Humans are more frightening than ghosts.

Being watched like that, Chen Sheng’s mouth twitched. He wasn’t surprised by the headless girl’s ever-shifting emotions—after all, this wasn’t the first lifelike “NPC” he’d encountered. Every character he met in this game world possessed moods and personalities that shifted with the situation.

Still, to be scrutinized by a ghost with a look as if she were staring at her own kind—even though he kept reminding himself she was “just an NPC”—Chen Sheng couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed.

So, Chen Sheng summoned his “beginner’s gear.”

As the gallows manifested, a furious wind howled from the distant high school up ahead. Amid the gusts, he could just make out the sounds of things shattering—a mass of glass breaking, or perhaps something collapsing entirely.

On the gallows, the human skin bound by the noose felt it all most acutely. The skin trembled ceaselessly, as if it might come alive at any moment. But revival was not its wish. Its resurrection would be simple: drain a person dry, let another take its place.

No, right now, it only wanted to flee.

Deep in the heart of the town, something existed that terrified it to its core. Yet, even its greatest weapon—the curse—was completely suppressed in the presence of Chen Sheng. Defeated, the skin drooped lifelessly from the noose, limp as rubber, as if it were truly dead and utterly silent.

The wind made the skin sway gently, casting a serpentine shadow beneath the blood-red glow—a touch of eerie atmosphere added to the scene.

Chen Sheng raised the gallows and probed ahead. Finding no resistance, he carefully stepped forward—first his left foot, then his right. This time, there was no sensation of hitting an invisible wall.

He walked straight into the toll station beneath the archway. The moment he stopped, he realized he was short one companion. Turning back, he saw the headless girl still standing in place, seemingly lost in thought.

“Hey, we can go now! Come on, don’t just stand there!” Chen Sheng waved her over.

The girl looked up at him, her lips moving as if she wanted to speak, then hesitated and shook her head. Saying nothing, she lowered her gaze and walked forward timidly.

She was afraid to speak.

She’d believed she would also be barred from entering Golden Town—after all, “the living enter, the dead leave” was an established rule in this ghost town.

If not for this rule, she’d have returned long ago.

When she’d first discovered her head had been severed, she was terrified—though the fear didn’t last. She hadn’t been dead long, and still retained traces of the living. But once those remnants faded, she became a fully qualified ghost.

In other words, her ghostly nature had entirely eclipsed her humanity.

She’d tried returning before, but had only hit the same “wall” Chen Sheng had encountered just now.

But this time, she felt no such barrier.

She quickly moved to Chen Sheng’s side.

Chen Sheng couldn’t sense it, but as a ghost, the girl felt it vividly: somewhere deep in the town, a ghost was raving in “ghost tongue,” spitting curses into the wind so fierce that even other ghosts would feel their heads splitting.

These curses carried power.

If malice was the source of a ghost’s strength, then curses were its means of attack.

This indiscriminate onslaught left the headless girl deeply unsettled.

A curse wouldn’t kill a ghost outright—nor was death certain—but ghosts could still feel pain. Taking a hit from a wind-borne curse was like being punched by a grandmaster of the First Realm. Recovery would take months.

“Did you see something just now?” Chen Sheng asked. He figured her dazed state meant she’d noticed something.

After all, no game would have an “NPC” do something pointless.

“I don’t know…” The girl glanced at Chen Sheng, clearly hesitant. Though the curses had vanished the moment she stood beside him, she still dared not speak.

She feared that if she said anything, the cursing ghost in the town’s depths would hear.

For a ghost to curse fluently in ghost tongue—this was no ordinary specter. Learning the ghost language required certain qualifications.

By human classification, only a “Dire” class ghost was eligible for such knowledge. Any lesser ghost attempting to learn it would be assimilated instead.

Ghost tongue was an essential part of a wraith’s sacrificial ritual—an arcane force of terrible potency. To learn it was to prepare for ascension into a wraith.

Golden Town had become a ghost town because a ghost sought to perform a sacrificial ritual here and ascend to wraithhood.

The same was true of neighboring Jinshui Port Town.

The headless girl didn’t know the little ghost’s true strength—she’d never been to the Land of the Dead, and knew even less about it than Chen Sheng did.

So she was anxious and on edge.

To her, it was the most terrifying kind of ghost below a wraith.

But Chen Sheng had noticed something. “Are you afraid?” he asked.

She wanted to deny it, but under his gaze, she dared not lie. Feeling the execution tool so close, a sudden realization struck her.

An execution tool? With such a thing present, perhaps she had nothing to fear…

“When we get into town, can you not leave me behind?” she asked softly, looking at Chen Sheng.

Hearing this, he immediately caught on and grinned. “If you don’t tell me what you saw, I’ll leave you behind.”

The “threat” left the headless girl feeling wronged, and she burst into tears.

“I brought you to Golden Town, how could you…”

Chen Sheng was speechless.

He stared for a moment, marveling inwardly at how this so-called “healing game” truly lived up to its name—not only was the female ghost not fierce, she seemed easily bullied.

He couldn’t resist wanting to tease her a bit more.

Expressionless, he began to count, “One, two…”

He didn’t say how far he’d count, nor what would happen when he stopped, but perhaps because this scene was so common in “interrogation plots,” the headless girl was instantly frightened into confessing everything.

However terrifying that cursing ghost in the town’s depths might be, at this moment, it was clearly the man before her who inspired more dread…