The Ominous Image Revealed by Divination

Could it be that, like the illusion on the Dead Spirit Island last time, the things hanging there are their corpses again?

Carlos observed carefully, and the more he looked, the more similar they seemed. He could even distinguish one from another based on their body shape.

"What do you mean? Are you trying to provoke us into committing suicide again?" he said.

"I don't know, let's go take a look." Before Yu Xing could finish speaking, she had already started walking towards the tree. The others noticed their actions and wanted to stop them, but when they saw Carlos follow, they relaxed and let them go.

Walking to the tree, Yu Xing circled it and looked around.

The corpses were dressed in excessively simple white burial clothes, like two pieces of cloth sewn together, with their own clothes underneath, nothing missing except for shoes and socks.

Therefore, the team members' clothes were clearly visible to them.

"As expected." Yu Xing raised an eyebrow and walked to the tallest figure. Judging from his build, this should be his "corpse."

He came down to the ground, avoiding the bird carcasses that had fallen to the ground and were mangled by the rain, and looked at the height of the carcasses, planning to climb up a tall tree to take a look.

Neither of them told anyone else that the corpse was themselves, since they were paranormal investigators who had seen too many paranormal events and were experienced in dealing with all kinds of them.

The other team members, who had only ever raided tombs and had seen zombies and ghosts, were bound to cause unnecessary trouble if they rashly accepted new things.

Yu Xing straightened his sleeves, checked the leather gloves to make sure they were intact, and, now that he was away from the other team members, he no longer acted like a delicate person. He climbed directly up the tree trunk.

After thinking for a moment, he kept a certain distance from the tree trunk, drew his dagger, and deftly plunged it into the trunk. Using it as a support, he bent his legs and secured himself firmly.

"You can climb trees?" Carlos was a little surprised.

Yu Xing smiled, her eyes crinkling as they peeked out from behind her mask. "Knowing a little bit of everything makes life easier."

"What kind of talk is that?" Carlos vaguely sensed a deeper meaning in those words, but couldn't quite grasp it.

Yu Xing turned around and began to climb upwards. He was very fast and his movements were skillful. He didn't know what kind of tree this was, which was seven or eight stories high. The trunk was rough and easy to climb.

He also found traces of previous climbing on the tree trunk, several pieces of bark that had been peeled off, and some fine cracks left by sharp objects being inserted into it.

Yu Xing paused in her climbing, ignoring Carlos's question from below, "What happened?", and carefully examined the size of the narrow crevice.

He hugged the tree trunk tightly, pulled out the dagger, and compared it to a narrow crevice not far above his head.

"... Exactly the same?" he murmured. "What does that mean? Not only are the corpses ours, but we're also the ones hanging them up?"

The situation is indeed a bit strange.

He continued climbing, found the branch from which his body was hanging, and gracefully climbed up, standing firmly on his feet.

On the other side, the team that had been on guard for half a day had not found any suspicious persons. Lin and Will were still not finished, so they kept watch on the two of them, put down their weapons, and took the opportunity to observe the surroundings.

"Oh my? Ah Shi, look!" Shi Jiu spotted San standing on the high ground and tugged at Ash in surprise, "He's really good at fighting."

Ash followed her gaze, a thoughtful look in his eyes. "That's right, that branch is very thin and can't bear much weight. It's already a struggle to hang a corpse on it. But San stood on it without even needing to hold onto the trunk. His balance and courage are probably in the top thirty in our organization."

His Chinese isn't good, Shi Jiu found it painful to listen to; he regretted discussing this with Ash.

"Was he trying to lift the corpse's hair?" Unica crossed her arms, looked up, and her big eyes were full of curiosity.

She was very interested in this newcomer, not only because of his attractive appearance, but also because of the mystery surrounding him, as if he was always hiding something.

Most importantly, she had already initiated conversation with him several times, but he still seemed lukewarm, just like Will, like a block of wood.

The members of the tomb-raiding family followed Master Li, intently watching Yu Xing's movements. They too wanted to know what kind of face lay beneath that long hair—was it human or ghost?

Yu Xing walked step by step towards the front of the tree branch. The area under his feet became smaller and smaller. In the latter half, Yu Xing like he was walking on a horizontal bar. He didn't need to spread his arms slightly to maintain his balance because he found that the tree branch was very tough. After bearing his weight, it only swayed slightly and was still far from the safe zone.

