Chapter 145: Donkey Trek Youth Hostel (5)

"Indeed, Jie-ge. Let Lao Zhao hand the machine to me. It'll only take a few minutes." A figure carrying a backpack emerged from behind Lao Zhao the cameraman upon hearing Er-zi's words.

"Fine, fine! Fix it quickly! Consider it a break!" Li Jie waved his hand impatiently.

"You got it! Lao Zhao, you start dismantling it first. I'll find the replacement parts we need, and we can work together to make it faster." The man addressed as Brother Wang said to Lao Zhao the cameraman.

"...Alright then!"

Lao Zhao placed the space-drilling bullet into his left hand, clamped the camera under his left arm, and began removing the damaged parts with his right hand. Although this posture was somewhat tiring, Lao Zhao did not want the space-drilling bullet to leave his grasp.

Though he sensed no abnormalities in the resentful energy, Lao Zhao felt that the people around him were not quite right. Although their behavior and tone were no different from usual, Lao Zhao's intuition told him there was something wrong with these people.

Yet, to say they were all possessed by spirits felt somewhat off. There simply weren't that many spirits available to possess ten Five-Star Awakened ones, especially with Er-zi among them, who was at the peak of the Five-Star level.

As everyone knew, spirits of the same rank, once gathered together, were likely to fight and devour each other.

[Forget it! Caution is never wrong!]

Working in an awkward posture for over ten minutes, Lao Zhao finally managed to strip away all the damaged components.

[Why are most of these gold components?]

Lao Zhao looked at the removed damaged parts, feeling a subtle sense of unease in his heart.

"Here, it's yours!"

Lao Zhao turned around and handed the camera over.

"Got it!"

Old Wang took the camera and swiftly installed the spare parts.

"Old Wang, these parts aren't right! These aren't custom-made; the signals will be blocked by the containment space and won't get out at all. Did you grab the wrong ones?" Lao Zhao glanced sideways at the ordinary parts Old Wang had installed, then asked with great astonishment.

"They're correct!"

Old Wang raised his head and flashed a sinister smile at him. Lao Zhao's heart skipped a beat. He quickly scanned the others around him; apart from Li Jie, everyone else was wearing the exact same eerie, sinister smile.

At the same time, the surrounding environment rapidly transformed into the lobby of the lodge. Red scars simultaneously appeared around the necks of both Lao Zhao and Li Jie. Following that, the scars rapidly expanded, forming crimson bloodstains.

Bang!

Lao Zhao triggered the space-drilling bullet he had been preparing for a long time. With a deafening roar, the containment space was forcefully torn open by the bullet, creating a fissure. Lao Zhao's figure then distorted, swiftly escaping the place along the opened spatial singularity.

As for Li Jie, because his reaction was a split second too slow, his body was instantly shredded by the bloody marks. Within moments, his flesh and blood dissolved into crimson imprints that seeped into the room, transforming into nourishment for the entity.

Soon, the camera was repaired by Old Wang. Controlled by the entity, the signal pierced straight through the containment space and transmitted directly to the outside world. In the corner of the room, a body resembling Li Jie began to re-form and coalesce.

The livestream restarted.

Li Jie looked at the camera with a bizarre expression, a cold smirk playing at the corners of his mouth as he said, "Welcome back, everyone. Now, it's hunting time!"

The viewers in the livestream room were utterly baffled. The current Li Jie clashed severely with his usual livestreaming persona. How could Li Jie, who had always presented himself as a clownish figure, wear such a grim and chilling expression?

None of them suspected that something was wrong with the broadcast, however. Equipment used for live-broadcasting entities was subject to stringent requirements. While capable of penetrating the containment space to connect to the internet, the core components made of gold also ensured that entities could not trace the network cables back to find them.

This was not alarmist talk.

An entity wielding electromagnetic parasitism that once wreaked havoc in Megalopolis had a precedent of tracking people down along network cables to kill them. Therefore, the live-broadcasting authorities had long been on guard against this, though they probably hadn't expected the components to be swapped out by an entity!

"Then let's start with the top contributors on the donation leaderboard! Presenting the top 16 corpse lords!"

The entity that inherited Li Jie's memories still retained his habitual playful style, yet it formed a stark contrast with the chilling expression of a ghost servant. Many viewers watching the stream felt a chill run down their spines, as if they were being targeted by something unknown.

Streaks of red bugs quietly manifested through the network inside the homes of the top 16 donors on the leaderboard.

Immediately afterward, the bodies of these 16 individuals distorted, appearing within the room of the hiking youth lodge through spatial singularities. The camera in the livestream gave a close-up shot of these 16 people, and then their bodies shattered directly, all their flesh, blood, and magnetic energy entirely absorbed by the entity.

On the walls of the hiking youth lodge, another 16 crimson marks were added.

"You've got to be kidding me!"

"Are these special effects?"

"Special effects my ass! The top contributor died first. Damn it, this is really haunted! Why won't this stream close!"

As the viewers in the chat exchanged panicked messages, they realized they had been bound to the devices they were using to watch the stream. The phones and computers they held could no longer exit the livestream room, and even attempts to smash the devices failed completely due to the obstruction of the red bugs.

