Ch12 - Ghost Realm's F4

It was completely dark inside the messy storage room. The suppressed cries were so sharp and wretched, even the windows wobbled due to some unseen source.

Everything was like a scene from a horror movie, but Lu Xu wasn’t afraid and only watched this skit with tranquility.

The male ghost wearing a printed shirt sat on the windowsill, working hard at banging on the window, until half his body was leaning out.

Another ghost squatted by a corner and wailed eerily, stopping from time to time to ask the ghost knocking on the window, “Am I not crying loud enough, why isn’t he showing any reaction?”

Printed Shirt didn’t stop his actions, used to seeing weird things. “He’s probably so scared he’s turned dumb. You have to give people some time to react, what are you so anxious for?”

“Waaaah, when can we turn the lights on, I’m really scared of the dark.”

Printed Shirt was impatient. “Xiao Si, can you wake up, what kind of ghost is scared of the dark?!”

“Okay okay, our ghost realm’s F4 will never admit defeat!”

Xiao Si sulked. The more he thought about it, the more he thought he was losing his ghost face, and thus wailed with even more force.

Afraid that Lu Xu couldn’t hear, he even scooted forward, crying and trying to blow cold air on his neck.

Seeing that his head was coming forward, Lu Xu couldn’t help but turn his head to avoid him.

At this close of a distance, the two of them were basically face-to-face and staring at each other. Seeing that this performance review had willingly sent itself to him, Lu Xu was in a very good mood and quirked his lips into a smile as a greeting.

Xiao Si saw his reaction and his jaw dropped as he completely forgot about his crying. “Da…da ge…”

“What are you calling me for. Keep going, don’t stop.”

Although Xiao Si had not been dead for many years, he had scared off many people. He had seen so many people scared to the point of pissing their pants, but he had never seen someone as relaxed as Lu Xu.

When he first saw this man on screen, he had thought that his spirit was strong. But now that he was facing him in real life, Xiao Si’s spirit was about to fly away in shock. “It’s Master Lu Xu…”

The lights in the room lit up along with the abrupt end to the banging on the glass.

Lu Xu just stood there in that composed demeanor, watching them. At first glance, he was even brighter than the lights.

The two male ghosts were hugging each other and shivering, trying their best to huddle together in an attempt to diminish their presence. Who knew how much they wanted to escape at this moment, but they were so scared their legs wouldn’t listen. Even standing up was difficult.

“Wuuuuuh…” Thinking of all the legends regarding Lu Xu’s violence, Xiao Si couldn’t help but start crying. It was fine that he couldn’t live as a human for many years, but now he couldn’t even be a ghost?

Lu Xu raised his hand to rub at his ears, and curled his lips. “So noisy.”

The words hadn’t even landed when two pairs of hands immediately covered Xiao Si’s mouth—one pair was his own, while the other was Printed Shirt’s.

The crying sounds abruptly came to an end. The world was once again quiet.

The two ghosts didn’t have any blood energy present on their bodies; it seemed that they had done no evil nor harmed anyone.

Lu Xu believed he should be warm and polite towards clients. He also didn’t actually want to make it hard for them, he just wanted to chat casually for a bit. “How long have you been dead?”

The two ghosts were originally extremely frightened, but Lu Xu’s good-looking features didn’t show any aggressiveness for the time being. Without noticing, they relaxed a little.

Printed Shirt spoke first. “20 years for me…”

Xiao Si counted on his fingers and said in a small voice, “3 years for me…”

It wasn’t a very long time, but it wasn’t short either.

Normally, grim reapers would receive a notice before a person died, so they could prepare an even better service.

Of course there were those who died and remained in the mortal realm, perhaps due to obsession or resentment. This connection was enough to allow them to remain among humans for a while.

Sure enough, Printed Shirt returned to his senses and shakily took out his ‘temporary mortal realm permit’ to show Lu Xu in case he was mistaken for an evil ghost and was dissipated. “Master, it’s not because we don’t want to go, it’s because we can’t leave…”

Lu Xu took the temporary permit and realised it was a document given by the Southwest Grim Reaper Division.

The grim reapers’ work was divided into districts. There was no shortage of competition between each district.

The Southwest Grim Reaper Division always considered Lu Xu’s division as rivals. They had been trying very hard these past few years to defeat them. Xie An had complained multiple times that he had been robbed of orders by the Southwest Grim Reaper Division.

If it wasn’t for the mission this time, Lu Xu didn’t think he would have chanced upon their ‘resident clients’.

He would be crazy to not accept a performance quota sent to his door.

“Tell me, why can’t you leave?”

Seeing Lu Xu’s desire to listen, neither Printed Shirt or Xiao Si dared to hide anything and honestly told him—

“The songs I’ve written haven’t been sent out yet.”

“I want to debut!”

Printed Shirt’s name was Tao Yingbo. He died at the age of 27. For the sake of achieving his dreams of being a singer, he dropped out of school at 20 and came to Dongcheng looking for work. He went out to sell his songs during the day and wrote them at night when he returned home. He drifted about like this for 5 or 6 years, and had written who knew how many songs. When he was 26, a studio asked him to send over a song and said they would consider producing an album for him.

Tao Yingbo was very happy and picked out a few songs to send over. He waited with a heart full of hope.

