A sopping-wet, deathly pale female corpse was sprawled across Yang Jian’s back, corpse-stiff and icy to the touch.
Countless strands of cold, sinister hair coiled around his body, following Yang Jian as he spun within the hurricane.
Her body was filled with vast amounts of lake water; the moment it filled her entire frame, it began gushing out through the cracks in her flesh.
Yang Jian’s condition was terrible.
The cold lake water was constantly scouring his body, while the foul, rotting hurricane endlessly dismembered the fierce ghosts he controlled. The state of perfect balance he had achieved was now beginning to revive at a terrifying speed.
“So it’s still come to this…”
The next instant.
Seven scarlet, eerie eyeballs suddenly emerged from Yang Jian’s cracked body.
A dense crimson light exploded across Yang Jian’s skin. Amid the violent wind, everyone saw a streak of blood-red flash past.
At the center of the hurricane, a gigantic scarlet eyeball was suddenly projected, staring eerily at everything.
The instant the eyeball appeared, the corpse-filled tornado actually showed faint signs of slowing down.
The hurricane, mixed with lake water, continuously tore apart the eyeball in the air, but whenever it was about to fall to pieces, a dense red glow would surge out from its center, and the eyeball would be restored to its original state once more.
Yang Jian was constantly restarting himself, but this condition could not last for long. What he was doing now was like walking a tightrope. The moment the ghost eye fully revived, or the hurricane completely dismembered him, he would die immediately.
‘Seven layers… The critical point I can control now is here. As long as I don’t exceed this limit, I won’t immediately die from the revival of the fierce ghosts.’
Yang Jian gripped the hatchet in his hand, rapidly considering his next move.
Fang Shiming was standing in place at this moment. He had not been blown away. He looked at the gigantic ghost eye that had suddenly appeared, suspended in the center of the tornado.
“This Yang Jian… But the wind is showing signs of easing now. An excellent opportunity.”
A wooden door stood in place. Li Yang clung tightly to the doorframe as lake water and violent wind battered the old door panel again and again. Under the assault of two supernatural forces, Li Yang could not push open this eerie wooden door.
A mass of black-yellow mud and sand was especially conspicuous within the raging, deathly pale hurricane. It was slowly approaching Li Yang, and a voice entered his ears.
“Yang Jian used some unknown method to slow this wind down. The fierce ghost I control is extremely compatible with this hurricane. Next, I’ll restrict the wind for an instant, but I can’t suppress Ghost Lake.”
Li Yang could not speak at all right now. He merely nodded.
Afterward, the slowly writhing black-yellow mud and sand gradually dispersed into the violent wind.
Little by little, a trace of black-yellow appeared faintly within the deathly pale tornado.
At the same time that the black-yellow color appeared, a series of eerie wooden doors abruptly stood up around the gigantic ghost eye within the hurricane.
Over a hundred old wooden doors appeared in an inconceivable manner, their backs facing the ghost eye, suspended in midair.
The next second, the black-yellow color flashed past. Yet strangely, it also gave the impression that its flash was abnormally slow. Afterward, the entire hurricane suddenly fell into stagnation.
But in that instant, Ghost Lake was not restricted. Overwhelming lake water, along with densely packed corpses, poured down. At the same time, sheets of yellow paper drifted in from nowhere, covering the countless corpses.
Suddenly, one of the doors opened with a bang. What followed was a continuous series of bangs, like firecrackers going off.
Over a hundred eerie wooden doors opened one after another without cease.
The stacking of certain-death supernatural effects was completed in an instant. Irresistible forces of attraction surged out from behind the doors, drawing in the overwhelming lake water.
The cold lake water was sucked into the wooden doors, then rushed out from behind them again, all converging toward the gigantic ghost eye in the center.
Within the dense red light, Yang Jian stood atop a stretch of lake water. He was soaked through, cold lake water dripping continuously from his body, while a female corpse clung tightly to his back.
Yang Jian’s current condition was extremely delicate.
After Ghost Lake had been subjected to the supernatural suppression of Li Yang’s countless eerie wooden doors, it had then been gathered into the ghost eye. At this moment, Ghost Lake’s level of terror had already fallen to its lowest.
But even with the ghost hand and the tattoo working together with the ghost eye, he still could not completely suppress the female corpse on his back.
That female corpse was constantly attacking and invading Yang Jian, while Yang Jian was also continuously attempting to control Ghost Lake.
Under the conflict of supernatural forces, neither side could do anything to the other. The female corpse remained clinging tightly to Yang Jian’s back.
But Yang Jian could not afford to drag this out. As long as a human used the power of a fierce ghost, there would always be a limit. But ghosts had no such limit. If the stalemate continued, the one who failed in the end would only be Yang Jian.
“While I’m controlling Ghost Lake, Ghost Lake is also invading and controlling me. In a certain sense, this ghost has already fused together with me…”
“If I use the hatchet to dismember it, I’ll be dismembered as well.”
Yang Jian was thinking.
The hurricane was gradually speeding up. Fang Shiming had already been blown to some unknown place, and that mass of black-yellow had vanished.
A broken paper effigy grabbed a charred body and fell from midair. Those yellow papers that had drifted down earlier had been Liu San’s final measure before regaining consciousness.
Li Yang crouched beside the wooden door, looking at the gigantic scarlet eyeball in the sky. His condition had also reached its limit.
“The corpse from the Reform Society inspired me, but every ghost controller’s method of controlling fierce ghosts is impossible to replicate. Perhaps I don’t need to completely copy that state of a ghost controlling a person…”
Yang Jian was now making an entirely new attempt.
