This Damned Thirst for Survival
chapter-69

The corridor is empty.

The bloodied killer’s face was expressionless, hostility on his handsome face.

Jiang Luo just walked away with a clean slate.

This is a sure way of telling Chi You once again that you are just a tool to be used by me.

Jiang Luo kisses him, not to escape, not because of anything else, but because it will trap Chi You.

But Chi You is oblivious, accepting his kiss with interest and taking particular offence when Jiang Luo pushes him away. Not only does he let the daring patient out from under the chainsaw, but he is also his unprepared scapegoat.

He was played for a fool.

Even when she was alive, even when she was bullied by the Chi family, Chi You had never been so frustrated.

The killer’s lips were grinning, but the aura of danger was suddenly strong.

If he didn’t do something, he wouldn’t be able to vent the unexplained desires and evil thoughts in his heart that followed the monstrous anger he had mixed with it.

How can you take advantage of an evil spirit and not pay the price?

The killer raises a step, the corner of his white coat lifting gently.

He headed in Jiang Luo’s direction.

*

Jiang Luo is carefully descending the stairs.

Lu Youyi and the dead ghost were supposed to be waiting for him at the end of the sixth floor, but Jiang Luo didn’t see them. Jiang Luo knew them well enough to know that if they didn’t show up, it meant that something had happened to them.

But with the toughest faceless monster in the building already in Chi You’s hands, what other dangers can they expect to encounter?

No, there is indeed a potential danger that has not yet arisen.

The Chi family.

If the Qi family’s illusions are the means of the Qi family, then what means did the Chi family use?

Are Lu Youyi and the Dead Ghost safe now?

Jiang Luo’s mood, which had just been soaring to the heavens, continued to sink as worry and anxiety rose. He made it all the way down to the fourth floor when the hospital scene suddenly changed to that of a trainee dormitory building.

The illusion is broken.

Jiang Luo was stunned, who had broken the illusion?

At that moment, Jiang Luo stepped on a strand of hair.

He looked down and was almost unsteady on his feet from the dense and constant upwelling of black hair.

What the hell is this?

Jiang Luo wrinkles his brow and immediately backs away, his expression twisted as he stares at the twisting strands of hair.

He took out the fire talisman and flicked it, it flared up from the top and just as Jiang Luo was about to throw it on his hair, a voice rang out behind him, ” Jiang Luo, no!”

Jiang Luo turns his head to see Ye Xun and Lu Youyi running up to him, panting. Ye Xun’s face was white and Lu Youyi’s was covered in blood. Jiang Luo was startled by their images and stopped in time, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Don’t burn it, it’s Xiao Fen’s hair, both Xiao Fen and the dead ghost were buried under it,” Ye Xun breathed sharply, “Xiao Fen ate Fu Yuaner and grew a lot of hair on his body.”

” Fu Yuaner?” The long-ago name caused Jiang Luo to frown, ” How did Fu Yuaner get here?”

He remembers vividly that one of the objectives of the second level of the Yun Nan tournament was to find Fu Yuaner’s body. They eventually managed to dig Fu Yuaner’s body out of the office wall and then diverted to find Wang Xinhui, but when they found him and returned, they were informed that they had taken Fu Yuaner’s body.

Lu Youyi said weakly, “I don’t know, but the dead ghost said that Fu Yuaner seemed to have been made into a puppet.”

When it comes to puppets, Jiang Luo is the first to think of Chi You, but then he realises that Fu Yuaner is not Chi You’s puppet, but the Chi family’s puppet.

The Chi family.

It turned out to be waiting for them here.

Jiang Luo sneered inwardly and said with concern, “How did you hurt your head, did you use Fu Lu to stop the bleeding?”

Lu Youyi felt about a little short of blood and dizzy in the head but managed to hold on, ” Ye Xun stopped my bleeding, I’m okay, let’s find the dead ghost and Xiao Fen first.”

The staircase is already crowded with hair, and if a person were buried in it, there would only be one result: death by suffocation. But dead ghosts are the living dead and Xiao Fen is a grieving doll. Lu Youyi and Ye Xun are anxious, but not very worried.

Jiang Luo asked, ” When is Xiao Fen going to stop?”

Ye Xun laughs bitterly, “I don’t know. If it’s long, it’ll probably flood the whole building with its hair. If it’s quick, it’ll stop in a few minutes …… but I should have a way to get it to stop first, but first I have to go back to my dorm and get my stuff.”

