Chapter 361: The World’s Malice Condensed into an Entity

At the redemption counter of Dream Come True Entertainment City, Lu Yibei once again witnessed Jiang Li’s outrageous desire to win.

All she had done was casually say, “Let’s see who dies first,” and Jiang Li actually exchanged another full fifty years of lifespan over it.

A hundred and fifty years?

By then, she’d be a hundred and sixty-nine years old. What’s the point of living that long?

Does she really want to be an elder that much?

Lu Yibei suspected that if it weren’t for the fact that the chips required to keep adding up became too astronomical, this woman would probably try to exchange with the sky-no, with the Entertainment City-for another five hundred years.

As for why the chips needed to exchange for more than fifty years of lifespan suddenly increased, Lu Yibei hadn’t asked the bunny girl for the reason, but combining some info she’d once gotten from Gou Meng, she’d more or less figured it out.

According to her pesky little sister, even those few at the very top of the haunting pyramid had a limit to their existence. Psychics were probably the same.

A lifespan of a hundred-odd years was pretty much the upper limit for a psychic. Beyond that, it wasn’t just prolonging life, it fell into the realm of pursuing immortality. Naturally, the chips required for such an exchange were on a completely different scale.

So, if you were to plot the number of chips needed to exchange for lifespan as a function, would it look like a “V” curve?

Tch, both the fleeting moment and eternity are priceless, but only those mundane, uneventful days are worth nothing at all?

Maybe…

Lu Yibei thought this, shrugged noncommittally, and turned to look at Jiang Li. Noticing her mood seemed a bit down, she couldn’t help but feel curious.

“What’s wrong? Regretting it? Don’t want to live that long after all? No need to worry about a little thing like this, you know. They’re just letting you live longer, it’s not like they’ve turned on some cheat where you can’t die.”

“After all, you never know which will come first-tomorrow, or an accident, right?”

Faced with Lu Yibei’s daily trash talk, Jiang Li rolled her eyes and continued her silence.

She’d originally wanted to use the redemption counter to retrieve the memories she’d lost to the Big Boss, but unfortunately, those memories hadn’t appeared on the redemption list.

Although the knowledge and common sense she’d accumulated over the years hadn’t vanished along with her memories, she often found herself unable to recall where that knowledge and common sense had come from.

This hollow feeling in her mind was not pleasant.

As she pondered, Jiang Li’s gaze swept across Lu Yibei’s increasingly bulging pocket, and she frowned slightly. There, aside from that absurdly large emerald rough stone, a few bright red round corals and several golden fish scales had been added.

She couldn’t name the golden fish scales, but she did recognize the corals as Longan Coral-a high-tier alchemical material rich in fire attribute psychic energy, occasionally found near undersea volcanoes.

“Why are you exchanging for alchemical materials? Since when did you learn that craft?”

“Uh…” Lu Yibei was momentarily stunned, pouted, and played dumb. “Don’t you know me? What alchemy would I know! Just buying and selling, that’s all.”

“When I was outside, I saw someone buying this stuff at high prices. I compared it, and the buying price is much higher than what you spend in chips to exchange for them, so I figured I’d buy some, make a quick profit.”

Hauling goods for others? That did sound like something Lu Yibei would do… After hearing her explanation, Jiang Li muttered inwardly, calmed herself, and continued walking forward.

Lu Yibei followed half a step behind Jiang Li, covertly observing her back. Seeing there was no suspicion, she let out a silent sigh of relief.

She absolutely couldn’t let Jiang Li know she was an alchemy prodigy, even less that she was gathering materials to restore a haunting’s core entity.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Jiang Li. The real problem was Jiang Li’s constant urge to “set people on the right path.” Just yesterday, while they were resting, she’d enthusiastically recommended the Midnight Watchers Society headquarters’ haunting re-creation research institute to Lu Yibei!

With such strict supervision, how was she ever going to get married in the future!

Re-creation research institute…

A place like that sounded like somewhere you’d be thrown into a pressure cooker to be remade. Once in, no coming out. You’d have to kill her before she’d go!

Sorry, Ah-Li, even if the outside world is full of Jackie Chans(Famous Chinese kung fu stars) lugging around furniture, I can’t stop now! Lu Yibei thought.

