Without Ghost Lake’s suppression, spirit-summoning can allow me to revive once. This is also one of the necessary conditions for becoming a spirit summoner.
Even if he fails, the price for me is not unacceptable. To make someone like him owe Taiping Ancient Town a favor—this is killing two birds with one stone.
After thinking for a moment, He Yiner said to Fang Shiming, “Fang Shiming, remember to bring my corpse back to Taiping Ancient Town.”
Fang Shiming was stunned for a moment, but then immediately realized what this woman intended to do and nodded at her.
He Yiner did not hesitate. She leaped up and jumped into the center of the quicksand, landing right on that dim, yellowed corpse. The instant her feet made contact, an unknown killing rule was triggered.
A cold, sticky sensation rushed at her face, as if she had been wrapped in a mass of mashed flesh. The sand and mud around her surged madly into her body. Coming into such close contact with the source ghost of this quicksand caused He Yiner’s entire body to rapidly sink into it.
She showed not the slightest panic. Instead, she carefully observed the corpse beneath her feet. Disregarding the terror of a fierce ghost’s revival, she madly used the powers of the ghosts within her, trying to uncover the true killing rule of this bizarre quicksand.
She sank very quickly. The quicksand had already swallowed her chest. Suddenly, He Yiner felt the supernatural power within her loosen for an instant. She still wanted to try something more, but in her extremely poor condition, reaching this step was already her limit.
He was right. It isn’t suppression. The fierce ghosts inside my body can be used. I have to find a way to pass the information to him.
But how? I’m sinking too fast...
He Yiner’s entire body had now sunk into the quicksand. Only her two hands remained raised high, exposed above the surface, while her consciousness slowly faded.
Fang Shiming had been watching He Yiner’s every move, looking at her when only her two hands remained outside.
“Did she fail?”
Just then, He Yiner’s left hand struggled to point toward her clenched right hand. Then, maintaining that posture, she rapidly sank into the quicksand.
Fang Shiming’s brows knitted tightly. He did not understand what information He Yiner was trying to convey through that gesture.
“What is she pointing at...”
Suddenly, he saw a faint golden reflection.
“No, that’s—”
Following the direction her finger pointed, Fang Shiming saw the golden watch on He Yiner’s right hand flash past.
The quicksand had already reached Fang Shiming’s chest.
“A watch? Gold?”
He Yiner had already been swallowed entirely by the blackish-yellow quicksand. Only that gold watch still floated above the surface, carried slowly along by the quicksand.
“What information is she trying to give me...”
Fang Shiming’s mind analyzed frantically. Now, the quicksand was about to swallow his neck.
That gold watch had been carried by the movement of the quicksand to Fang Shiming’s side, but Fang Shiming still did not understand what message He Yiner wanted to convey with it.
“Is it time... or direction?”
Fang Shiming stared fixedly at the watch. The glittering golden watch had already followed the same route, carried by the quicksand around him twice.
“Something’s wrong. The direction this watch is moving...”
The quicksand had already covered Fang Shiming’s lips.
“The quicksand’s flow has an extremely regular pattern. Is she trying to tell me that the key to escaping lies in the direction?”
He tried moving his body along with the direction of the quicksand’s flow, but it still had no effect. The fierce ghosts inside him remained dormant.
“No good. There’s too little information.”
Unable to analyze what kind of intelligence He Yiner was trying to pass on, Fang Shiming could only make one final attempt.
That was to completely ignore the revival of the fierce ghosts and use their powers without restraint. He wanted to gamble—gamble that when his supernatural power fully unfolded, he could briefly reverse-invade this quicksand.
“Hmm?”
Fang Shiming’s finger suddenly twitched. He suddenly felt it loosen for an instant, before it swiftly stiffened again.
“It was very brief, but it really did move...”
Along with Fang Shiming’s momentary movement, the quicksand was stirred by a suddenly appearing breeze. Unfortunately, it was only for an instant before everything sank back into silence again...
However, that wisp of breeze was stronger than any time Fang Shiming had ever used supernatural power before. It even blew the overwhelming hurricanes around him into reverse.
It was as though, in that instant, his supernatural power had been used more than ten times at once, finally stacking together before being released.
Fang Shiming’s gaze sharpened. He suddenly thought of something.
