"Did the girl fall into the water pit in the end?" Shadow suddenly interrupted Feng Bujue to ask.

"Huh? You've heard it before?" Feng Bujue said.

"I want to hear a story that can scare me, not a joke," Shadow replied.

"Hmm..." Feng Bujue took a long breath, "Then I'll change it." He had plenty of stories like that in his head; he could come up with a hundred or eighty without a problem. "You want something scary, right..." He thought to himself, *But speaking of which, this guy is clearly a ghost himself, yet he's asking me to tell ghost stories. The unintentional humor is really...*

This time, Feng Bujue seemed to be preparing to be serious. The shorter the story, the better, and it had to be terrifying. It was actually quite difficult to make someone feel scared purely through the power of language within a limited space.

"That day, I was sitting on a park bench." Feng Bujue suddenly changed his expression, as if he had split personality, and began to narrate in the first person. "There was a fountain in front of me. I watched the water column rise high and then fall... The clear evening sky made me feel a bit cold."

Shadow listened to Feng Bujue's narration without saying a word. From an outsider's perspective, Brother Jue was really getting into the role. The way he referred to himself as "I" was quite convincing.

"I listened to the sound of the fountain's water while unfolding the two or three evening newspapers I had with me. But no matter which newspaper it was, none of the news contained the message I was hoping to see."

Feng Bujue exhaled a puff of white mist: "About two weeks ago, a girl was found dead in an abandoned empty house in the suburbs. What I'm looking for is news reports about this." A bizarre smile appeared on the corner of his mouth. "This girl and I had been in love for some time... I remember that day, also an evening, she came to meet me for a secret rendezvous, with a peach-petal-shaped hair bun, and wearing a school uniform and skirt... She looked so beautiful that it almost took my breath away."

Feng Bujue revealed a fanatical look at this point, his breathing became rapid, and the corners of his mouth twitched a few times in a morbid way: "So... I almost subconsciously took her to an empty house near the X-Ping crossing in the suburbs, and then strangled this panicked girl to death." He paused, his eyes widened, meeting Shadow's gaze. "That made me feel relieved... If I hadn't done that, I would have definitely gone crazy, ha... hehe..." He laughed a few times, the laughter revealing a sense of satisfaction, as if he was still savoring the pleasure of that moment.

"I untied her belt, hung her from the roof beam, and disguised the scene as a suicide by hanging." Feng Bujue continued, "Although I went home as if nothing had happened afterward, from that day on, I would come to this park every evening, buy two or three different evening newspapers, and sit on the bench reading them..."

Feng Bujue sneered, "'Young girl commits suicide by hanging,' I was hoping to see such news headlines appear." He suddenly reached out and grabbed at the air around him, as if there was something there. "Suddenly, I saw it. On the ground at my feet, there was a newspaper, an old newspaper that someone had discarded. In the center of a certain edition, there were three large headlines. Those words shot into my eyes like electricity...

Unidentified corpse in an empty house.

A decaying corpse, estimated to have been dead for about two weeks, was found in an abandoned empty house near the X-Ping crossing.

The deceased was a young male dressed as a company employee."

The expression on Feng Bujue's face was now a terrifying, ghost-like one: "I grabbed the newspaper and ran out of the park like a madman, inexplicably arriving at the X-Ping crossing and standing in front of that abandoned empty house.

I looked around frantically, making sure that no one had been to this crime scene, before opening the door and going in...

It was pitch black inside. I groped around and found the eight-mat room where the corpse was hanging, struck a match and looked..."

Feng Bujue shone the flashlight on his face, leaning forward a bit: "The belt hung down from the beam, and my corpse was hanging there. At the same time, from a pitch-black place behind me, came the girl's voice."

"Ohohoho... you've finally come back to find me..." Feng Bujue's story ended abruptly here.

He changed his face almost in a second, returning to his usual expression: "How was it?"

"Uh..." The light in Shadow's eyes, which emitted a ghostly blue glow, dimmed slightly. "I think the speed of your own transformation is more terrifying than the plot of the story..."

"Stop talking nonsense!" Feng Bujue said as he drew his gun again. "From the time I came in until now, seven or eight minutes have been wasted (the total time has now exceeded twenty-six minutes). If you still want me to say..." The rest of his sentence was, *if you still want to listen, then listen to the gunshot.*

"Okay, I'll take you to the prison cell." Shadow replied before Feng Bujue could finish speaking. He raised a finger. "Don't worry about what you're about to see. They're all harmless, so don't try to struggle."

The NPC's words were indeed necessary. If it hadn't given a warning in advance, Feng Bujue would definitely have resisted the situation that was about to happen...

In the next second, a spot of white light appeared on Shadow's fingertip. The spot of light gradually turned into a ball of light, and then countless strange little things swam out of the light. The color and texture of these things were like shell-less boiled eggs, but their size and shape were closer to insect larvae, pale and ugly larvae...

Their numbers increased, swirling in a ring in mid-air like a vortex. Although they moved in groups, each individual seemed to have its own consciousness. These translucent, soft, milky-white creatures chased and devoured each other nimbly... seemingly chaotic, but actually orderly within the chaos.

Feng Bujue felt like he was watching a drop of water under a microscope, but he didn't watch for long before the bad situation happened. Those things swam over from mid-air, circling around Feng Bujue, becoming more and more dense, more and more rapid...

They began to touch Feng Bujue's body, wriggling and gathering on him... until they covered his entire body, blocking his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

Just as Feng Bujue felt that the situation was a bit out of control and suspected that he had been tricked, he suddenly felt the pressure around him ease and the cold disappear. Although his eyes were closed, he could feel the environment in front of him getting brighter.

He opened his eyes and saw...