Outside the courtyard, pale moonlight poured down like white silk, while twisted shadows knotted across the ground.
Shang Qingbei watched the young man's mouth split all the way to his ears. That eerie smile seemed fixed to his face, and somehow Shang Qingbei could see mockery and ridicule in it.
Cornered by a ghost with nowhere left to retreat, he drew a deep breath, raised the dictionary in his hand high overhead, and smashed it down at the young man's face.
The heavy dictionary came down with all his strength, but it struck nothing solid, as though it had sunk into cotton.
Unable to stop the momentum in time, Shang Qingbei nearly stumbled forward and planted his face in the dirt.
He steadied himself, shaking out his arm. The young man had already vanished from before him, leaving only a small paper effigy drifting lightly to the ground.
The paper effigy was about the size of a doll, deathly pale from face to toe. Only a tangled mass of pitch-black hair was wound around the back of its head. Combined with the two dark circles of eyes on its face, it looked sinister and ill-intentioned.
[The town is filled with paper effigies and paper horses, shrouded in gloom throughout the day.]
The account from the strange tale had come true here. There would likely be even more dangers ahead.
Shang Qingbei let out a soft breath and pulled a black ballpoint pen from his dictionary.
[Name: Reading Pen] [Type: Item] [Effect: Touch an eerie entity with the pen tip to randomly obtain some information related to it.] [Note: Eerie Game-brand Reading Pen. Tap wherever you don't understand.]
This was a reward item he had obtained in his third Instance. Some considered it extremely useless in the early stages,