Free Web NovelChapter 109: Chapter 27: Abnormal Green Word Task
Watching the woman’s inexplicable smile from under her umbrella, Gao Tian suddenly had a bad feeling.
Had his ghost luck activated? He hadn’t felt any of the good fortune it was supposed to bring.
Why did he only draw a 10? The odds of her overpowering him were too high.
Or was it that the Rainy Woman, as an S-Level meme-like phenomenon, had rules that trumped his ghost luck?
The instant the Rainy Woman drew a card, Gao Tian had already prepared for the worst.
If she revealed a J or a Q, he definitely wouldn’t be stupid enough to just stand at the door and wait to be imprisoned in the urn.
He would either immediately run into the apartment and see if it could negate the urn’s effect, or he would dive directly into a mirror and gamble on whether the urn’s rule-based power would follow him into the Mirror World.
In short, he would absolutely cheat. Keeping your word with a ghost was the stupidest thing you could do.
However, the turn of events completely exceeded all of Gao Tian’s expectations, and all his carefully laid plans came to nothing—
After drawing the card, the woman’s lips, hidden under the umbrella, still held a faint smile.
She didn’t look at the card’s value, she didn’t show it to Gao Tian—in fact, she had never intended to play the game from the very beginning...
The woman opened her cherry-like mouth, revealing rings of sharp teeth like a demon’s beneath her plump lips, and a throat that was a bottomless pit. Then, without hesitation, she crumpled the entire card into a ball, stuffed it into her mouth, and chewed, the sound of tearing cardboard echoing as she ate the playing card.
From start to finish, she never once glanced at the card she had drawn.
Gao Tian’s head was buzzing. It took him a long moment to realize what had happened.
’The Rainy Woman... had eaten the playing card from the urn?’
Such a blatant disregard for the rules of the game made the ashes in the urn begin to boil. The urn was forced open by a strange power, impossible to hold down. A massive cloud of dust burst out like a tornado, surrounding the Rainy Woman. In the blink of an eye, it engulfed her and then swept her back into the urn.
In an instant, the urn slammed shut with a THUD. The spot where the woman had been standing was now empty.
’What in the world just happened?’
’Just like that... an S-Level vengeful spirit was imprisoned so easily?’
Gao Tian felt the heavy weight of the urn in his hands. The sense of unreality was so strong it felt like he was dreaming.
No wonder he had only drawn a 10, even with his ghost luck active. In that situation, even if he had drawn the lowest card, an Ace, he was guaranteed to win.
An S-Level vengeful spirit didn’t put up the slightest bit of resistance against the urn? It made Gao Tian’s earlier heroic resolve, when he’d opened the door ready to face death, feel like a complete waste.
It wasn’t until the Rainy Woman’s killing method, transmitted from the urn, entered Gao Tian’s mind:
The ability to create rain out of thin air under any weather condition, even indoors.
This rain is a supernatural phenomenon.
...
That’s it. Just that one short sentence.
’This is the killing method of an S-Level vengeful spirit? That’s it?’
Gao Tian clutched the urn, feeling more and more that something was wrong.
This didn’t match the Rainy Woman’s supposed killing method that was circulating online at all.
In other words, Gao Tian felt that the urn had only contained a part of her rules.
The Rainy Woman being able to create rain out of thin air was certainly one of her abilities. But her powers went far beyond that; the parts that came after were the real key.
’Could it be...’
This type of meme-like phenomenon has a tendency to endlessly replicate itself. In other words, there might already be thousands of Rainy Women throughout Shanghai. The one Gao Tian had just captured was only one of those thousands, which was why he only received a thousandth of her killing method.
That would also explain why the Rainy Woman was so indifferent to the game. Sacrificing one of her thousands of selves to use up one of Gao Tian’s important items was a huge win for the vengeful spirit.
Of course, all of this was just Gao Tian’s speculation. No one knew what the truth was right now.
With the Rainy Woman gone, the blood-red rain outside the apartment gradually faded in color, turning into ordinary, clear rainwater.
The downpour, however, did not lessen in the slightest. The weather didn’t return to normal just because the Rainy Woman had vanished.
Regardless, the crisis outside the apartment was temporarily resolved.
Gao Tian shoved the urn into a mirror and retreated back into the apartment.
Inside the apartment, Jiang Yang saw that the Rainy Woman outside had disappeared, but Gao Tian’s expression remained heavy, showing no signs of joy.
He asked,
"What’s wrong? Did it come at a great cost?"
Gao Tian briefly explained his theory, and Jiang Yang stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"That’s a possibility."
"But it’s also possible that meme-like phenomena are just this weak before they’ve fully matured."
"They’re still at a stage where a single Supernatural Artifact can contain them."
After all, the apartment residents had rarely encountered this type of meme-like vengeful spirit. They didn’t have much intel on them and could only guess.
In any case, the matter of the Rainy Woman had come to a close for now, more startling than dangerous.
If she came looking for the two of them again, they would deal with it then.
The call to the Spirit Disaster Bureau never went through, so Jiang Yang simply hung up. A moment ago, while he was confronting the woman outside the glass door, a new line of green text had appeared on the apartment’s back wall—a new mission.
Some unlucky bastard from one of the floors was about to be sent out on a mission again.
