Zhang Han was the closest. His face instantly stiffened, and his whole face was about to break into an uncontrollable smile. His mind was in utter chaos. Zhao Lei’s loss of control had come too suddenly, leaving Zhang Han unable to react for a moment.
“Damn it… Huang Ziya can’t move right now, and Feng Quan is already at his limit just maintaining the ghost domain. What do we do…”
“Wait… before the captain left, he told us… Wang Shanshan…”
In that instant, he abruptly thought of Wang Shanshan and immediately turned back to look at Feng Quan. “Feng Quan! Take Huang Ziya and go first! Find Wang Shanshan!”
Seeing this, Huang Ziya was about to rush up to help, but Feng Quan reacted quickly and grabbed her.
“Calm down, Huang Ziya. This isn’t the time to show off. Both of us are in terrible condition. If the two of us die here, Zhang Han won’t be facing just one ghost anymore. Leave this to him. We’ll retreat first and find Wang Shanshan. Brother Leg said that if there’s anything in Dachang City we can’t resolve, we should go to her.”
Huang Ziya froze for a moment. Only then did she remember that Yang Jian still had a contingency plan. Her eyes immediately lit up. She had absolute trust in Yang Jian’s arrangements.
“Okay!”
Looking at Zhang Han, Huang Ziya said, “Hold on! We’ll be back to save you right away!”
With that, she and Feng Quan got into the vehicle, slammed down on the accelerator, and sped off.
Only after Zhang Han saw the vehicle had gone far away did he feel relieved. He turned back and looked at the face before him, unable to tell whether it belonged to Zhao Lei or Tong Qian.
“Hehehe.”
From Tong Qian’s half of the face, that sinister and terrifying laughter rang out once again.
Zhang Han said in a low voice, “No matter who you are right now, if you can hear me, cooperate with what I’m about to do.”
The corners of his mouth had already begun to lift slightly. Being attacked at such close range, Zhang Han was almost unable to withstand the supernatural power of that smiling face.
“I’ll use the tattoo as a medium and pierce it into your face. If you’re Tong Qian, respond once. If you’re Zhao Lei, respond twice. I don’t want to save the wrong person.”
Zhang Han did not have Yang Jian’s sharp observational ability. With that laughter practically pressed against his face, he was extremely flustered at this moment. In his desperation, he could only say something as useless as this.
But Zhang Han did not stop moving.
On his back, a horrifying tattoo could faintly be seen, depicting the appearance of a man’s corpse.
The wound that had yet to heal was torn open once more. Zhang Han knelt down in agony. The bloody, mangled man in his back stood upright at that moment. A pair of blood-soaked hands suddenly reached forward, grabbing Zhang Han’s shoulders as if about to crawl out.
Zhang Han forced out the words with difficulty, “I’m going to start now.”
Gritting his teeth, he stood up and placed his hand on Tong Qian’s eerie half-face. The ferocious tattoo wriggled along Zhang Han’s arm and slowly sank into it.
Zhang Han planned to use the tattoo to pull the malicious ghost out. Whether it was Tong Qian or Zhao Lei, he had to save one of them. He absolutely could not allow this ghost to revive here.
But Zhang Han had overlooked one problem. His way of understanding the supernatural was still not as comprehensive as Yang Jian’s.
A consciousness-type malicious ghost was not something that could be easily touched simply by entering the mind.
As the two bodies came into contact, the tattoo became a bridge, connecting two completely different supernatural puzzles together.
The tattoo burrowed deep into Tong Qian’s smiling face. The medium was complete.
A supernatural clash in which Zhang Han alone resisted three malicious ghosts began. Although it was incomplete, it was still not something he could endure.
At this moment, Zhang Han’s face was already wearing an eerie smile. For an instant, he actually felt his consciousness slowly dissipating.
“Impossible. The ghost face doesn’t possess a consciousness-type invasion. Could it be because of that newspaper? Did some unpredictable change occur between the two?”
Zhang Han’s mind frantically recalled all the information regarding Tong Qian and those two ghost faces.
“It spreads through sound. In other words, if I can’t hear the sound, I won’t be attacked…”
After hesitating for a moment, Zhang Han still raised his finger and stabbed it fiercely toward his ear. His fingertip plunged deep into the bottom of his cochlea, and blood immediately gushed out from inside his ear.
The entire world instantly fell silent.
Zhang Han did not even let out a muffled groan. He still stared fixedly at the two ghost faces before him.
“Something’s wrong. The sound is still there.”
The sound by his ears had indeed disappeared, but Zhang Han could still sense an extremely faint sound gently echoing within his mind.
The sound was so slight that it could almost be ignored. For now, Zhang Han could still withstand laughter of this level.
Looking at the tattoo that had invaded the ghost face, Zhang Han thought of another possibility.
“Could the sound be using the tattoo as a medium to directly invade my consciousness…?”
“The captain said that the supernatural can’t be judged by common sense. That newspaper possesses a supernatural power capable of invading consciousness, and right now I’m in direct contact with it. In other words, my guess is entirely possible…”
“But I still have a chance… The newspaper itself is an incomplete ghost puzzle. The truly lethal things are these two ghost faces.”
He glanced at Zhao Lei’s half of the face. It had remained in an expression that seemed to be crying yet not crying. From the looks of it, Zhao Lei had probably suppressed it.
“From the current situation, Zhao Lei’s consciousness should still be there. The crying face has been suppressed by him, so it hasn’t gone out of control for now.”
“And right now, the one truly threatening me is Tong Qian’s smiling face. I only need to restrict this smiling face.”
“Tong Qian’s file stated it very clearly. As long as one doesn’t smile, one can avoid triggering its killing pattern…”
Zhang Han had always understood that he did not possess Yang Jian’s almost abnormal observational ability when facing the supernatural, nor was he like other persons in charge, whose bodies contained the high-intensity supernatural power of several ghosts at once.
He had only controlled a single ghost, yet now he had to face three malicious ghosts at the same time. One of them was even the strangest kind—a consciousness-type ghost. Although it was an incomplete puzzle, it was still not something a ghost controller of his level could handle.
But at this moment, a trace of madness flashed through his eyes.
“Seek life through death… seek life through death… Captain, you were right…”
“Every supernatural power comes with a price. Even if you figure out a malicious ghost’s killing pattern, that doesn’t mean you can handle a supernatural incident unscathed. When facing unsolvable terror, only by placing yourself in a dead end and then finding life can you survive…”
He raised his head and glanced at the sky. By now, the daylight was already very dim. Only an incomplete moon hung unsteadily in the middle of the clouds, looking obscure and unclear.
“Captain… I think I understand your intention. Supernatural power is nothing more than an accessory for the living as they explore the path of the supernatural…”
“Though it is certainly important, it is not the most crucial thing.”
“Perhaps one day, an exception will appear—someone who, as an ordinary person, figures out the essence of the supernatural, resolves all malicious ghosts, and completely ends this era of the supernatural…”
He looked once more at Tong Qian’s half-smiling, half-not-smiling eerie face. The trace of madness in his eyes transformed into unwavering courage.