"Don't panic, I'm trying to figure something out." Wen Jingyan stared at the villagers gathering in front of him, his expression extremely grave.
The four of them seemed to be trapped in a spatial loop, walking in opposite directions, and eventually returning to their starting point.
At this point, no one suggested trying in different directions, because the result would most likely be the same—returning to the village—and it would be too much of a waste of energy.
Their entry into the village was triggered by the strange projector in the movie theater; it's unclear what pattern they'll encounter that projector again.
Wen Jingyan guessed that the projector was playing a horror movie.
The first scenario is that there is a corresponding film in the real world, and the projector brings this horror film to life.
The second possibility is that the projector recorded other Supernatural events and reproduced them in a unique way.
In either case, the longer it drags on, the more dangerous it becomes.
Wen Jingyan's mastery of the [Yin-Yang Road] and [Ghost Possession] is better suited for escaping and saving his life. Previously, he was controlled by others and had been working for the mastermind behind the scenes, never giving it his all.
Faced with this situation, he could no longer hold back. He had to Supernatural of the Yin -Yin-Yang Road to the fullest extent, hoping to open a passage to leave this place.
"Feng Qian, be careful not to let anyone interfere with or ambush me. I'll try to force my way out," Wen Jingyan said.
As a survival expert, his sensitivity to danger far surpasses that of ordinary people. At this moment, his intuition is constantly warning him, and his body instinctively wants to get away from the village ahead, as if there is a terrifying horror in the village.
A dark, winding path stretched out beneath my feet, but it flickered and wavered as if there was an unstable signal.
Upon seeing this, Wen Jingyan froze, and the Supernatural of the Yin-Yang Road was greatly suppressed.
Immediately afterwards, the villagers gathered at the village entrance seemed to be stimulated and all started to move.
Their steps were stiff yet swift, their expressions numb like those of walking corpses, their eyes devoid of any living spirit.
The distance between the two sides is gradually shrinking, and no one knows what terrible things might happen if they come into contact with these things.
"Aren't you ready yet?" Feng Qian's eyes gleamed with golden light, his voice trembling slightly. Even with his slowed senses, he felt a tremendous sense of dread as the eerie villagers approached.
Du Yan and Su Yu were extremely tense, not daring to utter a sound. They were just ordinary people, and now they only hoped that Wen Jingyan really had a way to escape, and that he wouldn't abandon them when he ran away.
Wen Jingyan was drenched in cold sweat. He was trying his best to activate the Supernatural of the Yin-Yang Road, but unfortunately, he could not find an "exit" and could not connect to the outside world.
Suddenly, the dark, winding path beneath his feet seemed to have touched something it shouldn't have, and it collapsed and vanished in an instant.
At the same time, the villagers who were approaching them suddenly froze in place, their stiff heads turning in unison, staring at a certain spot.
Wen Jingyan was startled and turned to look in that direction as well.
Where there had been nothing before, wells suddenly appeared, each with a regular hexagonal opening and surrounded by weeds.
What's even stranger is that these wells are arranged in a circle, as if something is surrounding them in the middle.
Feng Qian had sharp eyesight and spotted it immediately: there was a child right in the middle of the wells.
To be precise, it should be a baby. It had a large head, dark blue skin, and was curled up on the ground, as if it had just been lulled to sleep by its mother.
The baby was holding something in its hand, but it was too far away for Feng Qian to see clearly. He then told the other three what he had seen.
Wen Jingyan wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, a sense of indescribable fear welling up inside him.
Fortunately, the baby remained still and did not show any aggression for the time being, which is somewhat good news.
But bad news followed quickly; Wen Jingyan sensed another terrifying aura approaching from behind.
His body was tense, and he didn't dare to turn around.
The next second, the strange villagers gathered at the village entrance suddenly collapsed in unison, and then quickly rotted, filling the air with a toxic stench of decay.
"What happened?!" Feng Qian's eyes widened.
"Da da--"
Slow, heavy footsteps came from all directions; something terrifying was approaching.
"Damn it!" Wen Jingyan clenched his fists. The situation was now worse than before; they seemed to be attacked from both sides by multiple Fierce Ghosts!
