Shattered Face Ghost

Once he was sure everything had settled down, Gao Tian finally had time to deal with his injured hand.

The bleeding from his finger wasn't serious. He went back to the bathroom, turned on the tap, and washed around the wound. After drying it with a towel, he found some stiff cardboard to use as a splint. He straightened his finger, then wrapped tape around it to hold it in place.

He did the whole thing by himself, using one hand. Once the pain passed a certain threshold, he couldn't feel it anymore.

Only after taking care of that did he return to the study to inspect the "inheritance" left behind by the Red-eyed Person.

The blazing fire released by the urn had burned "Gao Tian" to ashes. Amid the ruins, half of a photograph drifted down.

The photograph wasn't part of the ghost, so the urn hadn't burned it to ashes and imprisoned it along with the ghost. But for some reason, the ghost had been hiding a photograph inside its body.

Gao Tian walked over and picked up the surviving corner of the photograph from the ashes.

The complete photograph might have been a family portrait. In the corner that remained, there was a chubby-cheeked little girl of seven or eight, pouting toward the camera. A much larger hand rested on her shoulder, probably belonging to an adult man—a father or older brother—steadying the little girl.

What a shame. Most of the photograph had been burned away by the ghost fire. Only this small piece remained, not enough to see what the girl's other family members looked like.

Why would this ghost have something like a family portrait hidden inside its body?

Was it important to the ghost?

Gao Tian figured that ghosts naturally came from people who had died. Since they had once been alive, they must have had families and friends like ordinary people, and probably plenty of fond memories, too.

After becoming ghosts, all they had left in their minds was an uncontrollable, violent urge to kill. But some of the stronger emotions and important people from their lives might have been deeply etched into their minds. They might still cherish them, even as ghosts.

This family portrait showed the ghost's family from when it was alive. Though it had become a monster that was no longer quite human after death, its family might have been happy. That might be why it still couldn't let them go, even after turning into a monster.

Of course, all of that was only Gao Tian's speculation. He had no evidence to support it. He didn't know much about ghosts, so he could only try to make the most reasonable guess based on what he knew so far.

Gao Shen turned the photograph over and looked at the back.

He'd only meant to give it a routine check, but he noticed a few hastily written words in permanent marker on the soot-blackened half.

"...uman Person Apartment.

"15.9.12."

What was this?

Gao Tian examined it several times, making sure he hadn't misread it.

Was that where and when the photograph had been taken?

There were plenty of apartments with "kind" in their names, but ones with "person" in them were incredibly rare. That character was hard to use in a name, after all.

Rich Person Apartment? Good Person Apartment? Kind Person Apartment?

Gao Tian's hand froze.

...Person Apartment—Living Person Apartment!

He remembered. The group owner's ID in the Jialan Society Chat Group was also Living Person Apartment!

Every user in the Jialan Society had an ominous name—"Ghost Infant," "Ghost Cave," "Burning Death Ghost." But the name "Living Person Apartment," which belonged to the group owner, referred to a real place. This ghost had gone there when it was alive, and taken a precious photograph with its entire family.

The photograph had been taken about ten years ago.

Afterward, its owner had died and become this Red-eyed Person. Who had it been? The little girl's brother? Her father? Or had the little girl herself been the only one left?

Why had this person become a ghost after dying? And how had Ghost Cave used it as a way to find the living person in the Chat Group?

Gao Tian remembered something. Of the few people who had spoken the most in the Chat Group, Living Person Apartment and Ghost Cave had clearly been the most influential. One was the group owner; the other had an inexplicable intuition, sensing without reason that a living person had slipped into the group.

Ghost Infant was probably a woman. Burning Death Ghost, meanwhile, had the worst standing and the fewest friends. No matter what it said or what Black Packets it sent, Ghost Cave and the others treated it like it wasn't there and ignored it outright.

That was why Ghost Cave and the others hadn't bothered to check the urn Burning Death Ghost sent. They didn't know what it did, and that became the key to Gao Tian's comeback.

Now, Ghost Cave was completely confident in the curse it had sent him. It must have thought the living person in the Chat Group was already dead.

As Gao Tian pondered this, he absentmindedly turned the photograph over again, bringing the little girl's face back into view.

At that moment, he saw, to his shock, that the little girl in the photograph seemed to have come alive. The corners of her mouth lifted slightly as she gave him a faint, almost-smile.

Gao Tian couldn't believe his eyes. The little girl's expression in the photograph had changed.

It had happened in the blink of an eye. Now the little girl was motionless again, like an inanimate object. It was as if she had never moved at all.

If Gao Tian hadn't experienced so many bizarre things, he would have thought the light had refracted strangely and made him see things.

But he was absolutely certain of what he'd seen and remembered. The little girl in the photograph had moved when he turned it over.

This photograph really was a Supernatural Item. The little girl in it was a ghost, too.

Gao Tian didn't dare waste a second. He quickly folded the photograph in half, then found a lighter and burned it to ashes.

