Chapter 394: How to Own Five Buildings

Zone E.

After Tang Erda handed over the property deed to the child, Bai Liu heard his system beep.

[System Alert: Congratulations to Player Bai Liu for obtaining a cemetery building in District E 0812, main quest completion progress (1/5)]

After making sure Bai Liu got the cemetery building, Tang Erda asked, "Shall we go to the next one?"

"Wait!" The kid who had the deeds hesitantly pulled Tang Erda, "Did you get all the ghosts out of the building, and get their deeds?"

Tang Erda glanced at Bai Liu and, after receiving a nod of agreement from Bai Liu, replied to the boy, "Just took the property deeds, not evicted them."

The boy breathed a sigh of relief, "It's good that he wasn't kicked out."

Bai Liu raised his eyebrows, "You're not afraid of these ghosts?"

"I don't think they're ghosts." He looked into Bai Liu's dark eyes, "They're just people who live underground."

Bai Liu raised a little interest as he walked over, "Actually, I'm curious about something, you seem to know that after you die, people become ghosts and still keep working, so why do you only want to live until you're 26?"

"It's harder to die than to live, so what's wrong with living on?"

The boy was silent for a moment, and he looked down and snapped his nails and said softly, "Because I'm alive and I don't have a home."

"My mum and dad are dead, and when I die after paying off the mortgage and become a ghost, I can live in the cemetery with them, and it's okay to be a little bit hard, so if we stay together as a family, we can get through anything."

Bai Liu calmly asks in return, "You don't care if you die for this?"

The boy looked up, and he replied seriously to Bai Liu: "Actually, I don't think I'm dead."

"Although we can't eat like corpses, we don't have to sleep, we sleep in a cramped cemetery room every day, but I feel that as long as we are all together, helping to support each other, no matter where we are, no matter how hard it is, we will not perish."

He laughed up, "Because I think that one day we will walk from the cemetery room to the land and see the sun."

"Even if we die and our bodies rot, as long as we living ghosts exist and roam the underground, then there will always be that day."

Bai Liu asked, "Why were you just, afraid that these ghosts living in the cemetery building would be cast out?"

The boy gave a start and hesitated for a moment before speaking, "Don't you know?"

"People walk outside and living developers charge land management fees, and ghosts walk outside and dead developers charge land management blood."

"Land management blood?" Bai Liu repeated, "What is this?"

The boy scowled, glanced carefully from side to side, came close to Bai Liu with his hand over his mouth and said very quietly, "-Developers turn into ghosts even after they die, and they suck the blood of the lower and second class citizen ghosts."

Bai Liu lowered his eyes, "Ghost blood is not renewable, is it? What if it's drained?"

"When the blood is drained, the marrow is sucked, and when the marrow is also drained, the flesh is eaten, and when the flesh is also eaten, then there is nothing left." The boy's shoulders began to tremble as he spoke, "If you get sucked to that point, you're really dead, there's nothing left."

Bai Liu looked at the shivering child: "Do you know where these ghost developers hang out?"

The boy shook his head sluggishly, "I don't know, I've only lived over here for a year too, some of it was information passed on to me by my dead parents and some of it was my own observations that led to my conclusion."

"But if you're looking for dead developers ......" the boy looked up at Bai Liu, "you can try the rotten buildings in the districts."

Bai Liu pondered for two seconds, then nodded his thanks and spoke, "The developer of this cemetery building, is he dead too?"

The boy was stunned: "...... This cemetery was developed back in the day by one of the five major developers, the landowning developer on this side of E. He's been dead for many years."

Bai Liu's eyes turned dark: "Are all the cemeteries in each district developed by big developers?"

The boy nodded: "The cemetery is part of the infrastructure, all developed by the big developers of the districts in the early days, but now they are all long dead, leaving their assets to their descendants, and the properties in Sunny City now are all descendants of the five major developers derived from the group of five major developer companies."

Bai Liu calmly asks, "Is there no additional development or transfer of ownership of this cemetery to follow?"

The other person meditated for a while, "I don't think so, it's always been like this ......"

"Then the title to the cemetery building should still be in the hands of the big developer." Bai Liu paused, he looked around quickly and calmly and gave a quick order, " Team Tang, take the kid, we're getting out of here now immediately, something's coming out."

[System Alert: Congratulations to player Bai Liu for taking away the property rights of Cemetery Building 0812 in Area E from the big developer in Area E.]

[System Alert: Player Bai Liu has disturbed the developer of Area E. He is furious with you for taking his assets and is about to wake up from the ground to hunt you down!

[The (E Zone developers) are about to attack!