Now that the illusion has been broken, even if Ye Xun has a way of stopping Xiao Fen’s hair growth, the hair, which has crawled up several flights of stairways, is still too gruesome to bury the existence of the metaphysical community if it is seen by onlookers.

What’s more, there are two other explosive and dangerous beings on the sixth floor. One is Chi You and the other is the Faceless Monster. Each of them is extremely catastrophic for ordinary people.

Jiang Luo no longer hesitated and called the director.

Soon the announcements in the dormitory came on.

“Urgent notice, there is a power leak in the trainee dormitory and the power has been cut off urgently. For safety reasons, please leave the dormitory now and gather in front of the dormitory building via the east staircase. We will arrange hotel accommodation for you. Again, please use the east staircase to gather downstairs, please do not delay and gather in five minutes ……”

All the trainees were woken up in the middle of the night by a shout, came out of their rooms in a daze and made their way down the stairs on the right in the dark.

Amidst the grumbling, a few people exclaimed, “Crap, whose wig was thrown on the floor?”

“Hahahahaha who wears a wig in the middle of the night?”

“Get out of here, get out of the way.”

After five minutes, silence returned to the building.

Ye Xun went back to his dormitory and found his suitcase, from which he retrieved a square piece of yellow cloth. After a long time, there was a movement under the pile of hair and the rabbit doll crawled out of it, covered in hair and now looking horrible in its original cute form.

Ye Xun said helplessly, “I told you not to eat indiscriminately.”

He took out a knife and cut the hair from around Xiao Fen’s body, then immediately took out a yellow cloth and wrapped it around Xiao Fen, whose hair soon calmed down and could not grow back in the cloth.

Ye Xun explains, “Hair is the remainder of blood, and the kidneys are the flower of hair. The kidneys contain the essence and are responsible for reproduction; blood and kidneys are water, and hair is its essence, so it is naturally water. The colour yellow is the colour of the earth, and Taoists often use yellow, or green, to represent the natural colour of grass and wood. I wrapped Xiao Fen in a yellow cloth, and Xiao Fen’s hair would not grow back.”

“Then let’s get out of here.” Jiang Luo was reluctant to stay here any longer, he couldn’t be sure if the faceless monster and Chi You would be able to fight to a draw and who would win.

In fact, it was not in his interest to win or lose, but Jiang Luo Yu Guang glanced over and saw Lu Youyi crouching by the pile of hair, wondering, “Lu Youyi, what are you doing?”

Lu Youyi murmured, ” Jiang Luo , the dead ghost is still in his hair.”

Jiang Luo is silent.

Lu Youyi suddenly wavered, and Ye Xun was startled, ” Lu Youyi?”

Lu Youyi said blankly, “Oops my head is a bit dizzy.”

Before the words were out of his mouth, his eyes had already closed and he plunged forward upside down!

Jiang Luo reached out in time to tug him in, and Lu Youyi collapsed on top of him, the large hole in his head a horrific bloody paste.

Jiang Luo picked Lu Youyi up and his face was grave, ” Ye Xun, you take Lu Youyi to the hospital first. I’ll look for the dead ghost, and when I find it, I’ll meet up with you.”

Ye Xun : ” Jiang Luo , the faceless monster ……”

“It’s taken care of,” Jiang Luo interrupted him, “Come on, you take him first.”

Ye Xun made up his mind, “Yes.”

The moonlight scatters from the window like feather fragments.

Jiang Luo watched their distant figures. When they had disappeared, he moodily collected his face and expressionlessly threw out the fire talisman towards the pile of hair.

Hair ruffled in a flash of rushing fire.

Jiang Luo does not believe that dead ghosts can be buried under their hair.

Even if he was buried under his hair, there was a way to get out from underneath. It makes no sense that Lu Youyi could escape Xiao Fen’s hair, but the living dead could not.

But if the dead ghost escaped and did not come to them, the only explanation is that the dead ghost did not want to come to them.

He regained his memory.

The fire talisman burned down in a single burst, leaving traces of the blaze burning on the walls on either side. Jiang Luo stands at the edge of the stairs, his eyes downcast as he looks down.

He didn’t know if he should go down.

Lu Youyi and the dead ghost were washed down in the middle of the third floor. If the dead ghost was still there, it would only be below the third floor. But if the dead ghost had regained his memory, why would Jiang Luo have gone down to look for him?

Eventually Jiang Luo stepped down the ladder and landed on the black dusty ground.

“Tap, tap, tap.”

The sound of a shoe heel hitting the wall came from below.

