The group had already been walking through this world of blazing flames for over ten minutes, yet they still had not reached their destination.
“Almost there...”
Li Jun glanced at the old, worn spoon in his hand. It was a supernatural object capable of locating the place its user had in mind, but every time it was used, the ghost within the spoon would attack the user once. All along the way, Li Jun had been resisting that ghost’s assaults.
At this moment, the tip of the spoon had already begun to crack slightly. This supernatural object was nearing its limit. To put it simply, the fierce ghost inside the spoon was about to revive. But Li Jun did not say much. The green flames on the surface of his body flickered on and off as he continued leading the others forward.
“Wait.”
Just then, Shen Lin suddenly stopped. A very faint sound rang beside his ear. It sounded like a note produced by some kind of musical instrument. Though extremely weak, it was utterly out of place amid these ruins.
“Listen carefully. Something’s coming...”
Wang Chaling immediately turned his head, looking in one direction with a deep frown. He had come into contact with quite a few musical instruments before; this sound was very familiar to him.
“Piano music?... Everyone, be careful!”
The originally faint sound gradually grew louder. Even Li Jun could hear it now. It was a strange piano melody, as if drifting out from within the flames. The notes intertwined, low and eerie, like a melody that did not exist in reality, seeping into everyone’s eardrums.
But it was too late.
Without any warning, a fat figure abruptly appeared above the group’s heads. The man wore the kind of waterproof apron used in slaughterhouses for killing pigs, and in his hand he gripped a rusty, rolled-edge kitchen cleaver, chopping straight down at Li Jun’s head.
Yang Jian was the first to react, raising the hatchet in his hand to block the sudden attack.
“Bang!”
The instant the blades clashed, a dull sound erupted, as though two corpses had slammed violently into each other.
The butcher’s attack was stopped, but a hideous wound immediately appeared on Yang Jian’s hand, identical to the edge of the cleaver in the butcher’s grip.
A hint of surprise flashed through Yang Jian’s eyes. That rolled-edge cleaver seemed able to attack him without direct contact. This was very similar to the characteristics of the hatchet, but Yang Jian did not know what sort of medium that cleaver required.
The butcher’s face was full of bulging flesh, his eyes wantonly savage. He gave Yang Jian no time to think at all, raising his hand and bringing down another chop, aiming straight for Yang Jian’s head.
Behind him, the pitch-black headless ghost shadow suddenly stood upright and covered the butcher.
This chop landed heavily on the headless ghost shadow, nearly cleaving it in two. At the same time, an identical hideous wound immediately appeared on Yang Jian’s chest.
Yang Jian stared at the cleaver in the butcher’s hand. This method of attack was far too bizarre. It could actually strike him through a fierce ghost. The way this medium was triggered was even more abnormal than the hatchet’s. Especially in a supernatural confrontation of this level, once he used his own supernatural power, it meant he would be struck with absolute certainty.
“Can anything I’ve touched become a medium? Or is it only the supernatural power I myself have used...”
The butcher saw Yang Jian’s confusion. The savagery in his eyes grew even stronger, and a chilling smile appeared on his face.
“Stop guessing. Just obediently let me chop you into mincemeat.”
On Wang Chaling’s side, a little girl resembling a Western doll appeared before him. The girl looked around ten years old. Her face was deathly pale, and her large, dull eyes carried a dead aura. She stared blankly at him like a corpse.
The two lifeless old people behind him immediately raised their arms and actually seized this strange girl from a distance.
However, Wang Chaling did not notice at all that behind him, there was another identical girl staring at him gloomily. The instant those two old people moved, this girl suddenly reached out and directly pierced through Wang Chaling’s chest.
A trace of astonishment flashed across his face. Wang Chaling lowered his head and looked at the gaping hole torn open in his chest. The girl’s hand was gripping his still-beating heart. Then she squeezed hard, and the entire heart burst apart. Blood splattered across his face, and Wang Chaling slowly collapsed.
Shen Lin had already begun moving the instant that pair of twins appeared, but he was stopped. Blocking him was a strange old man wearing no shirt, his entire body shriveled and thin. One hand was raised stiffly above his head, as if supporting something.
Shen Lin immediately felt that something was wrong. His gaze followed the old man’s arm upward. There was a pitch-black coffin there, looking battered and broken, as though it might fall apart at any moment. At this time, the coffin that had originally been blurry in his field of vision was slowly becoming clear as the old man gradually lowered his arm.
At that very instant, Shen Lin was shocked to discover that his body could no longer move. It was as if someone had pinned him in place; he could not even blink.
Yet his consciousness remained clear. His eyes looked into the coffin. Through the gaps in the coffin, he saw pairs of horrifying eyes inside. Those eyes looked utterly lifeless, all staring fixedly at him, and their number was still continuously increasing.
The old man’s arm had already lowered halfway. That indistinct coffin had become solid, as if it had invaded reality from some unknown supernatural place.
Suddenly, the coffin shook violently. It seemed as if a ghost inside wanted to escape. An arm covered in livor mortis slowly reached out from within, grabbing toward Shen Lin’s head.
The scene before his eyes blurred. Shen Lin could no longer even see his surroundings clearly. The entire world seemed to have been covered by a layer of frosted glass, hazy and indistinct.
As that palm touched Shen Lin, countless strands of black hair abruptly surged out of the coffin. Their number grew larger and larger, looking like innumerable black columns of water rushing toward Shen Lin.
But it was not over yet. Beneath the overwhelming mass of black hair before his eyes, there were actually terrifying human heads, one after another. These heads rolled along the strands of hair, all heading toward Shen Lin.
His vision was blocked by black hair. Countless agonized wails rang beside his ears. Those human heads pressed tightly against Shen Lin’s ears, continuously letting out chilling howls.
A pale hand suddenly stretched out from the darkness, grabbed Shen Lin’s head, and yanked hard. Shen Lin’s entire body was actually pulled into the coffin, and no sound came from him again.
At this moment, a burst of dark green flame centered on Li Jun suddenly swelled outward, about to shield everyone within it.
But in the next instant, the green flames filling the sky abruptly changed color, as if painted over by an even deeper layer of green light. The color became extremely strange and vivid.
As an ethereal piano note echoed, Li Jun’s ghost fire slowly transformed into sheet after sheet of tattered painting paper, drifting down within this world of blazing flames before finally being burned to ash.
Meanwhile, Li Jun’s body was currently being compressed into a flat plane, looking as if he were being pasted into a painting.
Li Jun’s ghost domain vanished. The reflection of an oil painting burning with ghostly green flames quietly emerged. Before this oil painting sat a dispirited vagrant, his whole body exuding a cold, sinister aura. In his hand, he held an old paintbrush, and he was painting the attacks that the several captains before him were suffering.
“So these are the so-called captains? Nothing impressive.”
The fat, bloated butcher walked over carrying a head. Behind him was a headless corpse gripping a hatchet.