The ground shook violently, as if the feet of some extremely heavy species had smashed into the ground and moved one step this way, a hissing, muffled sound roaring out of the ground, accompanied by a rotting stench so strong that it was sickening.

Bai Liu and the others darted backwards, Muke and Mu Sicheng, who were in the rear, looked back quickly at the mist in the middle of the cemetery, which was shaking behind them, and reported in unison, "The monsters are moving at a low speed, no one is coming after them! "

"No." Bai Liu looked down at the blood suddenly rushing inwards rapidly in the green veins under the skin on the back of his hand, the slightly bulging veins instantly eye deflating, "The monster has caught up with us."

[System Warning: Player Bai Liu is being drained of blood and his life value is dropping dramatically! ......87......73......]

Liu Jiayi quickly handed a bottle of antidote to Bai Liu, who took it and drank it, when a violent coughing sound came from behind Tang Erda and the seventeen-year-old child being carried on Tang Erda's back whimpered and struggled in pain.

Tang Erda quickly rolled him off his back, the boy's face was blue, the skin of his mouth and abdomen were caving in and drying out fast, the veins in his body bulging slightly out of the burst skin, the blood in it flowing as fast as if it was being sucked in a frenzy of greed.

Mu Sicheng and Muke's faces sank as they turned their heads again to identify the source of the vibrations that were pursuing them, and after making sure they were far away, they quickly turned to Bai Liu and reported, "The source is still far away from us."

"Which means this monster's attack didn't even need to touch us." Bai Liu turned his head to the others, "Does anyone else besides me and this NPC show symptoms of being attacked?"

Mu Sicheng, Muke, Liu Jiayi and Tang Erda all said in unison, "No."

[System Warning: Player Bai Liu is being drained of blood, his life value has dropped past 80 again ......]

The child in Tang Erda's arms is being sucked until his scalp is dried up, he is in pain until he can hardly make a sound, his body is convulsing and twitching, his eyes have started to roll back, large, unconscious tears are slipping down his face, and he is whispering about his mother.

Tang Erda's grip on the npc tightened and he looked at Bai Liu with a tense expression.

"I can't give my antidote to the npc." Liu Jiayi glanced at the npc and her face turned ugly, she handed a bottle of antidote to Bai Liu again and looked up at him, "At the rate this monster is sucking blood, my stock of antidotes will be cleared out soon."

"We haven't figured out this monster's attack yet!" Mu Sicheng looked at Bai Liu whose face was pale, blood flowing wildly under his translucent skin, and cursed the grass, "It started attacking without making contact, it's a judgement type attack, this monster is very high level."

Muke analyzed with a strong sense of composure, "Definitely high, the E developer should be the top boss in this copy."

"A monster that attacks in the Judgement class only needs the player to meet the range and criteria for it to attack, and the player will definitely be attacked." Liu Jiayi replied quickly, "We only have this npc and Bai Liu being attacked here, what's the difference between you and us?"

Bai Liu swept up the child NPC whose hand was slowly dropping, "Housing issues."

Liu Jiayi's reaction was extremely quick as she snapped her head up, "You mean!"

Bai Liu explained concisely, "I and have a cemetery building in E district, this NPC is a house slave of the cemetery house in E district, the house in E district is attributed to the land, the E district developer has the ownership of the land in E district according to the setting, so it can suck our blood with the help of the house."

"The house is the conduit and medium through which he sucks blood from us."

Bai Liu stopped his small steps backwards and looked ahead with level eyes, "But this ruling is not good to lift for now, the houses turn to you you will also be sucked blood, now it is not clear the range of activity of this developer boss monster, if the other side's range of activity is the whole map, there is no point in running, the best way to not be sucked blood by this monster is --"

"-kill the monster."

Bai Liu drew his whip and ordered with a cold gaze, "Stop the retreat, Mu Sicheng, Muke move forward against the enemy, Liu Jiayi guard me and the two wounded households of the npc, heal and defend, Team Tang manoeuvre and wait to attack."

Both Mu Sicheng and Muke drew their weapons at the same time, one cold and the other showing their teeth, and rushed up into the mist.

There was nothing in the roaring mists.

No ghosts, no developers, a bare and still open land all around, not even a corpse in sight, only far constant vibrations and sticky growls coming from beneath the ground.

Mu Sicheng dug into the earth with one claw, but the earth was still there beneath.

Muke clutched his dagger, his face darkening to the point of dripping, and stepped forward to take hold of Mu Sicheng's shoulder, stopping him from digging any further: "Stop digging, with our senses we can sense nothing under or around this land."

Mu Sicheng tilted his head, his eyes red as he looked at Muke: "Then why does Bai Liu keep getting blood sucked out of him?"

