The first to react was Fang Shiming, who was closest to Tong Qian. Tong Qian only felt a gale roar past; then a black shadow flashed before her eyes, with Yang Jian’s ghost shadow following close behind.
Ye Zhen let out a great shout and smashed a fist toward the Starving Ghost’s rotting, stinking head. At its feet, a greenish flame coiled upward along its rotten, blackened legs.
Almost in an instant, everyone attacked at the same time.
“Watch out—its hands have the suppressive effect of coffin nails!” Behind Wang Chaling, the figures of two deathly old people flickered and appeared above the Starving Ghost’s head.
“Are you kidding me? You’re only saying that now?” Yang Jian abruptly withdrew his ghost hand. The first target he had chosen to attack was its hands.
Just as everyone rushed toward the Starving Ghost, Li Leping appeared silently in front of Shen Lin.
“Shen Lin, don’t resist. Cooperate with me.”
Shen Lin felt himself being invaded; his memories began to blur.
“A ghost of the same type? What is he trying to do...”
Suddenly, the Starving Ghost before them began flickering nonstop, then vanished abruptly from where it stood. From the moment the Starving Ghost appeared and attacked them to the moment it disappeared, the entire process had taken less than ten seconds.
Fang Shiming looked at the empty ground before him.
“It disappeared?”
Yang Jian, however, looked toward Li Leping and Shen Lin. He could roughly guess what the two had done.
“To think a ghost’s ability can be used like this. An astonishing line of thought.”
Fang Shiming followed Yang Jian’s gaze. After a brief moment of thought, he seemed to understand as well.
“To confront the Starving Ghost in this way, to come up with a solution in such a brief instant and execute it smoothly—remarkable.”
“What are you all talking about? Didn’t I punch that little starving ghost and send it running?”
Ye Zhen looked at his own fist with an invincible expression.
“As expected of me...”
Shen Lin crouched on the ground, wisps of black smoke rising from his body.
“Actually, I was gambling too. But when I invaded Shen Lin’s memories, I realized I had made the right bet...”
“Still, it’s slightly different from what you’re thinking. I couldn’t have done it alone...”
“The ghost inside Shen Lin’s body and the one inside mine are of the same type—at least in a certain aspect. That’s the only reason I could complete this plan.”
“I first invaded Shen Lin’s memories, then Shen Lin counter-invaded me, helping me trace back to the memory scene of when he was attacked by the Starving Ghost, making him forget that attack.”
“Of course, against the Starving Ghost, complete forgetting is impossible.”
“But ghosts will always obey their killing patterns, constantly reconstructing the memory scene from that time and returning there to continue attacking Shen Lin.”
“The Starving Ghost only ate part of a ghost; it doesn’t even count as a puzzle piece. I assumed it could only appear in the same memory scene. It was dangerous... but I bet right.”
“Then, by having Shen Lin repeatedly trace his memories back to the instant we triggered the killing pattern just now, the ghost would crash, because ghosts do not make choices. It would keep repeatedly appearing in two different memories...”
“But an incomplete puzzle piece cannot withstand this kind of regression. Infinite memory regression will cause infinite crashes...”
“However, Shen Lin and I have only restricted this portion of the supernatural. The Starving Ghost is still somewhere inside this Ghost Painting.”
Li Leping patiently explained.
In this era of ghost revival, no one existed to guide this generation. Everyone was fumbling forward in the dark.
Li Leping’s actions were undoubtedly meant to share his experience. Everyone listened carefully, because perhaps at some point, this experience might save their lives.
Wisps of black smoke rose from his scorched skin. Li Leping’s condition was extremely poor.
“Li Leping, you are a man people cannot remember, yet do not want to forget. I, Fang Shiming, rarely admire anyone. You count as one.”
Fang Shiming walked up to Li Leping and helped him up from where he crouched on the ground. He greatly approved of Li Leping’s selfless willingness to share.
“Yang Jian, you’re the only one here who has come into contact with the Ghost Messenger twice. If you have any good suggestions, speak up.” Li Jun crouched on the ground, brows furrowed. He truly could not think of any method.
Yang Jian shook his head and looked gravely at the ghost coffin suspended in midair.
“It can’t be imprisoned. The method used at the training base—changing the Ghost Messenger’s killing pattern to make it return to the ghost coffin—can’t be replicated. Now, because of the Starving Ghost and the Ghost Painting, unpredictable changes have occurred. We can only make contact first.”
“Perhaps we should try changing our way of thinking. Just like what Li Leping did just now, we can’t preconceive the relationship between the three ghosts.”
Fang Shiming stood beside Li Leping, also pondering their next move.
“Find the true location of the Ghost Painting. Attack the source of the Ghost Painting and force the fierce ghost to restart. After restarting, the ghost will return to the Ghost Painting. Imprison it in the instant it restarts and returns to the painting,” Wang Chaling said, laying out his solution.
Shen Lin said, “But without the Ghost Painting’s restraint, the Ghost Messenger and the Starving Ghost may instantly go out of control. We have to imprison the Starving Ghost and the Ghost Messenger at the same time.”
“That’s impossible. Restricting the Ghost Painting is already the limit of what we can do. Trying to imprison the Starving Ghost and the Ghost Messenger on top of that is no different from courting death.”
