The thug who had been hiding behind a pile of junk under a black cloth suddenly sprang up. He fired at the glass window facing the back kitchen, shattered it, then leaped through without hesitation and escaped.
He knew perfectly well that the White House had only so many hiding places. Woman Face would search them one by one, and it was only a matter of time before she found him. Surviving behind that pile of junk for so long had already been a miracle.
GOOGLE Search TWKAN
More importantly, the sky outside had cleared up.
The timing was about right, just as Burning Death Ghost had predicted in the Chat Group. After roughly ten minutes, the Ghost Domain had completely dissipated.
He was back in the Normal World. As long as he left the White House, the ghosts inside couldn't follow him out. If he didn't run now, when would he?
The thug acted decisively. He had spent years handling dirty work for the bosses; without a nimble set of moves, he wouldn't have lasted that long. The instant the Female Ghost bent over Gao Tian to check on him, the thug sprang out like a leopard, fired, and vaulted through the window. He completed the whole sequence in less than ten seconds.
But he had underestimated the Female Ghost's speed.
The moment he jumped, the Female Ghost sensed movement behind her. As he escaped through the window, she shot toward it as fast as lightning, propelled by her long neck. Facing outside, she shouted:
"Zhang Youguang..."
"Zhang Youguang."
"Zhang Youguang!"
After the three cries, the thug who had barely made it out of the house exploded in a spray of blood in the backyard. He died a horrible death.
Unfortunately, he had been just a little too slow. If he had been able to teleport beyond the courtyard in an instant, he might have escaped the Female Ghost's curse.
At that moment, Gao Tian knew that the last—and best—opportunity he had been waiting for had finally arrived.
The Ghost Domain outside had receded, and he could leave the White House at any time.
The Female Ghost, who had been perched on him, had also been distracted by the fleeing thug. Her neck had stretched out through a window on the other side, trying desperately to reach outside.
Gao Tian sprang to his feet and sprinted in the opposite direction.
But he wasn't heading for the front door. Instead, he raced toward the stairs leading to the second floor!
Gao Tian wanted more than just to escape. Xu Yuan had put him through hell this time. If he didn't take the pot the man had left in his Old Home before he left, he'd never get over it.
The Female Ghost guarded the third floor so closely that the pot was most likely up there.
Gao Tian was also curious why Xu Yuan was so attached to the pot he'd left in his Old Home, why he couldn't stop thinking about it. He'd even set so many traps to protect it.
Gao Tian made his move just as the Female Ghost floated to the window and killed the thug trying to escape into the courtyard. By the time Gao Tian charged up to the second floor like a wild boar, the Female Ghost had finished off the fugitive outside and was flying toward the second floor.
The long necks on all three floors of the house began retracting, closing in to stop Gao Tian.
Gao Tian darted left and right, narrowly evading several attempts by the long necks to strangle him.
"Zhao Qiang."
"Zhao Qiang."
"Zhao Qiang."
"Zhao Qiang!"
Behind him, the Female Ghost's plaintive voice kept calling out. With her limited intelligence, she couldn't understand why her Killing Rule had no effect on this man at all.
Vengeful Ghosts were dim-witted, so Gao Tian couldn't use Memory Ghost on her; she was too stupid to hold a normal conversation. But their behavior was usually quite predictable. Even after so many failures, she just kept repeating Zhao Qiang's name.
By the narrowest of margins, Gao Tian dodged several sweeps of the long neck, snakelike as it lashed across his path. At last, he reached the Third Floor he had been longing to get to.
It was almost the end of dawn outside. Golden sunlight filtered through cracks in the ceiling and fell in scattered patches across the dim third floor, allowing Gao Tian to make out the scene before him.
The third floor was sparse and simply laid out. A broken table held an incense burner with three sticks of incense that had long since burned to ash. Above them rested a grayish-white photograph of a Horse Face Woman. In life, she had seemed rather gentle, with clean white teeth in her mouth. She didn't look like she did after death, with nothing but a dark, gaping hole where her mouth should be.
It was obvious that this was the ghost Xu Yuan kept in the White House. Somehow, he had put a dead woman's photograph and ashes on the third floor of his Old Home. After she died and became a Vengeful Ghost, she had taken up residence there, killing any Living Person who dared to come upstairs.
Beneath the table sat two enormous pots, each about half a person's height. One was white, and the other was Blood Red.
The woman's long, slender neck stretched out from the mouth of the white pot. Gao Tian glanced at it from a distance and saw a bit of white powder inside. There was a ninety-nine percent chance that the woman's ashes were in there, and that Xu Yuan had anchored her to this place.