Jiang Yang, still feeling a sense of relief from the Rainy Woman’s disappearance, walked toward the back wall to check.
Every apartment resident had an obligation to inform the other members about the green-text missions.
When he saw the text on the wall, the look of relief on Jiang Yang’s face vanished without a trace.
It was replaced by an expression of utter disbelief.
After reading the green-text mission three times, Jiang Yang still couldn’t believe the words on the wall. He muttered to himself,
"How is this possible..."
"This is too strange. It’s not my time yet."
"And we’ve never had a mission like this before. It’s completely abnormal."
Seeing him so flustered, Gao Tian’s curiosity was piqued. He temporarily set aside the matter of the Rainy Woman and walked over, asking,
"What happened?"
Judging from Jiang Yang’s tone, this mission involved him.
It was indeed unusual. For a veteran resident like Jiang Yang, who had completed five missions, the interval between missions was usually quite long. By his calculations, his next mission should still have been months away, but the green text had appeared early.
But all the "rules" and "intervals" in the apartment had been figured out by generations of residents through trial and error. The apartment had never had a manager, or an avatar for that matter, to personally confirm the exact enforcement of each rule.
The green-text missions appearing somewhat early or late was a normal occurrence. It wasn’t the first time it had happened.
So why was Jiang Yang this shocked? If anything, Gao Tian thought Jiang Yang’s reaction was what was abnormal.
Jiang Yang slowly turned around, his expression grim.
"Your name is on the green-text mission, too."
For a moment, Gao Tian didn’t understand what Jiang Yang meant.
’My name, on the green text?’
’What kind of joke is this? Jiang Yang must have misspoken.’
Jiang Yang was going from his fifth mission to his sixth, while he was going from his third to his fourth. They weren’t on the same level, so how could they be assigned the same mission?
It seemed he would have to go to the wall and see for himself just what the hell was going on with this green-text mission.
"Listen, Gao Tian, I know this is hard to accept."
"I’ve only ever heard of this type of mission in rumors."
"It’s called a joint mission."
"Residents of different levels in the apartment work together to complete the same mission. But each resident has a different objective to achieve..."
Jiang Yang’s voice was still ringing in his ears.
Gao Tian had already walked up to the wall covered in green text.
[JOINT MISSION]
Mission Requirements:
Mission participants must depart tonight for Longshu Temple in the Inner World and survive there for 7 days.
Based on their previous mission completion records, each participant must complete a corresponding event in Longshu Temple. The conditions for mission success are completely different for each.
Participants:
Jiang Yang (5 missions): Ensure Yu Sheng’s survival and investigate the past events of Longshu Temple.
Gao Tian (3 missions): Retrieve a specific coffin, return to the real world, and ensure it remains completely intact.
Wang Wenbo (2 missions): On the condition that Jiang Yang completes his objective, help the Monks of the temple find relief from their pain and end their unending torment.
...
The mission description ended there.
This mission was truly bizarre. Not only did its participants span completely different tiers of residents,
from the highest (fifth mission) to the lowest (second mission).
The requirements for each person were completely different. Never before had such a "creative" mission appeared.
Longshu Temple. Gao Tian would not forget that name.
It was Yu Sheng’s seventh mission.
Come to think of it, the day Yu Sheng had left was the same day as the fourth-floor exploration. Since then, Gao Tian had gone through so much—the Haunted House, Jin Hai Mansion, the Divine Tree—but even now, Yu Sheng had not returned to the apartment.
If it were anyone else, being trapped in the Inner World for this long meant they were 99% likely already dead.
But Yu Sheng was no ordinary person. Missions beyond the fifth one had very long processes and couldn’t be completed in just a day or two.
Besides, Jiang Yang’s mission objective clearly stated, "Ensure Yu Sheng’s survival."
This indirectly proved that Yu Sheng, at least for now, was still alive. If Yu Sheng were already dead, Jiang Yang’s mission would have been a failure from the start.
Staring at the green-text mission before him, Gao Tian felt a mix of emotions.
He should have had at least two more months before his own mission. It had been moved up. He had just returned to the apartment, and he couldn’t even get a moment’s rest before he had to go back out and fight for his life.
Although Yu Sheng had really screwed him over with the gray card incident, knowing he was still alive... was a huge relief.
"I’ll go contact Wang Wenbo. You get ready. The gray ticket stub should have already appeared in your room. We need to get ready to leave,"
Jiang Yang said.
Even if the mission hadn’t specified leaving tonight, they wouldn’t dare delay for a few days.
Yu Sheng had been in Longshu Temple for over three weeks with no word. Every day they arrived earlier gave them a better chance of saving him; otherwise, it would lead directly to the failure of Jiang Yang’s mission.
...
...
An old man wearing a military overcoat, smoking a long-stemmed pipe, and looking a bit rustic, limped up to the glass doors of an apartment building’s first floor.
"Been a while since I showed off for the young ’uns. A few consecutive flashes and I went and threw out my old back."
"Better tone it down next time. I’m not as young as I used to be. Time waits for no man."
He took a deep drag from his pipe, slowly raised his head, and looked at the sign above the apartment, which was obscured by ivy. He could just barely make out the four words: "Apartment for the Living."
