Clutching the cheap electronic shrieker still humming in my palm, I pinched the palm-sized paper trike reeking of decay and coagulated iron. The gale pursued like a death-spirit, incessantly driving snow into my collar. Cold penetrated marrow; my toes numbed into inert blocks within soaked cloth shoes, bereft of sensation.
To linger was death. Nightfall in this desolation without shelter, and I, Ye Thirteen, Former (Disgraced) Disciple of Qingwei Temple, would adorn tomorrow's lurid headlines: madman frozen stiff, clutching funeral money.
Move! Only move!
The paper trike, struck by that uncanny beam from the recorder's base, pulsed like a thing possessed. Its nose lifted, crude wheels vibrating at a frenzied pitch, tenaciously pointed towards the leaden disk of the fading sun veiled by snow ahead – roughly aligned with the descent.
So be it. The vessel was broken, the steed near death. Gritting molars, I jammed the still-bleating "Master's Dirge" recorder into my inner coat pocket against my chest. Its metallic chill pierced flesh. Then, holding the ill-omened paper trike before me like some profane relic, I embraced it as my sole beacon in this ocean of hopeless white.
Each step was a labor, plowing snow. The path vanished; direction distilled to instinct and the recorder's faint thrum against my ribs. Snow lessened, yet twilight plummeted with terrifying velocity: iron gray bruised into the ominous indigo of impending night.
Impossible to gauge time. Legs transformed to cement. Dizziness threatened oblivion. Just as doubt whispered I circled my own tomb–
*Bzzzt… Crackle… Click… Crackle…*
Subtle static, like an antique radio seeking frequency, hissed from the recorder against my heart. Then the synthetic voice sliced through interference, fragmented yet louder:
"…Signal amplification… High-intensity necro-energetic contamination detected… City fringe relay station… crackle… Target zone acquired: Abandoned Tower Complex, Old District… Ye Xiaomu… Spiritus entity… crackle… Designated… Navigator…"
Ye Xiaomu? What cursed jest was this? Did this infernal box now assign spectral partners?!
Before comprehension dawned, the texture beneath my feet shifted.
No longer yielding, packed snow.
Instead… hard. Icy. Unnervingly… granular?
Stumbling, I halted. Looked down.
Snow. Vanished.
Underfoot stretched pitted asphalt, a battlefield of fractured stone and frozen silt. Tar patches glistened like scabs under dying light. Crooked cement poles lined the roadside, snared in skeins of dead wiring, crowned by obese, soot-black crows perched like gargoyles, their obsidian eyes glittering cold in the dusk.
Beyond, amidst the skeletal silhouettes of decaying tenements—peeling walls like weathered tombstones—meagre yellow lights sputtered feebly.
The city!
I'd truly escaped those cursed peaks!
Giddy relief never crested. A more primal, overwhelming tsunami of hunger slammed my gut. Calf muscles shrieked protest, signaling utter depletion.
Food. Now.
Driven by the primal imperative, I lurched along the decaying road towards the denser constellation of lights. Warped, rust-eaten signs emerged. One caught the fading light: Ye Family Village, South Road.
Ye Family Village? Such coincidence?
No time. I veered onto a marginally wider street. Low-rise dwellings sprang up—self-built hovels and two-story boxes—intermingled with shuttered corner shops and grimy eateries. Roller doors gaped like metal jaws; light bled thinly through cracks, staining wet asphalt in bruised strips. Air hung heavy with rancid oil, coal smoke, and stale sewage. The city's pulse felt smothered by snow and night.
Hope ignited at a half-raised shutter: "OPEN". A grimy minimart! I stumbled towards it like a lost child. Yellowed stickers blurred on the grease-smeared window: "Cigarettes. Seeds. Noodles. Water."
Inside, the olfactory assault hit: greasy sausage machines, cheap tobacco, dust. Cramped, chaotic shelves. Behind the counter, a woman huddled in a puffy coat, cheeks raw with chilblains, clutched a hot-water bottle, eyes glued to her phone.
"Boss! Instant noodles! Spicy!" My voice scraped like sandpaper, vaulting me towards the counter.
She glanced up, recoiling at my apparition (hair frozen wild, face deathly pale, plastered in mud-snow). "Twelve yuan."
Twelve yuan?!
My heart plummeted deeper than any snowdrift. My worldly possessions: a cursed box and a paper trike.
Pockets held less than lint.
"Erm… Boss… could… credit…" My chapped lips managed before her barked dismissal severed the plea: "Broke? No credit! Get lost! Don't scare customers!" She shooed like banishing vermin, protectively sliding her own open bag of reheated sausages aside.
Starvation. Exhaustion. Cold. Now, this naked contempt.
A dark fire detonated from my core.
"Fuck you!" I roared. Fury summoned strength. The rancid paper trike slammed onto the greasy counter.
*Thud.*
A sound both heavy and final.
It stood, absurdly upright; wheels seeming to shudder.
She stared, baffled, eyes flicking from my desperate, contorted face to the bizarre object. Contempt curdled into horrified disbelief.
