Ning Zhe sat on the edge of the bed, recalling the ghosts he had encountered over the past two days.
Taiyi was a hazy wisp of vapor, formless and featureless, arising from nothing and vanishing into nothing.
Zhaoyou was an old almanac, still tucked in He Nianjun's arms.
Te Rang was a pitch-black, grotesque shadow that always hid beneath corpses' feet whenever it appeared.
The forms ghosts took seemed to be tied to the rules they represented. With that as a premise, Ning Zhe tried to roughly picture the ghost Baizhi had described.
"Omnipresent."
"Impossible to look at directly."
"Something happens to anyone who looks at it directly. I need to be careful."
Every condition was abstract, leaving Ning Zhe rather lost. What exactly did this ghost look like?
"Baizhi, where do you think this ghost came from?" Ning Zhe asked. "We only just left Ancient Tablet Town. We hadn't even gone five kilometers before it fixated on us and came after us. Isn't that a little too much of a coincidence?"
Ning Zhe's implication was obvious. He believed the ghost targeting them now was not a rootless Wandering Ghost like Taiyi and the Snake God, but something like Te Rang—an anomaly deliberately released, used, and controlled by someone.
Baizhi nodded. "I don't think it's a coincidence either, but things probably aren't entirely as you imagine."
"We'll talk about it later." Ning Zhe checked the time. It was 19:11 in the evening, and the sun was about to set.
After thinking for a moment, Ning Zhe got off the bed and headed toward the window.
"What are you doing?" Baizhi looked alert.
"Before the sun starts setting, I'm going to warn the other people at the Gas Station and tell them to get indoors and hide," Ning Zhe replied.
"That's