It is an HP-lock cheat!
Mu Li is suddenly struck by a massive surprise; his back no longer aches, and his legs no longer feel sore.
This is a skill that not even high-level characters possess.
What is there to be afraid of then? Time to get up and party!
The female ghost suddenly reacts.
She snatched away his eyes, turning the young man into the one without eyes.
Did the statue actually mistake the young man for her?
She glares at Mu Li with bloodthirsty eyes: “Give them back!”
As long as she kills him, the music box will be hers again.
The female ghost attacks Mu Li, but Pei Kanyan kicks her flying once more.
Yet when he turns back, he finds that the frail figure has actually scrambled up on all fours and, before even standing steady, charges straight toward the female ghost.
Pei Kanyan: “…”
Is he trying to throw his life away?
The female ghost giggles.
With someone protecting her, she would be hard to kill, but this young man is delivering himself right to her doorstep.
“Truly courting death!”
She reaches out and pierces the young man’s throat.
Mu Li coughs up a mouthful of blood, seizes the opportunity to grab that hand, and twists her wrist, snapping it instantly.
The female ghost initially cares little for such a minor injury.
However, after waiting a moment, she finds that her broken wrist bone refuses to heal itself.
A realization suddenly dawns on her, and her face instantly fills with terror.
Oh my, the health bar cannot recover now.
The young man standing before her licks the undried blood from his lips and slowly breaks into an innocent and harmless smile, his lips red and teeth white, looking utterly harmless.
“Now, it is my turn to settle accounts with you!”
The female ghost actually senses a trace of danger and tries to withdraw her hand, but it is firmly locked in place.
Looking up, a pair of eyes is right before her eyelashes. No one is more familiar with them than she is; those are the eyes she snatched away, lifeless, devoid of vitality, and entirely hollow.
She seems to see a swirling vortex of white, bottomless and deep, attempting to suck her in.
Mu Li whispers softly:
“Damage Reflection!”
The female ghost feels an agonizing, bone-deep pain throughout her entire body.
Her ankle bone is broken, her heart is shattered, her throat is torn.
Just like the injuries she inflicted upon the young man.
“Ah!”
She screams aloud.
How can this be?
Yet the young man looks thoroughly annoyed:
“Calculated wrong, still a bit short.”
The reflection damage is not enough; the mob still has one sliver of health left.
Faced with the threat of death, the female ghost’s sluggish brain races. The more severe the young man’s injuries, the heavier the backlash she suffers. So that is how it works.
“Ridiculous! I will kill you before the backlash hits!”
Mu Li curls the corners of his mouth: “Then why not give it a try?”
Hearing this, Pei Kanyan frowns tightly.
The female ghost suddenly drops her smile.
The young man in front of her is dead serious.
A madman!
“Want to die together with me? In your dreams!”
The female ghost wears a ferocious expression, baring two rows of sharp fangs while a faint foul odor radiates from her mouth.
The young man appears to lack the strength to dodge anymore.
He flashes a smile, feeling no fear regarding his own death, looking completely at peace instead.
Go ahead, bite all you want, bite as hard as you can. If I die, I will eat my hat.
Pei Kanyan steps forward.
The person he saved, how could he let a monster kill him?
Thus, he grabs the female ghost by the neck once more. With his muscles tensed and a burst of strength, half of her neck is crushed instantly.
Holy cow!
Mu Li is startled.
Recalling just moments ago how he was grabbed by the neck by this exact same man’s hand.
A wave of lingering fear washes over him.
Should he thank the teaching assistant for sparing his life?
The female ghost has never felt fear before, but at this moment she experiences a bone-chilling terror.
This man is by no means as simple as he appears on the surface, and for the very first time in her existence, she feels the urge to retreat.
Spotting her umbrella in the distance, the female ghost makes a feigned move to bite the young man again.
Pei Kanyan exerts his strength, failing to anticipate that the female ghost is merely staging a feint and using the leverage to escape instead.
The female ghost’s fingers brush against the umbrella handle, her face etched with boundless hatred:
“I will never let you go!”
