Huang Ziya stared blankly at Zhang Han’s receding figure. In that instant, she seemed to see Yang Jian’s shadow in him—the decisiveness and courage to face any supernatural horror, to still find the slimmest chance of survival in a desperate situation, and lead everyone in tearing open a path to life.
Cao Yang and Huang Ziya had already drawn close to the corpse. Tong Qian’s laughter and sobbing echoed in their ears.
“Auntie Huang! Don’t go any farther. Just stand there!”
Xiong Wenwen’s expression was awful, his face deathly pale. The strength of the fierce ghosts each person controlled was different; he needed to predict with absolute precision where every single one of them should stand.
Huang Ziya pouted. She very much wanted to snap back at him, but now was not the time to argue. Her feet stopped, and she stood where she was.
At that moment, Huang Ziya was surprised to discover that the black hair on her head was astonishingly calm. There was none of the earlier restlessness at all, as if she had returned to the time when she had just gained control of the ghost hair.
She immediately said in delight, “It’s working! Zhang Han, you’re amazing. I’m about to start liking you a little.”
Feng Quan walked past Huang Ziya and said, “Stop talking nonsense. Get ready.”
He was the second to stop. With Xiong Wenwen’s prediction, everyone could stop precisely at the position most advantageous to themselves.
The white fog around them grew denser and denser. Everyone could actually feel a trace of dampness; the mist had even begun to condense into droplets.
But the fierce ghost opposite them was invading this white fog. It wanted to attack Xiong Wenwen and complete its killing pattern.
Within the fog, droplets of water were continuously frozen into tiny ice pellets that fell to the ground. Time passed, second by second.
Zhang Han had also stopped. Only Cao Yang was still carefully approaching.
He looked at Cao Yang, who was getting closer and closer.
“Almost there…”
At the back of his neck, several ferocious tattoos faintly emerged. The shape of a palm was slowly rising beneath Zhang Han’s skin.
Yet just then, a sudden change occurred. That ghost actually began to move. Shock flashed across everyone’s faces. Their actions were dangerous, but they should not have caused this fierce ghost to lose control.
The ghost wanted to kill Xiong Wenwen. That was a pattern that could not be changed. But at this moment, Xiong Wenwen was within Feng Quan’s ghost domain, and that ghost was simultaneously facing the resistance of the fierce ghosts inside everyone’s bodies.
This loss of control had come too suddenly.
An extremely powerful chill surged toward them. The white fog abruptly came to a halt, and before everyone’s eyes, it began to freeze rapidly from the front, turning into a wall of ice.
“Run…”
Xiong Wenwen suddenly spoke, his voice filled with extreme pain. With difficulty, he raised an arm and pointed into the distance.
“Run that way… someone’s going to die.”
At this moment, on Xiong Wenwen’s pale face, the face of an unfamiliar man had faintly appeared. On that lifeless man’s face, a strange expression was actually beginning to emerge. This was the precursor to the fierce ghost inside Xiong Wenwen reviving.
Using the fierce ghost’s power repeatedly in such a short period of time had caused Xiong Wenwen’s condition to deteriorate rapidly. He was almost unable to hold on.
Cao Yang’s gaze sharpened.
“Damn it. Could it be that robot has malfunctioned?”
The ghost domain rapidly unfolded. Amid a burst of horrifying laughter, a succession of footsteps suddenly rang out. At this moment, it was as if countless corpses were marching in place all around them. Everyone was instantly pulled into the ghost domain, but Cao Yang was still one step too late.
The freezing ghost slowly raised its arm and reached toward his ghost domain. The instant it made contact, the frozen ghost domain actually shattered open into a large hole. Under everyone’s shocked gazes, Xiong Wenwen was violently dragged out by that cold, sinister arm.
There was no time to react at all. A trace of astonishment still hung on Xiong Wenwen’s face.
The chill rapidly receded. The freezing ghost did not continue attacking the others. Instead, it stood stiffly in place, mechanically looking in the direction Xiong Wenwen had pointed just now. Then it abruptly vanished from where it stood.
Zhang Han immediately turned to Cao Yang and said, “After it! This ghost kills very slowly! Xiong Wenwen can still be saved!”
Cao Yang coldly glanced in the direction where the ghost had disappeared. An extremely important strategic asset like Xiong Wenwen was something he would definitely not give up on lightly.
But the one who moved before him was Tong Qian. A howling mixture of laughter and sobbing formed a wave of sound that swept toward that direction.
“Move faster! Save Xiong Wenwen!”
Footprints stepped along the sound wave in midair, pushed forward at high speed. Faced with such an extreme situation, Tong Qian seemed to have figured out a new way to use those two faces. It had to be said that only by constantly experiencing supernatural incidents and wandering on the edge of death could ghost controllers truly grow.
This sound wave was incomparably strange. When Cao Yang’s footprints landed on it, they actually gained an accelerating effect, carrying everyone madly toward the distance.
Deep within the heavy snow.
In an open-air fountain plaza.
The extreme low temperature had frozen the gushing streams of water into uneven ice pillars, like a field of deathly silent tombstones.
The air was filled with the stench of frozen, splitting rotten flesh.
Around the plaza, scorched paper figures had piled up in dense layers. Charred fragments were scattered all over the ground, gradually covered by the white snow.
A waxen-faced man stood atop the pile of ruined paper figures.
His hollow eyes stared at the sky as he muttered to himself:
“What happened up there…”
Just now, a cluster of cold black fire had ignited without warning from within the pile of paper figures, instantly devouring a large swath of them.
Within that black flame, Liu San saw a human silhouette. A trace of scarlet flickered at its forehead. The shadow actually turned its head to look at him, as though confirming something.
“Yang Jian?”
Looking at that somewhat familiar figure, Liu San tentatively asked.
The black shadow stood motionless. The faint scarlet at its forehead seemed to be observing Liu San, yet also seemed to be in a muddled, ignorant state of confusion.
Then it slowly raised its arm and gently swept it across the surrounding paper figures. The black fire immediately spread over them.
This eerie black fire had come abruptly and vanished even faster. In less than a minute, it disappeared together with that shadow.
Even so, it had burned away most of the paper figures.
Liu San turned his head. What had just happened was somewhat beyond his expectations. That black shadow seemed to be a ghost, yet it also seemed to have retained part of its self-awareness, and had not attacked Liu San.
But now was not the time to worry about that. The black fire had already receded. Liu San’s gaze fell on the stairs of the plaza, where there was a human-shaped figure encased in a thick layer of ice.
It was a robot—or rather, a bizarre artificial construct forcibly stitched together. Wang Xiaoming had used some unknown method to stuff a supernatural object inside it. Not only had it not gone out of control, it could even be controlled by the robot.
The instant the black fire appeared just now, this robot had also been more than half burned away. Even the tattered quilt inside its mechanical body had been burned through, leaving a hole.
This situation was extremely terrifying. To put it plainly, it was equivalent to a part of the ghost being dismembered by the black fire, and after being dismembered, this supernatural object still maintained its original state, showing no signs of revival whatsoever.