46: Chapter 46 You are as rude as your skin color.
From a window upstairs, a few terrified screams rang out.
Immediately after, the front door was violently kicked open.
A Black girl rushed out.
[ image ]
She was wearing a stained hoodie, her hair messy, her pupils dilated; she was in a state of extreme agitation and frenzy.
Mia.
The addict who, in order to see her deceased mother one last time, didn't hesitate to drag her friends down with her.
She rushed onto the lawn.
She didn't even glance at the boy, Riley, who was still convulsing, his life hanging in the balance.
Her eyes were fixed intently on the severed hand at Qin Ming's feet.
That was her drug.
It was her key to the world of the dead.
"That's mine!"
Mia shrieked, her voice as hoarse as a crow whose neck was being strangled.
She lunged forward, claws out, completely ignoring the fact that Qin Ming, standing there, was a living, breathing person.
"Give it to me! It's mine!"
She reached out with her thin, dark hand, trying to shove Qin Ming aside to snatch the severed hand.
Her movements were crude.
Savage.
Carrying a sense of entitlement and predatory nature.
Qin Ming frowned.
He absolutely loathed lunatics with no sense of boundaries.
Especially idiots like this who not only harmed others but also felt no remorse.
Just as Mia's fingers were about to touch the hem of Qin Ming's clothes, Qin Ming raised his foot.
The movement wasn't fast, but it was extremely precise.
Those were expensive calfskin dress shoes.
Bang!
A textbook front kick.
It slammed hard into Mia's chest.
Crack.
It seemed as if the sound of ribs breaking rang out.
"Ah!"
Mia let out a short, sharp scream, and her entire body flew backward faster than she had come.
She rolled three times on the ground before stopping when she hit a fire hydrant on the side of the road.
She passed out instantly.
"You are as rude as your skin color."
Qin Ming withdrew his foot and lightly brushed some non-existent dust off his trouser leg.
His tone was flat.
Devoid of any emotion.
It was as if he had just kicked aside a bag of trash that was blocking his way.
In the distance, urgent sirens and the wailing of an ambulance could be heard.
A crowd of onlookers began to gather.
Qin Ming had no interest in staying to give a statement.
He bent down.
His slender fingers elegantly picked up the graffiti-covered severed hand.
It felt ice-cold to the touch.
The corpse wax inside seemed to be trembling slightly, craving a new host.
"Since nobody wants it," a meaningful smile curled the corners of Qin Ming's mouth, "then I'll reluctantly recycle it."
He turned in the shadows.
And disappeared into the depths of the night.
Leaving behind only the chaotic scene and the boy lying in a pool of blood.
Back home, Qin Ming locked the door and casually tossed the graffiti-covered severed hand onto his desk.
Under the dim light of the desk lamp, the severed hand looked exceptionally hideous and comical.
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Its surface was covered in a material that looked like plaster or perhaps ceramic; those black signatures were dense and numerous, and behind every name seemed to represent a deceased person who had once used this for amusement.
A type of extremely disgusting energy, carrying a scent of rot, was spreading across the desk.
If an ordinary person were standing here, they would likely feel a chill down the back of their neck right now, experiencing the illusion of being watched.
Qin Ming pulled out a chair and sat down.
He stared at the hand, his right index finger tapping lightly on his knee.
"A one-way channel connecting to hell... or rather, to the world of the dead?"
he muttered to himself.
Qin Ming reached out his fair, delicate little hand and, as if gripping the hand of an old friend of many years, firmly grasped the cold, severed hand.
The sensation wasn't like stone, but rather like a layer of dry skin wrapped around a mass of writhing fat.
Extremely disgusting.
Qin Ming didn't show any expression of disgust; he just calmly stared straight ahead into the void.
"Talk to me."
Hum!
The originally still air trembled violently without warning.
The desk lamp bulb emitted a harsh buzzing sound, and the light instantly turned a ghastly green.
In the darkness, a figure drenched from head to toe appeared abruptly opposite Qin Ming.
It was an extremely bloated man.
His skin was a grayish-white color from having been soaked in water for too long, his eyeballs bulged outward, his purple tongue hung from the side of his mouth, and large amounts of mucus and lake water dripped continuously from the hem of his clothes onto Qin Ming's expensive carpet.
