Bizarre Honkai, a Wife-Chasing Crematorium

"In any case, congratulations. The first item was an umbrella, so the next ones probably won't be too outrageous."

After returning to the group, people congratulated her one after another.

MEI didn't reply. She took a box from the shelf, hesitated for a moment, then folded the umbrella and placed it inside.

She turned, walked to the door, and set the box down.

She watched the process of the box sinking into the blood...

Unlike when the middle-aged woman traded with the ghost, where the box sank naturally, this time, the box with the umbrella paused in the blood for three seconds.

A dark shadow, its face also obscured, appeared in the blood. MEI compared it with everyone present.

It didn't belong to the ghost, it wasn't her own, and it certainly wasn't any of the living people in the warehouse.

MEI shifted slightly to the left, and the head of the shadow in the water shifted a little. The same happened when she moved to the right.

This shadow is watching me?

A ghost?

No, perhaps it's been following me since much earlier.

She had felt something was off for several years now.

Walking under the bright sun, yet feeling no intense heat; when it rained, the wind-driven water never touched her; even a few times when crossing the road, cars that failed to brake in time would swerve dramatically.

"..."

"..."

Without a doubt, a ghost had been following her since she first came into contact with the Bizarre, yet it had never triggered its killing rule to kill her.

Ghosts were by no means benevolent, so what was...

As she pondered, the box slowly sank, and the shadow gradually disappeared.

The ghost began to demand the second item—the pendant.

Instantly, the crowd was in an uproar.

"No way, a pendant? What kind of insane luck is this?! How are they all external objects? Is this ghost a sucker for pretty faces?!"

"How strange. The previous trades I saw were all for parts of our bodies. I've never seen a trade for an external object."

"I told you, good deeds are rewarded. She risked her life to save us, maybe even the ghost was moved."

"Get real, ghosts don't have feelings."

MEI returned to the crowd, her head bowed in silence, lost in thought.

She had only heard one sentence from the crowd—"Ghosts don't have feelings."

Indeed, ghosts did not have feelings.

So-called emotions were merely manifestations of their rules.

But... some Bizarre entities with consciousness were different.

They did possess twisted emotions, but those emotions had been distorted and had deteriorated over a long time. In the end, they became completely unrecognizable, either lacking, faded, or extreme...

MEI took the crystal pendant from her neck and placed it in the box.

The pendant was just an ordinary pendant. It had only been worn by Elysia for a few days, becoming imbued with her "divinity." It wasn't a particularly precious item or a Bizarre object.

Furthermore, the "divinity" had already disappeared, and the crystal pendant was completely dim, with nothing special about it. MEI didn't feel it was a pity to lose it.

Being able to complete the second trade was naturally a good thing.

MEI placed the box containing the crystal pendant in the pool of blood.

Once again, MEI saw the figure in the blood, but she still couldn't see its face, only a blurry outline flickering in and out of view.

She searched her memory for a match but could never find a similar person.

Who could it be?

Why has this ghost been following me? And what is its true identity...?

The box paused in the blood for three seconds before finally sinking and disappearing.

The ghost began to demand the final item.

Just as MEI was thinking, the blood gradually converged into a fatal word—soul.

The soul is an ethereal thing, unprovable by science.

Some even believe that memory is equivalent to the soul, and transferring and preserving memories in another body is the same as being that person.

MEI hadn't delved into this kind of research, but Otto Apocalypse had provided an answer.

Memories can be copied and transferred. But the soul is the only proof of self recognized by the Imaginary Tree.

The crowd was overjoyed, looking on to see what the third item the ghost would demand was.

When they saw the word "soul," the smiles on their faces vanished.

This was a direct death sentence.

The warehouse was silent. Dim light barely pierced through the mottled windows, casting twisted and bizarre shadows. The old shelves teetered, piled high with dust-covered boxes, arranged in an irregular yet seemingly deliberate way. A cold wind blew through the cracks in the windows, carrying a bone-chilling cold and a mournful wail.

