The Ruins Entwined with Mist and Ghostfire

Li Dan's snap was incredibly soft, yet it struck the hotel's deathly silent air.

Mary Shaw's mist surfaced first. Gray-black tendrils of fog seeped out from the gaps in the floorboards, instantly twisting into an impenetrably dense cloud. A piercing nursery rhyme drifted from within, no longer the off-key humming from before, but like countless fine needles stabbing into the eardrums.

Mary Shaw's face emerged from the center of the mist. She wore a performance gown, and if not for that long, bloody tongue, she might have been mistaken for an elegant old woman.

Her withered fingers pinched several gleaming silver puppet strings. The other ends wrapped around two Earthbound Spirits that had just crawled out through the crack in the door. With one pull, the ghosts in hotel waiter uniforms were dragged into the mist like rag dolls, leaving behind only two brief screams.

Unfortunately, ghosts had no physical bodies and could only become part of the Mist Ghost Domain.

The Black Forest Spirit's hoofbeats shook the floor until it cracked. It stepped out from the edge of the mist, its human-faced, deer-bodied form even more muscular than before. Its antlers resembled two sharpened iron forks, still draped with strands of an Evil Spirit's black mist.

It charged straight to the front. Its human face opened its eyes and swept its gaze over the incoming tide of ghosts, then it abruptly lowered its head, its antlers piercing straight through the chest of a male ghost in formal wear.

The ghost let out a shrill screech. Its body was wrapped in the tentacles growing from the Black Forest Spirit's fur and vanished in an instant.

With every step it took, dense tentacles sprouted beneath its hooves. They spread across the floorboards, entangling the Evil Spirits that tried to ambush it