“I understand! He Yiner and I both fell into the cognitive trap of ghost controllers. In order to avoid the revival of fierce ghosts, we subconsciously didn’t dare to use the ghosts’ powers recklessly.”
“Especially when both of us are in such poor condition, this cognitive trap was magnified without limit.”
The quicksand had already covered Fang Shiming’s eyes.
“Just now, He Yiner must have been the same as me. She pushed the ghost inside her to the limit, so the information she wanted to convey was... time!”
“Time is the key information!”
The quicksand had completely swallowed Fang Shiming.
“The ghost inside my body has already acted, but its action has been infinitely delayed at the instant it began.”
Fang Shiming’s consciousness was slowly fading.
“It can be inferred that this quicksand has the effect of delaying killing rules. That is why, at the bottom of the lake, it could suppress some extremely terrifying fierce ghosts together with Ghost Lake.”
Fang Shiming recalled the direction in which the gold watch had moved.
“And the route traced by the watch’s movement is the key to breaking this ghost’s ghost domain!”
In the dark, oppressive environment, cold quicksand poured into his body from all directions. His body was filled with a large amount of cold quicksand, making it incomparably heavy.
Fang Shiming kept his eyes tightly shut. He had not completely died. Instead, he silently analyzed and pondered his next move.
“Just now, I fell into the cognitive trap of ghost controllers, blindly believing that using the fierce ghosts’ powers recklessly would only make me die from their revival. But since the ghosts inside my body have been delayed...”
“Then, what if I do this?”
Slowly, a supernatural phenomenon that completely defied logic and common sense occurred.
No, it should be said that supernatural incidents were often like this—existences entirely beyond human understanding and completely incompatible with any law.
Inside this dense quicksand, a strange breeze began to blow...
The quicksand around Fang Shiming began to flow faster. The direction of its flow was precisely the route Fang Shiming had seen the watch move along.
“Right now, I have no risk of the fierce ghosts reviving. Even if I use their powers to the limit, they will be delayed by this quicksand at the instant they act.”
“Perhaps I can call this state supernatural stacking.”
By relying on the quicksand, Fang Shiming was attempting an alternative and bizarre method of supernatural stacking.
“As long as I grasp the upper limit of this quicksand’s supernatural power, I can successfully escape and control this fierce ghost.”
A gale howled through the air. A pitch-black corpse lay in the very center of a patch of blackish-yellow quicksand.
Suddenly, a current of air burst out from within the quicksand, carrying the entire expanse of quicksand with it and forming a blackish-yellow, cold gale.
Strangely, the speed at which this gale blew was incomparably slow, giving the impression of a slow-motion scene in a film.
Fang Shiming looked at the blackish-yellow gale slowly blowing around his body.
“I succeeded.”
What he had done was undoubtedly like trying to ascend to the heavens by stepping on one foot with the other. Through the quicksand’s characteristic of infinitely delaying revival, he briefly stacked the ghost wind, then used it to blow the quicksand and fuse it with the ghost wind.
Finally, he in turn used the ghost sand to delay the revival of the ghost wind and the man-crushing ghost. That was why the ghost wind looked as if it had been slowed down.
This was an alternative supernatural force created after fusion. It only appeared incomparably slow, but it possessed the complete characteristics of a ghost domain.
Sluggish, yet dangerous to the extreme.
Supernatural incidents were often like this. They made no sense and defied logic.
A woman’s corpse lay horizontally in the middle of the road.
“After handling this incident, I’ll make a trip to Taiping Ancient Town.”
Fang Shiming stood expressionlessly at the side. His entire body was incomparably stiff, and a cold aura permeated the area around him, making him look like a corpse that could move.
Although he had successfully controlled the ghost quicksand and avoided the revival of the fierce ghosts, their erosion had become even more severe. Something known as emotion was slowly disappearing.
Feeling the changes within his body, the sensation of fierce ghost revival had completely vanished. But Fang Shiming was still sensing the changes in his body, exploring the connections between the three fierce ghosts in order to avoid any unknown mutation.
Five minutes later.
A gale blew past, advancing toward the center of the hurricane in a way that defied intuition. It clearly looked as though it was blowing exceptionally slowly, yet its movement speed was astonishingly fast...