Can phone chat logs be special items too? Gu Mian wondered. Who the hell designed this? And it attracts ghosts, no less! Does everyone want to see if there are any skeletons in his closet, or what?

Gu Mian noted down this special item and continued reading.

He quickly found a bug report about the corpse puzzle.

[Fixed the bug where the Dismembered Ghost pulls out the wrong organs from the player as punishment every ten minutes in the corpse puzzle task]

Under this line of text, there was a hastily written note that seemed like a programmer's complaint.

'This Dismembered Ghost is old and senile. It keeps tearing organs off players that it *already has attached to itself*. After tearing one off, it realizes it can't use it because it already has that part, so it just throws away the organ it ripped from the player. It makes our task's penalty seem completely random. I strongly suggest we fire this Dismembered Ghost and get a smarter one.'

There's a lot to unpack in this complaint...

After reading these lines, Gu Mian had a general idea.

The punishment for the corpse puzzle probably involved the Dismembered Ghost tearing an organ off a player every ten minutes to attach to itself. Ideally, it should tear off organs players hadn't found for it yet, but this ghost was rather dim-witted and kept picking the wrong ones.

It must have torn organs off quite a few unlucky players by now.

Speaking of which, four minutes had already passed. Gu Mian glanced at the time displayed on the large screen nearby.

He had to get a move on, or the terrifying Dismembered Ghost might come for him soon.

With this in mind, Gu Mian began moving through room after room.

He soon found the first piece of the Dismembered Ghost's puzzle in the Evil God's room.

After identifying Xu Xingcheng's corpse, Gu Mian, ever so considerate, straightened it on the floor to make it look less gruesome.

When Gu Mian arrived, he noticed a bulge under Xu Xingcheng's corpse, as if something was hidden beneath it.

Gu Mian bent down, moved the body aside, and indeed found another body with a head underneath. Judging by the head, it was the missing Dismembered Ghost from Room 603.

He remembered this corpse from when he passed Room 603 earlier; it looked quite old, with withered skin and white hair. No wonder the programmers' manual said it wasn't smart—probably senile already, he thought.

The part Gu Mian had found was just a bare torso topped with a head, devoid of limbs. He held the Dismembered Ghost's head in his hands. Its eyes were tightly shut, and it looked very peaceful.

Looking at the bare torso with the head attached, Gu Mian figured he still needed to find its limbs.

At least he'd found the biggest piece. He immediately took this piece back to Room 603 and went to find the next one.

The layout of these two floors wasn't complicated, offering few places to hide things.

Gu Mian soon found the Dismembered Ghost's left arm in an oil drum in the Burning Death Ghost's room. After returning the arm to Room 603, less than four minutes remained until the first punishment. He still had three body parts to find.

Most rooms didn't have any good hiding spots. If any place was likely to conceal something, it would be the Binge-eating Ghost's room.

There was a long table in the room piled high with delicious food. An arm or a leg hidden there would be hard to find without a careful search.

But that wasn't the best hiding spot. There was another place in the room where something hidden would be even harder to find.

Inside Room 504, Gu Mian crouched by the table, poking the Binge-eating Ghost's protruding gut. "Hiding it in here would make it almost impossible to find," he mused aloud, "though, isn't that a bit twisted?"

The Binge-eating Ghost, which had been sitting quietly with its upper body sprawled across the dining table, seemed to shudder almost imperceptibly when Gu Mian said this.

He stroked his chin thoughtfully, "They're all ghosts. They probably don't have moral compasses. From their perspective, one ghost hiding inside another's stomach probably seems perfectly normal..."

After Gu Mian finished speaking, the corpse in front of him trembled more noticeably, even causing the nearby table to wobble slightly.

This slight tremor intensified when Gu Mian picked up his axe, and the table began to shake as if in an earthquake.

Gu Mian gestured towards the Binge-eating Ghost's stomach with the axe, as if deciding where to make the first cut.

At that moment, the Binge-eating Ghost suddenly slumped weakly in its chair. Its upper body slid smoothly off the table and onto the floor. As it landed, it 'accidentally' kicked out, sending the nearby dining table flying.

The long table landed upside down, and stuck to its underside was a leg—the very body part Gu Mian was looking for.

Gu Mian stared at the overturned table, its own legs pointing skyward, and the dismembered leg stuck to its underside. He was speechless.

Was the force of that 'weak' slide really that great? Or was this the first time he'd seen someone 'accidentally' flip a table while falling? The Binge-eating Ghost's strength was terrifying.

With the table overturned, the bloated corpse on the floor sneakily turned its head to look. Only when it saw the leg revealed under the tabletop did it close its eyes again, resuming its act of being dead.

Since the body part hidden in this room was found, Gu Mian decided not to go after the Binge-eating Ghost, which lay on the floor still wearing a blissful smile. Less than two minutes remained until the first punishment; he had to hurry.

Gu Mian stepped forward, pulled the leg off the underside of the table, and examined it. It was a right leg.

Now he just needed to find the left leg and the right arm.

Carrying a leg around was inconvenient, so Gu Mian decided to take it back to Room 603 and attach it first.

Gu Mian soon returned to Room 603. The Dismembered Ghost's torso, with its head and left arm, lay forlornly on the floor.

Gu Mian squatted beside it, leg in hand, and attached it to the lower left side of the torso.

After doing this, Gu Mian looked up at the large screen. The countdown had, at some point, reached four hours and eleven minutes. The first ten-minute interval was up.

The punishment should be here, he thought.

Gu Mian looked down at the head on the floor. According to the programmer's log, the punishment was the Dismembered Ghost suddenly jumping up, tearing off a player's limb, and attaching it to itself.

Of course, the "sudden jumping" part was Gu Mian's own embellishment, an action he felt suited the horrifying and thrilling atmosphere.

Just as Gu Mian squatted before the corpse, wondering how it would deliver the punishment, he felt something touch his thigh.

He glanced back. It was the left arm he had retrieved.

The corpse's eyesight was truly terrible. The hand fumbled around on his right leg for a good while, seemingly unsure if this was the limb it should tear off.

After fumbling over Gu Mian's leg for some time, the hand finally decided what to tear off. It spread its withered fingers, gripped Gu Mian's right ankle, and yanked hard.

It didn't budge.

It yanked hard again.

Still, nothing.

The head on the torso couldn't resist cracking open an eye to peek at what was happening. The moment it did, it saw a large axe pinning its left arm to the floor, immobilizing it.

In the past, players had feared the punishment and tried to resist, but all resistance was futile, the ghost recalled.

So, it opened its gaping, bloody maw, straightened its bare torso, and lunged towards the thigh of the person squatting beside it, determined to carry out the punishment.

Which leg was it supposed to tear off? It had forgotten. Oh well, any leg would do.

But as it lunged, its gaping maw wide, its old, dim eyes finally focused on the person's face—a nightmarish visage, one frequently cursed and shared in its colleagues' group chats.

The righteous judgment screeched to a halt.

The head, mouth still agape, froze mid-lunge, unsure whether to advance or retreat. Its wrinkled face was a mask of utter embarrassment.

Finally, the old ghost steeled itself, gritted its teeth, and decided to throw in the towel.

CLICK. It snapped its blood-filled mouth shut, squeezed its old, dim eyes closed, and with a THUD, flopped onto the ground, playing dead. A fake, benevolent smile spread across its face, as if it had merely wanted to show Gu Mian how dazzlingly white its teeth were.