"What the hell is this monster?!"

"What the hell is this heresy?!"

In reality, Su Yang's eyes were red as he watched people being sucked dry and carried away from the Sunnyside property, and he took a deep breath with his hands propped up on the table of his makeshift tent, almost hoarsely questioning himself and the team around him.

The players looked at each other in silence.

Su Yang closed her eyes, propped her forehead up and opened them again, taking a deep breath and once again combing through the test reports presented by everyone from the top.

"Unit 1 to 6 test results, heresy values detected fluctuating range 7340~134212, total 5793 objects in the building, all objects leaving the building detected no abnormalities."

"Unit 6 to 9 test results, heresy value detection fluctuates from 7106 to 12985, total of 6,903 objects in the building, all objects leaving the building detected without abnormality."

"Nine to ......"

Su Yang read until the last test report, then took another deep breath to adjust her emotions and said, "The range and magnitude of the fluctuations in the heresy values are similar in all the flats, but no heresy values have been detected in the objects or building materials."

He slowly lifted himself up and looked at everyone, "That means that all objects within the entire Sunshine property have no heresy values detected, yet every place is in the midst of heresy values as high as seven thousand to thirteen thousand, and are still expanding outwards in a circle at a rate of 13-15 metres per minute, affecting the surrounding occupants."

Su Yang's fists clenched, he was quiet for a second or two, his face almost blank, then quickly came back to his senses: "Have they evacuated all the surrounding tenants?"

"All the occupants in a one kilometre radius around the area have been evacuated." A team member replied, but he smiled bitterly, "But Team Su, at this rate of expansion, in an hour or two at most, the heresy that is the Sunshine Building will have expanded to a kilometre away, and by that time ......"

Su Yang looked straight at the team member, "So we're going to try to take this heretic in within an hour, you got that?"

Everyone's face was solemn and they raised their heads, "Yes, Team Su!"

One of the team members raised his hand and whispered a question, "Captain, is it possible that it is a heresy that doesn't exist as an entity, like air or something? "

Su Yang shook his head slowly: "Unlikely, if it's air, a diffusion rate of 13-15 metres per minute is too slow, for example, rose perfume would spread all over the city in an hour."

"And the way this heresy affects is limited, not quite the same as the air, which is an indiscriminate form of spread attack." Su Yang nodded clear-eyed at the report, "It's the houses."

"Neither the passers-by passing through here nor our team members who came to investigate showed anything unusual, the only people who showed anything unusual were the residents who bought houses here."

Su Yang's fingers trailed down and landed on an electronic report from the hospital on the tablet, pausing for a moment.

"Ten minutes ago, the hospital sent me this report over saying that at first only the people who moved out of the house would show symptoms of desiccation, but then, over time, the residents who mainly lived on this, all showed symptoms of desiccation to varying degrees."

Su Yang breathed out, "And with this change, what we have detected here, is that the heresy is expanding outwards at an increasing rate."

"You could say that the heresy started out affecting people [with the intention of moving out of their homes], that is, people who wanted to escape from here, but as we processed the eviction certificates, the heresy began to feed on the marrow and flesh of these people, while expanding outwards."

Su Yang pauses: "One could say that our move of trying to get the residents in the rotten building to move out activated and reinforced the heresy and made it start to want to suck in more of all the residents who own homes here without restriction."

One member of the team added with a grimace, "Then won't it become more and more powerful and kill more and more people?"

Su Yang gave the team member a look, "It's the job of the Heresy Handling Bureau to stop the heresy before it gets too powerful."

A team member knocked on the door and came in holding up a report, " Team Su, the information you asked me to check about the developer of the Sunshine property, I just got it!"

Su Yang reached for it and looked down at it with a single glance, then he slowly frowned.

"...... This developer surnamed Li did not develop the land immediately after he got it, but secretly contracted part of the land twice to four other developers, and the other four developers injected capital and then started to build the Sunshine property together with him in the name of the head contractor, so the Sunshine property was in total five developers jointly developed."

This member of the team nodded: "It was illegal and was later found out, but by that time this developer named Li had already run away."

Su Yang turned the page and frowned more and more: "The developer, surnamed Lee, was arrested and imprisoned last year, and during his stay there he showed various unusual behaviour, sometimes disappearing suddenly during roll call."

"...... often go to the library to borrow horror books and games to check them out, like preparing for an exam and carefully taking notes on them, often chanting something under my breath, I'll be out soon, I'll get that land, it's a priority for the guards ......"

"Not only that." The team member pointed to the information, "This man was very bold, often provoking the prison guards, saying he could change the world, and voluntarily confessing that the contract he had privately contracted to four other developers stated that the land use life was up to 9,999 years."

