Ye Zhen dangled in midair like a corpse, not stirring in the slightest.
Wang Chaling’s face changed as he looked at Ye Zhen, gripped tight in that stranglehold. “Ghost Errand?! We can’t make contact alone—save him first, suppress it! Make it restart!”
Almost simultaneously, Li Leping and Wang Chaling grabbed that pitch-black, ghastly arm.
Suppression locked into place, and Ye Zhen’s eyes snapped open. But this suppression was mutual—they dared not let go. Once the suppression was lost, the Ghost Errand would begin killing.
“Watch out beside you!” Su Fan shouted, pointing to the side as he stared at his phone.
The next second, an identical, bizarre, massive picture frame appeared there, and from within, another pair of pitch-black hands reached out…
“Are you kidding me?! Two Ghost Paintings?!” Yang Jian’s eyelids twitched violently at the sight of the strangely appearing massive frame.
Before he could even process the shock, another red figure slowly materialized before him.
A putrid gale howled as an aged pair of scissors entwined with black hair fiercely stabbed toward the suddenly appearing red figure.
Fang Shiming’s face changed. “It won’t go in?!”
“Be careful!” Shen Lin appeared behind him, his figure blurred and nearly transparent.
With Shen Lin’s appearance, the red-clad woman before them seemed to suffer some kind of supernatural suppression, her form slowly growing indistinct as well.
“Quick! I can’t suppress her for long!”
Fang Shiming’s body sank low. A gloomy, deathly-pale corpse abruptly appeared on the red-clad woman’s shoulder. The aged scissors smoothly stabbed into it. The red figure trembled slightly, then fell into stasis.
Ghost flames and my scissors can restrain the Ghost Painting…
“Find a way to restrict the Ghost Errand! I have a bit of an idea to imprison the Ghost Painting.” Fang Shiming’s bloodshot eyes swept over everyone.
Mournful, bone-chilling sobs and eerie laughter echoed by everyone’s ears. This indiscriminate attack made no distinction between friend and foe, but at a time like this, no one dared to tell Tong Qian to shut up.
Inside the other suddenly appeared frame, the pitch-black figure’s body was already halfway out. It wore a worn coat in the style of a supervisor, stained thickly with blood. Its entire head was stiff and blackened, emitting a rotten corpse stench.
“We can’t suppress it! That corpse is still moving!” Tong Qian watched the corpse slowly crawling out of the frame, her eyes filled with despair.
Yang Jian suddenly thought of something and shouted, “That coffin! Make the Ghost Errand return to that coffin!”
The situation was dire. Once the Ghost Errand in the other painting fully emerged, everyone here would die.
A golden ghost domain carried everyone and the Ghost Painting toward the coffin in the air, closing the distance almost instantly.
However, a grayish-green ghost domain blocked their path. After a brief clash, the golden ghost domain violently tore the grayish-green to shreds.
As the grayish-green ghost domain slowly dissipated, a completely ashen-gray figure stood quietly beside the ghost coffin, motionless, as if contemplating.
“Are you kidding me? Tong Qian! Stop it!”
But before Tong Qian could act, the Hungry Ghost suddenly split its lower jaw, its mouth opening to an exaggerated size, and swallowed the entire coffin whole. What was bizarre was that after devouring a coffin twice the size of the Hungry Ghost itself, the Hungry Ghost’s form underwent no change whatsoever.
The next second, the Hungry Ghost abruptly turned its head and stared fixedly at them.
At this moment, only Tong Qian, Ah Hong, and Su Fan could still move, but under the current circumstances, the three of them could not play any decisive role.
Yang Jian simply couldn’t break free. The abruptly appearing second Ghost Painting and Ghost Errand made him and Li Jun not dare to fully suppress the red-clad woman before them, terrified that a third Ghost Painting might appear.
“No time! Li Jun, hold on!”
Yang Jian’s figure flickered, appearing beside the Hungry Ghost, holding a worn paper banner in his hand.
Suddenly, Yang Jian gouged the Ghost Eye from his forehead. His entire face was instantly dyed crimson with blood. Without any hesitation, Yang Jian slapped the Ghost Eye forcefully onto the paper banner.
