On the far side of the moon, the light was unnaturally dim. Everyone stopped before an enormous pit.
In this vacuum, a dense stench of corpses filled the air, completely defying common sense.
It was a patch of pitch-black flame.
Cold, without the slightest warmth. Its absolute blackness could not even refract light; at a glance, aside from the black flames, nothing else could be seen.
It was a kind of blackness difficult for humans to comprehend, like the absolute void and emptiness of the darkness on the side of one eye after you closed it.
And amid these eerie black flames, a corpse dressed in the clothes of a person in charge hung silently in midair. A rust-stained coffin nail was still driven into its forehead.
“Li Jun is going to die. The previous method of merging ghost domains won’t work. We need to think of another way to retrieve the corpse...”
A paper figure was supporting Li Jun’s ruined, charred body. Even Liu San’s yellow paper could not completely cover Li Jun, who was on the verge of revival.
Wang Chaling looked at the blackness before him, a trace of gravity appearing on his face as he said, “Even Headquarters has no intelligence on this black fire. Since the King has already withdrawn, we have enough time to analyze these flames. I don’t think we should act rashly.”
“I agree with you.”
Shen Lin stood at the very front. This black fire could not even be observed, let alone touched. In the face of a supernatural force of this level, making contact rashly was no different from courting death.
Yang Jian, however, had been observing the pitch-black flames the entire time. The ghost eye turning on his forehead revealed his unease; even the ghost eye could not see through this black fire.
That strange burning sensation from earlier had left Yang Jian unable to calm down. His instincts were telling him that if they did not act as soon as possible, what happened next would be extremely terrifying.
But if they wanted to take the corpse away, they had to touch the black fire. There was no other clever shortcut.
When facing supernatural incidents, the most direct and clumsiest method was often the most effective.
Contact. Probe. Analyze.
No longer hesitating, Yang Jian tightened his grip on the hatchet in his hand and said, “We can’t wait any longer. Although I have no reason, I trust my instincts. I’m going to begin.”
Everyone looked toward Yang Jian. In their impression, Yang Jian was not the kind of person who would draw conclusions casually.
Whether it was during the out-of-control incident in Dajing City, or the King’s attack just now in that two-dimensional space, Yang Jian’s judgment had never been wrong. When facing supernatural incidents, they could be said to trust Yang Jian’s judgment greatly.
Liu San said, “Do whatever you want to do. We’ll support you at any time.”
Shen Lin and Wang Chaling also nodded along.
Yang Jian stepped forward. On the headless ghost shadow behind him, eight ghost eyes suddenly opened, then slowly converged toward the center.
Facing this eerie black fire, Yang Jian had no intention of holding anything back. He intended to directly open the eighth-layer ghost domain and forcibly take Zhang Sun’s corpse away.
However, just as Yang Jian was about to act, a sudden change occurred. The pitch-black flames within the deep pit abruptly went out of control, spreading toward them at a speed almost like teleportation.
Everyone had no time to react at all, because Yang Jian had not yet begun to act. No one had expected an attack at a moment like this.
Just then, a surge of out-of-control red light expanded violently, about to collide head-on with the incoming blackness. Yet something strange happened: that patch of scarlet suddenly vanished, without even touching the black fire.
Yang Jian’s brows locked tight as he looked at the headless ghost shadow behind him. What had just happened made his scalp tingle. The eight ferocious scarlet eyeballs on the ghost shadow had not yet fully overlapped together.
He had not opened the eighth-layer ghost domain at all. Then where exactly had that red light belonging to his ghost domain come from?
Wang Chaling looked over and said, “Yang Jian, what happened?”
Just now, he had clearly seen a surge of scarlet expand violently. That was Yang Jian’s ghost domain, but it had disappeared in an instant.
“It wasn’t suppression, nor was it a restart. I hadn’t even begun to act...”
The scarlet ghost eye on his forehead turned uneasily.
Yang Jian was very familiar with that red light. Its aura was exactly the same as that emitted by his ghost eye. But he had not performed any action to open the eighth-layer ghost domain at all.
Moreover, before the red light had even touched the black fire, it vanished into thin air, as if it had been stripped away from reality itself.
“Impossible. That black fire did indeed attack you.”
Liu San’s hoarse voice sounded.
“But without triggering its killing pattern, a ghost will absolutely never take the initiative to attack a person.”
Shen Lin glanced at everyone. It seemed that someone among them was missing. Ever since they had come out of that two-dimensional space, he had been unable to recall exactly who it was.
But now was not the time to think about that. After pondering for a moment, he said:
“We’ve been standing together this entire time. If we triggered some unknown killing pattern, then logically, everyone should have been attacked. But only Yang Jian was.”
A deathly silent figure appeared in front of Wang Chaling, protecting him.
“Unless some unconscious action of yours just now triggered the killing pattern. Was it because you took the initiative to attack? Perhaps the nature of this black fire is similar to the Ghost Messenger’s kind of irresistible suppression, which is why your ghost eye was neutralized in an instant.”
“No... something’s wrong...”
Yang Jian stood quietly in place. The burning sensation in his ghost eye grew stronger and stronger; at this moment, he could even feel pain. For a ghost to produce a sense of pain was something that should have been absolutely impossible.
At this moment, an indescribable abnormality rose in his heart. Yang Jian could not understand how this attack had taken effect. There had been no warning whatsoever, and he had not even begun to act.
Suddenly, that cold burning sensation intensified violently. Yang Jian only had time to shout:
“Be careful! The attack has already begun!”
Before his words had even fallen, everyone discovered in astonishment that a patch of cold black flames had appeared abruptly, spreading and covering Yang Jian’s body crazily.
The way this cluster of black fire appeared was far too eerie, so much so that it gave people the illusion that at the spot where Yang Jian stood, the black ghost fire had already existed there all along, and Yang Jian’s movement was merely him “stepping onto” it himself.
Almost as an instinctive reaction, dense red light swelled instantly. Yang Jian intended to restart himself and restore his state to before he had suffered the black fire’s attack.
However, the same strange thing happened again. The dense red light vanished into thin air, as if the fact that he had restarted just now had never occurred.
Yang Jian’s eyelids twitched violently. “Are you kidding me?! It disappeared?”
The black flames burned wildly. Even the pitch-black headless ghost shadow behind him was covered by this even denser blackness.
All of this happened too quickly, in less than a single second.
But the captains present all reacted very quickly. Liu San was closest to Yang Jian and was the first to move. With a raise of his hand, a sheet of wax-yellow paper swiftly drifted toward Yang Jian.