The Guide was covered in wounds, blood streaming from them. Some were claw marks, while others looked as if he had been torn at. He looked as though he'd been attacked by a ferocious beast—or no, by a pack of ferocious beasts.
After stumbling out of the mirror, he glanced back at it. He was nothing like the unruffled man I'd encountered before. Instead, he looked vicious and savage.
He didn't pay me or the two ghosts in the room the slightest attention.
For a moment, I didn't know what to do. Everything had happened far too quickly.
I'd thought Mr. Zhou knew something important, and that the old man called Erzi might be hiding some clue. Now the real person had suddenly appeared. I'd planned to find the Guide first, but I hadn't yet figured out what to do after that.
"It's you..."
I turned to look. The old man called Erzi was glaring at the Guide with hatred.
The Guide merely glanced at him, then shifted his gaze to me.
A chill rose from the depths of my heart. It was the same feeling I'd had when I saw the door at the end of the corridor in the Greenleaf Paranormal Agency.
Pure evil. Nothing else.
Aside from paranormal incidents, I'd never encountered any real danger in my life, much less anyone truly vicious. Even during those incidents, I'd rarely come across anything like this.
The evil emanating from the Guide was even stronger than that of the Nian Beast or the stone spirit.
My mind went blank for a moment.
"Ah—!" Erzi's roar made me jolt.
He clutched the fountain pen in his hand. At some point, he'd rushed in front of me, passing straight through my body.
I felt a bone-deep chill as the ghost's yin