Chapter 24: Chapter 24: It Reanimated After All
Su Jiu, Li Jin, Jin Daxiang, and the others found some trash bags in the mall. They tied the collected body parts up securely, brought them all to the first-floor plaza, and tried to piece them together.
Under normal circumstances, curious passersby would have undoubtedly stopped to watch what they were doing. But right now, most people in the mall were gripped by the fear of being unable to leave, so no one paid their actions any mind.
All the body parts were laid out together, forming a complete body. All that was missing was the head.
Just then, Xia Ta, who was still standing in the center of the plaza, did something completely unexpected.
She walked straight toward the massive billboard. Then, she placed her hands on the iron support pillar below. Her arms, beneath her formal attire, began to strain. Accompanied by the horrifying sound of stressed metal, SQUEAL... CREAK... she actually, inch by inch, ripped the entire billboard right out of the ground.
This was just too absurd.
It was even more ridiculous than the story of Lu Zhishen uprooting the willow tree.
Xia Ta was only about 1.6 meters tall. Standing beneath the billboard that was dozens of meters high, she looked as tiny as an ant. No one could have imagined that she would actually grab the billboard and pull it up, inch by inch!
Watching from across the plaza, Jin Daxiang and the others were dumbfounded. ’Is she even human? She has to be Superwoman.’
Gao Tian was even more astonished. He knew Xia Ta was very strong, having acquired a supernatural item that boosted her strength after a certain green-text mission. But he had never imagined the girl’s power was this immense.
Many of the onlookers who had been focused on the mall entrance were now staring at this unbelievable scene, their mouths hanging open. One after another, they pulled out their phones to record.
Amid this bizarre scene, most people failed to notice something crucial. The billboard had been completely uprooted, and the power cables beneath it had been ripped apart one by one. Yet, despite having lost its power source, the gigantic face of the female star on the screen hadn’t vanished. It just kept mechanically repeating the motion of applying makeup.
’This billboard isn’t normal. It doesn’t need power to work!’
Jiang Yang was the first to react. He snatched up two body parts, one in each hand.
"Xia Ta thinks the body’s head is the celebrity’s head on the billboard!"
"Let’s get over there, quick! We need to put the complete, headless body under the billboard!"
’This is so fucking ridiculous.’
’Why could the face of the celebrity on the billboard serve as the sixth piece—the head?’
But Gao Tian and the others had no time for questions. In the distance, the tiny figure of Xia Ta swayed unsteadily beneath the colossal billboard. Lifting something dozens of times her size was clearly an immense burden, and she was struggling to support it.
Gao Tian, Jin Daxiang, and the others each grabbed a leg and sprinted over to Xia Ta. They reassembled the headless corpse, and then, with a loud THUD, Xia Ta laid the billboard flat directly on top of it.
She was drenched in sweat. Clearly, uprooting the billboard had exhausted most of her strength.
After all this was done, the group began to back away from the corpse, putting distance between themselves and the body parts to observe what might happen next.
This was a lesson learned through hard experience by the apartment’s veteran residents: a mission’s final moments, when participants’ focus is most scattered, is the perfect time for a surprise attack. The green-text missions loved to take out hopeful participants waiting for their rewards with a sudden, fatal blow.
Gao Tian and the others stared at the "complete" corpse. The body was clearly male, yet its head was the female celebrity from the billboard. They had no idea if this counted as fulfilling the green-text mission’s requirements.
Only a few seconds had actually passed, but to them, it felt like a century.
A moment later, Gao Tian and the others witnessed an unbelievable sight. The body parts, still partially in the black bags, began to move. They drew toward each other as if pulled by magnets, piecing themselves together.
Rotting flesh tore through the black plastic. The parts connected, re-forming a single corpse.
The celebrity on the billboard was especially unnerving. Onscreen, she had stopped her makeup routine. She slowly turned her head, and from her deep-set eye sockets, crimson blood began to stream.
Then, the billboard screen faded to black. At the same time, from the neck of the incomplete body, countless strands of thick, black hair began to sprout. A round head seemed to be struggling to push its way out from within.
The incomplete corpse had accepted the celebrity on the billboard as its final puzzle piece.
"This is so fucking ridiculous."
Li Jin couldn’t help but complain.
"How could any normal person figure this out to pass the mission?"
Xia Ta and Jiang Yang’s expressions didn’t relax in the slightest. Even though they had technically fulfilled the green-text mission’s requirements, this mission... was just too damn absurd.
A foul, black ichor pooled beneath the corpse. As the head grew, its hands and feet began to twitch as if electrocuted. Its movements were strange and distorted, as though it were struggling to climb up from the ground.
