This chapter is a long one, contains more than 2k words. Enjoyyyy
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There are good people and bad people in the world.
The same is true in the deep world, there are ghosts that were filled with malice when they were human beings, and after their death, they become worse, and become evil ghosts that sow despair; but there are also some wronged souls that even if they die unjustly, they still hide goodness in their hearts.
"What is your name? When the opportunity arrives, I will take you to see your brother."
"Firefly, my mom said that there is a kind of bug in this world that can glow in the darkness of the night, and it's called firefly, but I've never seen it before."
"There are many parents who look forward to their children, but it's the first time I've seen one who looks forward to their children becoming a bug." Han Fei told the kid to take the ball and hurry away, "Don't come back here to play again, tell me your home address, I'll come and find you."
"My mom and I are staying in the hotel next to the convenience store, my mom has been unable to leave, it seems like she's waiting for my brother to come back."
The child's speech was a bit strained, and after he took the initiative to tell Han Fei his home address, he ran away with a leather ball in his arms da-da-da-da.
"This child is quite interesting ..." Turning back and staring at the wall of the back alley for a long time, in fact, Han Fei is more concerned about those black shadows on the wall, all the "people" who have worked as shopkeepers here, seem to have been killed. All the "people" who have worked here as shop assistants seem to have been killed in the end, and some of their residual souls have been imprisoned on the walls of the back alley.
Day after day, this back alley wall is densely packed with faint humanoid silhouettes, and each humanoid silhouette represents a clerk.
"It shouldn't be the first time that Firefly ran into the back alley to play, but not only did those ghosts on the walls of the back alley not kill Firefly or take Firefly's soul, they even took the initiative to play the game with him."
"When I opened the door just now, the ghosts on the walls seemed to want to help Firefly to hide, and no one made any strange movements to expose Firefly's location."
Those residual ghosts on the walls were very tacitly trying to protect Firefly, and just from this point alone, Han Fei felt that those residual ghosts could be his friends.
"It seems that most of my colleagues and seniors are good people!"
Scanning the walls of the back alley with his eyes, Han Fei bowed slightly, "It's my first day on the job, so I'd like to ask for more care from my seniors."
Seeing that there was still nothing unusual on the walls, he entered the room, but as he was about to close the door, he vaguely saw that the silhouettes of the human figures on the walls began to move slowly, and everyone seemed to be discussing something.
"All of the former shopkeepers have been sealed into the walls, and I'm curious as to why the shopkeeper didn't just kill them for good? Could it be that the shopkeeper still needs the remnants of their souls to control their power?"
The soul power of a heart of regrets wasn't particularly strong, but when hundreds or thousands of regrets came together, it was a very terrifying force.
"Ding Ding Bell!"
The soul bell at the doorway rang once again, and Han Fei was about to head inside when a piercing chill suddenly came from the landlord's ring on his hand.
Gently stroking the cracks on the ring, Han Fei hid inside the garbage disposal room and glanced outside.
The one-eyed clerk stood in the cash register, and in front of him was a woman in red who was close to two and a half meters tall.
The woman wore a blood-red cap and a grand red wedding dress, but a white flower hung from her chest.
Almost at the same time that woman appeared, the temperature inside the convenience store dropped to freezing point, and the one-eyed clerk became polite, receiving the other party with seriousness.
Most of the time it was the one-eyed clerk who was asking questions, and the woman would only occasionally nod her head. Han Fei didn't fully listen to the conversation between them, and he only vaguely heard words such as the seventh day of the first month, soul retrieval, dead building, and number 144.
A few minutes later, the one-eyed clerk walked out of the cash register and signaled the woman to follow him into the stockroom.
The woman, who stood over two meters tall, paused for a moment toward the garbage disposal room where Han Fei was hiding while turning around, and with the covered head blown by the ghastly wind, Han Fei saw a gaping mouth.
"She found me?"
The woman didn't give Han Fei a hard time, carrying a blood seeping package in her far more massive hands, she slowly entered the store room.
No strange sounds came out, and the light in the storeroom simply dimmed abruptly.
Coughing sounds rang out, and the one-eyed clerk walked out of the storehouse carrying a paper man that was the height of a normal person, that paper man had a smile on his face, and his hands covered the clerk's eyes.
The woman in the wedding dress also walked out, but the blood-stained package in her hand was gone.
The soul bell rang, and the one-eyed clerk carried the paper man on his back and just left the convenience store with the woman in the wedding dress.
"The paper man that One-Eye carried away was completely different from the ordinary paper man, the expression on his face was just like a living person, was that paper man the store owner?"
The temperature in the store returned to normal, Han Fei quietly walked to the door of the storehouse, the white wax in the storehouse went out, and it was pitch black inside.
"Even if the paper man that One-Eye carried away is not the store owner, there should be part of the owner's consciousness in the paper man, after all, the paper man's expression is almost no different from that of a living person, and it knows to cover the eyes of the store clerk, as if it's worried that One-Eye will see something."
Han Fei didn't believe that an ordinary paper man would be that smart, it was probably the store owner behind this manipulation.
"That woman in wedding clothes is very strong, giving me the feeling that she's even more terrifying than Xu Qin, she entered the store seemingly wanting to ask for the store owner's help, what's contained in that package should be the payment to the store owner."
