel for so long, he could at least provide some valuable information, which was better than making guesses based on their limited information.
Currently, three ghosts had yet to make an appearance, which meant at least three dangerous scenarios remained. Based on the two ghosts that had already appeared and the corresponding roles of the player characters, Xiao Qing believed that 2212, where she resided as a convicted arsonist, was the most likely to be the setting for a dangerous scenario.
After all, a fire cannot go unnoticed, and simply searching for keywords like “Fair Hotel, fire” online would quickly yield news reports about a deliberately planned and premeditated arson attack a decade ago.
It was the peak tourist season with an overcrowded hotel, and everyone was asleep in the dead of night. Numerous accelerants had been splashed throughout the floors, smoke detectors and sprinkler systems were intentionally tampered with, escape routes were sealed from the outside, elevators were simultaneously disabled, and hundreds of victims on five floors were left with no survivors. Many bodies had melted into the walls and carpets, making identification difficult.
However, this was the only information she could find about the Fair Hotel. Searching the hotel’s name alone resulted in a stream of promotional articles and advertisements for the hotel, portraying it as a typical luxury vacation spot where even a casual photo could garner numerous likes.
Little Darling shifted back to Xu Yintang’s side, using its four tentacles to secure the corners of the towel, ensuring it wouldn’t slip off. With its round and adorable movements, it almost looked like a little ghost playing around, and Xiao Qing, who usually avoided Little Darling’s odor, was even slightly tempted.
What to do? This pillow looks so comfortable, perfect for corporate slaves…
Only Lei Bo continued to look absolutely terrified of Xu Yintang. He had been afraid of Xu Yintang since he first appeared, and after a brief interaction with Little Darling’s tentacles, he couldn’t bear to be in the same room as Xu Yintang. No matter how much Huahua comforted him, he stuttered and couldn’t speak clearly, as if he had lost all courage when facing the two youngsters’ combined “attacks.”
“Ah…” Huahua helplessly exchanged a glance with Xu Yintang and then held Lei Bo’s hand. “How about we go to the adjacent lounge and talk there? Everything will be fine; don’t be scared.”
Lei Bo, with teary eyes, vigorously nodded his head, unable to even glance in Xu Yintang’s direction.
So, Huahua took Lei Bo to the separate small living room next door for a heart-to-heart discussion. She asked Xu Yintang to continue their late-night storytelling game. Although Xiao Qing’s story about the fox grave digger was of high quality and challenging to surpass, they had all agreed to let Xu Yintang share his story.
Moreover, they were all sharing their personal experiences with supernatural and terrifying events in real life. Xu Yintang couldn’t use fictional stories from the game to deceive them. All the players had had some level of supernatural encounters before entering the game, and this was considered one of the criteria for selecting players.
“Let me think,” Xu Yintang said, looking at Lei Bo’s disappearing figure behind the door. He pinched one of Little Darling’s tentacles. This particular tentacle, with a missing tip, was curled cutely around Xu Yintang’s finger, trying to spread its sticky fluid all over every nook and cranny of Xu Yintang’s hand.
“What’s wrong?” Xiao Qing pointed at the tentacle, and Xu Yintang responded with a smile, “I just learned a new skill, and I’m quite pleased with it.”
“I don’t have a particularly interesting story to tell, so I’ll just share a random one. I hope you won’t find it boring,” Xu Yintang said, lowering his eyes as if lost in memories. “In a psychiatric hospital, there was a woman who had lost her child.”
“She was constantly searching for her child, a four or five-year-old boy who was both cute and well-behaved… a child named ‘Tangtang’…”
“Wait…” Old Wang interrupted Xu Yintang’s narration, his expression subtly strange as he questioned him. “Are you also going to mention that the woman lived in a dilapidated hospital with only two visible floors, but inside, it was like a maze with five or six levels? Was her house scorched black and in ruins?”
“Also, wasn’t she from the South and could hum folk songs in dialect, appearing gentle but turning into a fierce demon when angry, capable of strangling people like a yaksha?”
Xu Yintang was taken aback, and Old Wang took his reaction as confirmation, teasing him, “I didn’t expect you to have heard of this as well. My grandma used to scare me with stories like this, saying if I misbehaved, the crazy lady from the hospital would come and take me away.”
“Surprisingly, yes,” Xu Yintang replied after a brief pause, a look of resignation on his face. “Why don’t you tell the story in detail, and let’s see if it’s the same story I know.”
Old Wang said, “Hey, as soon as you mentioned ‘Tangtang,’ I knew it had to be the same one. Let me think about how to tell it. This story is quite old, and it’s known only in my hometown. Even in the neighboring town, not many people have heard of it.”
Saying this, he suddenly realized something and exclaimed with delight, “Oh! We’re from the same hometown! I couldn’t tell from your accent!”
Old Wang, wait till you find out that not only is he “from your hometown,” he also is Tang Tang 😭
+1 waiting to see the reaction
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Quite old??? Does the time just work weirdly in his hospital or has this been going on for a long time and he’s just stuck at his age???
Could also be he’s actually a kidnapped child so she’s been around much longer then he has. His memory is pretty bad so it’s possible he forgot. That would also explain why ML and MC are still the same age.
Awww, it’s already the last chapter??
Ty for all your hard work ♥️♥️♥️~~~
Ok how old is tangtang
I mean if this is old tale or the crazy lady kidnapped children n tang tang is a victim of the lady she should be super old because tang tang is atleast more than 20 n also the other who dreamt about tang tang even he mentioned that tang tang as elder????
Can anyone clarify please
This is such an imaginative story…
Thank you for the update ❤️💯
Seriously love this story, a great mix of horror and suspense and comedy to lighten the mood, plus the translation is so good. Great work to both the author and translator ❤️
Ready for this reveal! Hee hee hee! Thanks for the update 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Interesting…. I was gonna say something but forgot what it was☺️
OH- wasn’t Xiao Qing a guy??? Previously The pronouns “He” was used when talking about him but this chapter it was switched to “she” I remember because it said something about the three guys seemed honest and clean and weren’t leering at the girls
HOOOOLYY
Mother is here again in the plot
Thank you for your translation 💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