When Lu Yibei and Jiang Li returned to the door of VIP Lounge No. 002, Ah-Hua and a gold-clad bunny girl had already been waiting for quite some time.

Seeing the two return, Ah-Hua immediately came up, face beaming at Jiang Li. “Miss, that bunny girl from earlier was looking for you, asking when your gambling game will open again. Now there are a lot more guests signing up for the game.”

Although Ah-Hua didn’t know what her miss and Lu Yibei were plotting, seeing them win chip after chip made her very happy.

“Really?” Jiang Li glanced at the bunny girl waiting in front of the lounge door, nodded in greeting, and walked forward.

Lu Yibei stood where she was, scrutinizing the bunny girl negotiating with Jiang Li, frowning slightly.

More guests signing up again?

Is it because I spent so many chips, causing the Entertainment City’s stockpile to increase, and now those chips are flowing back to the guests again?

Lu Yibei vaguely felt something was amiss, but couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

A moment later, Jiang Li finished negotiating with the bunny girl and returned to Lu Yibei’s side, asking softly, “The Entertainment City sent someone to ask when we’ll reopen the game. What do you think?”

“What else? If someone’s delivering money to our door, we take it!” Lu Yibei shrugged. “I bet those bunny girls are anxious for their cut, too.”

She lowered her voice. “Besides, you remember the plan I told you about, right? We just spent a wave of chips, but we’re still far from putting the plan into action!”

“Mhm.” Jiang Li nodded. “Then I’ll tell her we’ll open again in two hours.”

“Why wait two hours?” Lu Yibei didn’t understand.

“Because I think you need to rest for a while.” Jiang Li replied in a tone that sounded like a boss giving orders to a subordinate. “You didn’t close your eyes at all while I was sleeping, did you?”

“……”

Lu Yibei opened her mouth, wanting to retort, but when she met Jiang Li’s unquestionable gaze, she shrank her neck and muttered, “Fine, whatever you say. I can’t handle this on my own anyway.”

Besides, I want to see if my guess is correct! Lu Yibei added silently in her heart.

The gambling game didn’t start immediately, and Lu Yibei didn’t obediently follow Jiang Li’s suggestion to find a place to nap.

Although she really wanted to, she felt that if she wanted to test whether the frequency of hallucinations was related to the number of chips she owned, it would be more appropriate to do so in a crowded place.

So, using the excuse of looking for Liu Seer, Lu Yibei slipped out of Jiang Li’s line of sight.

When she returned to the main hall, she found that the hall, which had been much quieter because many guests had lost all their chips to her, was now bustling with people again-she had no idea when so many guests had arrived.

They crowded around the gambling tables, everyone scrambling to place their bets, the atmosphere noisy, packed, and feverishly excited. It reminded her of the aunties and uncles fighting over cabbages during supermarket sales.

Each one of them looked like retired soldiers in a supermarket, nothing like the frail figures you’d see on a bus.

Lu Yibei, with a spicy strip dangling from her mouth, scanned the room and headed toward the most crowded gambling table-a dice game of odd or even-trying to squeeze in. Unsurprisingly, she ended up stuck on the outside of the crowd.

Her petite, slender frame, without the use of psychic energy, was no match for those tall, burly psychics and hauntings.

Helpless, she asked a bunny girl to bring her a chair. With a spicy strip in her mouth, she sat quietly to the side, observing the scene.

During this time, a bunny girl kindly brought her drinks and snacks. Guests holding a large number of chips like her always received special treatment anywhere in the Entertainment City.

And so, in the chaotic main hall of the Entertainment City, there appeared a girl who seemed completely out of place.

At the Russian roulette table, guests slammed the table in excitement, their eyes red as they won chips, while she complained to the bunny girl that the macarons were too sweet.

At the Texas Hold’em table, guests lost everything and left in dejection, while she told the bunny girl to make her next milk tea half-sweet.

Many guests who recognized Lu Yibei thought she wanted to join in and play a few hands. They all watched her closely, hoping to follow this “big shot” and make a killing. But all she did was keep stuffing snacks into her mouth, like a merciless snack-destroying machine.

People came and went at the gambling tables, guests changing over and over, but she just sat there, picking at her toes, gazing at the ceiling, milk tea in her left hand, spicy strips in her right, enjoying a peaceful moment.

