Ghost Amusement Park 34

Li Zhi found it somewhat amusing, but she didn’t explain further and just smiled, saying, “Forget it, I won’t snatch candy from a child.”

Li Jianxi lowered his eyes and said nothing more.

After collecting the remains, the two began to walk back. When they had arrived, they hurried, but now Li Jianxi slowed his pace. The moonlight stretched their shadows long. If it weren’t for the wrong time and place, it might actually have felt like a leisurely night stroll.

Li Zhi was quite tempted to ask if he remembered anything from the previous instance. From the moment this NPC appeared, there was a jarring sense of disconnect with Horror Variety Show. Even with the setting of friendly NPCs, Li Jianxi’s kindness towards the players left her feeling puzzled.

Would the [Ghost] system, so full of malice towards players, really place such a friendly NPC in the instance? Or, to fit the storyline’s logic, did [Ghost] not mind if friendly NPCs helped players?

But she hadn’t yet figured out the rules of the instance and feared that asking might trigger something undesirable, so she kept quiet.

When they returned to the Jin residence, the Madam, who had just given birth and was still physically weak, was already cleaned up and dressed in neat, clean clothes. Although she looked pale, her spirit was strong, nothing like her earlier crazed state.

“Once you bless the child, I will take her and leave this place.”

The Jin family had reaped what they had sown and was now ruined. She had heard that her husband, father-in-law, and all those she had lived with day and night were dead, yet she felt no sadness. Instead, she felt a sense of relief, as if a great revenge had been fulfilled and she was finally free.

When they heartlessly took her daughter and drowned her in a basin, she had longed for this day, for their retribution!

She only felt sorrow that she and her daughter could now start anew, while the former madam and her child would remain here forever.

After hearing her words, Li Zhi thought for a moment, then turned and walked toward the lotus pond in the mansion.

It was late at night, typically the most dangerous time in the instance, but in this one, the malice of ghosts was nothing compared to human hearts.

Because the temperature had dropped, a thin layer of mist hovered over the pond. Li Zhi crouched by the pond, dipping a finger into the icy water, and called out, “Madam, would you care to chat?”

There was silence. The wind blew through the lotuses in the pond, creating soft ripples.

Li Zhi sighed. “We’re leaving soon. If you don’t come out now, no one will perform the rites to help you and your child pass on.”

After another splash of water, there was no visible change in the pond, but Li Zhi sharply sensed a cold presence behind her.

She turned around suddenly, and as expected, there was a ghost woman, her face obscured by long hair, her body dripping wet, standing behind her. She was reaching out with hands wrapped in water weeds, seemingly intending to push Li Zhi into the water. But because Li Zhi had turned around so abruptly, the ghost’s movement awkwardly froze in midair.

Li Zhi: “…”

Ghost: “…”

“I was going to help you,” Li Zhi said, sounding hurt. “And you tried to kill me.”

Ghost: “…” Though her face was hidden, Li Zhi imagined her expression must be rather embarrassed. The ghost silently retracted her hands, and a cold, eerie voice came from behind her black hair, “I wasn’t… I just wanted to scare you… You’ve scared me twice already…”

Once when the ghost possessed Zhao Luan and Li Zhi came at her with a kitchen knife, and once when the ghost peeked through a small hole in the window, only to have Li Zhi slap a charm pack right in her face.

She remembered both incidents very clearly!

Li Zhi couldn’t help but laugh.

At her feet, three ghost babies were crawling around. One of them crawled toward Li Zhi and tried to hug her ankle, but the ghost woman pulled it back and gently patted the child’s head as a warning. The ghost baby obediently stopped crawling randomly and just circled around Li Zhi’s feet.

In life, the ghost had never been able to be a mother or care for her child, but in death, she had finally been reunited with her children.

“Take them with you,” Li Zhi said, “In your next life, you will surely be mother and daughter again.”

From behind the black hair, a faint sobbing could be heard.

Based on her experience from the previous instance, Li Zhi guessed that once the players blessed the newborn baby, they would be directly transported out. So, she first called Li Jianxi over and performed the rituals to help the former madam and her three ghost babies pass on. Only after that did she return to the courtyard for the final step of blessing the child.

The baby girl slept soundly in the swaddling clothes.

The madam held her, her eyes full of love. After overcoming countless dangers to bring her into this world, the child had now received the sincerest blessing, and her life would surely be smooth from here on out.

“Thank you,” the madam said, bowing deeply to them while holding the child. Then, with determined steps, she left.

As she stepped out of the courtyard, everything around them began to blur again. Just like last time, Li Jianxi stood quietly, about to disappear along with the scenery.

Suddenly, Li Zhi spoke up, “Li Jianxi, will we meet again?”

In the haze, Li Jianxi seemed slightly startled.

Unfortunately, Li Zhi didn’t get to hear his answer. Her consciousness dimmed for a moment, and when she regained awareness, they were back in the safe house.

The safe house looked exactly as it had before, with no noticeable changes. It seemed to be a fixed part of the process. When they cleared the instance, there had been five of them, but now only four remained. Li Zhi, Chi Yi, Tian Mingjie, and Zhao Luan. Clearly, one person had been eliminated.