"You… you lunatic! Escapee?! What's this… trash?!" Her voice pitched high. A frantic hand dived below the counter – likely an alarm.
Her fingertip brushed the button—
*Crackle… Crackle… Ye Xiaomu online… Received…*
A voice—thin, brittle, frayed like a corroded transistor signal, laced with a forced, nervous tremor—issued cleanly from within the paper trike on the counter!
The voice… tearful? No. Shivering pseudo-calmness. Identical to the one that routed the half-seen widow!
The woman's hand jerked back as if scorched! Eyes bulged. Jaw slack. She gaped at me, then the speaking abomination, pallor leaching like death.
"Sweet Buddha! GHOST!!!"
Her shriek could flay hide. Hot-water bottle and sausages forgotten, she scrambled backward, tumbling over the chair, scrabbling like a crab into the shop's dimmest recess behind shelves, a quaking leaf. "Merciful Goddess!" she gibbered, "Protect me!"
I: "......"
Hunger remained. But before me sat a steaming bucket of Beef Noodles (her intended supper?), a hefty bag of bread rolls… and the smartphone dashed to the floor in her panic, screen alight on some video feed.
Starvation eviscerates ethics.
My gut roared anew. Morality, legality, dignity – all flimsy barriers against the will to live. A filament snapped within.
"Sorry! Boss! Debt of desperation! Paid tenfold!" I hollered towards the trembling shadow, doubt reaching her ears.
Then—a lightning snatch!
The scalding noodle cup! Steam curling.
The dense sack of bread!
The fallen Pineapple 14 Pro Max! Slick under my fingers.
A frantic pivot. Out the shutter door! Her wails of despair, shrieks of "Cops! Apprehend the madman!" ripped the icy air behind me.
No time for remorse!
I fled down grimy, narrow alleys choked with twilight. Jaundiced streetlamps, consumptives coughing light onto wet walls and overflowing bins. Blacked-out windows watched, occasional eyes flickering from curtain gaps before vanishing.
Deep into a cramped alley dead-end—shielded by high walls and a skeletal billboard—I slumped like a fugitive rat. Back against icy, gritty brick, gasping.
Hunger was a white-hot knife. Fumbling, I ripped off the noodle lid. A tsunami of aroma—rich, spicy, ambrosial—blasted my senses. Intermingled with the dense scent of bread.
The plastic fork? Futile! Bare hands!
Scalding noodles and broth shoveled in. Mouth scorched, esophagus protesting. The searing pain interwoven with visceral satisfaction!
The bread followed, gulped down throat. Choking, gulping frigid, life-giving broth.
Alive… Fucking alive…!
Mouth distended with sustenance, focused solely on survival—
*Tap!*
*Tap-tap-tap-tap!*
*Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!*
A rapid tattoo of minute, sharp pops erupted from the paper trike resting near my foot! Accompanied by the faintest wisp of corpse-green light.
Ye Xiaomu again?! No peace?!
I gagged on bread. Eyes snapped down.
The crude vehicle convulsed. The blackened matchbox "bed" flickered violently with minute green sparks! Each spark flash synchronized with a soft pop!
The death rattle of a cheap, failing toy.
Worse—
A hazy thread of pale jade light, finer than spider silk, extended phantom-like from the convulsing form.
Pointing. Aiming… through the low, illicit structures… towards the distant heart of the city! CBD's radiant towers!
A spectral lodestone! Guiding?!
*Waaah… Crackle… It's… Exploding! Move, Ye Thirteen! They're… coming! So many! Legions!* The voice shrieked anew, crackling with raw panic, echoing off the dank walls.
They? Who?
Head jerked up!
The street beyond the alley's mouth!
The anemic yellow streetlights—one by one—began to extinguish!
Not flickering. True, absolute extinction. Snuffed like stolen breath.
*Pop!* First.
*Pop!* Second.
*Pop-pop-pop-pop—!*
Dominoes falling! Accelerating! Creeping along the street, darkening facades, swallowing illuminated signs! From the CBD direction pointed to by the trike, darkness—thick, viscous—unfurled soundlessly, an unstoppable ink-spill plague!
An unspeakable miasma—thicker, vaster, far more chaotic than the mountain's malice—gushed silently from the consumed zone! A cacophony of shrieks, whispers, gibbers, growls—a thousand lunatic frequencies—slammed my ears, shredding my mind. A madhouse amplified!
My heart seized! An icy fist clenched it.
Run!
Must run!
Action before thought! Half-noodles, bread-sack, shrieking, flickering paper trike—snatched! I bolted deeper into the alley's pitch, away from the devouring dark!
Behind: purest abyss, layered with icy chants from the void.
Ahead: my terrified, stumbling silhouette.
The paper trike shrilled: *BOOM! BOOM! DYING! Run! Faster! Never look back! DON'T! LOOK! AT! THEM!*
*Huff… Huff…* Lungs ablaze. I ran a panicked maze. Walls taller, crushing. The diseased lamps became my only beacons.
