Yang Jian and the other two walked through this unfamiliar Huanggang Village. After turning a corner, a coffin abruptly blocked the middle of the road.
“Empty...” The ghost hand pressed against the coffin, sensing no supernatural aura at all. It was just an ordinary coffin.
“Keep going.”
Li Leping stood to the side. He did not seem to be in good condition; wisps of black haze were slowly seeping out of his body.
They had only gone a short distance when two more coffins abruptly appeared ahead. Yang Jian’s ghost eyes fixed on the two empty coffins, but there was still nothing unusual about them.
Yet the next instant, when Yang Jian shifted his gaze away from the coffins to observe the surroundings, another coffin appeared out of thin air beside the two.
“Yang Jian, there are two coffins over there too.”
Yang Jian followed the gaze of Tong Qian’s crying face and looked over. On the empty road, two old black coffins sat silently.
“Something’s wrong.” Yang Jian narrowed his eyes slightly, staring at the coffins before him.
“The number increases once we look away... It’s not the source ghost, only a medium. Wasting time here is meaningless. Keep going.”
When the three of them passed another corner.
What came into view was a gray-black sky. One decayed black coffin after another was laid out upon the black earth, and each coffin was missing a section of its lid.
Boundless, stretching beyond sight.
Yang Jian was startled and spun around. But Huanggang Village behind him had already vanished. All that remained were black coffins, arranged neatly across the black soil.
Such an abrupt transition gave one the feeling of being inside the Ghost Painting’s ghost domain.
“You’ve got to be kidding... Even if this number isn’t the source ghost, they could bury us by sheer quantity alone.”
Yang Jian’s ghost eyes twitched uneasily, as though suppressed by something. This was already his third time facing the Ghost Messenger. Every mutation of the Ghost Messenger brought with it a sense of despair.
“We have to think of a way to find the source ghost. Li Leping, right?... Given the current situation, I don’t care what state you’re in. We don’t have a choice.”
As he spoke, Yang Jian took out a paper banner from behind his back. The paper banner was tattered beyond recognition, as though it would crumble with a single gust of wind. Many hideous dead heads were painted on it, and as Yang Jian shook it, they seemed to move, letting out waves of wailing.
“It’s time to act. Tong Qian, your two faces can play the greatest role here. In a moment, I’ll need you to suppress these ghost coffins. I’ll coordinate with you. No matter what’s inside those coffins, we cannot let that thing come out.”
Holding the dead-man banner, Yang Jian wore a grave expression as he looked at the densely packed coffins before him and continued.
“Li Leping, Tong Qian and I will help you suppress these ghost coffins as much as possible. You need to find the source of these coffins in the shortest time possible.”
Li Leping nodded. This environment made his condition extremely unstable, but at the same time, the fierce ghost within him showed faint signs of being suppressed.
“Understood. From here on, I’ll gradually lose consciousness, and my body will be taken over by the ghost. I’ll try to keep away from the two of you. When I find the Ghost Messenger, I’ll send a signal. Hold on to this. It can awaken my consciousness.”
Li Leping took out a double-sided drum from his chest, roughly the size of a palm. The drumhead seemed to be made from human skin, while the body of the drum was bright red, as though it were about to drip blood.
“Hmm? Is this the human skin from the human-skin lantern? The ghost fire inside was controlled by Li Jun. I didn’t expect Wang Xiaoming to turn the human skin into something like this.”
Yang Jian recognized this human skin. He had once seen it in an underground base somewhere at headquarters. Unfortunately, before Yang Jian could choose the Starving Ghost, it had already gone out of control.
“Then, I’m going to begin.”
After saying that, waves of gray-black haze poured out of Li Leping’s body, like thick smoke billowing from a chimney, carrying the smell of corpses being burned in a crematorium.
In just an instant, the thick smoke spread toward the countless black coffins. Within the smoke, one could vaguely see a charred corpse, its body already drained of moisture, like smoked-dried human flesh.
Miserable, chilling sobs and eerie laughter echoed through this unknown space filled with ghost coffins. Yang Jian held the paper banner in his hand; every time he waved it, the skulls on the banner would follow along the banner and attack Yang Jian’s body, but every assault was blocked by the ghost hand.
After Li Leping began to act, a figure rose from within every ghost coffin, standing there stiffly and mechanically, their entire bodies shrouded in pitch-black darkness, their appearances impossible to make out.
“My ghost domain won’t last much longer here... It feels like facing the Ghost Painting. Is it because of the Ghost Painting?”
Yang Jian looked at the topmost blackness of the ghost hand, which was slowly disappearing. Even after fusing with that fake coffin nail, the price of waving this paper banner was becoming almost unbearable.
This paper banner seemed to possess an extremely high-level suppressive power. Combined with Tong Qian’s sobbing and laughter, every time Yang Jian waved the paper banner, the figures inside the ghost coffins would lie back down a little.
“We can’t keep this up for long... I have to do something.”
He opened the human-skin paper. It was still completely blank, as though even it could not predict what consequences would result from the collision of three S-class fierce ghosts. This was already the second time Yang Jian had opened the human-skin paper, but ever since entering this place, the human-skin paper had fallen into some kind of silence.
“Useless thing.”
Suddenly, the thick fog filled with the stench of burning contracted rapidly.
“Did he find it?”
Yang Jian immediately took out the human-skin drum, and the ghost hand flicked it hard.
The human-skin drum made no sound at all. The center directly caved in from Yang Jian’s flick, but Yang Jian could feel that a certain medium was rapidly expanding from within the drum, spreading out in all directions.
Li Leping walked out of the thick smoke, his entire body giving off the charred stench of burning corpses.
“I failed. I went to at least three Huanggang Villages. This place is boundless, like countless Huanggang Villages stacked on top of one another. It gives me the feeling that I’ll never reach the end.”
Li Leping held the human-skin drum and looked at the dent on it.
“There’s still one chance...”
“Boundless, with multiple Huanggang Villages?”
Yang Jian was thinking rapidly.
“Impossible. The Ghost Messenger’s ghost domain absolutely can’t be this large. The current situation reminds me of the Ghost Painting recorded in headquarters’ files. Earlier, Wang Xiaoming lured the Ghost Painting here. Did the Ghost Painting invade the Ghost Messenger, or did the Ghost Messenger obtain part of the Ghost Painting’s ability...?”
It seemed Yang Jian was naturally gifted with this kind of talent—this way of thinking that was extremely sensitive to the supernatural.
In an age of peace, he might have remained unknown his entire life. But in this era overrun by fierce ghosts, such talent was the key to survival. Yang Jian and Wang Xiaoming were both this type of person.
“The source ghost isn’t here. Otherwise, we would have been attacked long ago. Li Leping, search once more. This time, we’re going into the ghost coffin!”
After saying that, Yang Jian pointed the paper banner at one of the ghost coffins, and the ghost hand grabbed the person inside and threw it out.
Then the three of them jumped straight in, leaving behind only the endless black coffins beneath the gray-black sky.
If someone were to look down from the sky at this moment, they would discover that every coffin resembled a picture frame. Inside each one was pitch-black darkness, nothing visible at all, and each emitted a cold, sinister aura...