Chapter 193 Chapter 188 The Power of Suffering
Fang Shiyun quickly grabbed her phone before it fell to the ground, holding her breath.
This was instinct; the prey stays quiet in front of the hunter, hoping not to attract the hunter’s attention.
It was very quiet, so quiet that she could hear footsteps outside approaching, getting closer to the door.
Were there people or ghosts outside? Wan Ziqi was dead; how could he come to Magic City?
Thinking back to the strange events from last night to now, the terrifying conjectures that she had deliberately ignored floated back to her mind.
The footsteps outside came to a stop.
“Knock, knock, knock, knock.”
Four knocks sounded slowly.
“Is anyone there?”
A hoarse male voice came in, “Is Fang Shiyun there?”
The voice was very familiar.
Fang Shiyun bit down hard on her finger, stopping herself from screaming.
“Knock, knock, knock, knock.”
Again, four knocks. Fang Shiyun didn’t dare to breathe; suddenly, she thought of something, lowered her head to look at her phone, and pressed the side button with force.
The screen displayed a vertical volume slider; the blue volume bar quickly diminished, as fast as Fang Shiyun’s courage leaking away.
Just as the volume was turned off, her phone vibrated, showing Wan Ziqi’s phone number. She had already deleted Wan Ziqi’s contact.
Fang Shiyun remained motionless, terrified of accidentally pressing the answer button.
The door was knocked on four more times: “Baby, baby, are you there?”
Fang Shiyun didn’t respond.
The footsteps receded and went upstairs.
Outside the anti-theft door, the knocking sound faintly continued, gradually fading away.
Fang Shiyun took a deep breath and started gasping for air. It was then that she realized that she had been so frightened she had forgotten to breathe, almost suffocating herself.
There must be ghosts; there had to be.
Fang Shiyun’s fingers trembled, cold sweat soaking her, her mind in a chaotic state, unsure of what to do.
After a few minutes of deep breathing, her mood finally calmed down.
Once calm, Fang Shiyun pressed 110 on her phone screen with her thumb.
A drop of water fell on her palm, moistening her skin.
Was the ceiling leaking?
Instinctively, Fang Shiyun looked up and saw Wan Ziqi’s bloodied face, his nose flattened, with one side of his glasses broken. Beneath his flattened nose, his mouth was twisted into a familiar smile, revealing a mouth missing several teeth. Blood dripped from his chin, landing on Fang Shiyun’s phone screen.
Fang Shiyun’s face went pale quickly, her mouth agape like a fish thrown ashore, a drop of blood falling from his cheek into her mouth.
Fang Shiyun’s eyes rolled back as she let out a hissing scream, collapsed on the ground, her body convulsing for a moment before she fainted.
Ji Ma stretched lazily, having been sitting behind Fang Shiyun all this time, observing the mortal as one would a lab rat.
Previously, she had been bathing in the bathtub; even when the host, Fang Shiyun, got up and opened the door, Ji Ma did nothing, simply continuing her bath.
During this time, Fang Shiyun had been oblivious to her presence. Ji Ma had brazenly used lies to terrorize Fang Shiyun, yet she remained unaware of Ji Ma, who was so close.
Ji Ma wrote a report in her personal system:
“For mortals, my lies can alter their perceptions. I didn’t use invisibility; I played a video game right in front of her, and she didn’t notice me.”
Ji Ma was not surprised by this. Fang Shiyun was merely a mortal; she could pollute and alter Fang Shiyun’s perception simply by lying. It seems that twisting perceptions and lying
“Magic power remaining at 50%. The majority was spent on invisibility yesterday, dragging Fang Shiyun out of the hotel in public and ‘canned memories’…”
Ji Ma coldly looked at the fainted Fang Shiyun on the ground and continued writing her experimental report:
“The power of suffering harvested is abundant, and compared to the consumption of magic, it is very cost-effective. However, the healing speed of soul damage has clearly declined. It is expected that simply tormenting Fang Shiyun will not heal my soul damage.”
However, Ji Ma had no intention of giving up on tormenting Fang Shiyun. A little healing of her soul damage was excellent, not to mention the fire of resentment in her heart that still needed to be quelled.
Now that Fang Shiyun had fainted, she could not extract the power of suffering from her for the time being.
Ji Ma stood up, walked to the computer, sat down at the desk, and started tapping her fingers on the table.
After finishing her bath, Ji Ma played a game and used her lying ability to torment Fang Shiyun.
On the computer screen, the Weibo headline read “So the rabbit feet are that big,” instead of the trending topic about a programmer jumping off a building. Wan Ziqi’s corpse was still frozen in the rented apartment. Ji Ma hadn’t planned
Even Fang Shiyun’s Weibo trending topic “Programmer jumped off a building” was due to Ji Ma’s lies and distorted perceptions.
Ji Ma clicked on “League of Legends.” The computer screen didn’t flicker much, providing a great experience, unlike Wan Ziqi’s laptop, where the screen was more difficult to play “League of Legends.”
She simply wanted to collect the power of suffering, a straightforward idea, to gather pain through the Internet but it was not feasible to start big.
She needed to conduct small experiments first, such as testing whether she could gain power through tormenting opponents.
Ji Ma entered her QQ number, successfully logged in using her phone, and clicked on ranked matchmaking. After a few minutes, she was matched successfully.
Regarding video games, Ji Ma was both unfamiliar and familiar. She had just played a few matches, and aside from the first match where she was unfamiliar with the game mechanics and lost badly, she grew more adept in the subsequent games.
She discovered that as long as she controlled the character with the mouse and dodged the slow-moving skills, she wouldn’t get hurt.
This applied to both lane fighting and team battles.
In Ji Ma’s view, dodging skills while laning and dodging skills during team fights were the same; it was just about avoiding one slow skill versus avoiding five slow skills.
“Ding!”
In her thoughts, she began to select a character.
Ji Ma’s mouse hovered over a female warrior wielding a giant sword. She really liked this hero because the sword was huge while the female character was slender, clearly possessing extraordinary strength.
The mouse lingered over the confirm button.
But Ji Ma’s peripheral vision caught sight of a fluffy hero’s face. Past memories were stirred, and she suddenly remembered that this hero was named Teemo, whose ultimate resembled laying land mines, making him quite annoying.
Since she didn’t chase victories but sought to torment her opponents, why not choose him?
Ji Ma quickly selected Teemo and immediately confirmed.
It seemed that upon seeing a beautiful female teammate, she had turned into the annoying Teemo.
A line appeared in the chatbox below.
“Don’t pick this hero if you can’t go top lane.”
“Messing with my mentality, I’m in my promotion matches.”
Ji Ma remained unfazed and slowly typed in the chatbox: “Trust me, diamond expert, specialized in this hero.”
Ji Ma momentarily forgot the hero’s name.
“Then I’ll just lie down here.”
Ji Ma nodded, opened Baidu, and slowly typed “How to play Swift Scout?”
She conveniently clicked on a talent build.
The chatbox displayed “Who dares to provoke me, I will…”
Seeing that long line, someone asked: “?”
Ji Ma replied: “Really.”
Entering the loading page, Ji Ma minimized the game window and clicked on the first search result, carefully examining the webpage.
She believed she could gain the power of suffering; if she lost, she would frankly collect the power of suffering from her teammates.