Yet—
As I neared the next passage, hope flaring at surviving light outside—
The final lamp at the alley's end…
*Pop!*
—died.
Solid blackness sealed my escape. A wall of cold darkness.
Finished!
Despair surged, an arctic tide crashing over me.
Mind blank. Legs halted. Back pressed to freezing brick. Stared into the impenetrable near-darkness.
*CRACK—!!* Beneath me, the trike screeched a final, raucous death cry—a dying crow's last gasp! All light vanished utterly. Exhausted silence.
Ye Xiaomu fell mute.
Only the viscous whispers remained. Creeping closer. Amplifying… A frigid breath touched skin!
Then—
The impossible.
*Puff—!*
*Puff-puff-puff—!*
*Puff-puff-puff-puff-puff…!*
As if a legion of imps blew microscopic bubblegum.
At the edge of the total darkness sealing the alley, the void sparked!
First, a bead of spectral jade.
Then, corpse-glow white.
Then sallow yellow, abyssal blue, arterial crimson, bruised amethyst…
Thousands upon thousands of pinprick specters—cold, alien—bloomed like malevolent night-eyes within the absolute black! They shimmered. Drifted.
Not lamps. Not illumination.
Pure, ethereal necro-lumina—cold, intrinsically death-suffused.
Jade flames: drowned bloater's grievances.
White phosphorescence: open grave-bones' resentment.
Sallow gleam: ancient casket-deep stagnancy.
Deep blue chill: stillborn infant's unvoiced grief.
Crimson glare: clotted hemorrhage's hue…
Amethyst miasma: eons-old malevolent enchantment…
They swarmed—an unfathomable multitude!
A colossal, amorphous entity seemed to have spilled its profane palette into creation's void, painting obscene, terrifying chromatics!
These phosphorescent shades drifted into the dirty alley air. Not attacking. Drawn… or repelled…
*Vvvrrmm—*
The Pineapple phone in my coat pulsed, screen flaring sudden, searing white light! A beacon through the umbral veil!
Locked. Default wallpaper. Time display only.
Yet… bathed in this sudden luminescence—
The gathered necro-lumina…
Surging!
Like homing spectres! Moths to a lethal flame!
They converged!
Jade flames flowed to the phone's base!
White phosphorescence clung to the top left!
Sallow glimmers gathered top right!
Deep blue, crimson, amethyst… spectral fireflies adhered to precise edges of the screen! Not touching glass—hovering near, painting its borders in their deathly glow!
In one chilling instant!
Around the phone's illuminated frame…
Manifested a nauseating ornament…
A FRINGE NAVIGATION BAR!
Left: putrid jade.
Right: sickly sallow.
Top: corpse-white.
Bottom: drowned-deep blue.
Corners: spattered arterial crimson and toxic amethyst.
Hell's hues fused with mortal tech in grotesque harmony.
Immediately—
*Ding!*
A cheerful, app-notification chime trilled from the phone.
The screen flashed!
A horrifyingly intricate digital map consumed the display!
Background: deep cosmic void, strewn with icy-silver data-stars. Dynamic routes—crimson, jade, amethyst rivers of spectral fire—snaked across its surface. Streets, rivers etched in transparent, ghostly cyan light. Frightening precision.
Dead center—
A vibrant, warm-yellow arrow pulsed steadily, pinpointing my location: Ye Village South Road · Poltergeist Alley!
Just ahead of this arrow, mere centimeters scaled, a building cluster was smothered under a thick, churning, organic sludge of dark crimson!
Labelled above it, in digital font dripping like fresh gore:
"DANGER ZONE"
Subtext: High-Concentration Chaotic Spirit Barrier - Hyakki Yakō · Labyrinth of Lost Souls · Mortals Forbidden!
Behind my arrow (the escape alley), a robust trail of vibrant green data-arrows pulsed defiantly!
Their endpoint: a dazzling beacon of warm, inviting white!
Destination:
Abandoned Tower Complex, Old District · Building 3 Rooftop · Safehouse (Provisional)
Adjacent, a flashing annotation:
Navigator: Ye Xiaomu (Senior Drifter · Temporary Contractor · Route Accuracy: 85%)
And most perverse—
Where the virtual navigation bar should be…
Four icons manifested in solid, cold spectral light!
As if welded to the screen's edge!
A twisted skull symbol (Function Unknown)
A flaming ghost banknote (Function Unknown)
A weeping dagger (Function Unknown)
And lastly—
An icon outlined in flickering, corpse-green fire…
BLOOD-RED… DEEP, SCARLET RED.
Its legend:
HellNav Pro · Spirit Realms Live Map · VIP Beta · Tap To Install
The screen's glare illuminated my terror-ravaged face and the utterly inert paper trike in my other hand—drained.
The specters illuminated no earthly path.
They signposted the descent…
To the Netherworld's live navigation.
My trembling finger hovered.
That vermilion download symbol pulsed like an infernal eye.
Half an inch separated salvation and damnation.
Press?
Accessing the quickest escape…
Or booking the fastest flight to Hell?