“But the current situation no longer gives us a choice. We need to formulate a plan—at the very least, to imprison two ghosts at the same time.”
Su Fan looked at the old-fashioned phone in his hand. The little figure inside had died once again.
“The source of the Ghost Painting is here, but not on this level. Every place in this Ghost Painting world can lead to the source of the Ghost Painting, but I don’t know the method.”
“It’s a ghost domain. My ghost eye is being suppressed by the Ghost Painting here. I can’t use it...”
Yang Jian sensed the tightly shut ghost eye on his forehead. Ever since entering the Ghost Painting, it had remained dormant.
Li Jun, who had been crouching by the roadside smoking, put out his cigarette and stood up. Greenish flames suddenly surged from his charred half-body, and everyone felt a scorching sensation rush toward them.
A world filled entirely with greenish flames overlapped with the gray, murky world of the Ghost Painting, but it seemed to be limited to that.
“It failed. We need a deeper-level ghost domain to invade.”
“Wait, Li Jun. Inside your ghost domain, my ghost eye seems to have recovered.”
A red light flashed past. Yang Jian directly opened a five-layer ghost domain, but in the next second, Li Jun’s greenish ghost domain was instantly torn apart by a burst of red light and dissipated. Immediately afterward, the red light sank back into Yang Jian’s body, and the ghost eye shut tight again.
“No. Ghost domains can only cancel each other out—no, perhaps they can reach some kind of balance through mutual invasion and form a brief fusion. But the level of your ghost domain is too low. It can’t withstand my invasion, so it vanished. If your ghost domain were a little deeper, perhaps I could try something.”
Li Leping looked at Li Jun, then said to him,
“Li Jun, this might be able to help you.”
He tossed Li Jun a blood-red double-sided drum.
Li Jun looked at the small drum that emanated an eerie aura. “The human skin from the Human Skin Lantern?”
“Yes. But I can’t guarantee whether you’ll immediately suffer ghost revival after controlling this human skin. After all, controlling any ghost is extremely dangerous.”
“There’s nothing to hesitate over. When facing supernatural incidents, many times we don’t get to choose. Ah Hong, prepare to assist me.”
Li Jun tore off the human skin stuck to the drum and, without the slightest hesitation, covered his own face with it.
The instant the human skin touched Li Jun’s face, the greenish flames on his body abruptly transformed into a deep green. Everyone immediately felt an eerie, cold burning sensation.
“Ah Hong!” Li Jun’s muffled voice came from behind the human skin.
Ah Hong had already begun moving before Li Jun called her. Under the burning of the deep green ghost fire, Ah Hong’s whole body trembled uncontrollably, and the makeup on her face rapidly melted, but her hand remained steady as she painted the familiar face onto the human skin.
At last, after half of Ah Hong’s face had melted away, Li Jun’s face reappeared on that human skin. Only now, Li Jun’s face looked very strange. His expression was wooden, like the face of a paper effigy used in folk burials.
“Yang Jian, begin,” Li Jun said. His mouth did not move when he spoke; his voice was muffled and eerie.
An even deeper green ghost fire slowly spread out and enveloped everyone. All of them felt a cold, burning sensation.
“Li Jun, hold on. Suppress the ghost fire and expand the range!”
This deep green ghost fire can even burn away my ghost domain. I can only reduce its erosion of my ghost domain by expanding the range. Then what would happen if I shrink my ghost domain...
A vivid, dense red light flashed. Immediately afterward, the entire gray, murky world seemed to be illuminated in an instant, all of it shrouded in a golden radiance.
Yang Jian looked at this golden world.
“A fusion between ghost domains, producing some kind of qualitative change? But the outer layer is still Li Jun’s ghost domain. I only took a shortcut and caused a change in the centermost area.”
A searing burn assaulted them. Everyone felt as though they were inside a furnace. The golden flames burning around them seemed to possess an extremely powerful suppressive effect against fierce ghosts.
Ye Zhen looked at the golden ghost domain before him, completely disheveled.
“Holy...”
“It appeared! Over there!” Tong Qian’s three faces instantly locked onto a half-person-tall oil painting in front of them.
The oil painting hovered quietly in midair, isolating itself from all the golden flames. Its surroundings were gray and murky; looking at it was like a nearsighted person trying to see something in the distance—indistinct and blurred. Within the bright-red frame was only an empty grayness, as though the ghost inside had already run out.
“The ghost that attacked Ye Zhen earlier?” Ah Hong looked at the empty oil painting, thinking.
Abruptly, without any warning, a person in red clothes whose face could not be seen stood behind Ah Hong. A pair of pale, eerie hands slowly reached toward her.
“Attack!” Before the voice arrived, the person had already arrived. A sheet of golden flame instantly enveloped the eerie woman in red. The golden fire had an extremely strong suppressive effect on her; with only an instant of contact, those pale, eerie hands gradually vanished.
Everyone’s attention was drawn by the sudden attack. From within the empty Ghost Painting, a pitch-black hand suddenly reached out, grabbing straight toward Ye Zhen’s neck.
At the same time, within the gray, murky world of the Ghost Painting.
The Starving Ghost, which had remained motionless in place all this time, suddenly moved. Some kind of balance was being broken. Its blue-black ghost domain rapidly expanded.
The Starving Ghost’s blue-black skin was slowly turning ashen gray...