Hearing Wang Liang’s words, Zhao Jianguo froze for a moment. How had he not known that the person in charge was going on a business trip? Oh—this person in charge wasn’t someone he could manage.
Wang Liang said, “Right. At present, Da’an City only has one supernatural incident left that’s been sealed off. I’ll deal with it when I get back. I solved two incidents as soon as I took office, so I should have lived up to the privileges you gave me. But after this, I need to handle a private matter. If it’s quick, one or two days; if it’s slow, about a week.”
“All right, I understand. Of course that’s no problem. The ghost candle should be delivered tomorrow. And as we said before, as long as you take proper responsibility for Da’an City, Headquarters will show you the greatest tolerance. You can act according to your own ideas,” Zhao Jianguo said.
“Mm. If there’s nothing else, I’m hanging up.”
After ending the call with Headquarters, Wang Liang took out the gold bottle containing the supernatural ashes, pulled off the cap, and glanced inside.
He could sense that the cold emanating from the supernatural ashes within had not weakened at all. As a preliminary conclusion, after the ashes were taken out of the ghost-fire basin, there was no need to worry about them having a “shelf life.”
In truth, such problems rarely appeared with supernatural things. Wang Liang was merely being cautious and wanted to confirm it again.
Wang Liang went downstairs into the safe room, carried the ghost-fire basin down and set it on the floor, then came to the three gold boxes piled against the wall.
Each box had a label stuck to it, recording which ghost was imprisoned inside and its killing pattern.
The stinking ghost, the waving ghost, and the old woman ghost.
Wang Liang used a tool to cut open the lid of the gold box containing the stinking ghost. Before the stinking ghost inside could revive, he grabbed it by the throat. The supernatural powers of Sadako and the ghost blood acted at the same time, suppressing it until it showed no movement.
He lifted the stinking ghost out and came before the ghost-fire basin. With his other hand, he rubbed his chin. How should he verify the method of using ghosts to produce supernatural ashes next?
Let the stinking ghost be contaminated by the ghost fire?
This dark-orange ghost fire possessed the ability to send a person or ghost to a supernatural place once it had completely ignited them.
If the suppressed stinking ghost were set alight, it would probably be sent directly to the supernatural place corresponding to this patch of reality. Did that mean he had to try producing supernatural ashes inside the supernatural place?
Furthermore, the old woman ghost possessed the supernatural ability to tear things through the air from within the ghost fire. It could rip apart things burned by ghost fire from a distance and throw them into the ghost-fire basin.
So simply letting a ghost be burned by ghost fire might not work. The supernatural ashes were all inside the ghost-fire basin. Perhaps the ghost needed to be thrown into the ghost-fire basin and burned there, relying on certain special effects the basin possessed, in order to produce supernatural ashes.
But if he threw it directly into the ghost-fire basin, setting aside whether the ghost would be sent to a supernatural place by the dark-orange ghost fire, the basin itself didn’t seem large enough to fit the stinking ghost.
Right, Wang Liang thought. A ghost’s physical form was only a kind of appearance. A ghost domain or other suppressive supernatural powers could make it deform. This was also the origin of supernatural objects.
Just like in the original plot, Yang Jian used a ghost domain to compress the Deceiving Ghost into a necklace, condensing it into a black dot.
When the supernatural power was used, the compressed ghost would revive and the black dot within the necklace would spread, but Yang Jian could use the ghost domain again to press it back down and condense it once more into a black dot.
Wang Liang currently did not have a ghost domain and could not alter a form too drastically, but his ghost blood possessed strong corrosive properties. If he corroded it for a long time, he should be able to alter a ghost’s form to a certain extent.
After his first confrontation with the stinking ghost earlier, the ghost’s body had already shown signs of corrosion before he imprisoned it. Now he could try corroding the ghost for an extended period and see what happened.
Thinking of this, Wang Liang felt it was indeed worth trying. If the stinking ghost was transported away, at worst he would go to the supernatural place and try it there. In any case, he had to figure out how the supernatural ashes in the ghost-fire basin were produced.
However, Wang Liang did not rush to use the ghost blood to corrode the stinking ghost and then stuff it into the fire basin. Instead, he first tossed out two photographs and summoned two derivative Sadakos.
Then he had one derivative Sadako take the stinking ghost from his hand and stand on one side of the safe room, where there was nothing else nearby.
After that, Wang Liang controlled the other derivative Sadako to crouch before the ghost-fire basin, preparing to try another way of using the ghost-fire basin.