Everyone understood the rules of the show by now, so no one asked questions.

Li Zhi sat on the sofa and poured herself a glass of water. Chi Yi also came over. After going through such an intense instance, she wasn’t in the best of moods, but she still mustered the energy to quietly say, “Zhi Zhi, last time Xu Shu said we could discuss exchanging items in advance. Is there any item you need? If I get the chance later, I’ll buy it for you.”

Li Zhi shook her head. “Choose what you need. Your exorcism knife is broken. You need a new weapon for self-defense.”

Chi Yi hesitated for a moment but then gathered her courage and said, “I’d like to team up with you again next time. Can I ask for the team card again?”

“I don’t mind, but think it through,” Li Zhi said calmly, looking at her. “If you keep teaming up with me but don’t significantly improve your abilities, your popularity will gradually decline, and you might end up being seen as an appendage to me.”

Chi Yi sighed in frustration. “I know I can’t rely on you too much. If you make it to the top of the popularity rankings and I’m still a nobody, the audience won’t like me. But I guess it’s some kind of fledgling syndrome. My first instance was with you, and I only feel safe when I’m with you.”

She thought for a moment and then pleaded, “How about this? Take me with you one more time. In the next instance, I’ll try not to stay with you and rely more on myself to pass. After three instances, I should have enough experience. I’ll go solo in the fourth.”

Li Zhi couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re already stressing about the fourth instance when we haven’t even started the third? What if we can’t make it through the third one?”

Chi Yi looked at her in disbelief. “How could that happen? To me, you’re destined to be number one on the popularity leaderboard!”

Where did she get this unshakeable confidence?

Just then, Tian Mingjie’s excited voice interrupted them. “The rankings are out!”

All four of them quickly looked at the screen on the wall. At the same time, the system’s mechanical voice echoed in their ears:

——Voting for this round has ended, and the popularity rankings are as follows:

——Fourth Place: Tian Mingjie, with a total of 432,156 popularity points.

Although Zhao Luan had expected this, he couldn’t help but darken his expression upon seeing the results.

Chi Yi glanced at her declining popularity and sighed quietly. In the last instance, thanks to her fans’ intense support, she had more than a million points. But now, her popularity had dropped.

From now on, this trend would become increasingly apparent, just as Li Zhi had said. As Horror Variety Show became a common part of society, the fan circles of the entertainment industry would undergo a dramatic reshuffle.

No longer would fans support a celebrity purely for their acting skills, beauty, or personality. The only criterion for gaining fans would be a player’s ability to clear instances.

People admire strength. In this playground of ghosts and monsters, only the strong deserve their support.

Li Zhi was right. Chi Yi needed to pass instances on her own and show the audience her capabilities. They wouldn’t want to see a strong player dragging along a weak one, but they would love to see two powerful players joining forces. Only then would her and Li Zhi’s partnership truly explode in popularity.

As someone who had spent years in the entertainment industry as the nation’s first love, Chi Yi understood this dynamic all too well.

However, seeing Li Zhi in first place, with a popularity value twice that of the last instance, all her complicated feelings were soon replaced by pure joy. “There’s still the MVP point multiplier, right?”

As soon as she finished speaking, they heard the system’s voice: “Based on the player’s performance in the instance, the following evaluation has been made. Player Li Zhi has received an S-rank rating and is rewarded with a 1.5x point multiplier. Current instance popularity value is updated to 2,268,945, with no change in ranking. Total popularity value is updated to 2,455,262, not yet in the top 100 of the current world’s total popularity leaderboard. Please keep up the good work.”

Since their first instance was a beginner round, there hadn’t been a broadcast for the total popularity or leaderboard rankings. Now that they’d cleared the second instance, their popularity values were being tallied.

In the previous instance, Li Zhi had earned over 800,000 popularity points. After redeeming the Confusion Perfume, she still had over 100,000 points left, which were now added to her total.

It seemed that with each cleared instance, the popularity points would accumulate. The more instances cleared, the higher the total popularity, and the greater the chance of reaching the overall leaderboard.

In the last instance, Lian Qinglin had earned more than 2 million popularity points and was ranked in the 80s on the leaderboard. Now, Li Zhi had over 2 million points herself, yet she hadn’t made it into the top 100.

This could only mean that in the week she’d been resting and the few days spent in the instance, other players had been clearing instances. The threshold for entering the overall leaderboard was continuously being raised as more players successfully completed instances.

It truly was a fierce competition.

There would inevitably be people who, for the sake of popularity, rankings, and items, would keep grinding instances. Horror Variety Show was destined to become a nationwide obsession, infiltrating everyone’s lives.

No, not just entertainment. When everything people needed, and even what they couldn’t attain in real life, could be obtained from these instances, who would still bother with ordinary jobs or schooling? All they’d need to do was keep entering and clearing instances to get whatever they wanted.

It might even become a new profession. There would undoubtedly be capitalists hiring people to clear instances and obtain the items they desired. In the future, specialized instance teams might emerge. As long as they had a team card, they could form their own group and grind through the instances.

Li Zhi realized that [Ghost] was slowly eroding the order of human society.