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Chapter 7: Fierce Ghost, Fierce Ghost, What Time Is It (Part 7)
◎ Begging You and the Wishing Pool ◎
On the third day, Yu Qing as usual went to the community entrance. Sure enough, that road still had not appeared.
During the entire day that followed, Yu Qing searched everywhere for food. But in an unfinished building complex abandoned for twenty years, apart from that peach tree, there was no other food source.
Yu Qing returned to Building 18 empty-handed. She ate the leftover half of the chicken from last night. After thinking for a while, she saved a chicken leg just in case.
Now she could only hope for that slender ghost that appeared every night.
She looked a little nervously at the main entrance. If she made a request, would it get angry?
That night, the moon had only been up for a short while when the slender ghost appeared at the main entrance.
Yu Qing, as she had done yesterday, extinguished the fire and planned to hide back in the corner. But just as she turned around and had not yet started running, the slender ghost appeared behind her. Immediately, a huge force grabbed her by the collar.
With one finger, the ghost hand hooked the fleeing Yu Qing back.
Under the moonlight, the slender ghost looked down at Yu Qing. Its elongated shadow enveloped her completely.
With each step forward, the ghost hand poked her once. Yu Qing was thus poked back into a narrow corner.
A faceless face leaned in. Although it was hard to see expressions on that vague black shadow, Yu Qing could feel that it was angry.
Her whole body was ice cold. Her mind was blank.
The slender ghost let out a low voice toward her. That voice was extremely hoarse. Of course it could speak, but in this haunted place there was no need for communication. So when it spoke, its articulation was especially awkward and hard to understand.
Being too close, Yu Qing’s head buzzed and she did not clearly hear it. She vaguely heard keywords like die and kill.
Just when Yu Qing thought she was doomed, a chicken that had died with its eyes wide open was viciously thrown in front of her.
The feathers were not plucked.
The ghost hand pointed at Yu Qing, then pointed at the chicken on the ground. See this?
This would be her fate if she angered him.
The chicken died even more miserably today, its head and body separated.
And not a single feather had been plucked for Yu Qing.
Yu Qing shrank her neck, looked at the miserably dead chicken on the ground, then looked at the terrifying, tall ghostly figure in front of her.
The slender ghost leaned closer again and bared its teeth.
Yu Qing nodded in fear to show she understood.
Observing Yu Qing’s expression, the slender ghost thought its threat had worked. Only then did it slowly straighten its body and let her go.
But it did not notice that as soon as it turned around and the terrifying pressure vanished, the cowering Yu Qing immediately perked up.
The fear on her face disappeared. Her hunched back straightened. She poked her head out to watch the slender ghost’s back vanish at the main entrance. Then she casually picked up the chicken from the ground.
After a while, Yu Qing returned to that wall again. Below that line of writing, she left a line of small characters, her tone very humble and devout:
Thank you. Could you please bring me some salt tomorrow? Without salt, I will die. Please, I really need it.
The slender ghost returned and leaned over to look at the writing on the wall.
Obviously, today’s threat was effective. The lawless Yu Qing now knew what fear was. Those several please please words showed a cautious attitude, completely different from her arrogant request to pluck the feathers yesterday.
…
Perhaps it was her cautious and fearful attitude that pleased the ghost.
On the night of the fourth day, the slender ghost brought back a chicken and a bowl of salt.
Yu Qing picked up that bowl of salt.
The salt looked a bit strange, a bit like the kind of salt used during festivals and ancestral offerings. Of course, in this haunted place, there was no such thing. The place was still sealed off and not connected to the outside. So this salt was actually an offering that people placed at the entrance of Huangquan Community during festivals.
Although its source was dubious, Yu Qing was very happy. After all, she had not eaten salt for four days.
That day, Yu Qing found a few wild green onions beside Building 17. She squatted by the pot, sprinkled some wild onion flowers and added salt, making a fragrant pot of chicken soup.
After four days, Yu Qing finally had a flavorful meal.
The conditions here were very basic. Bathing was simple. During the day, she could wipe herself when no one was around. But the more urgent problem was that she had been brushing her teeth with hot water for four days.
She wrote a line on the wall: Thank you for the salt. I urgently need a toothbrush. Please, I beg you.
The slender ghost returned.
It looked at the words on the wall.
The living needed to breathe and eat. To eat, they needed flavor, and they even needed to brush their teeth.
So troublesome.
There was no toothbrush, after all, no one would offer such things to a ghost.
But since Yu Qing had again written please please in a very humble tone,
The slender ghost grabbed a few freshly dead resentful spirits and learned that willow branches could also be used to clean teeth.
…
On the fifth day,
While Yu Qing eagerly waited, the slender ghost brought a chicken and a bundle of willow branches.
However, the slender ghost still left a line of bloody words on the wall to warn the greedy Yu Qing not to go too far or covet too much.
These past few days, this slender ghost had already been blinded by Yu Qing’s please please.
Each time it saw those three words, the image of a weak, helpless, pitiful little delivery girl clasping her hands and begging appeared before its eyes.
Clearly, the one who had squeezed it onto the ceiling in the elevator and forced it to sit stiffly for eight hours on the bus before was someone ignorant of fear.
Once she knew the truth and saw its ferocious, terrifying form, the little delivery girl now only had trembling fear and humble pleading left. This was exactly what it wanted to see.
The slender ghost was very satisfied.