But a year passed and before he could wait for an album, he heard his own songs in other singer’s albums. He went to demand justice but the studio refused to admit it and threatened to sue him.

“I was really angry and wanted to talk to them. I had drunk a few bottles of liquor that day and wanted to go to the roof for some fresh air…I really didn’t want to jump off the building, I was just not careful…”

On some night ten years ago, Tao Yingbo fell off the roof of an apartment and appeared in a corner of the social news. He was merely used as an example to remind others to watch out for their safety. Even until death, no one knew how good the songs he wrote were.

“Da ge, it’s been hard on you, wuuuuuh…” Xiao Si wiped at his tears as he listened at the side, then sobbed out his own story.

Compared to Tao Yingbo, Xiao Si’s story was much simpler. His name was He Xinghua and he died when he was 18.

Since childhood, He Xinghua’s dream was to become an idol. When he was 13, he signed to be a trainee and was put into a group when he was 15. He signed up for an audition show when he was 18, but met with a car accident on the way to the show recording. His life came to an abrupt end just like that.

“The five of us were going to debut, but three of us were left here wuuuuh…”

“Three?” Lu Xu keenly caught onto the word and asked, “So what you’re saying is that there are other ghosts here other than the two of you?”

“There are.” He Xinghua replied cautiously, “The other two are my groupmates, they’re probably still upstairs…”

Tao Yingbo saw that Lu Xu didn’t have anything to say and was afraid he had misunderstood something, so he hurriedly explained, “We’ve been living in this building for a very long time. The people came without even greeting us and took up our rooms, anyone would be angry right? Master, we really didn’t want to harm anyone, we only wanted to scare them a bit…”

“Let’s go.” Lu Xu didn’t accuse them of anything, but he didn’t want them causing trouble under his nose.

Meanwhile, the situation upstairs was complete chaos.

A group of trainees had been busy washing up but for some reason the lights above them kept flickering on and off.

There were a lot of people, so there wasn’t anything that scary about the electricity cutting out.

But who would have imagined that when they were halfway done with their showers, the water would suddenly stop.

“Fuck no, I just shampooed!”

“I just put on body wash!”

“Aaaaaa, save me, I didn’t rinse my face wash and my eyes hurt!”

…

The events had happened too quickly and even Fan Zeng and his crew were struck dumb. They quickly asked workers to come and fix it.

“Kekeke…” The female ghost with the hanging tongue watched the bodies of the opposite gender running around the hallway, still holding a hand up to cover her face. It was just that the gaps between her fingers were quite wide and her eyes rolled about excitedly, watching everything in front of her.

Two male ghosts turned off the main switch and didn’t forget to float in the hallway to admire the results of their efforts—

“Is this enough?”

“I feel like we’re lacking something.”

As they spoke, Xu Haoming walked out of room 201.

He had only finished half his shower and his body was still covered in foam. He walked out muttering “fuck” to himself, looking to see if anyone had figured out a solution.

The two male ghosts looked each other—

“Why don’t we choose him?”

“Okay, it’s him then.”

“What a lousy apartment, doesn’t even have running water.” Xu Haoming’s heart was full of curses.

He was already a little upset over rooming with Lu Xu. Now, not being able to even take a shower was unbearable.

He wrapped himself in a towel and went to see if the public bathroom still had water he could quickly rinse himself with. But when he walked out of the dorm room, he realised everything was pitch dark outside. When he reached the public bathroom he discovered that there was still no water.

“Fuck!”

Xu Haoming swore and turned around to go back to his dorm to wait.

It was only 5 or 6 meters from the bathroom to his dorm, but Xu Haoming kept walking and walking without reaching the end.

He had clearly walked a lot, but every time he stopped and turned around, he realised he was still by the entrance of the public bathroom.

There should have been many people around, but unknowingly, the sounds and people had all disappeared.

The darkness had already added to his fears. Xu Haoming unconsciously quickened his steps, but no matter how far he walked, he couldn’t leave the public bathroom.

“Who knows, you might see a ghost tonight!”

Lu Xu’s words suddenly echoed in his ears and for the first time, Xu Haoming, who had always admired science, began doubting his understanding of the world.

He had heard stories about ghosts banging on walls before, but he had never thought it would happen to himself.

The more scared a body was, the more sensitive it would become. A cold gust blew on his neck, running down his spine. Even his scalp was numb.

Xu Haoming felt like something was behind him, but he didn’t dare turn his head around.

“Is anyone there?” He yelled for help, straining his voice, but there was no response.

Lu Xu went upstairs and saw the scene of two ghosts. One of them was busy covering his eyes while the other one busied himself with blowing cold air on his neck.

Lu Xu was somewhat amused by this scene but when he saw that Xu Haoming was about to collapse, he casually snapped his fingers—

The lights in the corridor lit up and the public bathroom was filled with the sounds of gushing water.

Xu Haoming raised his head and saw Lu Xu standing in front of him. The discomfort he felt earlier disappeared completely. For the first time, he felt that Lu Xu was very good-looking and familiar. He immediately jumped on him and almost cried, “Save me Lu Xu, there’s a ghost…”

nao: anyone else feel secondhand embarrassment for the ghosts? imagine doing your best to blow air at someone’s neck but they’re watching u the entire time oof

if the ghost realm has an F4 i guess our novel team is the alien realm’s F4 pls support our upcoming debut