168: Chapter 168 "The Cleaner"? Or an "Old Friend"?

The waste disposal center on the west side of the Science and Technology Park was a place even more nauseating than the water supply center.

Mountains of rotting matter emitted a suffocating stench, with rats and maggots crawling through the crevices.

Ryan advanced, stepping across the slimy ground, his twin hammers wreathed in Hellfire carving bright trails through the darkness.

This wasn't just for illumination, but also because any insects or rats that came near the flames would be instantly incinerated into ash.

"Ghost of the Deep Forest..." Ryan muttered the name, vigilantly scanning his surroundings.

"Why hide in a pile of trash? A pool of wine and a forest of meat? I suppose that's not wrong; the 'trash' here is mostly composed of corpse remains..."

[Rustle... rustle...]

A faint sound came from deep within the mountain of garbage. It wasn't the sound of rats—it was more like something grinding its nails.

Ryan looked toward the source of the sound. Behind several scrapped compactors, he could vaguely see a flash of white.

"Am I that lucky?" he whispered, slowly approaching.

Just five meters from the target, the ground beneath his feet suddenly gave way—the seemingly solid floor collapsed, revealing a deep pit three meters in diameter!

Ryan reacted extremely quickly, catching himself in a split across the opening; watching those Jean-Claude Van Damme videos yesterday really wasn't in vain. Of course, due to the sudden split, he wouldn't be telling anyone about the strain in his groin.

He then slammed his hammer into the pit wall to steady himself. Looking down, he saw the bottom was actually piled high with white bones!

"A hunter's trap?" Ryan frowned. Just as he was about to climb out, the sound of wind came from above—

A massive iron net dropped down toward his head!

Clang!

With a swing of his hammer, the iron net snapped. But the attacker finally revealed themselves—a human!!?

In the most abnormal of places, the most normal thing had appeared.

Beneath a white tent was a street stall in a style common to Paradise Lost. A figure resembling a tall, thin man, dressed as a merchant in a black robe and mask, was leisurely smoking a pipe behind the stall.

As the two approached to look, they saw various strange small bottles displayed on the stall, filled with liquids that looked either dreamlike or malevolent. Strangely, the area covered by the stall and tent had no insects, snakes, or rats, nor any strange odors...

Under each potion bottle was a small slip of paper. Other than that, there was nothing else on the stall except for a strange cash box for collecting money, which looked like a prop.

"Eh... I received a system notification that a very promising Alchemist would appear here. Of course, it certainly isn't you, Sir Werewolf Knight."

"Is it that elegant-looking Druid behind you? Close to nature... er, forget it, the possibility of a Druid loathed by nature is also quite low..."

Hearing him talk to himself, Ryan really wanted to give him a hammer blow, or several. However, the Paradise Lost system notification had already appeared in the party channel.

[Detected that an Adventurer was accidentally injured by a Paradise Lost staff member. Compensation: 2000 points. Please ensure you do not engage in combat with non-combatants, otherwise... Obliteration!]

"Hah!"

Ryan performed a backhand upward swing with his hammer, and Hellfire roared out, turning two nearby trees into temporary torches.

"I do know the Alchemist you're talking about. She's tied up with something for now and can't make it here," Ryan said, pointing toward the breath that had split the Science and Technology Park in two, where the blue bone-fire was still crackling.

"A teammate? Very well, then let's talk price." The Black-Robed Merchant patted the cash box hanging on him. "I lost quite a bit at her place before..."

"First, pay the fee to view the potions and recipes. 1000 points per person! Hurry up!"

"You... son of a...?!! I didn't hammer you just now because the system wouldn't let me, but if I hammer you to death for robbing points now, Paradise Lost wouldn't have any objections, right?" Ryan complained wildly in his mind.

In the end, Ryan couldn't resist Sister Loran's tugging and reached his hand over the cash box held out by the Black-Robed Merchant. A "clink-clink!" sound rang out, and the system notified him that 1000 points had been spent to view the alchemy recipes.

Loran wasn't the type to let her points be taken for nothing either. She took out paper and a pen, squatted in front of the stall, and began to transcribe the alchemy potion recipes...

...On Mia's side, the office building was considered the most "decent" structure in the Science and Technology Park—if one ignored the bloodstains on the walls and the shattered windows.

She and Chen Mo pushed open the glass doors, greeted by a front lobby in total disarray. Scattered documents were covered in thick dust, and wire-like cobwebs hung from the ceiling. Most bizarrely—all the computer screens were lit up, displaying the same image:

A pair of blood-red eyes.

"Old House Ghost..." Mia looked around. "That sounds like it should appear in an old house. Why choose to occupy a modern office building?"

"Probably because of the resentment. It's definitely not because there are more computer screens here." Chen Mo took out the wish compass. After spinning wildly, the needle pointed toward the elevators. "The item suggests a mass suicide occurred here."

The elevators had long since stopped running, so the two headed up the stairs via the emergency exit. Unlike the chaos below, the third-floor corridor was exceptionally tidy—every office door was tightly shut, but a dark red light seeped through the gaps.

"Strange..." Chen Mo touched the bullet holes in the wall. "This floor wasn't here the last time I came."

Mia suddenly stopped in her tracks. "Since a moment ago, there's been one extra set of footsteps."

The two whipped around—at the end of the corridor, a woman in professional attire had appeared at some unknown point. Her lowered head was tilted at a bizarre angle, and her mouth was split open to her ears.

"Ke... ke... ke..." her laughter carried the static sound of an old television with no signal.

Instantly, all the office doors opened at once! The same woman stood in every doorway, her posture identical!

"Hallucinations?" Chen Mo drew his gun and fired—

The bullet passed through the ghost's body and hit the wall, but the struck phantom appeared behind Chen Mo, its rotting fingers reaching for his shoulder!

Bang!

Mia's silk-clad toe kicked the ghost, and it dissipated with a scream. But more phantoms surged from all directions. The temperature in the corridor dropped sharply, and the wallpaper began to peel away, revealing blood-red fleshy walls beneath!

"Physical attacks have limited effect..." Mia frowned. "Is 'that' of yours ready?"

Chen Mo nodded and suddenly pressed the wish compass to the floor: "[Lock Reality]!"

The compass erupted with intense light, and all the ghostly phantoms shattered like glass. Only the entity originally standing at the elevator remained—this was the true core of the Old House Ghost!

[Old House Ghost LV15]

Memory Phantom: Replicates memory scenes of the target's fears.

Mental Pollution: The observer's Sanity value continuously drops.

Reality Distortion: Can transform parts of the area into the "home" from its memories.

The ghost let out a piercing shriek, and the entire office building began to warp and deform. The walls turned into rotting wood, and the floor became the collapsing stairs of an old residence... this was the dilapidated building where it had lived before death!

"Watch out! It's about to expand its Domain!" Chen Mo shouted.

Mia, however, curled her lips into a smile. "Just as well... I wanted to be lazy and expand my Domain too..."

The entire office building seemed to be imprinted over, and then completely replaced by a Rococo-style cathedral that looked filled with the fragrance of flowers and the singing of birds—the [Nightmare Cathedral]...