With Yu Qing’s please please as a side dish, its appetite was greatly increased.
It crunched through resentful spirits much faster than usual.
However, just like before, after finishing the resentful spirits and returning to Building 18, its steps slowly stopped beside the wall.
The first line on the wall was the bloody threat it had left: Greedy people will all die.
Below was Yu Qing’s reply:
Thank you, but I still need some fruits and vegetables. You know, the living need vitamins. Please, I beg you. Also, if possible, please bring me a piece of clothing. It is really cold here. Please, I beg you. Also, I still lack some daily necessities. The list is as follows: 1…
Because the list was too long, it ran down to the corner of the wall and could not fit. There was a small parenthesis with tiny words and an arrow: See page two.
The tone was humble.
The attitude was arrogant.
After reading page two, the slender ghost slowly looked up.
…
It knew that in the world of the living, there was something called a wishing pool.
Inside it was usually a punished turtle. All the living people would throw things at it to make wishes.
This was a textbook example of greedy living people.
But because the wall was covered with tiny characters, there was no space left to write a new threat.
The slender ghost slowly left the hall, preparing to give Yu Qing a deep and unforgettable lesson tomorrow.
At this moment, Yu Qing was dreaming sweetly, unaware that great danger was approaching.
…
On the sixth day, the slender ghost came again.
The greedy Yu Qing was eagerly waiting for today’s feeding, but she did not see that familiar figure for a long time. Suddenly, the window behind her swung open. A ghost hand grabbed her collar and lifted her up.
The sudden weightlessness of her feet leaving the ground made her instinctively hug that ghost hand.
The slender ghost paused for a moment and quickly placed her on a withered tree.
Yu Qing immediately hugged the tree branch tightly, afraid of falling. Below the tree, there were resentful spirits reaching their hands out toward her.
She saw that slender ghost grabbing one of them right in front of her and crunching it while eating. At her current height, Yu Qing could see this scene very clearly. Every humanoid resentful spirit that came into contact with the slender ghost would turn into a mass of screaming black mist and be chewed to nothing.
Especially after finishing one resentful spirit, the slender ghost would sinisterly lean closer, bare its teeth, and point, as if to say: after I finish them, it will be your turn.
Yu Qing was indeed scared stiff. Actually, she had been feeling uneasy all along, completely unable to understand why this ghost was bringing her food.
Maliciousness without cause was terrifying. Kindness without cause also made people uneasy. She had been guessing that the reason it was not eating her might be because she was too small and not fat enough yet, so it was feeding her every day. Today, this guess seemed to be coming true.
Yu Qing sat trembling for a while.
The slender ghost seemed a bit larger than when they first met. Also, perhaps because it had been eating resentful spirits these days, its body was gradually becoming more solid. Even the previously featureless face now faintly had the outline of human facial features, making it look even scarier.
As she was being scared, Yu Qing suddenly noticed that under the moonlight, the slender ghost looked somewhat familiar.
Her timid movements paused. She poked her head out to look at him, then looked at Building 18 behind her.
In a flash of insight, Yu Qing thought of that cold and familiar sensation just now. It felt just like that silent and taciturn customer who liked peach milk green tea and butter cookies. That customer was also very tall and very intimidating.
Realizing that the other party might be a familiar ghost, Yu Qing’s fear diminished quite a bit.
She no longer cowered, gradually sitting a bit straighter.
She was still afraid. Even though a familiar ghost was better than an unfamiliar one, it did not mean he would not eat her in anger.
She remained on edge.
After a long time, under the high-hanging ghost moon, a huge ghost hand suddenly stretched out in front of Yu Qing.
When not compressed, this terrifying slender ghost was over four meters tall. Even in the tree, Yu Qing could barely meet its eyes.
Yu Qing saw the ghost hand reaching out and thought it was going to grab her to eat, so she immediately turned and scrambled up the tree.
Suddenly, she heard an extremely low and hoarse voice say: “Come up.”
Perhaps because of its height, the slender ghost’s voice even carried a natural echo.
Yu Qing turned her head and saw that the giant ghost hand was just at her feet.
Was it telling her to climb onto its palm?
However, Yu Qing could not climb trees and indeed had no way to get down. She hesitated for a moment, then carefully climbed from the withered tree onto the ghostly figure’s palm and hugged its arm.
Yu Qing felt like she was lying on a cold and very hard stone. The slender ghost felt like it was holding a tiny piece of coal and instinctively wanted to shake it off, but thinking that Yu Qing was a fragile living person, it restrained itself. However, it still gave her a fierce glare.
Behind them hung the ghost moon.
Yu Qing, trembling, held on tightly, afraid of falling. Very soon, she was steadily placed back through the window.
Today, Yu Qing still received a chicken. However, as the harshest punishment for the greedy, the slender ghost pointed at the chicken. The chicken was alive. Not only had he not killed it, but he had not plucked it either.
The chicken clucked and ran wildly around the hall. The rule that “there will always be at least one guaranteed chicken” was once again proven.
Yu Qing poked her head out to look at the slender ghost disappearing at the end of the corridor.
After today’s events, there was still much fear in Yu Qing’s heart.
But in her subconscious, she vaguely realized the outcome of provoking this slender ghost.
It was equivalent to not provoking him at all.
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Arya[Translator]
૮꒰˶• ༝ •˶꒱ა ~♡︎