At the same time those doors opened, a cold, sinister wind rose around them. It was not as fierce as before; it could even be said to be extremely faint. Yet it carried a heavy stench of rot, as though a corpse were lying at the mouth of the wind and the odor had been brought out from its body.
As that faint wind swept past, the apartment doors actually came to a stop, even showing signs of slowly closing.
“There’s something wrong with this wind.”
The landlord reacted very quickly, immediately sensing where the problem lay.
But Fang Shiming did not give the two of them more time to react. The wind blew faster and faster, more and more violently. Those doors that had been about to open were, without exception, forcibly blown shut.
Gradually, the sound of chains being dragged inside the rooms also stopped. No, it had not stopped; rather, the ghosts inside had had their movement speed restricted by Fang Shiming in an extremely short span of time.
The prison warden did not seem too surprised. He said coldly, “Trying to stop the two of us by yourself—aren’t you a little too confident?”
After saying that, he crouched down and placed both hands on the apartment floor. It seemed he was using this supernatural apartment as a medium. The sound of iron chains dragging inside the rooms rang out once more, only this time it was very hurried, as though someone were dragging chains and walking quickly inside the rooms.
With a muffled bang, the iron chains seemed to smash against a door. The door Fang Shiming had shut opened again. Although its speed was now almost imperceptible, and even the sound of the dragging chains had become extremely faint, Fang Shiming’s suppression was failing.
Fang Shiming did not panic. His body sank slightly as he said coldly, “Don’t move.”
Without the slightest warning, two cold, eerie corpses abruptly appeared behind the two members of the King Organization, as if they had been born out of thin air. The two only felt their backs sink, and two icy corpses clung tightly to their backs.
The corpses were heavy—unreasonably heavy—as though they were two dull, heavy tombstones, lying there in deathly stillness.
It did not end there. One cold corpse after another layered over each other in midair above the two men’s heads, then fell one after another, pressing straight down on their backs.
In the end, all the corpses gathered together, rooting themselves to the two men’s shoulders and pinning them firmly in place.
In just a few short seconds, the two kings had been suppressed by Fang Shiming until they could not move.
Everything had happened too quickly. Facing Fang Shiming, the two of them had no time to react with more methods. There was no unnecessary probing, no intense exchange of blows.
This was how battles between ghost controllers were. It would not be like imprisoning malicious ghosts. No one would give you time to calculate and weigh your options; life and death often lay in a single instant.
“That man… is too fast…”
At this moment, the landlord’s face was twisted, and his body could no longer endure it. He began gradually dropping toward the ground.
“Supernatural stacking… I’ve never encountered an opponent of this level before. That seemingly slow wind beside him is the most lethal thing.”
“The one with the scissors, I admit that if we had run into you alone, perhaps we would have been killed instantly…”
As the prison warden spoke, he glanced beside Fang Shiming.
There was a black dot. In the next second, that black dot suddenly enlarged.
Darkness abruptly spread, like a decaying curtain enveloping everything from all directions, swallowing Fang Shiming in an instant.
Facing the sudden attack, Fang Shiming’s expression did not change. Without even turning his head, he thrust an old pair of scissors fiercely into the empty darkness. Something strange happened. At the end of that darkness, a terrifying old woman wearing a Western-style dress abruptly appeared, standing in the distance.
Suddenly, her figure flickered continuously like a stuttering image. With every flicker, her posture did not change, yet she drew closer and closer to Fang Shiming from afar.
A withered, skeletal hand suddenly clamped around Fang Shiming’s wrist. The cold, stiff touch felt as though he had been seized tightly by a corpse.
“You pride yourselves on being existences that deal with malicious ghosts, yet you burned an entire city of people to death.”
A voice that did not belong to any living person rang out.
“Tell us the solution to that fire, and we can let you go back.”
The landlord and the prison warden immediately felt the corpses on their backs lighten.
A supernatural clash. The instant the terrifying old woman in the Western-style dress grabbed Fang Shiming’s wrist, a supernatural clash formed in which Fang Shiming alone faced three captain-level entities.
