33 Family P 4

"Each room has a special area to keep the ghosts inside," Third P was unfazed by the brutality in front of him and pointed to a cage illuminated by green light at the end of the room.

Lia quickly recovered and the split-second of surprise flew away with no trace left. Tom shot her a glance and a nasty smile spread on his face.

Lia knew that vengeful ghosts existed because mortals were (brutally) killed and had lingering regrets, deep resentments left that bound them to the world and kept them from passing on. However, to go to this extent to create ghosts was just inhuman.

"As you can guess the success rate of turning a mortal into a vengeful ghost is only 80%, not 100. This means there's still major room for failure. So you have to find out what the best way is to turn these mortals into vengeful ghosts."

"Sounds like fun," Tom put his hands behind his head as they walked back to the open space, "Zou think so too, Kim?"

Tom stretched out her name and Lia suspected he might have found something out.

"It's work, it's not supposed to be fun," she sat back on the chair. Third P left them alone.

"No? Haven't ya heard? New trend comin' through, work's supposed to be extremely fun or else ya not cut out for this?"

"I think you've hit the nail on the head. You seem to prioritise annoying me than working, could it be you were referring to yourself? If so, please find somewhere else to work."

"Ya think ya clever huh?" Lia didn't know if he was just pretending to speak like this or if this is how he really spoke.

"Quite confident."

Lia's eyes twitched. Confident. Did she really come across like this? Of course, she was on one hand but on the other, it was the cause why she failed last time. However, with her powers, she really thought she couldn't be defeated so easily, especially not when this whole building was full of corpses.

Lia felt the pieces of soul floating in her body and the knife strapped around her calf. In any case, she would be prepared. She also had the talisman.

"How do you prefer to do it? Do you want to split it up?"

There were three rooms on each side. If both managed three rooms and then reported the results at the end of the day, then that was enough.

"If ya want, I'll take the left side," Tom twirled on his chair before he pulled something out of his trousers.

"What's that?"

"Ya don't know?" Tom held up the device before he started pressing on it with both hands.

"Portable gaming device from the mortal world."

"Where did you get it?"

"Did ya even listen? Mortal world?"

Lia didn't say anything. Tom's attention was fixated on that gaming thing. He was seriously playing. She was, however, more concerned about how he got that device. Did he go to the mortal world and or did someone else give it to him?

Would it even work here?

But it was better if he wasn't working seriously, that meant Lia could move around on her own without that pair of eyes constantly on her.

Claise said that their working times would be from 10-5 with 1 pm being an hour lunch break. This project could go on for weeks.

Lia got up and walked towards the laboratory to check out the other rooms. Meanwhile, Tom snickered as Lia left.

Third P had shown them the last room on the right side, meaning it was one of the three rooms she had to take care of.

She opened each door and sure enough, it was the same sight that greeted her. She was uncertain what the difference between them was. Taking advantage of the fact that Tom wasn't here, she started examining the rooms on his side.

Even when a mortal was killed, there was only an 80% chance they'd turn into a vengeful ghost. So, their goal was to turn that 80% into 100% and to provide the best results.

How did mortals turn into ghosts? What were the requirements for it? What did the process look like? Could it be modified? Changed?

Just thinking about it made it clear to Lia that this was an absolute taboo topic. If they found out about the process and the key to creating those vengeful ghosts, then they would be aiding Min and whatever his purpose was.

In other words, Lia could never let this happen. If someone in here would really have a breakthrough then that secret could never be allowed to leave her and reach the ears of Min or anyone else related to him.

She had to maintain good relationships with the others to find out about their progress and in the end, make sure no one could leave here alive.

This turned out to be way more complicated than originally planned. At first, they just wanted to stop this facility and get rid of the P family but now this has turned into a wide-scale mission, including everyone who knew about this had to be eliminated.

Lia couldn't wait to discuss this with Noel. She wanted to know what his floor and experiments looked like and she was sure he had the same thoughts as her.

She entered the first room on Tom's side and closed the door behind her. In the room were several metal tables where mortals laid. She put her hands over their mouths. They were still alive. So, part of their tasks was to kill them.

