Global Collapse

The two ghosts stood there stiffly, as if they had turned into a piece of paper standing at attention.

"Ten minutes are up," the chubby man kindly reminded it in a low voice.

The two demons remained motionless, only glaring fiercely at the fat man with their two enormous eyes.

"Big or small?" Just then, it heard a voice from below that sounded like a demon's whisper.

The two demons stiffly rolled their eyes down, only to see the demon below staring intently at them with a terrifying expression on its face.

It didn't dare to move or speak.

"Big or small?" the demon below asked again, this time raising his voice.

The little devil could no longer pretend not to hear. It arched its paper-thin body and quickly replied, "Choose the smaller one."

Before the small words had even faded completely, it quickly blurted out the next sentence: "I lost, I should go on stage for the exhibition."

Wait a minute! The fat man's eyes widened. The exciting little game had barely started for half a second!

At this moment, the little devils pounced on the exhibition stand not far away with lightning speed.

Once it's been displayed and scored, it can retire gracefully.

Hope was so close, yet so far away—the leg that had fallen behind was grabbed by the demon.

Gu Mian gripped the human skin tightly in her hand and slowly pulled it back.

The little ghost's skin was already pale, and after being captured by Gu Mian, it turned even more ashen-faced, as if it had completely lost all hope for life.

Gu Mian rolled up the human skin in her hand like a roll of paper, forming a long tube. The heads of the two ghosts were at the front, so when it was completely rolled up, its facial features were exposed on the outermost layer. The fat man could also see its eyes, which were as still as dead water.

"This makes it easier to carry around." Gu Mian nodded in satisfaction. He didn't plan to let the ghost go on stage to score it yet, and besides, the judges weren't there right now; he was still tied up upstairs.

"Is this the ghost that knocked on the door just now?" The fat man leaned closer and looked curiously at the human skin tube in Gu Mian's hand.

Gu Mian turned around and pushed open the greenhouse door of the large storage room behind her a crack, glanced at the scene inside, and then shook her head: "No."

The last time he opened the door, he saw the seedlings of the big and small demons. Now, the place where the seedlings of the big and small demons used to grow is now empty, which means that the big and small demons have just grown from seedlings to mature and left the land. They matured after the knocking sound came.

However, the ghost seeds in the greenhouse grow too fast. One moment they are seedlings, and the next they are mature, skipping even the intermediate developmental stages.

Gu Mian even suspected that the judges might have secretly injected hormones into the seeds when she wasn't looking.

"So you're saying there's still a ghost somewhere?" As he spoke, the fat man moved even closer to Gu Mian.

“Yes.” Gu Mian pondered, “Do you remember the first three seeds that sprouted in the greenhouse?”

“I remember,” the fat man recalled, “there were two sacrificial ghosts and one plastic head ghost. The plastic head ghost ran away in fear when it saw the doctor, leaving only the two sacrificial ghosts.”

"Yes, that would mean there should be at least two sacrificial ghost seedlings in the greenhouse, but I just checked and there's only one left."

"Huh?" The fat man scratched his head in confusion. "How could this be?"

"One of those sacrificial ghosts grew first, and the other grew later. Fatty, did you see how the first sacrificial ghost grew?" Gu Mian asked.

The fat man nodded: "I saw it. The evaluator was talking about the team that bred sacrificial ghosts. At that time, I suddenly saw the ground around your feet seemed to be bulging. So I stared at it."

"As I watched, I saw a ginseng fruit head pop out of it, followed by the body, and finally the whole little person just darted out in a flash."

“But the second sacrificial ghost didn’t sprout like that,” Gu Mian thought of the situation at the time. “I saw two more sprouts emerging from the ground. One of them was a human head, while the other was a very standard-sized one.”

It was so perfect, it looked like a plant sprout from a biology textbook. It didn't initially look like the Sacrifice Ghost, but by the time 007 arrived at the greenhouse entrance, it had changed its appearance.

"So, the first sacrificial ghost I saw sprouted directly from the ground, but the second sacrificial ghost you saw wasn't actually a sacrificial ghost at first; it only became that way later?" the fat man said.

“Yes,” Gu Mian turned to look at the door of the main room of the cart, “and the missing sacrificial ghost seedling is the one that changed its appearance later.”

“So, the second Sacrifice Ghost might not actually be a Sacrifice Ghost,” 007 frowned. “It can change its appearance.”

"It's a shapeshifting ghost." Coco felt things were getting tricky.

It might turn into stone, into dust, or even into the form of other ghosts.

Now that the shapeshifting plant is no longer in the greenhouse, it's very likely that the knocking they heard was coming from it. When Gu Mian opened the door, the shapeshifting plant turned into a speck of dust and left the greenhouse.

The fat man quickly scanned all the ghost models in the hall with his eyes, but did not find any extra models: "This shapeshifting ghost must be a rare species, there is no introduction to it in the hall."

007 realized something: "If this ghost can transform into the appearance of other ghosts, then it can also transform into the appearance of a human, right?"

Upon hearing this, the fat man became alert.

He cautiously tried to open the player panels for 007 and Coco, and only breathed a sigh of relief when he found that he could open them.

Even if a ghost takes on the form of a player, it cannot replicate the player's interface.

Suddenly, a hand landed on his shoulder from behind, and a sinister voice came from beside him: "Aren't you going to try and see if you can open mine?"

The fat man was startled by Gu Mian and nervously clutched his heart: "Doctor, we've been together the whole time, and ghosts don't kill each other..."

As the fat man spoke, he glanced at the lifeless little ghosts in Gu Mian's hands.

“I don’t doubt the people present. After all, we’ve been in the hall ever since we planted the ghost, and we haven’t left anyone’s sight,” 007 said, hesitating for a moment before continuing, “What I mean is… Xie Bi’an.”

By the way, just now when Coco was saying "money can make the devil turn the millstone," Xie Bi'an from upstairs came down.

At that moment, the two ghosts suddenly appeared, and everyone was distracted by them, shifting their attention away from Xie Bi'an.

Gu Mian looked in the direction where Xie Bi'an had just stood. There was no one there now; he had gone upstairs sometime earlier.

"Was that really Xie Bi'an?" 007 asked doubtfully. "It could also be a shapeshifting ghost attracted by the idea that money can make the devil work, if the ghost took on the appearance of Xie Bi'an."

Gu Mian had to stay at the entrance of the greenhouse and couldn't go up to the second floor to investigate.

These ghosts grow at a rate as fast as if they've taken hormones, and most of them are rare species; who knows how many will run out if you leave them for a short while.

He didn't want to be running around searching for unknown ghosts.

“Let’s use the ‘ghost pushing the millstone’ method again and see if Xie Bi’an will come down again,” Gu Mian said.

Fortunately, the "Ghost Pushing the Millstone" only resets the user's game currency to zero each time it is used, but it does not limit the number of times it can be used.

Coco's game coins have been reduced to zero and can no longer be used.

007's game coins are almost gone; he probably won't last until the ghost comes down from the second floor.

So this time, it was the fat guy who used the saying "money makes the world go round."

The fat man watched in pain as his more than 1,000 game coins were reduced to zero, his expression extremely ferocious.

Just as the millstone appeared, footsteps sounded again from upstairs. (End of Chapter)