Back then, the old woman ghost had swept her hand over the ghost-fire basin, raising a large shower of sparks that formed dark-orange ghost fire for an attack.
The old woman ghost itself also possessed the supernatural ability to release sparks that formed ghost fire, but this ghost-fire basin should be able to do the same as well. It could be considered part of its puzzle.
But after Sadako’s pale hand swept over the ghost fire drifting unextinguished within the basin, it did not scatter sparks like the old woman ghost had. Instead, her hand was lightly burned by the ghost fire. A few strands of ghost fire clung to the back of her hand, using the supernatural as fuel as they burned Sadako’s hand.
Black blood vessels on the back of Sadako’s hand burst, and the exploding black blood extinguished those few strands of ghost fire.
Wang Liang frowned. It seemed that although dark-orange ghost fire burned inside the ghost-fire basin, he could not use it like the old woman ghost to scatter a large shower of sparks for an attack.
Either he had not found the right method, or he was lacking a certain supernatural power. Relying solely on the ghost-fire basin itself made it difficult to form a large shower of sparks for an attack.
Wang Liang felt somewhat regretful, but he did not dwell on it too much. As long as he could find a way to produce supernatural ashes, that was enough.
He brought the stinking ghost over. Foul-smelling, viscous black ghost blood flowed from his hand, sliding down onto the stinking ghost’s body with a sizzling sound.
Ghost blood flowed continuously, forming a pool of blood on the floor, and the stinking ghost was constantly corroded within it.
The flesh and blood on the stinking ghost’s body disappeared amid the sizzling sounds. This was not the ghost’s true body, merely the corpse it had parasitized.
After large portions of the corpse’s flesh and blood were corroded away and vanished, what remained in the ghost blood was a curled-up ghost compressed several times over, only the size of an infant.
The ghost’s body was withered and dry. It had no facial features, only three pitch-black holes, making it appear utterly savage and eerie.
Wang Liang threw the ghost, now shrunk several times over, into the ghost-fire basin. The dark-orange ghost fire burned the ghost’s body. Even without Sadako and the ghost blood suppressing it, the stinking ghost showed no movement at all.
Moreover, after it was completely ignited by the dark-orange ghost fire, Wang Liang discovered that the stinking ghost still remained inside the ghost-fire basin and had not been sent to a supernatural place by the ghost fire.
A special chill rose from within the ghost-fire basin, blocking the stinking ghost from being sent away by the ghost fire. The two supernatural forces clashed and conflicted at this moment, causing a new change to appear on the stinking ghost.
After it had burned for a while, a gray particle fell from the stinking ghost and landed at the bottom of the ghost-fire basin.
Supernatural ashes had been produced.
That speck of ash was extremely tiny, but Wang Liang, who had been watching the situation in the basin closely the entire time, still noticed the black dot falling amid the firelight. This made him feel delighted.
Ghosts could not be killed, so that speck of ash was not formed from the ghost’s body. A ghost could not possibly be annihilated by the ghost-fire basin into grains of ash. It was just like the naked male ghost he had encountered before in the supernatural place; who knew how long it had been burned, yet it still existed, its appearance undamaged.
So it seemed the supernatural ashes were formed by the ghost’s supernatural power being specially condensed within the ghost-fire basin.
And ghosts were products of rules; their supernatural power was inexhaustible. This also meant that as long as there were ghosts to use as fuel, the supernatural ashes would be inexhaustible!
If multiple ghosts burned at the same time, supernatural ashes could be produced even faster.
Chapter 45 has been revised a little. Everyone can go back and reread it. What was exchanged is no longer just one red and three white ghost candles; there is also ghost money.
Thanks to reader 20240108123001926, as well as the suggestions from other readers. Back then, when I wrote that exchange, the main purpose was actually to have Wang Xiaoming and the protagonist establish a connection and become aware of each other’s existence. It wasn’t meant as bootlicking. A lot of the satisfaction in the book actually comes from how these important original characters view the protagonist; it can’t just be a solo game.
As for the old woman ghost… uh, although she’s very strong, her most special ability is actually transporting things to a supernatural place. The protagonist has the ghost-fire basin in his hands, and the most valuable supernatural ashes and their method of production are also in the protagonist’s hands, so the old woman ghost isn’t that valuable to the protagonist.
But since there was some feedback—though most people are just following along, maybe thinking it doesn’t matter, or maybe silently dropping it, haha—I still went and changed a bit, adding some ghost money. That’s still very useful, especially at Ghost Street.
Keeping the old woman ghost now is completely meaningless, and the opportunity to exchange it back has also been preserved. That should be enough.