At this moment, the more than one million people watching the livestream had become food waiting by the mouth of the entity.

With a look of intoxicating satisfaction, Li Jie said, "This surging power is truly exhilarating! Well then... let the game continue!"

Click-clack—

With 28 successive sounds, another 28 people on the donation leaderboard died, and 28 more crimson marks were branded onto the walls of the lodge.

A short while later, countless viewers had been dragged directly into the lodge and transformed into crimson imprints. In the livestream's camera view, 28 bodies reshaped in the likeness of Li Jie and the others were now soaking in a pool of flesh and blood.

The foul-smelling flesh and blood knit their bodies together, forming a massive entity. Gradually, all the flesh twisted and contracted, ultimately kneading itself into a crimson rope. The crimson imprints that were originally on the walls of the lodge were now stamped onto the rope as well.

Still, viewers from the livestream continued to be dragged here by the red bugs to serve as nourishment.

As the headcount swelled, that crimson rope grew increasingly bloody. An inexplicable wave of energy radiated outward, and a wisp of masterless resentful energy emerged from the void. The environment throughout the lodge began shifting toward the netherworld.

This was the hallmark of a Six-Star entity—environmental alteration, also known as the embryonic form of a domain. Unlike a fully fledged domain, which could freely alter internal spatial laws, the internal laws within an embryonic domain would shift to the state most favorable for the current entity's advancement.

Meanwhile, Wu Zhuo, who was still outside the hiking youth lodge, happened to encounter Lao Zhao as he escaped.

The crimson bugs had thoroughly pierced through Lao Zhao's throat, making the scene behind him visible right through the bloody hole. Eerily, however, not a single drop of blood flowed from the wound. Moreover, despite sustaining such injuries, Lao Zhao had not died.

Aside from the fact that a Five-Star Spirit Investigator's body had been tempered and toughened by spatial force, once he was free from the law interference of the containment space inside the lodge, the magnetic energy and resentful energy within Lao Zhao reached a bizarre equilibrium—that was the reason he survived.

Looking at Lao Zhao, who lay twitching on the ground, Xiao Ke'ai raised her small white board.

"Master, he doesn't look human anymore! His throat has a hole that big, and his body is still moving! Shall we just finish him off?"

As Xiao Ke'ai spoke, ten sharp claws extended from her little paws, claws that could easily tear apart the body of a Four-Star entity. If a severely wounded person like Lao Zhao were to take a hit from those, it would be curtains for him immediately.

"Let me handle it."

Wu Zhuo reached out and pressed down on Xiao Ke'ai's paws. A slash formed from karmic fire shot forth from his hand, striking Lao Zhao squarely in the head.

A piercing, miserable scream instantly issued from Lao Zhao's mouth. Wisps of black Qi emerged from his body, only to be burned away completely by the karmic fire. Moreover, from the bloody hole in his neck, red, earthworm-like creatures wriggled and forced their way out of the wound one after another.

By now, Wu Zhuo and Xiao Ke'ai realized this was still a living human, albeit one deeply corrupted by an entity. If he couldn't endure this ordeal, he would likely turn into an entity himself.

Xiao Ke'ai raised her small white board with her paw.

"Mister, hang in there!"

"He's entirely surrounded by karmic fire, he can't see your white board even if you hold it up," Wu Zhuo sighed, reaching out to pat Xiao Ke'ai's fluffy head.

Lowering the white board, Xiao Ke'ai crouched down to scribble something on it before hoisting it up once more.

"Encouragement is an attitude! (Serious face)"

Seeing Xiao Ke'ai's earnest little face, Wu Zhuo couldn't help laughing out loud.

"Meow! (Humph!)"

Xiao Ke'ai let out a soft huff, put away the white board, and leaped onto Wu Zhuo's shoulder.

At this point, the karmic fire enveloping Lao Zhao had gradually extinguished. Curiously, there were no scorching burns left on his body by the fire; the bugs had been thoroughly burned away. However, the bloody hole in his neck began bleeding continuously, prompting Wu Zhuo to apply a simple bandage and medicinal treatment to the wound.

A moment later, Lao Zhao regained consciousness.

"Wu—wu? Wu!"

Lao Zhao's eyes were filled with sheer terror. The moment he tried to speak upon seeing Wu Zhuo, his mouth flooded with welling blood. From the look of it, he had something urgent to impart!

"Ai'ai, lend him your white board."

Wu Zhuo turned his head toward his shoulder and said.

Xiao Ke'ai twitched her cat whiskers, dug her little paws into her fur, and pulled out a white board even larger than herself, tossing it along with its attached pen right over to Lao Zhao.

Then, Xiao Ke'ai pulled out a fresh white board and scribbled on it:

*I gave it to him, it's so pitiful not being able to talk!* o(╥﹏╥)o

"Don't be sad, once you reach Five-Star, you should be able to speak." Wu Zhuo stroked Xiao Ke'ai's fluffy back.

White board: (*^▽^*)

On the other side, Lao Zhao was laboriously scribbling something on the white board, and judging by the looks of it, there was quite a lot to write.