Jiang Luo’s footsteps were frozen in place.

The voices below grew louder and louder.

Jiang Luo breathes softly and looks down from outside the handrail.

He locked eyes with the murderous demon standing on the first floor.

The killer seems to be deliberately waiting for Jiang Luo to spot him, and the next moment Jiang Luo sees him, he gives a cold, piercing smile.

Jiang Luo’s goose bumps stood up instantly and he thought incredulously, “Chi You have defeated the faceless monster to find him?

Chi You is really that strong?

Jiang Luo’s blood flowed faster, his heart beat faster. I can’t tell if it’s the excitement of meeting a rival or the terror of it, but his breath rushes a little and Jiang Luo looks deeply at Chi You and turns to run out.

Chi You lifted his steps and went after him without slowing down.

The evil spirit’s eyes were fixed on the dark-haired youth in front of him.

Everything else disappears in Chi You’s eyes as he splits the door of the stairway closed by Jiang Luo and continues his pursuit without pause.

A certain restlessness, once again, boiled over. Let the anger twist and another expectation rise steeply.

This feeling is so similar to the intense killing intent Chi You once felt for Jiang Luo, but it doesn’t seem to be the same thing.

Is he going to kill Jiang Luo?

No, Chi You didn’t feel like killing him.

There is another way to show Jiang Luo the error of his ways and give him quick pleasure than by killing him.

It also calms Chi You’s inner turmoil.

But …… that’s what works?

*

Jiang Luo ran to the ground floor and was about to run out the door when the door in front of him was blown violently shut by an evil wind.

“There was a loud bang and the empty ground floor became a closed space.

Chi You walks gracefully down the last set of steps and into the ground floor lobby.

Jiang Luo turned to look at him, not losing the battle. Jiang Luo’s posture was not lowered despite his obvious weakness, “Chi You, you’re not dead.”

He wrapped his arms around his chest, swimmingly, and raised an inquisitive eyebrow, “So, you’ve come in a hurry to tell me about your secret?”

“If that’s the case, I’m really sorry to tell you,” the corner of his lips picked up slowly, “that you’re about to tell me two secrets.”

Jiang Luo did not at this moment feel the hatred for the Chi family that must be extinguished.

Of course, he was a vengeful man, and it would not be too late for him to find out from Lu Youyi later what the Chi family had actually done to manipulate Fu Yuaner.

He was playing a time warp with the evil spirit.

Chi You laughed quirkily, “Yeah, I’m going to tell you two secrets.”

He took one step forward, the reserved elegance he brought to his appearance on the verge of collapse. Cracks cracked in him, and darkness and madness leaked out of him like a mountain in danger of collapsing.

Chi You was always a good-looking man, and after his death the deadness that covered his face even had a vaguely sickly, morbid beauty. With his nose straight and his eyes smiling, he was a handsome and gentle figure.

But at this point, Chi You seems to be revealing its true nature, a twisted madness emerging.

Jiang Luo feels bad.

Chi You This is because he was forced to kiss him and was set up as a scapegoat, so you’re disgusted and mad?

With a sense of crisis alerting him, Jiang Luo’s wrist shakes and all twelve coded messages fly out, striking at Chi You with a bang!

Chi You raised his hand and was about to stop the twelve ciphers, but they unexpectedly condensed into two chains in front of him, wrapping around his wrists and pulling them backwards at speed.

Chi You is locked in place with his arms wide open behind him.

He clenched his fist and pulled his right hand forward a fraction of an inch. The two strands of chains instantly became one again, clutching Chi You’s right hand with all their strength.

Chi You couldn’t break free this time, he was confined to the spot.

The evil spirit looked back at the golden chains, withdrew his head and looked at the dark-haired youth with a smirk.

The dark-haired youth stood cautiously not far from him and said, “Go ahead, two secrets about you.”

The evil spirit gave a subdued smile that was extremely deceptive, “Come closer.”

Jiang Luo stood calmly, Chi You’s smile remained the same, but his eyes became meaningful, “Scared?”

“Agitation doesn’t work on me,” Jiang Luo snorted, but after making sure the runes had bound Chi You solidly, he took a few steps forward, “but for your pity’s sake, this will do. Alright, you can talk now.”

He was too curious about Chi You’s secret.

Each and every one, all of them, he wanted to know and understand to the letter.

This paranoia makes Jiang Luo’s every step seem to be on the tip of a sharp knife, every step a shuddering danger, yet extremely appealing to him.