He could stroll by with his hands in his pockets, completely at ease.

But he felt several burning gazes surrounding him, so he had no choice but to awkwardly extend his arms, showing them to everyone in a cautious manner, before stopping and crouching down where he could reach the corpse.

The corpse was incredibly close to him; Yu Xing's breathing quickened. This was his corpse!

He was about to see a pale corpse named Yu Xing, completely dead, lifeless, and never to open its eyes again. This was a completely new feeling that he had never experienced before, and the thought made him a little happy!

Yu Xing reached out, his fingers touching the messy hair on the top of the corpse's head. He steadied himself, inserted his index finger into the hair in front of the corpse's face, and slowly hooked it towards himself.

The skin was indeed as pale as he had expected.

As she continued to peek out, her phoenix eyes were revealed. Because her eyes were closed, they appeared even narrower and longer. Below her eyes were a high, straight nose and cyanotic lips. Due to poor blood circulation, her face was very swollen, and her once beautiful appearance was almost ruined. Undeniably, this was the ugliest version of herself that Yu Xing had ever seen.

The moment the entire face was fully revealed, before Yu Xing could even spit out a curse, the face suddenly seemed to be dried into powder by the wind, and dispersed with a gust of cold wind. The head instantly turned into a skull, and the hair, matted into clumps, fell to the ground.

"What, can't I even look anymore?" Yu Xing muttered. He was certain that the corpse's head had been blown away because he had seen its "true face".

Even if the head is gone, the body remains.

Yu Xing didn't leave his own corpse unattended. He noticed that the simple burial shroud had two large pockets sewn on it. Since there were pockets, they must have contained something else.

Unfortunately, he couldn't easily reach the pockets.

After thinking for a moment, Yu Xing brought the dagger close to the thin rope hanging the corpse, brandished it a couple of times with ill intent, and then...

The corpse fell vertically, nearly hitting Carlos, who was eagerly craning his neck out of curiosity. He dodged it, and the corpse landed right in front of him. Unable to contain his anger, Carlos yelled at Yu Xing in the tree, "Damn it, couldn't you at least have said something first?!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to!" Yu Xing shouted even louder than him, her voice sincere and full of grievance. "I didn't know you were underneath it!"

The team members glared angrily at Carlos.

"Carlos, don't be mean to him. Isn't he nervous up there all by himself? He probably didn't even notice you." Unica had actually figured out that Yu Xing was teasing Carlos. She smiled mischievously and added fuel to the fire.

"Exactly, Carlos, why don't you climb up yourself? Do you expect me to tell you that you never perform high-altitude magic tricks because you're afraid of heights?" Shi Jiu said with a grin.

Master Li: "This kid's afraid of heights?"

Uncle Zhang: "So he's afraid of heights."

Ash: "Afraid of heights? Then you can't do a lot of things."

Unica: "Being afraid of heights and still calling yourself 'San'? How shameless!"

Carlos: "..."

Good, very good. Look at these people's faces, always eager to see a good show!

They were practically shouting "Let's fight! Let's fight!"

You guys really do forget about the old handsome guy once you find a new one.

Seeing that his plan had succeeded, Yu Xing smiled and, before anyone could react, leaped into the air.

He jumped straight down from that height, and the gasps of his teammates were stuck in their throats. He had already kicked off the tree, using the reaction force to mitigate some of the impact, rolled once on the ground, and landed safely.

Shi Jiu and Uncle Zhang ran over, startling Carlos. His expression was complicated. "Are you performing on a drop tower...? Saving time doesn't have to be like this."

"No, I just didn't want the hassle of climbing down. The bark was covered in bird blood and dried, rotting flesh, and I didn't want to touch it again." Yu Xing squatted down and rummaged in the pocket of his own corpse. After a while, he pulled out a crumpled piece of paper.

The paper is folded up, so you can't see what's inside.

Uncle Zhang ran to Yu Xing's side and scolded, "Young man, you're really fooling around! It's so high, what will you do if you break your leg?"

"I won't break my leg, Uncle Zhang. I know what I'm doing," Uncle Zhang Yu Xing replied with a smile as she unfolded the folded paper.

