Dahai City.
The entire city lay in deathly silence. There was no sign of any living thing. Black bloodstains still remained on the streets, and the air was still thick with an overpowering reek of blood.
Viewed from high above, it was a scene of utter ruin. Skyscrapers had collapsed, and corpses littered the ground.
Yet there was one place that seemed completely out of place.
It was a cemetery. The chaos that had destroyed the entire city seemed not to have extended here.
On the hanging plaque were three large characters.
Fushou Garden.
The entire cemetery was intact, showing no signs of damage at all.
An ordinary-looking man stood at the entrance. If anyone were standing here now, they would be astonished to discover that the moment their gaze left this man’s face, they would immediately forget his existence.
Stiffly lifting his foot, the man suddenly vanished from where he stood.
A phantom-like figure flickered continuously through the cemetery, as if searching for something.
All of a sudden, the man’s actions seemed to trigger some kind of medium. The sky darkened at once, and the surroundings instantly became extremely dim. The collapsed skyscrapers of Dahai City disappeared from sight, and the entire cemetery seemed to have entered a supernatural space.
The flickering figure stopped and looked at the tombstones around him. The numbers engraved on them had already changed into traditional characters, a counting style that had only been used decades ago.
Li Leping frowned slightly, then gently raised his arm. Wisps of black smoke seeped out from within his body, and the air was instantly filled with the scorched stench of corpses being burned in a crematorium.
The black smoke spread in every direction at an extremely rapid speed, as if wanting to envelop the entire cemetery.
A moment later, the black smoke stopped spreading, and Li Leping walked out from within it.
“The scope of this cemetery is a little too vast…”
He looked around. The number of tombstones seemed to have increased, and even the ground beneath his feet had begun to change. Stepping on it felt like treading on a pulp of rotten flesh.
“Invading reality?”
Suddenly, within this silent cemetery, a strange sound rang out. It was like someone striking a tombstone with a sharp implement.
Ding, ding, ding…
The sound was extraordinarily eerie. It was as if the person striking the tombstone was right behind him, but when he turned around, the sound became extremely faint again.
Li Leping immediately walked toward the source of the sound, but the knocking rose and fell in volume. Even after walking for about five minutes, he still saw nothing unusual.
All of a sudden, the knocking stopped.
Li Leping immediately unfolded his ghost domain and arrived at the place where the sound had disappeared.
His gaze fell on the tombstone before an old grave. The material of the tombstone looked very ordinary, as if it had been made from common stone.
However, the writing on it looked as if it had just been carved there. The strokes were crooked and uneven, and dark red blood still lingered between them, making it look extremely strange.
Through the dim light, he could barely make out the words on it.
“Li Leping.”
At that moment, a sudden sense of losing control swept over him. His feet abruptly stepped into empty air, and half his body sank into the earth.
He instinctively tried to struggle up, but his feet seemed to be firmly gripped by something that was dragging him downward.
“A killing pattern… the name?”
Li Leping did not panic. Instead, he calmly looked at the name on the tombstone.
The next second, those three large characters blurred, as if they were about to dissipate at any moment. But immediately afterward, the writing suddenly trembled and once again appeared clearly on the tombstone.
Li Leping pulled out his feet and walked out, looking at his own name.
“The blood disappeared, but the characters are still there. The name is only the medium. The blood is the true supernatural source attacking me. But something capable of carving even my name…”
He reached out and touched the writing. There was nothing unusual.
“I can’t forget the existence of the characters themselves. They must have been carved with some kind of supernatural object of an extremely high terror level. It seems I’ve found the right direction.”
Li Leping did not move again. He stood quietly in place, waiting for the next attack to arrive.
“Since I’ve already triggered the killing pattern, this ghost will continue attacking me. The name is still there. It won’t carve it again.”
The next wave of attack followed immediately. His vision suddenly began to blur violently, as if someone had thrown a sackcloth hood over Li Leping’s head.