Following the bloodstains on the ground, Han Fei arrived at the last row of the store shelves.
The feeling of being stared at by each paper person was not pleasant, but Han Fei also realized something after walking here.
The first time he came here, those paper people's gazes were no different from the gazes of the living, containing a variety of emotions.
But this time when he came in, the gazes of those paper people were dull, as if they had lost their souls.
"The blood stops here." Han Fei stared at a paper man in front of him and removed it.
There was still a gap between the back of the paper man and the wall, Han Fei probed inside and he found a coffin hidden behind the last row of shelves.
"Hidden enough." Han Fei memorized the locations of all the paper figures and then removed a few of them as he drilled behind the shelves.
As his hands touched the lid of the coffin, Ghost Stripe let out a heartbreaking scream, the pain was simply unbearable, the problem was that it wasn't Han Fei himself who was in pain.
"Brother, endure a little longer."
The package sent by the woman in wedding clothes had already been opened, and the blood-stained red cloth fell to the side as Han Fei pushed the coffin lid open with both hands.
Inside the coffin were bodies belonging to separate people, and right in the middle of this patchwork of corpses was a palm-sized, blood-red paper man.
The paper man's eyes were closed, as if he was asleep.
If you looked closely, you would realize that there were countless faces of resentful souls screaming miserably on top of that paper man, and many of those were faces that Han Fei had seen on the photos in the staff's preparation room.
"This paper man wants to have a real body?"
Han Fei was fully concentrated and was on high tension when a voice suddenly came out from somewhere in the house.
"Save me, save me ..."
Han Fei was so startled that he almost fell into the coffin.
He opened his eyes wide and looked around, finally realizing that the voice was coming from the white wax.
Crouching down next to the candle, Han Fei stared at the other party with a deadly stare, his face as if the words kill and exterminate were written right on it.
"You're the new clerk, right? The curse you've received now isn't deep yet, hurry up and take me out of here with you, I'll repay you!" The human face on the white wax was very blurry, he tried his best to make a sound, "That paper man is gone, it rarely leaves the store, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
"How can one candle try to talk me down? I am loyal to the shopkeeper, not something you can sway with a casual word or two." Han Fei's eyes were filled with murderous anger.
"You dug up the store manager's coffin lid on your first day on the job, how is that loyalty?"
"I just wanted to get to know him better."
"You're a smart man, let's not waste time." The human face on the candle kept crying out, "Do you know why the candles in this store burn all night? Do you know why the light emanating from this candle is soothing to the lonely ghosts passing by?"
"Why?"
"All the candles in the storehouse are corpse wax, all made from the monster's body and the remnants of the shopkeeper, and it likes to hear the cries made by the remnants being lit." The human face on that candle started to become distorted, "Sooner or later you'll turn into a candle if you don't leave! I know the way to get rid of the curse, take me away with you and I'll help you get rid of the curse!"
"You seem to know the store manager well?"
"I used to be a shopkeeper here as well, Store Manager himself is the bloody paper man in the coffin, it is a special cursed item that has slowly come into its own because of the constant absorption of grievances. All those who enter the store become its targets. Either they will become merchandise or they will become a sales clerk for the tiger, but there is no good end for a sales clerk! We shopkeepers will die too! And the death will not be peaceful, and the remaining humanity will be absorbed by the paper man and become part of it." The human face in the candle said with a sobbing voice.
"All the shopkeepers' humanity is absorbed by the bloody paper man?"
"Yes." The human face in the candle glanced towards the coffin behind the shelves, "It absorbed more and more humanity and grievances and gradually formed its own consciousness. Normally it will hide its consciousness amongst some paper person and place its own body in the coffin to warm it up with its flesh and blood, all the paper people in this store are probably its doppelgangers ..."
"In that case, aren't we already seen by it?"
"But this night is different! That female ghost in wedding clothes delivered the most vital piece of head and heart for the Paper Man Store Manager, and as a reward, the Paper Man Store Manager needs to help the female ghost in wedding clothes to kill one person." The human face on the white wax knew so much, it had been placed in the counter to overhear a lot of things, "That person lives in a dead building, it's very dangerous, the shopkeeper only has the opportunity to successfully kill the other person if it gathers all of its grudges and power. Once it succeeds in killing the other party, it will be able to obtain more things and accelerate its growth, and then we will be even more unable to escape."
"That means tonight is the only chance?"
"An opportunity that can't be missed!" The human face on the white wax frantically persuaded, "The store manager's curse will prevent you from getting close to its original body, forbidding you from leaving the convenience store, and once you trigger the curse you will suffer great pain. However, if it suffers a serious injury, the curse will be weakened and the pain you endure will also be reduced. So you should not have any worries, take me away with you! This is our only chance to escape, and I will tell you how to lift the curse."
"Wait, if the shopkeeper suffered a serious injury, then why are we leaving?"
"Having been hit by its curse, you are powerless before it! Please listen to me! Hurry up and take me away with you."
"Don't rush, I have a better idea now." Han Fei stared at the coffins behind the shelves with an odd expression, "If I just dry out the store and close it down on my first day of employment, will no one hire me in the future?"
Han Fei glanced at the quest panel, he vaguely understood why this quest was asking him to survive long enough for one night, because after that night, the store might be gone.