Chapter 27: Town
She had been wrong. People did not abandon their deep-rooted prejudices just because the world had changed. Customs and old habits clung to a person for a lifetime.
Just like being shunned by the living, that isolation would follow Lin Huai wherever she went.
Pushing those dark thoughts aside, Lin Huai closed the light screen and stepped out of the vehicle to claim her reward chests.
The moment she saw the treasure boxes, all her gloomy thoughts vanished. Three green ghost boxes and one bone-crushing box—what could possibly be better than that?
Lin Huai tried her old trick again, attempting to open the crates inside the coffin. But this time, no matter how hard she tried, the lid refused to budge.
After several failed attempts, a prompt flashed across her light screen:
[A Level 4 coffin can only absorb low-tier monsters. To absorb mid-tier monsters, the coffin must be upgraded to Level 7.]
Lin Huai stood speechless. She had thought she had outsmarted the system, but the game had rewritten the rules overnight just to stop her.
Since she was about to enter the town, she needed to open the boxes right away. Supplies were only truly safe once they were stored inside her inventory. If someone managed to steal the unopened chests, all her hard work would go to waste.
She pulled on her raincoat and stepped out into the pouring acid rain. Gripping the newly acquired greatsword in one hand, she drew a submachine gun loaded with mithril bullets with the other, preparing herself for a quick, brutal fight.
Because the green ghost boxes carried the unavoidable handprint curse, Lin Huai planned to crack open the bone-crushing box first, followed by the three green ghost boxes all at once. That way, even if she was cursed, her ability to open these four prize chests would not be ruined.
The previous bone-crushing box had come from the altar, where the satisfied altar god had gifted her a clean chest free of monsters.
This one, however, was a personal gift from Old Hei.
Out of ten reward chests given by Old Hei, ten of them were packed with monsters!
Lin Huai honestly could not tell whether this system assistant favored her or was deliberately trying to get her killed.
She raised the submachine gun and fired a short burst. With a sharp snap, the lid flew open.
A little boy wearing a bright yellow shirt slowly poked his head out of the box. The moment he saw Lin Huai, his eyes sparkled with joy. “Wow, what a pretty big sister!”
Even though the boy looked adorable and spoke in a sweet, childish voice, Lin Huai felt an icy chill shoot down her spine, and every hair on her arms stood on end.
A Yellow Father Ghost!
Driven purely by survival instinct, Lin Huai jammed earplugs into her ears, shut her eyes tight, and pulled the trigger, spraying bullets across the road in a wide sweep.
Drawn by the opening of the bone-crushing box, a swarm of white and green zombies rushed out of the rain alongside the boy.
The child had been running toward her with a bright smile, but after catching a burst of gunfire, his expression darkened instantly.
His face twisted, and he threw his head back, bursting into a loud, shrill wail.
The sound was deafening, harsh, and horribly piercing. It scraped against the nerves like fingernails tearing down a chalkboard, making the heart pound in sheer panic.
Worse still, his crying carried a devastating mental attack. Even with earplugs firmly in place and her eyes shut tight, Lin Huai felt as though her skull were being split open. She stumbled, unable to keep her balance, as thin trickles of blood seeped from her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.
Fortunately, she stood within the coffin’s protective aura. Its defense and immunity traits shielded her just enough to restore a shred of clear thinking.
Forcing her eyes open against the blinding pain, she crushed a Yang energy crystal to activate the greatsword. The blade expanded rapidly, hovering directly above the ghost child’s head.
In the same breath, she pulled a stack of immobilization, critical hit, and sure-hit talismans from her bag and hurled them forward.
The giant blade slammed down with crushing force, splitting the Yellow Father Ghost’s skull. The violent shockwave sent the surrounding zombies flying in all directions.
Without pausing for a breath, Lin Huai tossed out a thunderblast talisman and a bright fire talisman. With an ear-splitting boom and a blinding flash of flames, both the boy in yellow and the horde of zombies were blown to ash, leaving the road silent once more.
Gasping for air, Lin Huai dropped to one knee. Wielding the greatsword had drained nearly all her energy.
She swallowed several guiyuan restoration pills and spiritual energy pills before finding the strength to stand up and gather the supplies from the chest.
The spiritual energy pills refilled her magic reserves, while the guiyuan pills restored her health and cleansed negative status effects.
The little ghost had hit her with a barrage of debuffs. She had to swallow five guiyuan pills in a row before her body finally returned to normal.
Old Hei was truly out for blood. She hadn’t even reached the intermediate tier yet, and he had thrown a Yellow Father Ghost at her—one of the deadliest mid-tier monsters in existence!
Its psychic wail could easily burst a person’s head like a melon. If she hadn’t reacted instantly, she would have dropped dead on the spot.
Yet before Lin Huai could even celebrate collecting her loot, a child’s shrill sobbing started ringing directly in her ear.
She spun around, alarmed. The road was completely empty; the zombies had been wiped out, and the few Safety Ambassadors standing out in the river were merely watching from afar without approaching.
The sound seemed to be attached to her mind, like an invisible earphone looping the child’s terrible crying over and over again, clinging to her like a parasite.
Lin Huai popped another guiyuan pill into her mouth, but it did nothing. The sound was not a standard debuff that medicine could cure.
She brought up her light screen and ran a scan.
[Wild Ghost’s Wail: A curse from the Yellow Father Ghost. The cursed player will hear the nonstop wailing of wild ghosts in their ears for the next 72 hours.]
Lin Huai felt ready to lose her mind. Hearing this noise for three straight days was enough to drive anyone completely insane!
All that suffering for a single bone-crushing box—and all it had given her was an item printer, one intermediate talisman blueprint, and one intermediate magical artifact blueprint. Why did the system have to torture her like this?
She shook her head, trying to ignore the constant ringing in her ears, and lined up the three green ghost boxes along the center of the asphalt.
She fired another quick burst from her submachine gun. Out of the three boxes sprang two green ghosts and one floating green hand!
The two green ghosts were easy prey; a clean hail of mithril bullets shredded them immediately.
Only the cursed hand proved troublesome. Lin Huai dodged with all her might, but the icy claw still managed to stamp a dark green handprint onto her wrist!
She was just about to enter the town, and getting hit with a double curse right at the gates was pure bad luck.
If she had known this would happen, she would have kept the boxes sealed. With her rank-one strength, was she really unable to protect a few crates?
Still, what was done was done. She had to press on into the town.
Gathering up all her new supplies, Lin Huai climbed into the driver’s seat and accelerated forward. Up ahead, a settlement with clustered buildings rose into view through the rain.
She pressed down on the gas pedal and headed straight toward the entrance.
Because this was only the first regional merge, the town was small, simple, and rustic, carrying the distinct feel of a rural Chinese village from the 1990s.
Lin Huai drove slowly down the main street, noticing that many players had already parked their cars along the roadside and wandered off to explore.
She could only shake her head. Did they really think this was an amusement park?
These beginners were far too naive. This was no ordinary human village—it was an outright ghost town!
Sure enough, before she had driven much farther, a woman came running out of a clothing shop, screaming at the top of her lungs. Hot on her heels was a well-dressed female ghost carrying a set of burial shrouds, politely yet persistently insisting that the girl try them on.