Lia only killed for her revenge and she wanted to let innocent people, especially mortals who had nothing to do with immortals affairs stay alive, but in order to not blow her cover, she had to do the experiments.

She inspected the room. Apart from the mortals, there were countless tools to torture someone. This room looked exactly like the other room they saw, the only difference was that the other room's mortals were all dead.

Suddenly, an idea popped into her mind. She could use those corpses but the problem was to get them out without anyone noticing.

Lia let the room and visited the others, however, all of them looked identical to the first one, except for the torture methods which were different. Medications, poison, gas, water and fire, and electricity.

Even if Lia had no idea how to turn a mortal into a ghost, even she knew that this wouldn't be effective, it was only to fuel someone's sadistic pleasure.

She left the laboratory and passed the open space where Tom sat, still playing his game. He briefly looked up to see Lia heading into the office of Third P.

Lia knocked on the door and Third P answered. After she closed the door, she bowed respectfully while Third P sat on the table.

"Anything wrong?"

"No, sir. I just wanted to inquire about the corpses."

"Corpses?" Third P raised his head and took a long look at her.

"Yes, surely we cannot let them rot in the room. You will have new test subjects coming in anyways, so it'd be best to clear the space."

"Ah, don't bother with it. I will have someone take care of it."

"If it's ok with you, I'd like to do it."

"You?" Third P's lips were still curled up and Lia felt he was making fun of her.

"Yes, there'd be more time for me to examine the corpses and see what happens after they're left to rot."

"Left to rot?"

"Yes," Lia knew these were absurd words but she felt that Third P would try anything.

Third P seemed straight and diligent but his sharp eyes told her he wanted to win and that made it easy to use his simple desire to manipulate and use him.

Third P was silent for a few seconds but then agreed, "It's an interesting thought. Good, I'll leave the coprses to you then. Also, how have you decided to work?"

"We agreed to split. Tom takes the left side and I'm taking the right side."

"Ok," with a nod Third P indicated that the conversation was over.

"Aren't you going to work?" Lia passed Tom's table.

"Ain't I doing it right now?" he waved his gaming device as his fingers flew across it.

"Are you even taking this seriously?" Lia didn't plan on leaving him alone.

"Listen, I do my work when I want. Well, look at the time. Shift's almost over," Tom removed his legs from the table.

"We have only begun."

"Ya sure concerned 'bout me," Tom strode away, "What ya lass take days for, I can do in a few hours."

With that, he disappeared. Lia didn't move for a while before he really vanished out of sight. She had no clue where he got the confidence that his slacking would be tolerated but it was indeed better if he wasn't here.

Lia made her way to the last room on her side and wrapped up the corpses. Then she scouted the stairs and the area in front of her room. Tom could be in his room or he was walking around somewhere else.

Even though Third P gave her his approval to take care of the corpses, she didn't want people to find out about it. Especially not Tom.

Two corpses at a time she carried them in her room and stored them in her bathroom. They were covered in clothes, so she didn't have to stare at them or smell them, hopefully.

She stored four of the corpses in her room before giving the others, outside the facility, a proper burial, hidden in the mountains. Then she went back to the laboratory and walked into the first room on her right side.

There were ten mortals who were strapped to the bed. They've just woken up and showed fearful expressions. Their mouths were covered, so they could make no sounds.

Even if Lia didn't kill mortals, they'd be after a while teleported back to the mortal world, dead, because they weren't allowed in the immortal world which they regarded as heaven.

Yet this heaven plunged them straight into hell.

This room used poison to kill them. In order to create ghosts, the mortals had to die with lingering regrets and resentment.

In other words, they had to be tortured to the point where they could fuel these emotions to the extreme.

"Poison can be painful but my guess is they will be slow working, taking their time to corrode you."

In order to fuel their hatred, personal connections should be established. The victims should be able to see and hear their abusers in order to feed the urge for revenge in their hearts.

The first mortal struggled and shook his head as Lia inserted a sharp needle into his arm. The veins bulged and the vibrant blue stuck out.

Lia briefly closed her eyes but continued. Later after her workday was over, each of the three doors to her rooms were pushed open. Tom looked at the tortured mortals and let out a snort.

He took the torture tools in his hands, stroked the victims and then gave a low laugh.