Is there any way out?
A fierce glint appeared in Wen Jingyan's eyes. The mastermind behind this had sent him to do this; surely they wouldn't just stand by and watch him die, would they?
The footsteps grew closer, and soon they saw a person.
It was a woman, thin and withered, dressed in tattered coarse linen clothes, but with a head of thick, long hair. Her hair was incredibly black, a unique kind of black, as if the heaviest darkness in the world had coalesced together.
They had seen this woman before.
It's the woman combing her hair at the dressing table that appears at the very beginning of the movie, when that old projector first starts playing.
Her steps were slow, and with each step she took, darkness engulfed the area she passed through, shattering the scene and revealing the original appearance of the movie theater.
Wen Jingyan and the others didn't dare to breathe, unable to comprehend what they were witnessing.
You see, they had tried their best to escape the village but couldn't, and this female ghost simply walked over, and the scene surrounding the village collapsed.
An indescribable sense of horror instantly gripped everyone's hearts, making it impossible to muster any thought of confronting it head-on.
We can't beat them, we simply can't beat them.
Even Wen Jingyan, the most capable member of the team, now only had "escape" on his mind.
But he dared not make any rash moves, for fear of violating the killing pattern of the female ghost before him.
Better to stay still than move. He slowed his breathing, stood still, and didn't make any unnecessary movements. As long as he didn't do anything extra, he was unlikely to make a mistake, unless this ghost's killing pattern was indiscriminate attacks.
The other three, blindly following Wen Jingyan, also dared not make a move.
Time ticked by, and the female ghost brushed past them. Everyone knew that if this ghost attacked at that moment, they would die instantly!
At this crucial moment, none of the four people faltered, and there were no dramatic scenes like those in horror movies, such as someone suddenly farting or suddenly bursting into tears or screaming.
The female ghost gradually passed them and walked towards the village.
As if the curtain had shattered, the eerie village vanished, and the surrounding scenery completely returned to that of a movie theater.
In the corner, an old-fashioned projector was still running, but the projected image had turned into static and noise.
Is this projector the source of all the abnormal phenomena?
Wen Jingyan's goal was not to contain it, but to find a way to release all the ghosts inside.
The clattering footsteps continued as the black-haired female ghost advanced step by step, seemingly oblivious to Wen Jingyan and his companions.
Seeing that the female ghost was about to leave, Wen Jingyan and the others breathed a sigh of relief.
Fortunately, the female ghost was just passing by, and nothing bad happened.
Only about two minutes have passed since the female ghost appeared, but those two minutes have made the four people present feel their hearts in their throats.
Feng Qian relaxed his tense muscles and was about to say something when suddenly, something unexpected happened!
Suddenly, the projector in the corner turned its projection towards the female ghost, and the light shone on her. The female ghost immediately stopped and slowly turned around.
The four of them tensed up again. Ever since entering the Starlight Cinema, everything they had encountered had been terrifying and bizarre.
Seeing the female ghost suddenly turn around, Wen Jingyan did not make any rash moves, but a bluish-gray road was faintly visible under his feet.
The projector's light flickered incessantly, and the female ghost illuminated by it stood there silently, making no further moves; the two seemed to be locked in a stalemate.
"Mr. Wen, please make a decision quickly. What should we do now?" Feng Qian asked anxiously.
Wen Jingyan remained silent.
Feng Qian continued, "Given the current situation, we have no way to intervene. We should retreat for now; if we die here, the situation will only get worse."
Although Wen Jingyan claimed he was there to resolve potential problems in advance, Feng Qian didn't quite believe him, thinking that Wen Jingyan might have other motives.
If there were no danger, Feng Qian would be happy to help and get closer to the big shot, but now that things are clearly going to go wrong, he doesn't want to die with others.
"Alright, let's retreat." Wen Jingyan said, feigning reluctance.
This is definitely not a place to stay for long; getting too close to ghosts will inevitably lead to trouble sooner or later.
The four of them turned around and quickly retreated towards the cinema entrance.
The actions of "turning around" and "walking" did not trigger the pattern of killing. After confirming this, they increased their speed.