The crowd's breathing became rapid and heavy, their heartbeats like war drums pounding in their chests.

MEI showed no panic, merely staring silently at the words formed by the blood.

Suddenly, a delicate and subtle smile blossomed on MEI's lips, and she laughed like a silver bell.

Click.

She cocked the pistol. MEI took the initiative to walk out of the warehouse and into the open.

Millions of raindrops fell, yet not a single one landed on her head. They deflected in their descent, missing her position.

Similarly, the cargo ghost demanding her soul behaved in the same way as the raindrops.

After MEI stepped outside, it did not attack but took two steps back.

She raised the pistol, aimed at the ghost's forehead, and fired several shots.

Like a stream of water, it was pierced through and quickly recovered. Unless the source was cut off, the ghost was immortal.

The smile on MEI's face did not fade. The muzzle of her gun did not lower.

"You want it? If you have the courage, come and get it yourself."

With that, MEI lowered her gun, holstered the pistol, which had only one bullet left, spread her arms, and slowly closed her eyes.

As if accepting her fate, she chose to stop resisting and wait for death.

Time ticked by, second by second. The hearts of the people in the warehouse were in their throats.

Soon, three minutes passed. MEI had not followed the rule and offered her soul in a box.

The cargo ghost suddenly disappeared from before her eyes.

But the unique coldness of the Bizarre did not vanish; instead, it moved behind her.

MEI did not react, allowing the ghost's twisted shadow to gradually approach her body.

"Watch out!" someone in the warehouse shouted, but it was too late.

The cargo ghost's twisted hands shot out swiftly, like a phantom, piercing through MEI's brain, about to take her soul...

The next second, a vast, deep shadow appeared at the cargo ghost's feet, like the giant maw of an abyss, opening its mouth and swallowing it whole.

The cargo ghost was devoured, the Bizarre space shattered, and everyone returned to the real world.

Standing on the bank, MEI looked at the two figures in the water: one was her own, and the other was the ghost that had been following her.

MEI walked from the bank into the stream and reached out to touch the figure.

"Who are you?"

The figure gave no reply, just a silent reflection on the water's surface, motionless.

"Thank you. Although I don't know who you are, neither memory nor the traces left in the world can prove that there was any connection between you and me."

"I will find a way to find out. Trust me, it won't take long..." MEI murmured to the increasingly blurry figure in the water.

Perhaps there was a sense of gratitude, but it was more based on rational judgment.

She could not allow an unknown ghost with no origin to follow her around. That would pose a considerable threat to her, to Elysia, and to Pardofelis.

If this ghost had been following her for a long time, it meant that Elysia's "divinity" had no effect on it.

Her experiment just now had confirmed from the side that the other party possessed a certain degree of a living person's consciousness and could clearly distinguish objective facts.

Since it could ignore Elysia's "divinity" and still possessed a certain degree of a living person's consciousness...

What did it want?

MEI looked up. The sky was still drizzling, but she couldn't feel it. A barrier isolated her from contact with the raindrops.

Holding an umbrella for someone else wasn't exactly something strangers would do for each other.

"Strange, why isn't Elysia here yet?"

MEI took out her pistol and reloaded it, looking around warily.

"Leave this place, go somewhere without light."

MEI immediately made a decision and started jogging toward a remote alley she remembered. The street was empty, and the streetlights went out one by one, but they never went completely dark.

Something's wrong...

MEI stopped, her peripheral vision glancing around.

It was too quiet, so quiet it was as if she were the only person alive in the world.

On both sides of the street was a bottomless darkness, and within the darkness were the faint outlines of ghosts.

The only walkable path was the main road straight ahead.

Of course, she could also choose to jump into the stream on the side.

The street in her memory was not long. She should have reached the end soon, and a turn at the corner would take her to her building.

But today, she had been running for a long time and still hadn't seen the end, as if the road had no end.

MEI raised her pistol, aimed at a residential building next to her, and fired the only bullet.

The gunshot was crisp, but it disappeared the moment it entered the building.