The only time she got up was to go upstairs and bring Ah-Hua down to join her in feasting.

Two hours passed in the blink of an eye. When Lu Yibei finally stood up from her chair, she immediately drew a lot of attention.

Is it finally happening?

Is she going to place a bet?

But she only scratched the back of her head, turned around expressionlessly, and walked upstairs with Ah-Hua.

As she passed the stairwell corner, Lu Yibei glanced out of the corner of her eye at the guests who had been trying to follow her bets. She curled her lips, then carefully recalled what she had observed in the casino just now. Her gaze sharpened as she fell into deep thought.

There really is a problem, a huge problem! Lu Yibei thought.

According to her observations over the past two hours, on the surface, there was nothing wrong with the upper three floors’ main hall. At every gambling table, guests were winning and losing in equal measure, just like the scenes that played out in the Entertainment City every moment.

But…

These psychics and hauntings were not just random passersby picked off the street. Each of them had their own distinctive appearance and psychic energy fluctuation!

Leaving the main hall and walking into the corridor of the private rooms, Lu Yibei finally turned to Ah-Hua and lowered her voice, asking, “Ah-Hua, did you manage to tell? The psychic energy fluctuations of the guests in the hall-who had appeared in previous gambling games, and who hadn’t?”

Previously, when Lu Yibei and Jiang Li were playing against the guests, Ah-Hua had been waiting outside the private room the whole time. She had basically seen all the guests who participated in the gambling games.

Thanks to the Spirit Pattern’s keen insight into psychic energy fluctuations, as long as she encountered the same fluctuation again, she was at least eighty or ninety percent sure she wouldn’t mistake it.

“Mm…” Ah-Hua recalled briefly, then looked at Lu Yibei and said seriously, “I recognized quite a few. Many of the ones who were winning big had appeared in our gambling games before, but those who were losing almost all the time-their psychic energy fluctuations were unfamiliar!”

“I knew it!” Lu Yibei said in a low voice, clenching her pink fists.

“What’s wrong? Is there a problem?” Ah-Hua pushed up her glasses, crossed her arms, and glanced sideways at Lu Yibei. “By the way, you still haven’t told me why you wanted me to do this!”

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll go tell my miss that you didn’t listen to her and rest properly!”

“……”

Go ahead, tell her. You think I’m afraid of her?

Yes, I am!

Lu Yibei opened her mouth, stared straight into Ah-Hua’s eyes, and said solemnly, “Ah-Hua, go find your miss first. I have something very important to do right now. I’ll tell you the reason when I get back later.”

With that, she hurried off, not giving Ah-Hua any chance to refuse.

“Hey, hey! Where are you going? You…” Ah-Hua called out a few times. Seeing that Lu Yibei didn’t respond at all, she stomped her foot in frustration and headed toward the lounge with a look of grievance.

Behind a stone pillar at the corner not far away, a pair of clear eyes watched Ah-Hua leave, breathed a sigh of relief, and then looked down at the seemingly normal main hall, growing increasingly grave.

“……”

So it really is like that. Those newcomers are deliberately losing their chips! Lu Yibei thought fiercely.

Just now, while intensely using her eyes to randomly select a lucky viewer and employ her precognition ability, she was waiting for the hallucinations to appear. After about an hour, she had basically confirmed that the frequency of hallucinations was related to the number of chips one possessed.

However, in the process, she noticed another anomaly.

With her memory-capable of memorizing The Diagram of the Gentleman Sword of Taihe after a single glance-she was nearly familiar with the faces of all the psychics and hauntings who had participated in her organized gambling games.

She discovered that the most active, the most boisterous, and the guests who lost the most chips in the hall were all unfamiliar faces, and not a small number-at least about thirty percent of the total guests.

Legend has it that in ancient times, Norwegians would put several large catfish into their vats when catching sardines, to prevent the sardines from dying on the way back. The catfish, swimming around and stirring up friction, would make the naturally quiet sardines move, significantly increasing their survival rate.

And this extra thirty percent of unfamiliar faces was just like the “catfish”!

They lost a huge amount of chips, left briefly, then quickly returned with newly exchanged chips, continuing to lose them. The cycle repeated.