Wen Jingyan kept glancing back until the projector and the female ghost disappeared from his sight, at which point he finally let out a sigh of relief.
The rest of the journey went surprisingly smoothly.
The good news is that they successfully reached the movie theater entrance.
The bad news was that when they pushed open the theater doors, the scene suddenly changed; instead of a street, they found themselves in a department store.
"Damn it... we haven't even gotten out yet!" Feng Qian was slightly annoyed, so much so that his voice rose considerably.
Wen Jingyan calmly observed his surroundings. There was no one in the mall, but he could faintly smell the stench of corpses.
It seems that there is no major danger to this shopping mall for the time being.
He dared not be careless about a shopping mall like this.
"Keep going," he said.
The group followed him cautiously toward the mall exit.
Suddenly, Su Yu, who had been silent the whole way, spoke up, "Can we use the goods sold in this mall?"
Her gaze fell on a counter selling gold jewelry.
Wen Jingyan was taken aback, then thought for a moment and said, "I'm not sure either, but I suggest we don't act rashly. The goods here may not actually exist."
Su Yu nodded, indicating that she understood, and then looked away with a hint of regret.
She wasn't greedy for gold jewelry; she valued the intrinsic worth of the gold itself.
The Investigation Bureau cut corners, distributing less gold items to the investigators. She wanted to gather some gold herself and cover the walls and floors of her house with it.
But since Wen Jingyan said there might be danger, Su Yu had no choice but to reluctantly give up.
As expected, things were not peaceful in the mall. Soon, a "clattering" sound rang out in the empty mall as the escalator suddenly started running, the roar of the machine particularly jarring in the deathly silence.
A chill ran down Su Yu's neck. She instinctively turned around abruptly and saw what appeared to be a dark shadow flash by on the escalator.
She wasn't sure if she was seeing things, but instead of trying to be clever and hiding it or deceiving herself with excuses like "I must have seen it wrong," she spoke up on the spot, hoping to remind everyone.
Wen Jingyan looked around, his gaze sweeping across the mall's atrium. On the glass railing, colorful lights flickered erratically, and a large group of plastic mannequins stood quietly.
Suddenly, warm air blasted out of the air conditioner vents, carrying the stench of rotting corpses.
The reflection in the glass window began to distort. Out of the corner of his eye, Du Yan noticed that more than a dozen versions of himself suddenly appeared in the reflection, each dressed in clothing from a different era. The one in the farthest distance, "He," was smiling, his mouth stretching to his ears.
He was startled, and when he turned around to look more closely, the reflections had vanished.
Like Su Yu, he did not hide the unusual phenomena he had witnessed.
Wen Jingyan stroked his chin and thought carefully. Since the beginning, strange things had been happening in this shopping mall, but these things only gave them a little fright and did not cause them any direct harm, nor did they see Fierce Ghosts.
This situation suggests that ghosts do exist, but none of them have broken any rules.
Thinking of this, Wen Jingyan didn't want to waste any more time, lest the market undergo even more terrible changes.
Three paths of different colors meandered beneath his feet, and he himself became part of the crossroads.
After Observation the three roads, he stepped onto a pale stone-paved road.
"Stay close to me, don't fall behind."
The other three followed Wen Jingyan side by side. After they had walked a distance, they heard the clicking sound of plastic joints turning behind them, and the melody of the birthday song echoed in the empty mall.
On the pale stone path, the group remained cautious and highly vigilant.
The road is not very stable, occasionally flickering like a bad signal. The scenery on both sides of the road is bizarre and indescribable.
As they traveled further, the unstable situation worsened, and Wen Jingyan's face turned pale.
Click--
With a crisp cracking sound, the pale stone pavement split open!
The crack stretched across the road, spreading from one side to the other.
"Run!" Wen Jingyan shouted and rushed out first.
Feng Qian dragged Du Yan and Su Yu along, and before the crack completely severed the stone path, they crossed the ever-widening crack.
After running frantically for a long distance, Wen Jingyan finally stopped, panting heavily.
"What just happened?" Feng Qian asked.
Wen Jingyan shaken, said, "A ghost bumped into my path, and I almost couldn't get out."