It wasn't disappearing into darkness in the traditional sense. Sound has a delay in human hearing, a process of gradually decreasing.

But as the bullet entered the building, the gunshot stopped abruptly, like a suddenly dried-up water source.

A discontinuous sound...

"I've entered another Bizarre space. I'm really lucky today."

To encounter two ghosts in a row without any preparation, her luck was unmatched.

Counting the one that had been following her, that made three.

"It seems I only have one path to take."

MEI slowly looked up and sighed helplessly.

No preparation, no information, unknown rules—anyone would be in the same predicament.

Either you have the power to break the rules, or you can only fumble around, figure out the rules, and then use them to avoid a bad ending.

Of course, most would die in the process of fumbling.

Whether it was a ghost, a person, or any specific social environment.

He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.

This was not something that could be changed by human effort.

The things a person could change were actually very few… especially when facing absolute rules.

Just like… she had once wished to be a pioneer in exploring the universe, a scientist who would leave great achievements in human history, benefit everyone, and lead humanity to a new civilization.

Later, she also began to grow indifferent to humanity itself. The more she understood, the more she understood her own shallowness. Those with the ability to change the world would inevitably be changed by the world. Even if they maintained their original intentions, they could only change things for a time, not the course of fate.

The life of an ordinary person is but a number, just as history itself is just statistics piled up from a bunch of uninteresting numbers.

When a person understands too much about the dark side of another thing, understands its internal motivations, and enjoys the benefits and conveniences it brings, it becomes difficult to extricate oneself.

The Bizarre… itself might be a law of the universe. It was just forgotten, abandoned. It lay dormant in an unknown depth and was awakened for some special reason at a certain moment.

Its rules are different from the physical laws of nature; they are the materialization of "absolute" concepts.

Accompanied by high-dimensional contamination, it can arbitrarily change the laws of the universe.

Just as entropy and creation/destruction are just manifestations of the laws of the universe…

Her thoughts pulled away from the vast speculations. MEI walked calmly on the endless street.

The streetlights on both sides went out from time to time, and the road under her feet grew wider.

She heard many strange sounds, some unfamiliar, some familiar.

The surroundings were no longer dark but grew brighter and brighter.

A paper person hopped up to her, trying to sever her ankle with its thin paper hand.

Unfortunately, its strength was too small; it couldn't even tear her trouser leg.

"How did you get here?"

MEI squatted down, pinching the paper person with one hand, and tilted her head to examine it closely.

From its appearance and the cold aura emanating from it, it was identical to the one she had encountered before.

But it should have fallen into dormancy along with the destroyed world. How could it appear in a Bizarre space in the Eigenworld?

She had considered whether to grant the paper ghost's request back then, to draw its eyes for it and let it continue its life as a paper person. After thinking about it, she decided against it. She had no reason to abandon her human body.

At least she hadn't encountered anything that would make her voluntarily give up her human body to live as a Bizarre entity.

Dying of old age like a normal person was also a good thing.

The paper person struggled desperately, but limited by the strength of its body, it could not escape, held tightly in MEI's hand.

MEI did not let go, observing patiently.

After struggling for five minutes to no avail, the paper person stopped resisting.

"Alright, tell me why you're here. Maybe I'll grant your request from last time and use my blood to draw your eyes for you."

"Here, this is a pen."

MEI took the pen hanging from her chest pocket and placed it on the ground.

Hearing MEI's words, the paper person immediately perked up, its head held high. It picked up the pen with both hands and began to write on the ground.

This was its rule. Even with a living person's consciousness, it still couldn't escape its own rule.

「He…」

After writing the first word, the paper person suddenly froze, its whole body becoming stiff and motionless. It fell straight to the ground.

"What's going on?" MEI was confused. As she reached out to help it up, the paper person turned into a pool of blood and slowly flowed into the stream on the side of the street.

MEI quickly ran to the bank but found nothing.

The surface of the water still only showed the outline of a dark figure whose face could not be seen clearly.

Ghosts cannot be killed. So what did it mean when the paper person turned into a pool of blood and flowed into the stream just now?