"Get a... a duoluozhong's number?" Rena could never imagine in a thousand years that she would hear such a request from Hannie's mouth. She had already prepared herself mentally as she thought that Hannie would get her to hurt herself or jump off a building or something along that thread. When she heard that it was a seemingly simple task, she was a little stunned for a moment.
"How could the task be so simple? It is not even dangerous? How does the requester have an advantage?" Rena thought to herself.
However, Hannie had not finished speaking. "The time limit for this request is 20 minutes. The number you receive must be an actual phone number. It doesn't matter if the call can or cannot be connected. The executor must appear in front of the requester before the time limit. The gender of the duoluozhong does not matter. Start!"
After Hannie finished her monotonous instructions, Rena immediately ran off to complete the request.
Hannie had to stand in the same spot to wait for Rena to return as long as her ability was still activated. As a result, Rena didn't have to worry that Hannie would run off and help Derik fight against Lin Sanjiu.
20 minutes was neither a long nor short time. Before Rena could get a phone number, she had to look for a duoluozhong. However, things don't usually go the way one wants. When Rena didn't need a duoluozhong, they seemed to be everywhere and it was impossible to get rid of all of them. Yet, when Rena wanted to find one, she couldn't even see a single duoluozhong in sight after running and looking around for five minutes.
Rena estimated the time she spent and stopped. She couldn't run too far as she would not be able to reach Hannie in time. After she surveyed her surroundings, Rena started to feel a little anxious.
"Where do spirits usually appear?"
There were just bank and financial buildings in the street that Rena was in. All of them looked sparkling new and seemed to give off the aura of elitism. No matter what, it didn't seem like any spirits were in those buildings.
" Honestly, there are not many urban legends about banks..." After Rena thought about it, she stomped her feet and quickly dashed into one of the buildings. Even though Rena was really confident, she had heard ghost stories about offices before. As long as there exists such strange tales, urban legends or ghost stories, there would be a real possibility of the relevant spirits existing in this world.
When Rena entered, she found that the office building was dimly lit. There were only a few flickering fluorescent lights along the corridors. As Rena raced across a corridor, the lights would suddenly start flickering rapidly. The constantly changing light intensity was very disorienting. Rena thought she saw someone standing in a corner. Paranoid, Rena moved closer to look at it but it was just a projection.
"Are there any ghosts around?" Rena ran through a few floors. The flickering lights made her more and more flustered. She grew more and more anxious by each passing second. "Quick, can one of you just appear?!"
She ran past some education consultancy firm and she turned into another corridor. There was a female toilet at the end of the corridor. Usually, there are many ghost stories which are set in a female toilet. From afar, Rena could already spot that the toilet door was half open. An indoor plant at the entrance of the toilet had been kicked aside. There was even a piece of toilet paper stuck on one of the walls. Even though the toilet had started to fall into desolation, there didn't seem to be any spirits around.
"Come on. Has it been 9 minutes already?" Rena took a breath and headed for the toilet, unwilling to accept the situation. She never really had a good concept of time so she wasn't really sure how much time had passed, "I would need five minutes to get a phone number and two to three minutes to run back, so..."
As she thought about this, she had already reached the entrance of the toilet. She looked up and inadvertently realized that the piece of toilet paper she saw was actually half a pale human's face.
The human face had moved from its previous position as Rena walked close to the toilet. When the girl looked up, her face nearly touched that pale, snow-white face. They were so close that their eyelashes were nearly touching. The top half of that human face had been squished together. The face opened its black toothless mouth and curled its lips, showing Rena a smile.
Rena couldn't help suddenly letting out a loud scream. She retreated a few steps backward. Before she could steady her racing heart, she stepped forward once again.
"You came at the right time," she still sounded fearful but for her brother, Lin Sanjiu and herself, the teenager demanded softly with her white lips, "Give me your phone number!"
As she said this, her fists glowed and she punched the white face. She purposely avoided the spirit's face and hit its ear. As its ear evaporated into a cloud of smoke, the smile fell from the spirit's face. It turned its too large eyes to its ear, showing its disbelief at what had just happened.
"Give me your phone number!" Rena had already rushed into the toilet. She had trapped that duoluozhong which was still wearing a woman's office wear in the corner of the toilet. "Otherwise, I'll kill you!"
When facing a posthuman with considerable experience, a normal duoluozhong couldn't do much to fight back. If the duoluozhong decided to take on Rena directly, it would have disappeared into a cloud of smoke long ago.
However, now, it turned its pupilless white eyeballs and a smile slowly appeared on its face again.
"If... you gave me... a piece of toilet paper," it said slowly, "I... would... tell you."
It did not even ask for a reason and had already caught its opponent's weakness.
Rena immediately frowned.
A normal duoluozhong combat ability was definitely lower than a posthuman who had already had a few level-ups. However, that was dependent on a condition. That condition is that the posthuman must not be dragged into the scenario which exists in the particular urban legend. There are certain special situations in an urban legend where the duoluozhong involved would gain a unique "peak" strength.
Taking the famous Sadako as an example. That situation would probably be "when a person watches the infamous videotape". The moment when Sadako crawls out of a television and attacks a posthuman would be when she would reach this "peak" strength. At that particular point, a spirit duoluozhong could even be a few hundred times more dangerous than usual.
Rena had done a lot of background research, so naturally she wasn't fooled.
"I know what urban legend you belong to." Rena sneered, she clenched her fists tightly while she trembled from her brewing anger. "When you are in a toilet cubicle in a woman's bathroom, a woman from the adjacent cubicle would suddenly say that she did not bring a packet of tissue paper with her and then she'll ask you to pass her some toilet paper. Supposedly, if a person tries to pass some toilet paper, the woman would grab the victim's hand and drag her to hell... Am I right?"
The face did not say a word but rolled her eyes and stared at Rena's hands.
"If you don't give me... any... toilet paper, I won't... tell you..." the spirit smiled with malice. "You can kill me... if you want."
It had probably overheard everything Rena mumbled to herself. It knew that Rena was hard pressed for time and did not have much choice. Rena felt her blood vessels pulsing. Normally, she possessed a sense of superficial superiority as a teenager, and people rarely created such difficult situations for her in Red Nautilus. Furthermore, this was just a duoluozhong. Even though she told herself in her head not to be rash, she couldn't overcome her impulse in the end. She punched the duoluozhong. At the same time, she grabbed one of its arms and tore it off. Her opponent screeched and Rena said vehemently, "Are you going to tell me your number?!"
The duoluozhong quickly stopped screeching. It looked at its arm, which had already dissipated into the air like ashes. She laughed cruelly and slowly crouched on the ground and started crawling down from the wall like a spider.
"I... will wait for you... in the other cubicle..." it said as it crawled. Something on its chest swayed, illuminated by the light in the toilet.
Rena was stunned for a second. Before she could think anything through, Rena had already picked up the duoluozhong and looked at its chest. After staring at its chest for a few seconds, Rena suddenly couldn't hold back her laughter.
"I've never seen such a stupid thing," the young girl's crisp voice sounded in the toilet, she was relieved. "Yu Meizhen!"
There was a metal employee pass holder hanging in front of the duoluozhong's neck. There was a small line of words "Soaring Blue Sky Education Consultancy". Then, there was a line of words which was slightly larger: Overseas Studies Consultant: Teacher Yu Meizhen. The duoluozhong opened her mouth as if she was about to say something. Yet, she had already turned into smoke the very next second.