"I also failed over here. That Fang Shiming from the Friend Circle conducts himself far too cautiously... It seems this era has given birth to quite a remarkable group of people."
"Every era has its protagonists. I've long said that we cannot underestimate any captain from Headquarters. Arrogance is often the beginning of failure."
A short, stout old man carried a hideous corpse on his back, looking at the rotting meatball oozing bursts of corpse water as he continued speaking.
"Using the corpse behind me to compress part of the Hurricane Source Ghost to this degree is already the limit. Since we can't stop them, we can only choose to act. The future Elder Qin currently sees isn't complete; we still have a chance."
Beside him stood an old woman, observing a bizarre skull hovering above the hollow ground.
"The remaining source of the hurricane is this skull; it can't be suppressed anymore, so it can only be placed here, using part of the Ghost Lake to allow the supernatural forces of the two to cancel each other out."
Behind them was a tall, thin youth with hollow eyes and an expressionless face.
"The corpse can't be used too many times. We must take advantage of being able to barely control part of the hurricane right now to complete the plan as soon as possible. This method is far too dangerous. Once these two supernatural forces spiral out of control, we might even end up buried here."
The old man holding the meatball looked at that hideous corpse, pondered briefly, then spoke.
"Let them in here. Use this corpse once to trap them, but don't kill them. This era still needs these youngsters."
The old woman looked at the corpse and said coldly, "What if we can't stop them? This corpse can be used at most three more times within a controllable range. Once it loses control, we'll all die here."
The youth's hollow eyes suddenly turned murderous as he said viciously, "Then kill them already! What, are you scared?"
"I think you're the one who's truly senile! You need to understand, if the us from back then encountered them, the ones who died would only be us. You've also witnessed the chosen geniuses of our era—such beings always manage to find a breakthrough when facing supernatural forces. I don't recommend making direct contact."
The old man holding the meatball stepped between the two.
"Now is not the time for internal strife. We've finally waited for this opportunity; it doesn't allow for any mistakes. Let them in, combine the remaining uses of that corpse into one. Even if we can't stop them, we must render them incapable of action."
Ten minutes ago, at the same time Yang Jian and Liu San were under attack.
He couldn't approach the center of the hurricane alone in his current condition. This place was too dangerous to linger in. If he still couldn't find Yang Jian, he should return and find another method.
Inside a world filled with fierce winds, Fang Shiming was walking along a low downhill section. Perhaps due to the terrain, the wind speed here was much slower.
Fang Shiming, whose condition was already quite poor, naturally chose this path.
Suddenly.
"Shaa..."
Beneath Fang Shiming's feet, a stretch of blackish-yellow silt suddenly appeared. The uncomfortably frigid sensation felt like meat paste freshly dug from a corpse, slowly wriggling at his feet.
Fang Shiming tried to lift his feet, only to discover his legs couldn't exert any strength at all. The frigid quicksand was submerging his ankles, slowly pulling him under.
Looking up, he could faintly see a pitch-black, bizarre corpse lying motionlessly in the center of the quicksand. The strange blackish-yellow quicksand was precisely flowing out from within this corpse.
"The ghost inside my body can't be used... suppression?"
An old, worn pair of scissors inserted into the quicksand. With a light snip, a "click" sounded out.
The flowing blackish-yellow silt was cut open with a bright red gash, which was then slowly covered and healed by the gradually flowing silt.
"The scissors can't produce any effect."
Fang Shiming frowned deeply, watching the slowly healing gash as he pondered a way to escape.
Right at this moment.
"It's the silt from the bottom of Ghost Lake." A voice came from nearby.
Fang Shiming followed the voice and looked over. A woman wearing a Headquarters supervisor's uniform was standing in the shadows not far away, watching him.
"Someone from Headquarters?"
Fang Shiming stared at the woman ahead.
The woman nodded, pulling out a supervisor's identification card from her bosom and waving it.
"Fang Shiming, boss of the Friend Circle. I've read your file."
As she spoke, He Yiner slowly walked out from the shadows.
"You're very lucky. The lake water in the silt was blown away, leaving only this quicksand; otherwise, you'd be dead here by now."
Fang Shiming didn't speak, merely staring coldly at He Yiner, waiting for her to speak. He was a smart man. A supervisor who could appear at this time must certainly be here to help.
He Yiner stood on high ground, looking at that pitch-black, bizarre corpse in the center of the quicksand as she continued speaking.
"Don't look at me like that either. My condition is very poor right now; I can't help much. I can only tell you what I know."
"This quicksand seemingly has the effect of suppressing and binding malevolent ghosts. At the bottom of the lake, it suppressed some extremely high-level malevolent ghosts together with Ghost Lake, but it was scattered by these strange winds. I didn't expect you'd encounter it."
In her current condition, He Yiner didn't dare recklessly touch this strange quicksand, so she could only provide the intel she knew.
"So it really is suppression, just as I guessed before. Suppressing together with Ghost Lake..."
Fang Shiming looked at the gradually sinking corpse, thinking.
"Wait! Impossible. Ghosts don't think. Mutual suppression between malevolent ghosts only results in shutdown, balance, or one side being suppressed alone. Even at the level of Ghost Painting and Ghost Messenger, it's the same."
Fang Shiming was recalling the supernatural collision between the Ghost Messenger and Ghost Painting in Dajing City. Neither could do anything to the other, forming a temporary balance.
And Wang Xiaoming had precisely exploited this characteristic of supernatural collisions to arrange for Li Jun's squad to enter the Ghost Painting; otherwise, he absolutely wouldn't have dared to do it.
Fang Shiming continued speaking.
"If a third malevolent ghost intervened at this time, it would only break this balance, unless the suppressed malevolent ghost's terror level already exceeded common sense. However..."
"This theory absolutely cannot be applied to Ghost Lake, because Ghost Lake itself is a supernatural existence far beyond the norm. And since it could be sunk to the bottom of the lake, that sufficiently proves the terror level of the malevolent ghost at the lake bottom absolutely cannot exceed that of Ghost Lake..."
The frigid quicksand had already reached his thighs.
Fang Shiming didn't panic, instead continuing his calm analysis.
"I can be certain that this quicksand is merely the malevolent ghost that was sunk to the lake bottom. If we infer from this..."
"The ghost inside my body might not actually be suppressed, yet I can't use it. I'm still missing a key piece of information."
"If I can come into contact with that corpse, perhaps I can obtain the key intel."
He Yiner looked at Fang Shiming, her heart filled with surprise. Through merely a few short sentences of exchange and observation, the man before her had already analyzed the supernatural properties of this silt.
Terrifyingly keen intuition.
This kind of person shouldn't die here.
He Yiner watched Fang Shiming slowly sinking, silently weighing things in her heart.