The image gradually emerged along with the sound, but the picture quality was extremely blurry, as if it were the final fragments read from some ancient storage device.
As the camera shook, a desolate scene could be seen. The empty sky was filled with a deathly pure black, and gray lunar regolith covered the ground.
There was no sound here, not even the slightest breeze. Only the footprints of a spacesuit were imprinted lonely upon the surface, bearing witness to a piece of history.
In the footage, a human clad in a spacesuit was moving slowly. His steps appeared light because of the Moon’s low gravity; each time his foot landed, it stirred up a faint cloud of dust that drifted slowly apart in the soundless vacuum, while a long shadow dragged behind him.
Empty. Lonely.
The footage of him walking continued for about thirty seconds.
Suddenly, the image shuddered, the signal abruptly distorted, and the background noise grew louder and louder, gradually turning shrill, like someone breathing with great effort. What followed was a series of rigid, muffled footsteps.
“Bzzzt—”
The signal became chaotic, and the electric current screeched harshly.
A hysterical scream came from the footage: “What is that... run!!”
The camera shook violently, and the entire image plunged into uncontrolled chaos, the lens tilting sharply.
Then came the shot of the camera falling to the ground.
From the blurred, out-of-focus angle, it could only capture the slanted horizon and the afterimage of the spacesuit.
Then, beep—
The sound stopped abruptly, and the screen fell briefly silent.
Just as everyone thought the recording had ended, the image lit up again. It seemed a long time had already passed.
An astronaut sat alone upon the desolate lunar ground.
Behind him, in the cold universe, Earth hung quietly in the empty vacuum, its azure radiance shining lonely amid the endless darkness.
The spacesuit was covered in dust. The oxygen supply was already nearing its limit, and a weary face was hidden in the shadow of the helmet.
He was silent for several seconds before continuing:
“The Moon landing program... was not exploration. It was exile.”
“We took ‘it’ away from Earth, but we can no longer go back.”
His voice grew weaker and weaker, filled with despair.
“Listen, if you can see this footage, stay away from here, stay away from...”
All of a sudden, the image jolted violently. The camera was knocked down from behind by some force and toppled onto the cold lunar regolith.
The lens tilted toward the space behind the astronaut. At that moment, the image captured a terrifying scene.
Behind the astronaut, upon the lunar dust that had originally only held the footprints of the spacesuit, there was now an eerie trail of bare footprints.
The footprints were crooked and twisted, their edges warped, as if some kind of dried-out flesh and skin had been dragged across the surface...
Immediately after, through the camera, one could vaguely see a deathly still face slowly emerging from the darkness behind the astronaut.
Pale, shriveled, utterly lifeless.
The wrinkles on the face were as deep as those of a withered old tree. Within its sunken eye sockets, a pair of unfocused eyes stared blankly at the man inside the spacesuit...
“Bzzzt—”
The recording came to an abrupt end, and the screen sank into dead silence.
Above Earth
Space.
In the deep space between Earth and the Moon, a faint mist shrouded the area. Within this strange fog, an old, enormous ship appeared and vanished indistinctly.
The dilapidated hull was covered in cracks. There was no living thing on the deck; it floated in deathly silence in the boundless universe.
One could vaguely see faint yellow lights shining within the portholes, as if hinting that some unknown existence was inside.
In the dead silence of space, this ruined ghost ship sailed slowly onward. Its orbit was stable, as though it were following some predetermined route set long ago.
“The Ark Plan. A raid plan devised by the King Organization. One of the ships loaded with ghosts was the key to the plan. The King Organization called this ship the ‘Ghost Ship.’”
Li Jun put away the small black metal box and continued:
“Professor Wang set up a scheme to lure part of the puzzle pieces of that ghost on the Moon back to Earth, causing it to lose control here. Foreign forces were forced to seek help from Headquarters. Professor Wang’s solution was to use that ship to circle the Moon, sealing that ghost on the Moon, weakening foreign forces while also sabotaging the Ark Plan.”
Liu San suddenly thought of something and asked, “The Ghost Ship?”
“Yes. Zhang Sun once saw that ship. His judgment was that it was an X-class supernatural incident—impossible to observe, impossible to make contact with, and even impossible to approach. If not for Professor Wang’s plan, which forced the King Organization to restrict that ship beside the Moon, what we would be facing now would be that ship.”
At this moment, Liu San glanced at Yang Jian and said, “Perhaps we can use that Ghost Lake to sink the Ghost Ship.”
Li Jun shook his head directly.
“It can’t be done. Professor Wang thought the same as you at first, but something happened that made him change the plan. A ghost walked out from within the Ghost Ship—a ghost suspected of having developed self-awareness.”
“A self-aware ghost?” Wang Chaling asked in puzzlement. He had never heard of such an existence before. Even the two terrifying old people behind him were merely ghosts controlled through a curse.
In essence, his grandfather and grandmother were still ghosts that obeyed their own killing patterns and ghostly instincts. Once the curse disappeared, the first person those two ghosts would kill would be Wang Chaling.
“That’s right. That ghost’s behavior is already close to that of a human. Its terror level is preliminarily judged to be S-class. That is enough to prove that there is more than one ghost inside the Ghost Ship. Relying solely on Ghost Lake may not be enough to suppress it completely, and unpredictable situations may even arise.”
A self-aware ghost.
Yang Jian thought of the anomaly he had encountered in the Ghost Dream, the one that possessed his father’s memories—a failed supernatural product.
Once a ghost possessed self-awareness, it could no longer be called a ghost. There would be no risk of revival, and it could use supernatural objects without limit. An existence of that level, if it took the initiative to resolve supernatural incidents, could end this entire supernatural era all by itself.
But if it were the other way around, as long as it wanted to, it could destroy the entire modern society in an instant...
Yang Jian looked at the flames around the rocket wreckage, which were growing increasingly fierce, and interrupted Li Jun:
“We don’t have much time. Where is Zhang Sun’s corpse? If we keep wasting time here, sooner or later the people of the King Organization will surround us and kill us here.”
Li Jun pointed above everyone’s heads and said, “The Moon...”
“The Moon?!”
“That’s right. The people of the King Organization want to use his corpse and the coffin nail to restrict part of the puzzle pieces of this fire, thereby freeing the Ghost Ship.”
“And the way up? Don’t tell me you want us to ride this rocket up there.”
Li Jun looked toward the head of the rocket wreckage, where an eerie black fire was burning.
“This fire is part of that ghost’s puzzle pieces. If we can make use of a deeper-level Ghost Domain, perhaps we can reverse-invade through it, but I can’t do it.”
After saying this, Li Jun looked toward Yang Jian. Among everyone present, only Yang Jian’s Ghost Domain possessed that ability.