“The first secret,” the evil spirit’s voice trailed off, “which side do you want to hear about?”

Jiang Luo said, “You.”

The evil spirit said in a daze, “Oh, me.”

“My secrets, then, are many,” the evil spirit smiled, his Yu Yu flickering from his golden chains, “I carry a curse on my back.”

Jiang Luo waited but didn’t wait for the rest, his brow twitched, “That’s it?”

Chi You raised an eyebrow, “The rest of the words are the content of the second secret.”

Jiang Luo was so angry that he laughed and said, “Chi You, as expected of you, one secret is divided into two, why don’t you count one word as one secret?”

Chi You said, “Then come closer to me, close enough to please me, and I will tell you all the rest of the words.”

Jiang Luo’s heart feels like a cat’s claws are scratching frantically, he licks his lips and looks up, only to find Chi You looking at him in a different way.

He suddenly remembered that he still had Chi You saliva on his lips, and Jiang Luo stiffened and withdrew his tongue, saying coldly, “If you keep looking at me like that, I’ll gouge your eyes out.”

Chi You smothered a laugh, “Don’t be so mean.”

Jiang Luo becomes more and more annoyed when he sees him like this. He even forcibly kissed Chi You in order to put him against the faceless monster.

But as it turned out, Chi You took care of the faceless monster with ease and caught up with him again. Although Jiang Luo was prepared for Chi You to beat the faceless monster, he never expected Chi You to be able to do it so easily and so quickly.

This gave Jiang Luo the feeling that he had lost out.

What chills him even more is that Chi You doesn’t have a weakness?

He took a deep breath and took two more steps forward, his tone quenching with ice, “Speak.”

The distance between him and the evil spirit was close.

Close enough that in the moonlight the evil spirit could read his every scowl.

The pale moonlight, like jade, strikes the side of Jiang Luo’s face, tracing down from his full forehead to the ends of his eyes, the tip of his nose, and the beads of his lips, which have only just been kissed by the evil spirit.

The high light, as it were, instantly punctuates the dark-haired young man with a heavy weight. The dark-haired young man is alive and real, rich with a dark flowing life force like a long river of floating dust.

Chi You’s gaze was careless, a smile on his face as if the secret did not matter to him, “This curse, which every Chi family direct line has, restricts us,” he said, scattered and casual, “from harming the Chi family’s side line. ”

Jiang Luo stares, puzzled.

No wonder.

“That’s one, so what’s next?” Jiang Luo was even more tickled.

Chi You, however, asked in return, “What do you want to know?”

Jiang Luo paused and said slowly, “Do you have a weakness?”

Jiang Luo’s heart beat rapidly as he asked this question.

No one wants to tell anyone what their weaknesses are, but Jiang Luo would rather Chi You say “no comment” than hear “no” from the mouth of an evil spirit.

The evil spirit raised an eyebrow in surprise and said meaningfully, “Good, that’s a good question.”

Jiang Luo couldn’t help but step forward, “Is it there or not.”

“That is, of course,” the evil spirit’s trailing voice suddenly lifted, “first to make me happy.”

His right arm, bound by golden chains, twisted so hard that it twisted to a terrifying arc, and in the next instant Chi You twisted his right arm in front of Jiang Luo’s face.

There is no way to break free of the Twelve Runes, so cut off the hand. Jiang Luo’s face is splattered with a black blood that flows from the severed arm of the evil spirit.

Jiang Luo is frozen.

In this moment, his mind went blank and he watched in a daze as the evil spirit covered his right arm where it had been broken open and walked up to him with another delightful smile.

The first thought popped up as an afterthought.

Do evil spirits have blood too?

Chi You lowers his head, releases his left hand, which is stained with the wound on his right arm, and strokes the side of Jiang Luo’s face.

A cold, chilling aura ran from flesh to marrow.

“I’m upset,” Chi You said slowly, “that you made me a scapegoat and played me in this way.”

Jiang Luo smelt a strong smell of blood as it stained Jiang Luo’s face and dripped from beside Jiang Luo’s eyes.

Chi You’s eyes were cold and horrible, “What you’ve done really makes me want to gobble you up in one gulp. In that case, use your methods to cheer me up.”

With those words, his left hand lifted Jiang Luo’s chin and kissed him abruptly and viciously.

His kiss is not a kiss, but the tearing bite of a beastly, vicious ghost devouring its prey. Bloody, contentious, ghostly, without tenderness or lingering, but gasping for breath, with the fear and terror that one would be swallowed up and eaten in one bite.