Within the pitch-black ghost shadow beneath his feet, a ghost eye slowly opened. Then the ghost shadow abruptly rose up and completely covered the female corpse.
Yang Jian did not choose to restart himself. Instead, he wanted to restart the female corpse’s state back to before it had corroded him. Under normal circumstances, he would never be able to restart a fierce ghost, but here, Ghost Lake’s supernatural power had already been suppressed to its lowest point by Li Yang and the others.
This was a contest of time. Every time the ghost shadow wrapped around the female corpse restarted once through the ghost eye, Yang Jian gained one more measure of control over Ghost Lake’s supernatural power.
But correspondingly, Yang Jian, who had lost the ghost shadow and the ghost eye, was now facing the fatal risk of the fierce ghosts reviving at extreme speed.
Lake water constantly seeped out all over his body. The ghost hand slowly transformed into a deathly pale color. His skin was covered with hideous tattoos, and his entire body was becoming rotten and foul-smelling.
Yang Jian did not know how the Reform Society had managed to maintain a clear consciousness after reaching the state of ghosts controlling people.
But in supernatural incidents, one often did not have the luxury of choice. Yang Jian had no choice but to control Ghost Lake through this method.
However, ghosts had no consciousness. They would only continue to obey their killing patterns. Even though Yang Jian had already restarted the female corpse back to the state before it invaded him, the corpse still continued floating up from the bottom of the lake and attacked Yang Jian again. It wanted to complete the killing pattern that belonged to it.
The next instant, Yang Jian’s entire body instantly rotted away completely. He fell straight down, but the lake water beneath his feet suddenly surged up, sinking Yang Jian’s corpse into the lake.
Yang Jian had succeeded. No, it could only be said that he had mostly succeeded.
He had controlled Ghost Lake, and the risk of fierce ghost revival had already disappeared. But that female corpse was invading Yang Jian through Ghost Lake at every moment. Once the female corpse successfully invaded him, he would die immediately.
And every time the female corpse floated to the surface, Yang Jian would restart himself through the ghost eye, then in turn use Ghost Lake to suppress the female corpse beneath the bottom of the lake.
Yang Jian’s current state was neither the shutdown nor balance of an ordinary ghost controller, nor was it the Reform Society’s ghost-controlling-person state. Instead, it existed between the two, a kind of anomalous state.
To kill Yang Jian, one would have to kill that female corpse. But ghosts could not be killed…
From Li Yang’s perspective, the gigantic scarlet eyeball in the sky radiated an eerie red light. Suddenly, large amounts of lake water flowed endlessly from the eye, as though it were a weeping eye.
Then the lake water slowly submerged him.
Under the illumination of the eerie red light, Yang Jian carried an old hatchet and slowly walked over from the surface of the lake. A cold, emotionless voice rang out.
“Don’t resist. I’ll take you out.”
On a high mountain several thousand meters away, the violent wind whipped at their clothes. Yang Jian and the others stood on the summit, gazing into the distance at the hurricane that had already covered the entire city.
Clearly, this operation had ended in failure.
Several helicopters were flying over from the distance.
“Yang Jian… no, Captain Yang.”
Liu San spoke to Yang Jian.
“I’m leaving. The people from headquarters are here. Li Jun is in your hands.”
Yang Jian did not speak. The ghost eye on his forehead was observing Liu San. Liu San did not mind. After saying this, he turned and left.
‘Another anomaly that’s hard to kill…’
This hurricane was something even a seven-layer Ghost Domain could not withstand, yet now Liu San was completely unharmed. Yang Jian even suspected that this so-called true body of his was nothing more than a comparatively special paper effigy.
A mass of slowly blowing black-yellow violent wind wrapped around a female corpse.
“Come sit down at the Circle of Friends when you have time, Captain Yang…”
After saying this, the eerie violent wind sped off rapidly into the distance. Fang Shiming intended to make a trip to Taiping Ancient Town right now.
Yang Jian turned around and looked at Li Yang, who was sitting on the ground.
He did not know this man, but there was no doubt that without him, Yang Jian and the others might have been wiped out in the hurricane.
Li Yang’s body was rotting at high speed. A sound that made one’s heart palpitate came from his chest, as if something inside him were about to burst out.
With the help of that wooden door, Li Yang had successfully achieved over a hundred stacks of certain-death supernatural effects, but the price was not something Li Yang could bear.
Yang Jian could not understand why this unfamiliar man before him would go so far.
“You still haven’t told me who you are.”
“We’ve been through quite a lot together. To me, perhaps this is the end of a stretch of memories.”
His body was giving off a foul stench, and his pale bones were clearly visible. Li Yang felt that he was about to die.
“You’ve known me for a long time?”
“You have a stretch of future in the past. My past, your future.”
Yang Jian did not understand what Li Yang meant by that.
Perhaps Li Yang had only now realized that the Yang Jian before him was not the captain he was familiar with.
But Li Yang did not regret it. Li Yang believed that as long as Yang Jian was still alive, this world would one day return to normal.
“Where should I go to find you?”
“I’m going to die. I can’t revive here. Captain…”
A battered and ruined shell carried an iron-like will, but this evil-ghost-like body ultimately still could not withstand the terror of the supernatural.
Yang Jian looked at the completely rotten corpse in silence. He did not even know this man’s name.
The corpse was placed into a golden coffin, and the helicopter slowly took off.
A dense red light flashed past. An ultimate scarlet edge shot straight into the sky, speeding rapidly in the direction of Dachang City.
Yang Jian was going to search for answers, whether from the Reform Society or from the man who had called him captain.