Su Yang frowned: "The normal contract is only for 45-75 years, and his private contract is not even valid."

The team member nodded: "That's what the wardens told him, but the man was laughing particularly wildly, saying he had a way to make these contracts work, a way to make every piece of land in the world his, a way to make the tenants who had turned him in work for him for the rest of their lives, just to buy a suite from him."

"The man said that if he had the desire, he would be able to do it, a typical materialist."

Su Yang makes no comment on the man's behaviour, then turns another page and his brow furrows again, "This man had contact with Li Gou, the rapist who was stabbed to death by an inmate in prison last year?"

"Right." The team member nodded, a subtle look appearing on his face as well, "At the time Li Gou that evidence disappeared out of thin air during the trial phase, the Heresy Processing Bureau had also intervened to investigate, but nothing out of the ordinary was ever found, and eventually the evidence inexplicably reappeared and went into the normal trial process."

"But before the trial, this Li Gou was bizarrely stabbed to death in prison."

Pointing to the information, the team said, "This developer, surnamed Li, had brief contact with Li Gou when he was in prison and later Li Gou showed the same mental symptoms as the Li developer - talking to himself, dodging disappearances during roll call, provoking prison guards and rampantly stating that one day he would be able to kill anyone who sued him."

Su Yang looked up and asked with a stony expression, "This Li developer, where is he now?"

The team member said, "It's dead, the body suddenly appeared in the playground after disappearing from prison for an hour back in August this year."

"Dead?" Su Yang asked rhetorically, wrinkling her nose, "How?"

The team said, "After the autopsy it was found that the stomach was full of dirt from the stomach to the mouth, and the stomach was directly ruptured by the dirt, it was alive."

In-game.

Muke and Mu Sicheng walked back with grimaces on their faces and Muke shook his head honestly at Bai Liu: "No monster found."

Tang Erda and Bai Liu exchanged glances and Bai Liu gave the order, "Switch defences, you two will guard the wounded and Liu Jiayi while Team Tang and I go and investigate."

Liu Jiayi looked at Bai Liu a bit, took two deep breaths and handed over a few vials of antidotes: "I don't use my skills anymore, if you have something to do, you can heal yourself by tuning my panel with my skills, pay attention to the blood line."

Tang Erda nodded to Mu Sicheng and Muke who had returned, "I'll guard Bai Liu, you keep an eye on the rear."

Bai Liu nods and walks with Tang Erda into the mists of the cemetery.

And then there was nothing in sight either.

Tang Erda held her gun against her trouser leg and turned her head to Bai Liu with a stony expression, "Are your life levels still dropping?"

Bai Liu, pale to near-transparent, nodded, "65, above the safety line."

"What do you think this monster could be?" Tang Erda's expression grew somber, "I've encountered colorless, odorless, invisible judgmental types of monsters, all of which are very difficult to deal with, unless one finds the other's being."

"As long as you find the deposit and are able to hurt the other side, then there is nothing to fear from such a monster."

"I was thinking the same thing." Bai Liu crouched down thoughtfully as he looked at the ground and narrowed his eyes, "...... Captain Tang, what kind of monster would you say, using what medium, could simply pass through the house, without touching the tenant, wherever the other person ran, whether the the other person is a human or a ghost, it can suck blood and draw marrow from the other person whenever and wherever it wants?"

"What is the most important thing that property developers seeking to maximise their profits want to deposit?" Bai Liu lowered his eyes to the earth that was trembling strangely after being dug twice by Mu Sicheng.

Tang Erda paused as he followed Bai Liu's gaze downwards.

Bai Liu smiles and looks at Tang Erda: "I think it's the land."

As he said this, he suddenly and without hesitation lashed down hard, splitting the thick earth to a depth of almost four or five metres.

The earth gave a dull and shrill hiss at the whip and began to shake from side to side.

A black and red clay-coloured slurry seeped out of the fissure, and the mouths of some of the broken pipes could be clearly seen and were writhing after being broken, blood clots were rapidly forming on the fleshy mouths of these soft greenish-grey pipes, and a strong smell of blood came from the "slurry" flowing out of the pipes.

[System Alert: Player Bai Liu has attacked with a skill weapon (Developer in Area E)]

Bai Liu looked at the blood-red "slurry" and the soft-walled pipes fluttering from side to side, densely packed, like capillaries trying to reconnect, and raised his eyebrows slightly: "Wow, this is the first time I've seen blood vessels growing in the earth. "

Tang Erda exhales, "The physical deposit of the five major developers here is the land itself beneath the ground."