Just as he was about to make his next move, Woman Face had already darted back to the third floor like lightning. Gao Tian turned around and saw an enormous mouth surging toward him as if it would swallow the world. He reached out to defend himself, but before he could do anything, his body felt wet, as if he had been swallowed into a mass of squirming organs. His consciousness soon vanished into an endless abyss.
You have died.
According to the effect of the Ghost Card, you are about to be revived.
The card you drew this time is--
Club 3.
There are no cards on your soul, and there is no conflict in points. Revival successful.
51 playing cards remain. The card drawn will be permanently branded onto your soul until the next time a card with the same point value appears, at which point the user will die instantly.
Enjoy your revival.
It was like waking from a terrifying nightmare.
Gao Tian felt his awareness slowly returning. First his head, then his neck. The cold sensation of his body lying facedown on the floor came back, and he could begin to move his limbs again.
He was back.
Gao Tian knew that he had run straight into the Female Ghost earlier. When she realized her Killing Rule didn't work on him, she had simply swallowed him whole, crushed his organs, then spat his corpse out onto the third-floor floor.
Luckily, he still had the Ghost Card, a Supernatural Item. Otherwise, it really would have been over.
In exchange for gaining a Club 3 on his soul, Gao Tian had revived on the spot in perfect health, though he should have been dead.
Even though he had regained control of his body, he stayed motionless on the floor, suppressing his breathing until it was almost nonexistent and pretending he was still dead.
Even with his eyes closed, he could sense a huge, terrifying shadow passing slowly overhead, letting out a dreadful cackle.
After killing all the intruders, the Female Ghost enshrined at the Spirit Altar had retreated to the third floor and hidden there again. She was guarding her Ashes Urn and that strange red pot.
Gao Tian guessed that the Red Pot was most likely the "pot from his Old Home" that Xu Yuan had mentioned. He had been so attached to it, so worried that someone would find it.
But there was a problem: how could the revived Gao Tian distract the Female Ghost above him, take the red pot, and escape unharmed?
Just getting out alive would be difficult. The moment he got up, the Female Ghost wandering across the third-floor ceiling would notice him. For her, killing him a second time would be effortless.
If he stood up, he'd be killed instantly. No number of Ghost Cards would be enough.
There was another way: he could use the Black Card in his pocket and teleport straight back to the Living Person Apartment.
But Gao Tian thought he could still work something out. He didn't want to waste his one and only precious Black Card here.
Back when he was lying on the first floor, he had already set a backup plan in motion.
He had deliberately left his phone under the sofa and set an alarm to go off in fifteen minutes, with the volume turned all the way up.
Now that he thought about it, the time was probably about right.
As long as the phone on the first floor suddenly started making noise...
"Don't Look at Me, I'm Just a Sheep!~"
A deafening sound and vibration suddenly erupted from somewhere below.
"Cackle, cackle, cackle!"
At the strange noise, the shadow that had been circling overhead immediately transformed into a White Day Rainbow. It shot past the stairs between the third and second floors and sped down toward the first floor.
After reaching the first floor, Woman Face circled around and quickly found the source of the sound beneath the sofa. She slammed her face down, smashing the already decrepit sofa to pieces. With repeated blows from her head, the phone beneath it soon broke apart too, its parts and casing scattered across the floor.
Once she had destroyed the phone, the strange noise stopped. Despite her limited intelligence, the Female Ghost quickly realized that there was no one here; it was just a phone used as bait to draw her attention.
While the phone was luring the Female Ghost down to the first floor, Gao Tian began moving on the third floor.
He sprang to his feet and rushed toward the table. At the same time, he kicked over the urn containing the Female Ghost's ashes, grabbed the other blood-red urn, and sprinted toward the third-floor window.
Cackle!
Downstairs, the Female Ghost felt the Ashes Urn connected to her neck being knocked over. She let out a strange laugh, overcome by pain and fury. Her long neck dragged her face back as fast as it could, racing up through the second and third floors to get revenge on the revived Gao Tian.
The Female Ghost was baffled, too. Why was this human so hard to kill? She had clearly killed him several times already, yet every time, he got back up as if nothing had happened.
No matter how fast the Female Ghost was, she still had two floors to cross. By the time her huge, bloodless, pallid face returned to the third floor, Gao Tian had already climbed onto the windowsill. He was just one step away from climbing over the wall and leaving the terrifying White House.
"Well, goodbye."
After bidding the mistress of the house farewell, Gao Tian held the Red Pot to his chest and fell backward without hesitation.
The drop from the third floor was indeed quite high, but the ground below was covered in soil and weeds. If he chose his landing angle carefully, he wouldn't fall to his death.
His only concern was that the pot in his hands might break. But he had no choice. Escaping alive was already a stroke of luck. Since Xu Yuan in the Chat Group treasured the pot so much, Gao Tian would rather bring back a few fragments than leave it sitting in Xu Yuan's Old Home.
Before you continue