But at that moment, when Wang Chaling saw the old man whose colors were constantly fading, panic crossed his face. He had never experienced anything so bizarre before. He immediately roared:
“Yang Jian! Whatever you’re going to do, hurry!”
Behind him, the headless ghost shadow had already completely covered the corpse, and the ghost eyes upon it were slowly overlapping.
Eight scarlet eyeballs fully superimposed upon one another. The surrounding space abruptly froze, then actually began to show signs of rewinding. This was exactly what Yang Jian did not want to see. Once the area-wide restart was completed, all their previous efforts would be wasted.
But Yang Jian could only control the duration of the restart; he could not interfere with the process itself.
He could only shout hurriedly, “Help!”
The other captains moved very quickly. The instant they sensed the restart beginning, they took action.
The yellow paper on Liu San’s body began to peel away, rising without wind and rapidly scattering, revealing the terrifying old corpse wrapped beneath it—a withered, deathly face, and two dim, lightless eyeballs hanging in its sockets.
Immediately, the world before them began to warp, collapse, and flatten, as though it were a sheet of paper being pressed flat by some invisible, tremendous force.
Yet this was only an illusion brought about by the supernatural. But as time passed, this terrifying manifestation of the supernatural altering reality was gradually becoming real.
Right after that, Shen Lin acted. A flash of axe-light emerged from Liu San’s memories, then invaded reality, tearing open the entire space.
Within the rift, one could even see a sinister black mist seeping out continuously, incomparably strange.
What followed closely after was a waxen yellow that expanded in an instant, blotting out the sky and covering the earth.
In the sky, countless sheets of yellow paper drifted down eerily, yet they did not fall to the ground. Instead, they stuck to the air, layer upon layer, like sealing strips.
Then, space began to fold.
Like a sheet of paper being folded over and over, with each overlap, the area-wide restart was suppressed by another degree. Under this eerie phenomenon repeating in cycles, the restart of the eight-layer ghost domain was forcibly stopped.
But the superimposition of the ghost eyes did not dissipate. Each time red light flashed, the entire world would be folded once. This was a supernatural counterforce, centered on the old corpse inside Liu San, barely maintained with the assistance of Shen Lin and Li Leping.
But this state could not last long. The slightest mistake, and the supernatural forces within the entire area would instantly go out of control.
Yang Jian’s gaze locked tightly onto the eyeball in the dried corpse’s hand. He was about to complete the most crucial step. Within the ghost shadow, the ghost eyes that had completed eight layers of superimposition slowly covered it at this moment.
At the instant of collision, a faint bell chime rang out, actually echoing through this vacuum, clear and audible.
The next second, the entire world suddenly halted.
Everyone, everything, came to a sudden, violent standstill.
The burning black fire, the yellow paper in midair, the silent Wang Chaling, the unconscious Li Jun, Liu San with half of the old corpse exposed, Li Leping and Shen Lin whose figures were almost transparent, and the tiny motes of lunar dust suspended in the air.
Everything froze in that instant.
It was as though even the fundamental particles in the microscopic world had lost their trajectories of motion.
Immediately after, the out-of-control red light surged wildly like spilled ink.
A thin line could faintly be seen. No, it was not a thin line—it was a fissure appearing in the entire image. The crack grew larger and larger, spreading densely like a spiderweb, and then the image began to shatter bit by bit.
There seemed to be a sound of breaking, and the world vanished.
A nine-layer ghost domain. Though it was incomplete, Yang Jian had indeed gone to the future. The entire process lasted less than a second, but the fact achieved through the supernatural had already occurred.
Yang Jian stood within a field of black.
There was no up or down here, nor left or right. The sense of direction had lost all meaning in this place.
Nothing existed here. Everything had yet to happen; everything remained unknown.
There were no colors around him, nor any shapes. It was a complete void, a true “nothingness” that surpassed the scope of human understanding.
Yang Jian frowned slightly. This was a forbidden domain he had never come into contact with before. He moved his legs and began walking through this emptiness, thinking.
“Under the supernatural counterforce, a space that should not exist was created—a space that has not yet occurred, but that I have truly arrived in.”
“Wang Xiaoming’s conjecture was correct. If one forcibly goes to the future through supernatural means, the black fire cannot anchor itself to a result that has yet to happen.”
In a future that no one could observe, even the “cause” had not yet occurred, making the “result” all the more impossible to predict.
The black fire’s killing pattern had failed.
“The black fire has disappeared, because it cannot anchor whether I will continue to hold malice toward it in the future. This situation is equivalent to the fierce ghost crashing. Under the conflict between an ‘unanchorable future’ and the black fire’s own killing pattern, I successfully escaped its attack.”
Sensing the fierce ghosts within his body, Yang Jian found that the ghost eyes ached faintly, but aside from that, there was nothing abnormal. The strange black fire in his mind had completely vanished. He opened his ghost hand and clenched his fist hard; Yang Jian could still use his own supernatural power.
“Then how should I imprison it? Or rather, how should I bypass it...”
“Li Jun said that the ghost ship limited the black fire’s expansion. That means it also has an upper limit. Faced with a supernatural force of a higher terror level than itself, it cannot break through either...”
“Supernatural superimposition?”
Yang Jian thought it over. Right now, he was the only one who could move. Within this space, there was no external force he could borrow.
But this was slightly different from the superimposition of the ghost eyes. This time, Yang Jian needed to superimpose all of his own supernatural powers, yet he had never attempted such a state before.
A possibility flashed through Yang Jian’s mind.
“If, within the ‘future’ opened by this pseudo-nine-layer ghost domain, I use the eight-layer ghost domain to carry out an area-wide restart, while simultaneously using the six-layer ghost domain to stop my own time...”
“Then, at the instant on the moon when I clash with the supernatural power of the pendulum clock, will a second me appear?”
“By the same logic, if the theory holds, as long as I don’t exceed the upper limit of this pseudo-nine-layer ghost domain, perhaps I can superimpose countless versions of myself...”
“The chance of success is very high. Even if I fail, I’ve already broken free from the black fire. As long as I no longer generate the thought of attacking it, I can still retreat safely.”
No one knew how long this space could exist. In supernatural incidents, every moment was filled with variables. Yang Jian decided not to hesitate any longer.
His character had always been like this: knowledge and action as one. Since he already had a clear plan, he would carry it out.
Behind him, the enormous headless ghost shadow rose upright, and the eight ghost eyes superimposed upon one another in that instant.
The next moment, light appeared.
Countless images began to form within the darkness, covering the sky and earth, arriving one after another.
They surged over like waves, interweaving, piling up, expanding.