As a result, the other gamblers, whose spirits had originally been dampened by Lu Yibei’s games, were now abnormally excited, as if injected with adrenaline, constantly stimulated by their winnings.

But…

Where did these people suddenly come from?

And how did they get so many chips to lose?

Thinking carefully, within this Entertainment City, the only one who could suddenly produce so many chips could only be that Big Boss, right?

Lu Yibei turned to look at the pitch-black vortex leading to the No Return Place, frowning.

Could it be…

The Big Boss finally couldn’t resist making a move?

Damn, I really thought, just as Jiang Li said, that he would be absolutely fair and just!

With that, she strode quickly to the arbitration room, and soon got the answer she wanted from the bunny girl there.

As expected, the number of guests signing up for their gambling games had increased again, almost back to the peak value!

“Damn it!”

Standing near the floor-to-ceiling windows outside the arbitration room, Lu Yibei slammed her fist hard against the column beside her.

There’s something wrong with those chips.

After I spend the chips, the Big Boss secretly sends people to lose chips to other guests, and then lets them lose those chips to me. This way, the number of my chips doesn’t decrease much.

The Big Boss is clearly targeting me!

Lu Yibei thought, squinting at the haunting that looked like an eyeball wandering not far away, and gave it the middle finger.

You play tricks on me, I’ll play tricks on you!

Let’s see who outplays whom!

When it comes to underhanded moves, I’ve never been afraid of anyone. If you’ve got guts, don’t use brute force-let’s play dirty together!

“Bang! Bang-bang! Bang-!”

Just as Lu Yibei was inwardly swearing, a series of muffled bangs interrupted her thoughts. Following the sound, she saw a figure, barely clothed and covered in mangled flesh and blood, clinging to the outside of the glass window. With long hair hanging down and covering its face, the figure was waving frantically at her, seemingly in a panic.

“What the hell! May I ask, what kind of monster are you!?”

Startled, Lu Yibei jumped back, instinctively conjuring a fireball the size of a washbasin in her hand.

Seeing this, the figure grew even more frantic, hurriedly breathed a patch of white mist onto the glass, and quickly wrote a line of words.

[Liu Seer: Help, quickly!!!]

Lu Yibei’s eyelid twitched. “…”

What the heck? What’s going on? Are you performing interpretive art here, sir?

Fifteen minutes later.

At the entrance of the upper three floors’ bathhouse, an old man was sobbing like pear blossoms in the rain.

“Uwah, they’re not human!”

“Attacking a hundred-year-old man like me! And torturing me too, it’s outrageous, not a shred of professional ethics for running a casino!”

Lu Yibei looked at Liu Seer, who appeared as delicate as a flower trampled countless times, and silently handed him a spicy strip.

“Please, sir, don’t cry for now. What happened to you? You look…”

Lu Yibei glanced at the wounds all over Liu Seer, each like a botched executioner’s cut that hadn’t quite sliced into the flesh, and stopped mid-sentence.

This old guy-he’s still alive after all that? He’s really tough!

“Sigh, it’s a long story. I barely managed to escape that ghostly place. If there’s a chance later, I’ll tell you the details. Let’s get to the main point first. Once we’re done, I have to catch the next train…”

As he spoke, Liu Seer looked around, a flash of terror in his eyes, instinctively shrinking his neck.

“Tsk tsk, I don’t want to stay here another second. Take my advice and leave too-don’t take a single chip with you!”

Did Liu Seer notice something too? Is that why he ended up like this? Lu Yibei frowned and said seriously, “I know there’s something wrong with those chips.”

“You know?” Liu Seer was stunned for a moment, then, after a brief hesitation, leaned in close to Lu Yibei’s ear and whispered so only they could hear, “But do you know, all those chips are made from the Big Boss’s flesh and blood? Let me tell you, the night before last, I fell asleep in a pile of chips, and then I dreamed…”

Lu Yibei listened quietly as Liu Seer recounted his Dream. When he described the Giant’s flesh and blood turning into gold coins under thunder, scattering across the land, driving people mad, while the Giant smiled eerily and new fresh flesh grew back onto its body, her pupils contracted violently.

A bold guess flashed through her mind.

Those chips might be stripped from the Big Boss, this Eldritch Destroyer-world malice condensed into tangible form…