As the words fall, the entire monster vanishes completely.
Mu Li suddenly loses his support and drops to his knees on the floor: “We cannot let her escape.”
Pei Kanyan grips the young man’s wrist, feeling his faint pulse: “If you take another injury, you will truly die.”
“If I get injured one more time, it will be fine. That female monster definitely will not survive.”
Thinking of this, Mu Li feels a wave of regret.
With the teaching assistant’s previous strike, the female ghost was down to a sliver of health, just that tiny sliver, and any minor hit would have finished her off.
If she manages to escape after all this, the player would be so furious he would eat his keyboard, mark his words.
Mu Li opens the mini-map: “She is on the rooftop.”
Even though his eyes are blind, does he still retain spatial awareness?
Pei Kanyan watches the persistent young man and falls silent.
Mu Li twists his arm, noting that it still moves, then uses the corridor wall for support to pull himself up, limping toward the elevator.
Pei Kanyan follows in silence.
The elevator goes straight to the ninth floor, but reaching the rooftop still requires climbing one flight of stairs.
As the elevator doors open, to their surprise, the female ghost is standing right at the rooftop entrance.
Waiting for them.
She continues to hold her umbrella, and although she looks disheveled, she is completely devoid of her previous panic.
Mu Li taunts her: “Why aren’t you running anymore?”
Pushed to the limit of her anger, the female ghost grits her teeth: “Only if you two can actually make it up here first.”
Pei Kanyan steps forward to block the young man: “That umbrella has a problem.”
Mu Li responds with an oh, then bypasses the teaching assistant, grabs the handrail, and climbs the stairs.
Pei Kanyan: “…”
Does he not listen to advice at all?
Mu Li steps onto the final step, yet finds no trace of the female ghost. He looks up, and the female ghost is somehow on the level above.
He looks down, and the teaching assistant is still on the ninth floor.
“Ah.”
An extra floor materialized in the middle out of nowhere?
“Hahahaha…”
The female ghost laughs maniacally, blood continuing to spurt from the side of her neck as she laughs:
“If you had not sent me up to the top floor earlier, I would not have been able to mark this spot in advance, would I?”
At this moment, Pei Kanyan comes up as well.
He offers a word of praise: “Nice umbrella.”
The female ghost cannot comprehend why the two of them still maintain such calm expressions:
“You will be trapped on this floor forever. Once you starve to death, the music box will be mine once more.”
So that was the scheme she was plotting.
Mu Li also chuckles slightly: “It suddenly occurred to me, my eyes are still with you, aren’t they?”
The female ghost freezes: “So what if they are?”
Wait, she suddenly stops.
That is right.
She snatched his eyes, so why did her own eyes suffer no backlash?
Mu Li’s tone turns cold:
“But now, I am no longer willing!”
The female ghost’s smile freezes on her face.
The corners of her eyes instantly split open, the cracks tearing through her skin inch by inch until they stretch across her entire face.
A wave of intense, violent pain washes over her. She wants to escape, but there is nowhere to run, and her shrieks grow distorted.
Enraged, she resolves to drag someone down with her even if it kills her.
“If I die, neither of you will live in peace!”
She twists the umbrella handle, sacrificing her own life force to unleash a final counterattack.
[Space Tear]!
Pei Kanyan takes a large stride to shield Mu Li.
His internal organs are shredded by a tremendous force, yet he expressionlessly wipes the blood from the corner of his mouth.
Unscathed.
The female ghost never expected that even this would fail to kill either of them. She is going to die; she has never recognized this reality so clearly.
“No!”
Amidst extreme unwillingness and disbelief, she dissolves into black mist and dissipates into the air.
Only an umbrella is left behind on the ground.
Mu Li picks up the umbrella.
Good stuff, good stuff, stow it away.
[Player has slain the Music Box Female Ghost and restored game vision. Rewards: Talisman X3, Attribute +5, Health +50.]
[Equipment item Dancer’s Umbrella: Acquired skill Marker Teleport, other skills locked.]
