The ghost had begun to kill.
The first person it targeted was Fang Shao from the Fourth Branch, the bald man who had once mentioned the rumors about Ji Li outside Chengxiang Primary School.
Yuan Kuan, a burly, powerfully built man, was in the rear car, but even he was helpless in the face of what was happening.
The car had crashed into the curb. Its body rocked, and hard thuds rang out intermittently as someone struck the doors.
Fang Shao was in the front passenger seat. Through the window, they could still see his exposed skin, which looked like red-hot iron.
The window blocked out the sound, keeping them from hearing the sizzling of seared flesh, but the scorching heat was perfectly apparent from the sight alone.
His face resembled a red lantern burning from within. The dark red beneath his skin looked like a fire about to consume all his internal organs. His bulging veins turned purple and black, twitching along with his spasming nerves.
His eyes kept rolling upward. His hands clawed and groped aimlessly, and his agonized screams threatened to shatter the glass.
But strangest of all were the strands of dark markings flowing across his skin like ink.
The markings joined together in dense masses, but a closer look would reveal that each was roughly the length and thickness of an earthworm. There were simply so many, moving so quickly, that they seemed to form one continuous expanse.
Mysterious dark markings flowed across his scalding, reddened skin. The sight was viscerally shocking.
Yet something was odd.
Fang Shao was on the verge of being scalded alive, but Yuan Kuan, who was restraining his upper body, and Shi Man, who was holding his wrists, seemed to feel none of that searing heat despite their direct contact