Only after confirming that the Knocking Ghost’s ghost domain had already left did Yang Jian and the others officially set out.
“We can’t wait any longer. Dragging this out will only invite more trouble.”
What they did not know was that, on the other side, Lu Ming had already arrived at the Caesar Hotel.
ZS City.
Caesar Hotel.
The hotel’s decor was European in style, and it looked extremely luxurious. The lights were dazzling, the place magnificent and resplendent; it appeared spacious, bright, and perfectly normal.
But anyone who had learned about it beforehand would know that this Caesar Hotel had already been sealed off some time ago and suspended for rectification.
This sort of normality, without the slightest trace of anything strange, was the greatest strangeness of all.
Lu Ming looked coldly toward the front desk. Sitting there was a female receptionist in uniform, a stiff smile still hanging at the corners of her mouth.
However, she clearly could not possibly be a normal living person.
“The real Newspaper Ghost is not currently disguised as this female receptionist.”
“This is only a ghost slave, something similar to a supernatural derivative. If I don’t make contact with it on my own initiative, it should be harmless.”
Lu Ming ignored the woman, whose mere appearance was enough to make one’s hair stand on end, and stepped directly onto the path leading to the hotel’s second floor.
The path consisted of two curved staircases on the left and right. The design was exquisite, and the floor was covered with a very stylish red carpet.
On the carpet were several faint, charred-black footprints, as though they had been burned. Yet there was not the slightest smell of scorching.
More precisely, what those footprints gave off was the foul stench of corpse fluid dripping down and corroding the carpet.
“There’s a tall male corpse wandering around the hotel carrying a ghost hatchet. These footprints were left by him, and they’re also the medium that triggers its killing pattern. If I step on these charred-black footprints, I’ll be instantly dismembered by that terrifying hatchet…”
“But even if I don’t step on these footprints, as long as the footprints I leave behind are stepped on by that tall male corpse, it will also trigger the Hatchet Ghost’s killing rule.”
Thinking of this, Lu Ming could not help but feel a chill run through him.
The tall male corpse, like the Knocking Ghost, had originally been one of the Seven Elders of the Republican Era. The hatchet in his hand could not only kill ghost controllers, but could even dismember real fierce ghosts.
Lu Ming still remembered that Yang Jian—protected in consciousness by the music box curse, possessing the suppression quota of three ghosts, and with ghost eyes capable of briefly stacking six layers of ghost domain under the music box curse—had been cut into two pieces with a single swing when he faced this Hatchet Ghost directly.
The difference was that Yang Jian had not been able to die at that time. But if Lu Ming triggered the Hatchet Ghost’s killing rule now, he truly would die.
Therefore, Lu Ming did not dare to be careless. From the moment he entered the Caesar Hotel, he had used his ghost domain, leaving no footprints inside the hotel.
Holding the mummified bride’s hand with his right hand, as they climbed the curved staircase, Lu Ming caught a glimpse of the mummified bride’s feet from the corner of his eye.
The mummified bride’s feet were currently bare. She was not wearing embroidered shoes that matched her wedding garments, and like her hands, they were covered in dark-brown withered skin, looking incomparably cold and terrifying.
But none of that was the point.
As Lu Ming looked at the mummified bride’s feet, a rather bold idea surfaced in his mind.
“If I can really pull this off, then my success rate in seizing the bloodstained old newspaper from the Caesar Hotel this time will definitely increase greatly.”
“At the very least, I won’t have to be on tenterhooks with every step, not daring to use the supernatural power of the mummified bride and the mourning clothes.”
Lu Ming’s eyes flickered. He knew very well that the supernatural was inherently uncertain. In a supernatural incident, nothing was absolute.
There was considerable risk in doing this. If something went wrong, he might even die right here.
But Lu Ming understood even more clearly that he had no other choice.
If he acted timidly no matter what he did, he would have died long ago on that ghost bus.
“Let’s go.”
Lu Ming stepped onto the second floor along the curved staircase.
Every step he took avoided the charred-black footprints, and he left no footprints on the carpet either.
This was an extremely cautious approach.
But whether he failed to notice it or did it intentionally, the mummified bride beside Lu Ming did not receive this protection.
In fact, somewhat coincidentally, the mummified bride’s feet, wrapped in withered brown dead skin, stepped each time—under some kind of guidance—onto those charred-black footprints on the red carpet.
The curved staircase leading to the second floor was not actually long. An ordinary person could climb it very quickly.
But to Lu Ming, this stretch of road seemed incomparably long. Every time the mummified bride stepped onto one of those charred-black footprints, his heart would leap for an instant.
If another ghost controller were standing nearby and witnessed what Lu Ming was doing, they would absolutely think he was a madman.
Because Lu Ming was actually trying to make the mummified bride trigger the killing rule of the ghost hatchet in the hands of the tall male corpse inside the Caesar Hotel!
Only a ghost could contend with a ghost.
Lu Ming wanted to use the ghost hatchet to deepen, or rather temporarily stabilize, the balance between the mourning clothes and the mummified bride.
“The terror level of the ghost hatchet is indeed frightening. It can even dismember fierce ghosts. But Li Qingzhi’s supernatural power right now is actually incomplete as well. No matter what, the mummified bride is an S-rank fierce ghost. She shouldn’t be completely suppressed.”
“So in the end, the most likely outcome should be that the mummified bride’s revival degree is suppressed. For a short period of time, I’ll be able to use the bride’s supernatural power without it affecting me.”
To achieve this, there was one more very important prerequisite.
That was, at present, unlike traditional control, the mummified bride and Lu Ming had not yet completely become one.
The supernatural attack launched by the tall male corpse would only target the mummified bride, and would not affect Lu Ming, who was holding her hand.
Tap, tap, tap!
Lu Ming held the mummified bride’s hand and climbed upward step by step, finally reaching the end of the curved staircase.
The entire process was astonishingly quiet, revealing an inexplicable strangeness. Only Lu Ming’s footsteps echoed through the hotel.
After arriving on the second floor, before him was a pair of European-style glass doors.
Through the glass, he could see the scene behind the doors. It was a pitch-black corridor. At the end, one could vaguely make out a room that resembled a restaurant, and from within came the sound of knives and forks colliding.
Just then, from that dark passage, the sound of footsteps suddenly rang out.
The sound was incomparably heavy, as though every step bore the full weight of the body.
Moreover, the footsteps came extremely abruptly. They did not approach slowly from far to near, but seemed to have been affected by some kind of supernatural force, suddenly appearing outside.
The fierce ghost’s killing curse had been triggered. Lu Ming saw a tall black silhouette walking over from the distance, standing in the dark corridor behind the glass doors.
The instant this ghost appeared, the surrounding environment turned much colder. Although it was all within his expectations, it still made goosebumps rise all over Lu Ming’s body.
“One of the Seven Elders of the Republican Era, Li Qingzhi; a puzzle piece dismembered after death; a tall male corpse carrying a hatchet as it wanders through the Caesar Hotel.”