At this moment, all four of them were unable to move. But if one looked carefully, the landlord and the prison warden were slowly regaining their ability to act.
Time passed second by second. The urgent silence was like heavy drumbeats striking everyone’s hearts.
In the current situation, whoever recovered even one second earlier could instantly reverse the entire battle.
Wang Xiaoming glanced at He Yin’er beside him.
“First, based on a study that has yet to produce a conclusion, you rashly intend to banish ghosts into space. Once it goes out of control, the consequences will be an immeasurable disaster.”
His tone remained calm.
“Second, I’m very curious—what exactly gave you the illusion that Headquarters would be so easily invaded by you?”
The landlord froze.
“What do you mean?”
Wang Xiaoming raised his head, his gaze falling on the gloomy, dilapidated ceiling of the apartment.
“You are going to die.”
Buzz—buzz!!
A low buzzing sound rang out from afar. From far to near, the sound grew more and more urgent, more and more piercing.
A cold sword light flashed overhead.
It was a gloomy, eerie longsword, flying over abruptly. It pierced diagonally down from above the apartment.
Pfft!
The tip of the sword sank into the floor tiles of the apartment lobby, but the sound was not like steel piercing stone. Instead, it was like stabbing into a piece of dead flesh, bringing with it a muffled thud that made one’s scalp go numb.
Along with this strange longsword, emitting wave after wave of buzzing, landing on the ground, a figure slowly emerged.
It was a haggard, withered man. His frame was thin, and his disheveled long hair covered half his face, revealing only a pair of bloodshot eyes, deathly still and indifferent.
The man’s clothes were in tatters. The cape behind him had long since been reduced to torn strips of cloth, on which two mottled words could still vaguely be made out:
“Justice”
Ye Zhen’s figure, beneath the dim light, gave off an eerie sense of incongruity.
He drew the sword and rose, standing with the sword in hand.
Lifting his hand, the tip of the sword pointed steadily at the three of them.
“Die.”
The buzzing sounded again, as though a corpse that had been dead for many years had suddenly let out an extremely horrifying roar—explosive yet muffled.
In the next second.
A cold sword light abruptly appeared before the three of them. Almost by instinct—
The landlord shouted, “Run!”
However, black and yellow flashed past. Amid the howling gale, that strange sense of slowness descended once more.
“Where are you looking?”
Fang Shiming’s icy voice rang out without warning, and a pair of scissors silently stabbed into the landlord’s skull.
At the same time, the other two figures suddenly froze. Their faces stiffened in an instant, followed by a strange, frenzied distortion, as though they were being twisted into hemp rope, rolling and stretching.
Their flesh began to contract and coil madly, eventually twisting into a wildly rotating vortex.
As a white dot slowly emerged, the vortex suddenly collapsed.
Three corpses that were no longer human in shape lay on the ground.
Wang Xiaoming’s gaze fell on the three corpses as he pondered a certain problem.
Suddenly, Wang Xiaoming raised his head.
“There’s something wrong with these corpses!”
But it was too late. It was a book, covered by the three twisted masses of flesh and skin, and not at all conspicuous.
And on the book were portraits of the three members of the King Organization.
A dense stench of corpses suddenly filled the entire space.
The apartment’s surroundings suddenly distorted and changed. All the doors abruptly turned into pitch-black iron bars.
Chains shuttled through the space, producing low, heavy impacts that made one’s heart tremble, as though countless corpses were smashing violently against the iron bars.
Accompanied by those spine-chilling impacts, the surrounding walls gradually became covered in grayish-green traces of decay, oozing black-red blood that flowed slowly down.
A strange yellow wind slowly surged, shielding everyone within it.
Fang Shiming looked at the old water cup in He Yin’er’s hand.
“How much longer?”
“Soon…”
Beside He Yin’er, an aged figure was slowly becoming clear.
No one gave them any time to catch their breath. An icy chain suddenly broke through the yellow wind and stabbed straight in.
“I can’t stop it. Those three people are already dead. What’s attacking us now is a ghost.”