For an instant, it was as if his life were flashing before his eyes—Yang Jian suddenly recalled Wang Xiaoming’s words.
“I ran an experiment on this paper banner once. Because it was too dangerous, I left it here. If necessary, you can put your Ghost Eye into it; perhaps it can turn the tide.”
The paper banner emitted dense red light. The ghost hand Yang Jian used to hold the banner turned deathly pale, and his skin began to crack inch by inch. Yang Jian’s body was being torn apart. Through the splitting gaps, several Ghost Eyes could be seen turning bizarrely inside his body.
With difficulty, he raised the banner and lightly touched it against the Hungry Ghost. In an instant, the space around the Hungry Ghost distorted and warped. Like a flowing stream, the Hungry Ghost was sucked into the banner.
But before everyone could breathe a sigh of relief, a grayish-green figure abruptly appeared before Yang Jian.
Rotten and putrid, a pair of dead-gray eyes stared fixedly at Yang Jian.
“That’s right… the Ghost Errand’s unsolvable restart… Am I going to die?” Yang Jian looked at the Hungry Ghost that had appeared again before him. Having devoured the ghost coffin, it now possessed the same supernatural traits as the Ghost Errand.
There was no need to use the Dead Man’s Banner again. Despair enveloped everyone’s hearts.
Golden flames began to flicker; Li Jun alone was already unable to suppress the Ghost Painting.
Ye Zhen, Wang Chaling, and Li Leping were pinned down by the Ghost Errand, completely unable to move.
The red-clad woman before Fang Shiming and Shen Lin was slowly recovering her mobility.
The Ghost Errand in the other massive frame needed only one more foot to fully step out of the painting.
From the moment they made contact with the Ghost Painting’s source until now, the entire process had taken less than thirty seconds. Despair was spreading.
Suddenly, a voice broke this dead silence of despair.
“Yang Jian! What are you looking at?! The Hungry Ghost’s hands are still there! We still have a chance! Don’t just stand there like a dead man!” Ye Zhen, held in the Ghost Errand’s grip, shouted at Yang Jian.
What’s this…? After the Hungry Ghost devoured the coffin nail, my Dead Man’s Banner is unable to affect it? That is to say, the restarted Hungry Ghost currently doesn’t have the coffin nail’s suppression ability…
What to do…
Back in No. 7 Middle School, the Hungry Ghost seemed to have restarted over a whole area… Could I accomplish that with the Dead Man’s Banner? I can only gamble once.
But I can’t let these hands restart back too… What to do…
I have no time left.
No longer hesitating, Yang Jian threw the Hungry Ghost’s arms toward everyone, then abruptly plunged his hand into the fissure in his chest where his heart was. With a violent grab, he tore out a handful of scarlet, bizarre eyeballs.
The Ghost Shadow was slowly piecing together Yang Jian’s shattered body, but it simply couldn’t keep up with the speed at which his body was splitting apart. Yang Jian was now completely torn apart, his entire body drenched in crimson. Blinding red light radiated from the fissures.
“Sending you on your way.” With that, Yang Jian smeared the eyeballs he clutched onto the Dead Man’s Banner.
Instantly, the Dead Man’s Banner turned entirely blood-red. An extreme scarlet gleam violently exploded forth.
The fifth-layer ghost domain directly skipped the sixth and seventh layers. The entire world sank into a sea of blood-red—an unknown taboo Yang Jian had never touched before.
A taboo capable of reversing life and death was occurring within this blood-red world.
From everyone’s perspective, the dense scarlet surged instantly, enveloping Yang Jian and the Hungry Ghost within it.
But this seemed to be an imperfect restart. The space around Yang Jian distorted, emitting rumbling hums that isolated the red light around him. He himself had not participated in the restart.
An area-wide restart began.
One second…
Two seconds.
The Hungry Ghost stood there, its hands already gone, staring fixedly at Yang Jian.
Three seconds.
The Hungry Ghost was just swallowing the ghost coffin.
Four seconds.
A sharp screech like fingernails scratching a blackboard rang out. The dense red light scattered instantly.
The Hungry Ghost stood before the ghost coffin, motionless, staring into the interior of the coffin.