Mu Li blinks, and the game graphics return to normal color.
The music box stops spinning, the extra space disappears, and they return to the ninth floor.
Pei Kanyan waits for a moment, only to notice that the young man’s wounds do not heal as they did before.
Were the injuries too severe, making it impossible to recover even by absorbing the female ghost’s energy?
Pei Kanyan silently makes a mental note.
Mu Li is dumbfounded.
What happened to the promised plus fifty health? Why does the player only have two health points right now?
He checks the description of the HP-lock skill and spots this note:
[Note: Once the Ultimate HP Lock skill is triggered, health points must be replenished later. If health drops to one or lower upon combat termination, the player enters the Feigned Death state.]
Mu Li’s vision goes dark.
So the player can take any amount of abuse during combat and be fine, but the moment combat ends, there is a chance of kicking the bucket right on the spot?
What a scam!
Pei Kanyan looks at the young man’s battered body and his still hollow, empty eye sockets.
He speaks abruptly: “Do you regret it?”
Mu Li turns to the teaching assistant, asking in confusion: “Why would I regret it?”
Pei Kanyan pauses:
“Let us go back.”
Returning to the apartment.
Mu Li sits quietly on the sofa, letting the teaching assistant bandage his wounds.
Not a single patch of the young man’s body is intact; his injuries are deep to the bone and startling to look at. The blood on his clothes has not yet dried and is soaked through anew, and it is the kind of condition where even a doctor would scream in shock and rush him straight to the intensive care unit.
Pei Kanyan lowers his gaze and remains silent. He simply cuts away the clothing, and peeling away the fabric inevitably tears off a layer of skin as well, yet the young man does not utter a single cry of pain.
How strange.
The young man radiates a bizarre aura throughout his entire being. Yet he cannot deny that up to this point, there has been no intention to harm him.
The wounds are bandaged, and the young man has been changed into a new set of clothes. He has been entirely cooperative so far, until the moment comes to dispose of the old clothes.
Mu Li hugs his crossbody bag tightly and refuses to let go.
“Throw them out.”
“No!”
Pei Kanyan has no other choice. If he wants to keep them, so be it, and then he puts on an apron and begins cooking dinner.
Mu Li sits on the sofa, stares at his precarious two health points, and lets out a massive sigh.
He rummages through his crossbody bag, but the game has awarded no healing items whatsoever.
What a headache.
Pei Kanyan waves a hand in front of Mu Li: “Dinner is ready.”
Mu Li checks his stomach; there is no feeling of hunger, but as he turns his head toward the dining table, the spread is lavish.
Fish soup, chicken soup, pig trotters soup, all nutrient-rich dishes. Mu Li smacks his lips, and instantly his avatar is sitting at the dining table.
Do holographic games even have a sense of taste, he wonders?
Mu Li takes a bite of the fish, and well, it genuinely has flavor.
Wait, the player’s health value just went up by zero point zero one.
“…”
Mu Li’s eyes light up, and he begins inhaling the food frantically.
Even a mosquito’s leg is meat, after all.
Pei Kanyan watches as the listless young man takes a tiny, dainty sip of meat, only to suddenly start devouring it like a starving ghost. He massages his temples with a headache.
Mu Li is completely lost in the joy of eating when his hand suddenly shakes, and a chicken leg drops to the floor.
He thinks for one second, in a game, who cares if something is dirty or not? All meats and vegetables are fair game.
So, he picks up the fallen chicken leg and shoves it straight into his mouth.
“Wait…”
Pei Kanyan has just kicked the trash can over when he sees the young man eat the dropped chicken leg.
He sets his chopsticks down with a sharp clack:
“Did your parents never teach you that food dropped on the floor cannot be eaten?”
Mu Li’s cheeks puff out as he chews, raising his head to look at the teaching assistant: “Hmm?”
Pei Kanyan suddenly remembers something, and the rest of his sentence is forcibly swallowed back down.
The young man said he was an orphan.
Is this a habit formed from living in an orphanage?