Wang Chen didn't know what was going through the head of this woman, nor did he care. She stood there like a bright sun in dark sky, hair and robes barely moving in the ghostly wind. For a long moment he simply watched her — not because he trusted her, but because on this floor trust was a luxury that killed quickly.

The first floor had a single, blunt rule: kill anything that moved. Beautiful or not, a living thing here was either prey or predator. That thought sat heavy under his ribs, sharpening his gaze until it felt like a blade. He kept his posture loose, ready, eyes cold. The way she had looked at him, the tone of her voice — it all felt wrong. "So what do you want?" he asked, voice flat as it could be.

Mo Huayan's long lashes fluttered, a motion as delicate as a falling feather. For a split second her eyes glowed with something complicated — amusement, calculation, a loneliness that had been polished into cunning. She smiled, the kind of smile that rearranged a room and set men's blood in motion. She scanned him once, twice, as if measuring the lines of his soul, then answered in a voice like warm honey: "I want this body of yours."

A cold hiss escaped Wang Chen. The words scraped like nails on a piece of glass. "I knew it! Another resentful ghost in disguise! Damn you all — one day, I swear I'm going to wipe your entire species from existence!"

Perhaps she expected fear. Instead, Mo Huayan's laugh bubbled up — small, musical, deliberately light. Her shoulders quivered with barely-contained mirth. The sound was intoxicating, a thread of melody woven through the stale air of the floor. Even in that bleak place it could have made saints open their eyes, if saints were so easily swayed.

Wang Chen felt his heart stutter. The creature before him had folded temptation into a human face, and a primitive, dangerous part of him rose at the sight. It felt hot and wrong, like a fever. He swallowed, tasted metal on his tongue. A thought flared and he hated it: a desire to possess, to conquer. He pushed the impulse back like a dampened flame.

"No… absolutely not." He gritted his teeth, every syllable an effort. "This woman is a vixen in human form. I must not let her control me."

He took a careful step back. Chronoblade thrummed at the edge of his mind — a comfort, almost — but a deeper warning pulsed too: he had a feeling this time the chronoblade might fail. Illusion, scent, memory — they could all be weapons. The skill might not cut through what she wielded.

Mo Huayan's laughter faded, but the smile remained — warm, disarming, predatory. She leaned in just enough to let the warmth of her breath drift toward him. "What do you think about my proposal?" she asked, voice soft as silk. "If you agree to this little sister's wish, I can fulfill all your desires."

Her words were an offer and a threat wrapped together. The ambient cold seemed to press closer, watching.

Wang Chen bowed his head once, as if in apology. He forced a humorless smile and kept his tone level. "I'm sorry, big sister, but my body is the most precious treasure in existence. No matter what you offer, it could never equal it — so I must respectfully decline your offer."

Every word came out carefully after weighing them. He felt the weight of the floor press in around him — the fog, the endless whisper of dead things, the soft chuckle that might be a trap. Mo Huayan's eyes flicked, unreadable.

Mo Huayan opened her mouth to speak again, eyes curved in playful interest — and blinked.

Wang Chen was already gone.

He didn't bother with bravado. He didn't threaten. He just turned and bolted, sprinting at full speed into the fog-choked distance like a man who'd just seen the reaper reach for his collar.

For a heartbeat, the look on Mo Huayan's face shifted. Her eyes widened slightly, as if she hadn't accounted for that answer. Then a slow smile bloomed across her lips, elegant and dangerous. It was like watching a flower open in a field of corpses.

"The more you resist…" she whispered, voice sweet enough to rot the bones. "The more interesting you become."

She giggled softly.

Her form rose without effort, toes lifting from the cracked, frozen earth. Her sleeves trailed like drifting veils as she floated forward, gliding after him. No footsteps, no sound, just a silhouette sliding across a dead world.

Wang Chen, thinking he had finally shaken her, risked one glance over his shoulder.

He nearly jumped out of his skin.

Across the grey wasteland, where the air itself tasted like ash and old hatred, a woman in white drifted leisurely behind him — as if taking a stroll through a spring courtyard instead of a nightmare-saturated hellscape.

"Damn this vixen!" Wang Chen snarled under his breath.

From that moment on, no matter where he ran, she was there.

When he ducked into cracked ravines to hide from prowling resentment beasts, she hovered just above his head like moonlight. When he crawled into tunnels of broken bone to sleep for an hour, she sat outside the entrance humming softly to herself. When he sprinted for his life across fields of frozen, whispering corpses, she floated along beside him at the exact speed of his panic.

At first, Wang Chen was furious.

He cursed her, cursed the Tower, cursed fate. He cursed whatever twisted being had decided that instead of giving him a decent combat class, he would be stuck with a "Gardener" class and a personal haunting by a seductive ghost with questionable morals and infinite free time.

"This stupid Tower," he muttered during one of his breaks, lying flat on his back in a fissure of dead earth, chest heaving. "First, it gave me this stupid class, Then it sends me a woman who refuses to leave. What's next? A landlord demanding rent?"

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