This visual impact was enough to make any adult scream on the spot.
"You... want..."
The water ghost reached out its rotting fingers, attempting to touch Qin Ming's cheek.
Greed was reflected in its pupils—it was a craving for living flesh.
Qin Ming looked at it expressionlessly.
"You're affecting my carpet,"
Qin Ming said flatly.
The next second.
A barely perceptible golden light lit up in the void behind him.
The water ghost didn't even have time to scream; the hand it had just reached out, upon touching the air one centimeter around Qin Ming, was like snow hitting a red-hot iron.
Sizzle—!
The purifying power of the holy light exploded instantly, spreading from its fingertips to its entire body.
This lowest-level vengeful spirit was as fragile as a piece of low-quality scrap paper in front of Qin Ming.
It hadn't even clearly seen what kind of monster this "host" actually was before it completely disintegrated into specks of light in the sky, not leaving behind even a trace of ash.
[Points +1.]
[Current Balance: 31 points.]
Qin Ming raised an eyebrow.
"Although the efficiency is a bit low, it has the advantage of being safe, and I don't have to go out."
He grasped the severed hand again, which had already begun to tremble slightly.
Yes.
This severed hand, acting as a medium, seemed to feel fear.
It twitched violently in the palm of Qin Ming's hand, as if wanting to break free from this terrifying grip.
"Second time."
Qin Ming's cold voice rang out again.
"Talk to me."
The air contracted in cold again.
This time, an old woman without a chin appeared.
Before she could even display her bloodied, mangled face, Qin Ming grabbed the air with his right hand.
[Death Grip].
A huge, ghostly blue claw instantly formed in the air, seizing the old woman's neck like it was grabbing a chick.
That power, spanning dimensions, directly locked down every particle of the spirit body.
"Too weak."
Qin Ming closed his five fingers tightly.
Poof.
The old woman turned into a wisp of blue smoke.
[Points +1.]
"Continue."
Qin Ming didn't give the hand any chance to catch its breath.
"Talk to me."
[Points +1.]
"Talk to me."
[Points +1.]
By the sixth time, the black graffiti on the severed hand actually began to fade, as if the power inside was being forcibly drained.
The spirits that had originally been eager to possess a body, on the other end of that dimension, seemed to have also sensed that something was wrong with this coordinate point.
Where was this an "admission ticket"?
This was clearly a "one-way ticket" to the slaughterhouse.
When Qin Ming shouted the command for the seventh time, he waited for a full three seconds before the space barely managed to squeeze out a scorched phantom.
When the phantom saw the faint golden halo appearing behind Qin Ming's head, it actually let out a terrified shriek and attempted to shrink back.
It wanted to run.
"Since you're already here,"
Qin Ming tilted his head slightly.
The physical halo behind his head flew out instantly.
The golden disc rotated, slicing open the charred ghost's chest cavity, and a wave of holy fire illuminated the entire sky above the Strife residence in that instant.
[Points +1.]
Qin Ming's expression now was like an old worker inspecting defective products on an assembly line, full of boredom and listlessness.
Monsters of this difficulty couldn't even give him the pleasure of a fight.
Eighth time.
Ninth time.
When the ninth beam of holy light purified the last remaining trace of cold air.
[Current Points Balance: 39 points.]
Qin Ming grasped the hand for the tenth time.
"Talk to me."
Silence.
A dead silence.
The desk lamp on the desk had returned to its normal warm yellow color.
The severed hand no longer trembled, nor was it cold.
It looked like it had completely turned into a dead object; its surface, once covered in graffiti, had become pale as paper, and a tiny crack had even appeared.
Even though Qin Ming increased the force of his tone again, that so-called world of the dead gave no further response.
Perhaps the spirits in that dimension had reached a consensus: This family's child is not to be touched.
"That's it?"
Qin Ming curled his lip, and with some disdain, tossed the "broken" severed hand into his storage space.
He had originally thought this thing would allow him to farm a few hundred points directly, but it only took nine rounds before the "server" on the other side crashed.
Qin Ming yawned.
He glanced at the wall clock; it was one o'clock in the morning.
A body of this age really still needed plenty of sleep.
"I have to go to school tomorrow, what a hassle."