The scorched black smoke abruptly dispersed. When Li Leping could see the scene before him clearly again, an old man was standing quietly in front of that tombstone.
He was dressed in a black burial shroud, his body withered like dead wood. In his hand, which was covered in foul-smelling mud, he held a rust-covered coffin nail.
Li Leping’s gaze immediately locked onto the coffin nail.
At that moment, the old man before him suddenly moved. It reached out and touched Li Leping’s name on the tombstone. The instant it made contact, dark red blood rapidly filled the entire name along the strokes.
As if some killing pattern had been triggered, Li Leping suddenly realized that he could no longer move at all. When he looked around again, the soil had, at some unknown point, buried him. From a distance, he looked just like a grave mound.
The black smoke around him rapidly drew back toward his body. Li Leping’s figure flickered incessantly, like a light bulb that might go out at any moment.
At the same time, the bloodstains on the tombstone slowly dissipated in rhythm with Li Leping’s flickering, and the surrounding soil gradually loosened.
A hand shot out violently. Li Leping appeared beside the old man in an instant, clamping down tightly on its arm. Then he squeezed with force so great that he directly crushed the old man’s arm, causing it to break off and fall to the ground along with the coffin nail.
“This ghost is too dangerous. As long as it knows a name, it can kill… I can’t leave it unchecked.”
Picking up the coffin nail, Li Leping directly threw the old man into the pit that had trapped him just now.
Beneath Fushou Garden’s plaque, a cloud of thick smoke appeared abruptly, and Li Leping walked out holding the coffin nail.
Taking out his phone, Li Leping said, “I got it, but this cemetery is very wrong. There’s a ghost inside, and I don’t have time to fully imprison it. You need to send a few people over to handle the aftermath and investigate this cemetery while you’re at it.”
Wang Xiaoming’s voice came from the other end of the line. “Understood. I’ve already contacted Ye Zhen and Fang Shiming, so this overseas raid…”
Li Leping interrupted Wang Xiaoming and continued, “Our previous deal still stands. Whether it’s protecting you or making a trip abroad, after this is over, you have to help me deal with the ghost in Room 301. Gather the captains as soon as possible. My current condition doesn’t allow me to leave Dachuan City for too long.”
After hanging up the phone, Li Leping looked back at the three large characters, Fushou Garden. Then his figure suddenly vanished from where he stood, as if he had never appeared at all.
Dachang City. The streets were filled with the smell of firecrackers. With the New Year approaching, every household had pasted up the character for fortune, and many children were playing with small firecrackers in the streets and alleys.
Even though the people of this city still had not recovered from the fear of the Starving Ghost’s previous loss of control, it still could not stop their anticipation for the Spring Festival.
A young man dressed in the uniform of a person in charge was walking down the road when he happened to step on a skyrocket.
With a bang.
Children’s laughter immediately sounded from the side.
Seeing the young man look over, the group of children instantly scattered in all directions.
“Ow!” The fastest-running child crashed headfirst into the young man’s leg.
The young man crouched down and patted the child on the head.
“Little friend, it’s not right to scare people for no reason.” The young man took the lighter from the child’s hand.
“Where are your parents? I’m going to tell them you blew my leg off.”
As he spoke, the young man lifted his pant leg, revealing a patch of skin covered in black corpse spots. It looked extremely frightening.
When the child saw that he had caused trouble, he immediately covered his face and burst into tears. “Waaah!! Wuwuwu!!!”
“Will you still dare to play with fire carelessly next time?”
The child immediately said, “I won’t! I’ll never dare again! Big brother, I was wrong!”
“Very good.” The young man stood up, patted the child on the head, and said, “Go on, then. I’ll let you off this time. If I catch you going around scaring people again, I’ll go to your house and find your parents.”
After hearing that, the child ran off in a flash and disappeared. The young man stood up and picked up the phone again.
A woman’s voice immediately came from the other end of the line. “Cao Yang! Stop vanishing in the middle of talking all the time! It makes it very difficult for me to communicate with you!”