The priest looked at the body bag in Li Jun’s hands and continued, “The child in your hands had a hard life. He was merely blinded by the King Organization. I want to take his body back and give him a proper burial.”
Hearing this, Liu San walked over to the corpse on the ground, squatted down, and carefully examined it. A faint black shadow covered the surface of the body. The person inside was dead beyond any doubt.
He drew out that blood-red dagger and sliced it across his own finger. The finger made of yellow paper was instantly cut in two.
Standing up, he nodded to everyone. “That’s right. It’s the killer’s corpse.”
Then he added, “It’s been suppressed very thoroughly. There are no signs of revival in the short term.”
The scarlet ghost eye on Yang Jian’s forehead stared at the priest as he spoke coldly. “You don’t seem to understand the situation.”
“In circumstances like these, you suddenly show yourself, say a bunch of irrelevant nonsense, and then expect to take that person’s corpse away. Isn’t that a little too naive?”
The hatchet in his hand had already lifted slightly. Yang Jian intended to make his move right here and kill the priest before him. Under such high pressure, aside from the few captains from headquarters who had been with him the entire time, Yang Jian trusted no one else.
“Wait, Yang Jian!” Seeing that Yang Jian was about to act, Li Jun immediately spoke up to stop him.
“Give him the body. This person really isn’t one of the King Organization’s people. If anything goes wrong, I’ll take responsibility.”
Li Jun was just about to throw the body bag over when a scarlet flash streaked past. In his vision, a headless black shadow first lunged toward him. By the time he reacted, Yang Jian had already lifted him into the air, leaving him with no room to resist.
The ghost hand was clamped tightly around his neck. The fierce ghosts inside his body showed no reaction at all. Before his eyes was Yang Jian’s lifeless face.
Yang Jian said coldly, “In a situation like this, handing over the corpse of a King Organization member—I’m starting to wonder if you really don’t have a brain. You’ll take responsibility? What ability do you have to bear that responsibility?”
“Believe it or not, if I wanted to, I could kill you within one second.”
“I agree with Yang Jian.”
Shen Lin, standing to the side, looked at Yang Jian. Even he had failed to react just now. Yang Jian had been too fast. He continued,
“Li Jun, regardless of whether headquarters has cooperated with this person before, given the current situation, we shouldn’t casually trust anyone. All the more so when what he wants is the corpse of a core member of the King Organization. We are carrying out a mission, and there can’t be any mistakes.”
Figures shifted within the collapsed buildings around them, gradually approaching the priest. They were Liu San’s paper people. Clearly, he did not believe the priest’s words either.
Seeing the situation developing toward a loss of control, Wang Chaling immediately advised, “Yang Jian, calm down.”
“What you’re doing isn’t wrong, but now isn’t the time for internal strife. Put Li Jun down first.”
Yang Jian did not let go. When it came to the supernatural, his word was final. Yang Jian would not allow anyone to drag him down in a supernatural incident of this level. If there was such a person, he would personally eliminate that unstable factor.
The ghost hand had already dug into Li Jun’s neck. Blood dripped down his arm onto the ground, only to be instantly evaporated by the high temperature.
Seeing that he could not persuade Yang Jian, Wang Chaling turned to look at the priest. “It seems headquarters has been in contact with you. In that case, after this is over, this corpse will be brought back to headquarters. You can go and retrieve it yourself then.”
“No problem.” The priest actually agreed very straightforwardly.
Then he took a deep look at someone in the team before turning around and walking into that white light.
“I’ll give you this corpse as a gift. Consider it proof that I bear no malice.”
After saying that, his figure vanished on the spot along with the white light, and the feeling everyone had of being watched by countless gazes disappeared as well.
Yang Jian looked at the spot where the priest had disappeared, and a strange glint flashed through his eyes. Following the priest’s final gaze, Yang Jian looked toward the group. That person was Li Leping. Ever since the priest appeared, he had not said a word. Yang Jian had subconsciously overlooked Li Leping, but the priest had noticed him—a presence that could be forgotten by others at any moment.
The priest’s behavior before and after had been too contradictory. At first, he had demanded an exchange for the corpse of a King Organization member, but afterward he had very readily agreed to Wang Chaling’s proposal. His true purpose in coming here did not seem to be as simple as exchanging for a corpse.
It was as if the priest had come here only to confirm Li Leping’s existence.
Casually throwing Li Jun down, Yang Jian said coldly, “I’ll allow what happened just now to occur only once. If there’s a next time, I’ll kill you immediately. Keep leading the way.”
Li Jun said nothing. As a soldier, he knew this was not the time for internal strife. Even if there had been some hidden reason behind his actions just now, this was not the place for idle talk. He took out the spoon that guided their direction again and led everyone onward.
“Dead?”
“That’s right. Almost killed instantly.”
The pitch-black manor was shrouded in eerie light and shadow. The distorted vision made it feel as though the entire manor did not exist within reality.
The air was filled with waves of intense corpse stench. Withered, gaunt thickets encircled the gloomy building, and occasionally, several blurry figures could be seen emerging in the darkness.
Several strange figures sat or stood within the manor’s great hall.
At the center of the hall was an old piano. An illusory figure sat there, gently pressing the keys and producing an eerie piano melody.
“I said long ago not to underestimate that support team. They represent the power of a country.”
Opposite him was a withered figure carrying a heavy coffin. Strangely, his voice actually came from inside the coffin. “Aside from Yang Jian, we know very little about the others’ information. At the very least, we are no longer completely passive now...”
A bloated butcher, his body covered in excess flesh, still held a rolled-edge kitchen knife in his hand. He spoke in an exceptionally muffled voice. “One fire burned away much of our vitality. Otherwise, the Killer and Ink Man wouldn’t have been completely unable to fight back. That damned Wang Xiaoming.”
Opposite the butcher were two identical puppet dolls. Their movements were eerily synchronized, as though they were mirror images of each other. They spoke at the same time in ethereal voices. “The priest made his move. The Killer has been confirmed to have died at his hands. I said long ago that we should have killed him back then.”
In the corner sat a vagrant holding a paintbrush, painting that overwhelming inferno on a piece of pallid human skin. Looking closely, the scene in the painting was actually the place where Yang Jian and the others had been attacked.
“Right now, we don’t have any spare energy to deal with him. Handling what’s in front of us is the most important thing.”
“Move out. At the very least, we have to stop the captains. I’ll repeat myself once more: none of you can look down on them. Just that fellow named Yang Jian alone—if I faced him one-on-one, even I can’t guarantee I’d be able to retreat unscathed.”
“Li Jun, how much farther?”
Yang Jian looked ahead. The flames had almost burned up into the sky. The entire horizon was a sheet of crimson, and even the air seemed to be erupting with scorching tongues of fire.
This fire was becoming more and more wrong.