Jiang Luo’s lip was bleeding from his bite and it hurt badly.

The dark-haired youth’s eyes became stern again as he reached out his hand and one of the twelve runes ran into his hand to transform into a dagger, which he thrust into Chi You’s body without hesitation.

The evil spirit, unaware of this, did not back away, but rather punished Jiang Luo by biting his lips with increasing viciousness and coldness, his breath tinged with the rush of anger as he gritted his teeth with equal force.

But almost broke his teeth with Chi You’s lips.

Manipulation.

Shit.

So hard.

Jiang Luo’s breath caught and the dagger in his hand stabbed deeper as eleven other runes wrapped around the evil spirit’s neck in an effort to pull him away from Jiang Luo.

The evil spirit finally lifted its head.

His lips were scarlet and he stuck out his tongue to lick the blood away from them and smiled, “Ah, I’m in a much better mood.”

Jiang Luo looked at him with a grimace.

The one-armed evil spirit raised his hand again and gently grazed his wet, translucent lips, “Of course I have weaknesses.”

“Like your yin-yang ring,” he said carelessly, “like ……”

Dangerous wrapped in sticky, ambiguous syrup, “You distract me with your kisses.”

The black mist rose up and slowly wrapped around Chi You, and his right arm, which he had twisted off himself, was also wrapped in the black mist. Chi You looked down at Jiang Luo, the anger and murderous intent that had suddenly risen after being teased, but at that moment, a different kind of disordered, obscure desire was added.

Chi You doesn’t understand what this means.

But he always gets the answer in Jiang Luo.

Chi You gave Jiang Luo a long, meaningful look before disappearing with the black mist.

Jiang Luo wiped his lips with a black face, flaming.

Chi You What’s going on here?

Deliberately disgusting him in his own way?

Jiang Luo always felt that something was wrong, and he paused as he wiped his lips.

But more important than that, Chi You said, “Of course I have weaknesses”.

What exactly is Chi You’s weakness?

*

Chi You appears in the sixth floor.

He hummed softly, the same song that Jiang Luo had hummed on his lips when he first met him after his death. The upbeat tune was inexplicably eerie in his mouth, the black mist wrapped around his broken arm against his wound, and as his arm recovered, a piercing pain stabbed through the marrow of his bones into his flesh.

The pain was even on a soul level, but Chi You didn’t seem to feel it, he had a strange smile on his face and was in a good mood.

Teng Bi stepped out of the darkness and said formally, “Master.”

” Teng Bi ,” Chi You smiled, “I haven’t seen you for a long time.”

Teng Bi pursed his lips, “Yes.”

In the darkness, the sound of flesh and blood growing on the arms was like a whisper. Even the stone body of the idol, when alive, has flesh and blood, perception and pain.

Teng Bi had experienced such pain before, and if he hadn’t experienced the pain of being invaded by the black mist into his flesh once when he lost his memory, he would have only assumed from his master’s expression that he couldn’t feel the pain.

Chi You asked, “How does it feel to live with humans?”

Teng Bi thought of those memories of being a dead ghost and he bowed his head and said, against his will, “Not how.”

“You’ll have to bear with them for a while longer then,” Chi You’s arm caught, and he slowly twisted his right hand and clenched his fist, “after that, you’ll lurk among their ranks.”

Teng Bi stared, “Master?”

Chi You said, “They call you ‘Dead Ghost’, a good name. In that case, you play the role of ‘dead ghost’ well.”

There was a twinkle in the evil spirit’s eye and he said, “Watch over …… Jiang Luo for me .”

*

Jiang Luo took a long time to calm down.

But his expression was still hard to read. Jiang Luo opened the door, intending to leave the place straight away, but suddenly the voice of a dead ghost came from behind him.

The dead ghost said, ” Jiang Luo ?”

Jiang Luo looked back as the dead ghost came out of the corridor, his great sword in his hand, and said, “I went to get my weapons, where are they?”

Jiang Luo couldn’t tell if he was happy or disappointed that the dead ghost hadn’t been restored to its original state.

The dead man’s tone mentioned, “The hospital?”

” Lu Youyi is hurt,” Jiang Luo said, still feeling the uncomfortable intrusion of another soft yet hard tongue as he frowned fiercely, shadowing the place, “Get out.”

Teng Bi stepped out of the shadows, hiding an uncomfortable look. But upon seeing Jiang Luo’s appearance, he was stunned and wondered, “What happened to your mouth?”