Even after mixing with the black dust left behind by the Red-eyed Person, the Weird Photo remained silent and didn't cause any trouble. Fortunately, that let Gao Tian breathe a little easier.

Then he turned around and picked up the urn containing the Red-eyed Person's remains.

The urn's function wasn't limited to forcing ghosts and people to play a game, then sealing away whoever lost. More importantly, if a person beat a ghost and imprisoned it inside the urn, they could obtain its Killing Rule.

As Gao Tian pressed all ten fingers against the urn's surface, bits of information began to seep into his mind, little by little, in a form that wasn't words.

The Shattered Face Ghost's Killing Rule was simple. If someone met its gaze five times, it would take one of their facial features each time. After the fifth meeting of their eyes, it would take their entire face.

This meant that anyone whose face was copied would die on the spot, wherever they were. It also meant the Shattered Face Ghost could gain all of its victim's memories, assume their identity, and move among the people in their life.

Of course, the other person had to meet its gaze willingly. No matter how long each meeting of their eyes lasted, it only counted once. To make someone meet its gaze again, the Shattered Face Ghost had to do something to attract Gao Tian's attention, like knocking on a window or sitting on a swing and acting like a ghost. Gao Tian then had to turn his head of his own accord.

Otherwise, the Shattered Face Ghost could have simply smashed through the window, held Gao Tian's head still, and stared into his eyes. It wouldn't have needed to wait for him to get into his car and chase him all the way to the park.

At the time, Gao Tian had been forced to open the Black Packet in the Chat Group. He had seen the Shattered Face Ghost's face, and the Shattered Face Ghost had sensed that a human was looking at it. That was why it had begun hunting him.

But it had only been Gao Tian looking at the ghost, so the Shattered Face Ghost hadn't copied any of his facial features that time.

The alley: the first time they'd met eyes.

The glass window: the second time.

The police station: the third time.

The park swing: the fourth time.

One more meeting of their eyes would have triggered the Killing Rule and killed Gao Tian on the spot. But he'd opened the second Black Packet in time and obtained the urn. It had completely neutralized the Shattered Face Ghost's Killing Rule, leaving the ghost no choice but to wait until they reached the apartment and settle things with Gao Tian through a game.

The Shattered Face Ghost's Killing Rule also worked on ghosts, not just humans.

Even though every ghost was immortal, collecting a ghost's facial features couldn't kill it on the spot.

But if the Shattered Face Ghost met the same ghost's gaze five times, it could copy one of that ghost's Killing Rules and use it for itself.

That was the full extent of the Shattered Face Ghost's abilities. Of course, thanks to the urn, they had now become Gao Tian's abilities.

Gao Tian now possessed a ghost's powers.

Meet a person's eyes five times, and they die. Gao Tian gains their face and memories. (He can choose not to use them.)

Meet a ghost's eyes five times, and he steals one of its Killing Rules.

Watching the gray-white sky outside gradually brighten, Gao Tian knew dawn was nearly over. He couldn't stay in this apartment full of corpses any longer. He packed up, put the urn in his backpack, and hurried out of Pingshui Apartment.

The Jialan Society Chat Group on his phone remained silent. Ever since Ghost Cave had sent the cursed Black Packet, no one had said another word.

To be honest, the Ghost Users' behavior was strange. Burning Fire Ghost was a ghost itself, so why had it developed an urn specifically designed to deal with ghosts? What did it stand to gain?

In fact, Gao Tian looked up records of Black Packets sent by other users. The obscure jargon they'd used back then was gradually beginning to make sense.

Questions like whether the Spirit Absorption Pot could withstand the Human Skin Doll's curse, or whether Ghost Cave's whole family might have survived the Woman in the Rain incident if it had gotten the Blood Shroud...

Now things couldn't be clearer. The items the users had mentioned were all Supernatural Items used to fight ghosts. They had been comparing whether certain Supernatural Items could counter specific Vengeful Ghosts.

The user called Ghost Cave had been especially active. From its conversations with the others, Gao Tian could tell that its entire family, including Ghost Cave itself, had died in an incident involving someone called the Woman in the Rain.

A sudden idea struck Gao Tian, offering an explanation for the Ghost Users' contradictory behavior.

Could it be that—

When the users in this group were alive, they had been professionals who used Supernatural Items to fight ghosts?

But theirs was an inherently dangerous line of work. It was no surprise so many of them had died. After death, they became ghosts and started killing people in droves, unable to control the desires inside them, as bottomless as an abyss.

But even after turning into ghosts, they couldn't change the instincts and values their former professions had shaped. These ghosts who once fought ghosts still followed their instincts after death, earnestly discussing how to deal with ghosts.

To test his theory, Gao Tian searched the internet for Jialan Society, hoping to find clues in various online communities, or even traces they'd left behind when they were alive.

At first, Gao Tian hadn't expected to find much.