’The six body parts have been stitched into one. Why hasn’t the green-text mission announced that it’s over?’
Watching the corpse tremble ceaselessly on the ground, Gao Tian was filled with a sense of foreboding.
’If this body originally belonged to Xu Yuan, then it must be extremely dissatisfied right now.’
’Because this head isn’t his at all; it belongs to some random woman. Anyone in that situation would be pissed off.’
’But there was no way for them to find his real head. Xu Yuan’s actual head had been taken by that ghost who likes to collect things. That ghost probably wasn’t even in the mall anymore, so how was Gao Tian supposed to find it?’
At some point, a woman’s scream pierced the air from the crowd of onlookers.
"That dark thing... Is it... is it standing up?"
The corpse that Gao Tian and his team had painstakingly assembled didn’t simply lie still now that the task was complete. On the contrary, having gained a complete body, the corrupt, indescribable thing slowly tore through the black bags that still clung to its fragmented limbs and climbed to its feet as if granted new life.
The first thing the corpse did after rising was run toward Xia Ta, Gao Tian, and the others. Its stance was wobbly at first; it took two steps and immediately fell flat. But when it stood up again, its control over the body had clearly improved, and it began to run faster and faster.
It was a truly bizarre spectacle. The rotten body’s head had completely transformed into the celebrity’s beautiful, seemingly glowing face. Yet its torso still oozed black fluid and radiated a nauseating stench. The celebrity’s face wore a mechanical smile as it advanced on the apartment residents.
The distance between them began to shrink.
"What in the world is happening?"
"Isn’t the mission over?"
Su Jiu was clearly a first-timer. Seeing this bizarre scene, she completely broke down. She plopped onto the ground, staring in horror at the approaching corpse.
Boss Jin looked plump and out of shape, but he was the most astute. The moment he saw things going south, he turned and started running.
Xia Ta remained standing where she was, muttering to herself.
"We’ve been tricked."
"The green-text mission said the body parts would reanimate at nine o’clock."
"But it never said it *wouldn’t* reanimate if we assembled it first."
"By putting these six pieces together, we actually accelerated its reanimation. It’s not even nine, and it’s already fully awake."
Jiang Yang’s jaw nearly hit the floor.
"What?"
"That’s a thing?"
But no matter how difficult the truth was to swallow, watching the female corpse get closer and closer, they all knew they had to accept it. In their minds, they had already cursed the apartment ten thousand times over.
Su Jiu’s mind was also in a state of collapse.
’What do we do now? I don’t want to die. This isn’t fair! I did exactly what the apartment asked, I assembled the whole body...’
Li Jin was so furious he started screaming curses.
"Apartment, fuck your mother!"
Xia Ta stepped coldly in front of the others.
"I’ll figure something out. I’ll hold it off for a bit."
"Those of you who are capable, find your own way out. Figure out how to save yourselves."
She and Jiang Yang had each taken five million from Boss Jin. Since they hadn’t completed the green-text mission, this was the only way they could try to make up for it.
’But how long could she really stall it?’
’Ghosts can never be truly killed. Even with Xia Ta’s unusual constitution and a few supernatural items to back her up, she couldn’t possibly tie up that female corpse forever.’
’She and Jiang Yang could buy some time, but that was it. Once Xia Ta reached her limit, she would just activate her black card and return to the apartment, abandoning Boss Jin and the other participants.’
’But in that short amount of time, where could Boss Jin and the others possibly go?’
’Sapphire Mall was sealed off by a strange white fog; there was no escape. Playing hide-and-seek with this complete corpse inside the mall would only end one way: every participant would be found, one by one, and brutally killed.’
’It was decided from the start. This mission was never meant for anyone to survive. Fail to find the body parts, and you die. Find all the body parts, and you die sooner.’
In an instant, the female corpse was before Xia Ta, its face fixed in that strange, mechanical smile. Xia Ta clenched her fists, ready to fight the ghost. But the corpse’s body twisted in mid-air in an impossible way, bypassing Xia Ta completely and lunging for the person nearest to her—Su Jiu.
The complete corpse was only interested in the participants of the green-text mission. It had no desire to kill a bystander like Xia Ta—at least, not yet.
As Su Jiu shrieked and the onlookers gasped in terror, Gao Tian—who had been silent until now—finally seized the fleeting opportunity. He lunged forward, the Ghost Transformation Spear in his hand flashing like a ray of white light as it shot straight through the corpse’s spine. The force of the blow was so immense that it pinned the creature to the ground.
A strange thing happened. The moment Gao Tian’s spear pierced it, the corpse froze as if a computer had crashed. It lay on the ground, showing no signs of movement.
"Congratulations, everyone. The second green-text mission is complete."