Uncle Zhang frowned. "You have no sense of propriety whatsoever! Are you hurt?"

After examining him for a while, Shi Jiu said definitively, "He's not injured."

Yu Xing also shook his head, his gaze falling on the paper in his hand.

There were words on the paper, and the crimson color of the characters could be seen through the back of the paper. A faint smell of blood wafted from the paper.

He calmly looked over and saw a sentence written in a wild and sloppy style in the blood-red ink on the white paper.

This is your future!!

Carlos, Uncle Zhang, Shi Jiu all saw the sentence. Uncle Zhang asked in a low voice, "What does it mean? Is this our future? Is that thing hanging human corpses here meant to scare those who come after us?"

A card flew through the air with a whooshing sound. Yu Xing couldn't dodge it; it struck the paper in her hand and stuck it to a tree not far away.

The Black Three of Spades echoes the scarlet on the paper, seemingly foreshadowing something ominous.

Immediately afterwards, a dark liquid gushed out from the surface of the card, and the entire card melted silently, as if it had been exposed to strong sulfuric acid.

The paper was unaffected. After the card melted, the black liquid vanished into thin air, and the paper drifted to the ground without leaving even a trace of being pierced.

"It's melted." Carlos looked at his cards, his expression unusually grave. "The spades have melted, representing death and irreversibility. Both of these outcomes are connected to the contents of this deck."

If we were to analyze the outcome of Carlos's card-throwing knife play, it would be...

Death, becoming a corpse hanging in a tree, this outcome is unchangeable.

"It's not that absolute." Yu Xing thought for a moment and felt it was impossible.

What cannot be changed is the course of the world's plot, but there can never be a predetermined outcome for the fate of each predictor, because predictors are there to break the cycle of change.

With both him and Carlos, the two strategists, present, how could their fate of dying here have been predetermined?

Putting aside Carlos's strength, he himself couldn't have died so completely, because he could revive without the power researched by the demon daoist.

Therefore, there must be a loophole in Carlos's result, but nothing has happened yet, so it's hard to figure out where the loophole lies.

However, this information had already dampened the relaxed atmosphere. Strange things happening to oneself are always far more terrifying than them happening to others.

Just as the four people were pondering the words on the paper, a commotion broke out from the group on the other side.

"Puff"

Will and Lin almost simultaneously coughed up a mouthful of black blood, then collapsed limply. Those nearby quickly caught them, their eyes filled with suspicion and uncertainty.

"What's going on?!"

Upon hearing the commotion, Yu Xing's mind raced. Yu Xing from the situation, Will and Lin must have witnessed something terrifying and suffered a backlash.

He had identified the corpses in the tree, and the corpses no longer held any appeal for him. He abandoned himself on the ground and ran back to the main group.

Lin was pale, his brows were furrowed, and blood was still trickling from the corner of his mouth. He was being supported by Unica, with the back of his head resting on Unica chest, and the veins on his thin arms were bulging.

"The feng shui of these corpses is too turbid. I only glanced at them, and they became an outlet for chaotic energy to flow out." He gasped for breath. "I can't look at them; they symbolize terrible images."

Will's situation was even worse; large beads of sweat seeped from his forehead and temples, he trembled all over, and his eyes were filled with intense fear.

He wasn't just suffering a backlash; he was genuinely terrified.

"Will, what did you hear?" Master Li was the calmest person present. He gave Will a sip of water and continued to reassure him.

Will's communication with the dead, and the intense fear it evoked—in Will's hometown parlance, could it be that he had summoned a demon, an evil spirit?

"I..." Will stammered, grabbing Master Li's hand as if to calm his terror somewhat. "It said, the one who killed it was me..."

"How is that possible?" Those who heard this gasped in shock. Uncle Zhang rushed over to examine them, and the bespectacled man said, "You've encountered a garrulous ghost, haven't you? Did it say who it is?"

Will closed his eyes, suppressing the shock he had just experienced. "It said its name is Will."

Will summons a spirit named Will using the Ouija board. Will kills Will?

A chill ran through everyone; they were acutely aware of something.

That's right, there are twelve corpses here; there are twelve people in total.

Even without Yu Xing and Carlos reminding them, they had already noticed it.

Will continued, "It wasn't lying. I asked it about my childhood, and it knew everything..."

In other words, it really is Will himself.