Dongzi was alone in the office. Just as he reached for a photograph on his desk, a very familiar voice echoed by his ear. He immediately turned to look in the direction of the sound, but saw nothing.

"Brother Dongzi, my left eyelid is twitching again. I still owe you a meal; we haven't finished our last one!" The voice was eerie, drawing out its syllables, sung in a ghostly tune.

Dongzi felt uneasy listening to it. The less he could see, the more agitated Dongzi became. Finally, Dongzi said, "Sister Ting, you either show yourself and speak, or you stay silent and just be still."

"Brother Dongzi, should I come out or not?"

"So wordy! Just come out then!"

The moment Dongzi finished speaking, he saw a translucent shadow slowly rising before him. This shadow was Hu Tingting, but strangely, she was holding a mirror. Dongzi could see Hu Tingting's face reflected in that mirror, while her back was facing him. Dongzi couldn't quite make out her face, so he slowly moved forward.

When Dongzi looked into the mirror again, he saw the face—which had been smooth and lovely just moments before—was suddenly covered in corpse worms. Eyes, nose, mouth, ears, the top of her head—corpse worms were crawling everywhere, slowly devouring Hu Tingting's skin and flesh.

"Ah!" At that moment, a shriek erupted from the doorway, followed by a deep exhale, as if someone had fainted.

Dongzi swallowed hard, gritting his teeth as he edged closer. As he walked, he muttered, "Sister Ting, I don't know how you died, but your Brother Dong never lied to you about anything. This matter... who do you blame in the end?"

"Brother Dong, I don't blame you. It was all due to my own impropriety; seeing the money, I believed everything anyone said. And look what happened—I died so horribly!" As she spoke, Hu Tingting slowly turned around, and her spectral form gradually began to solidify.

Dongzi had expected her to look like the reflection in the mirror when she turned, but what he absolutely hadn't anticipated was that when she turned, she looked exactly as she did right before she died.

"Brother Dong, I really must thank you. If it weren't for you, my eyes probably wouldn't have closed even now; imagine how tiring that would have been." Following this, Hu Tingting bowed to Dongzi.

As a matter of courtesy, Dongzi considered reaching out to help Hu Tingting up, but then he recalled the past events, the torrent of lies, and realized he truly couldn't trust anything. He quickly retracted his hand and then whispered softly, "It's nothing. This is what I should have done. Otherwise, it wouldn't be right for you to die with your eyes open."

"That's right!" As Hu Tingting spoke, a sinister smile spread across her face, her entire facial skin tightening together. She slowly lifted her head, and the skin and flesh on her face began to peel away, dropping toward the floor. From between the gaps in the bone, small, centipede-like insects crawled out, each one sporting a hundred or so legs.

Dongzi immediately recoiled, preparing to draw a talisman to meet the challenge.

"Dongzi, look closely at who I am. Can you still bring yourself to strike?" Hu Tingting's voice had become utterly chilling. At some point, her hands had clamped tightly onto Dongzi's shoulders.

Dongzi, after all, had seen many dead people; he was no longer the terrified wreck he was when he first followed Zhou Huan. Now, Dongzi felt much more steady inside because he knew he had to deal with this female ghost using a talisman. So, Dongzi widened his eyes and meticulously examined the so-called female ghost before him. But what he never could have imagined was this: standing before him was Hu Tingting’s body, but her face was his face. That face was already crawling with insects, and many more worms were creeping from Hu Tingting's arms toward Dongzi's neck, crawling inside his collar, over his chest and back, and onto his head.

A tremor started in Dongzi’s heart. He couldn't comprehend why he was seeing himself in front of him. Dongzi squeezed his eyes shut, bit down hard, and thrust the talisman forward with force.

Just as his hand reached out in front of him, he suddenly felt that the room had become intensely quiet. He deliberately shook his body slightly; there was no sensation of insects crawling on him. He slowly opened his eyes. He was actually lying on the sofa in Hu Tingting's office, having fallen asleep. A cold sweat had broken out on his head. The photograph on the desk was still sitting there exactly as it had been, and the talisman Dongzi held was nowhere in sight.

"That's not right. I distinctly saw..." He began to doubt the experience he had just gone through. Suddenly, he remembered the scream from the doorway. Dongzi rushed out immediately and saw a female colleague with a sprained ankle, sitting on the ground and rubbing it continuously, muttering incomprehensibly. Dongzi only caught a few phrases clearly, but one sentence he heard perfectly.

The female colleague grumbled, "My right eyelid has been twitching since morning; I knew it was a disaster! Now my ankle is twisted, this is just great!"

"Hey!" Dongzi called out to the colleague.

The female colleague turned around, then scrambled up, limping as she tried to walk away.

Dongzi moved to help her, but the colleague leaned against the wall, hobbling, and called back, "Brother Dong, I'm scared of you, don't come over. And don't say anything. Your words are blessed—whatever you say comes true. I knew you went into the dead Tingting's room. I was just passing by, and I knew nothing good would come of it. I admit defeat."

Her barrage of words left Dongzi speechless. Helplessly, Dongzi turned back to look at Hu Tingting's room. He felt the space was deeply eerie, yet he felt the incident had been real, but at the same time, it felt like a dream—he couldn't explain it. Dongzi shook his head and closed Tingting's door.

As he turned his back, a woman was suddenly pressed right in front of him. Startled, Dongzi shouted, "What are you doing? Why didn't you make a sound?"

"Heh heh, nothing. I just wanted to see what you were looking at."

"I was looking at Hu Tingting's office. Aren't you scared?"

"What's there to be scared of? Oh, right, didn't you say the manager was back and told you something earlier? He just returned from the bank and is in his office. If you need to see him, go soon, or he might vanish again!"

The look of shock on Dongzi's face dissipated. He gave a symbolic nod of thanks, rubbed his face, and headed toward the manager's office.

The female colleague who came looking for Dongzi was named Liu Jingjing. She had always been the closest to Hu Tingting, but this was her only good quality; she could take anything lightly. Her best friend died, and in her words, it was simply an unavoidable 'act of heaven'—fate.

Jingjing watched Dongzi’s appearance and secretly chuckled to herself. She sauntered out the iron door toward the warehouse in the back, as that was the usual spot for a break, a place to slack off. The supervisors knew about it, but usually, they chose to turn a blind eye, pretending not to notice.

Dongzi reached the manager's door, let out a long breath. He had managed to suppress the earlier episode, trusting his expression wasn't giving anything away, before knocking to enter.

"Who is it?" a voice, seemingly very weary, came from inside.

Dongzi called out loudly, "Dongzi, Manager. I'm here to ask you something."

"Oh, come in. I'm on the second floor. Close the door behind you when you come up!"

Dongzi agreed, entered, and carefully closed the outer door. The manager's office was a split-level space. The first floor was large enough for over a dozen people to meet and train. A staircase was tucked away in a corner, leading up to another office area. This second floor had a cot, used when the manager worked late and needed a quick rest. Furthermore, there was a safe on the second floor, where important documents and cash were kept. In essence, this was the manager's private domain.

It was strange; no one else was allowed upstairs, yet Dongzi was specifically permitted today.

Dongzi ascended to the second floor and saw the manager sitting on the floor, meticulously organizing the safe. On top of the safe sat a vase filled with white and yellow aquatic flowers. Beside the safe lay a black plastic bag, its opening untied, revealing stacks of joss paper and spirit money inside. The manager was pulling out handfuls of gold ingots from the safe, burning them for the dead!