You Must Call My Name

Chu He's complexion went from rosy to deathly pale in a single second.

He forcibly steadied his legs, which had gone weak from exhaustion.

Propping up his weary mind, he looked around the devastated battlefield for his bearings and spotted the knife nailed to a tree several hundred meters away.

His opponent had attacked too quickly, pressing him step by step and leaving him no time to retrieve his knife. Otherwise, he would not have won so wretchedly.

As for Miaomiao's strange little ghost, it had likely seen that the situation was turning bad and quietly fled while the two of them were locked in fierce combat.

After gathering his belongings, Chu He immediately fled the area.

This place was only a few li from the village. Such a huge disturbance had occurred, yet no one had come to investigate. Either someone had concealed the commotion, or the entire village had already begun falling under the village chief's control.

That was not what puzzled Chu He the most.

The village chief was controlling the headless corpse, so where had Han Zhong gone?

Could he have split into two groups and gone after Li Zhi?

That should not have been the case. Li Zhi was not worth such treatment.

At the time, Chu He had already prepared for the worst.

Now, it seemed that everything had passed.

Elsewhere, Han Zhong, the senior brother Chu He had been worrying about, was lowering his head and arranging black threads into a complex and peculiar ritual. At the center of the ritual, Mao Chen crouched uneasily, holding a black iron box in both arms.

"Senior Brother, is it really all right for us to leave the village in the dead of night?" Mao Chen fearfully swept his gaze over the dense fog around them and asked in confusion, "Why not come during the day? What if some terrifying ghost..."

"Time is pressing. The Land God has shattered, and a great number of low-level ghosts have already infiltrated the village. You have seen it yourself these past two days. We cannot delay any longer."

Han Zhong set down the black thread after laying the final line. He raised his head and said helplessly, "If we want to repair the Land God and restore its protective power, we need this kind of ghostly material to repair the statue. Besides, the Skin Ghost is more likely to appear at night than during the day. I can only trouble you with this."

"This... if it is for the village, then no matter how dangerous it is, I will not shirk my duty..." Though Mao Chen's heart trembled with fear, he still forced a smile.

"If my vital energy and blood were not too vigorous, making the Skin Ghost afraid to show itself and impossible to lure out, I would not have risked letting you try."

Han Zhong slowly rose to his feet and said with some regret, "I actually asked other junior brothers for help as well, but they... sigh..."

"They are just a bunch of selfish, self-serving people!" Mao Chen said indignantly. After venting, some of his fear scattered. He patted his chest. "Rest assured, Senior Brother. I will definitely complete the mission."

"Junior Brother Mao, if you lure over the Skin Ghost and cannot leave the ritual array in time, shout my name. I will keep you safe and sound."

Hearing this promise, Mao Chen's heart settled completely, and he nodded vigorously.

After saying that, Han Zhong turned and left, vanishing into the mist.

The moment he saw his senior brother leave, Mao Chen inexplicably felt weak at heart again. Staring at the thick, oppressive fog, his heart pounded wildly, and the more he thought about it, the deeper his fear grew.

The night in Misty Forest was undoubtedly terrifying.

Especially on the territory of that great ghost...

He hugged the iron box tightly and shifted his attention to it, pondering what it contained in order to distract himself.

From Han Zhong's fragmentary words, he knew it was an important tool capable of attracting the Skin Ghost. But why was it kept inside a box?

Shouldn't a tool be taken out and used?

Driven by curiosity, Mao Chen opened the black box.

What met his eyes was a pair of eyes that had refused to close in death, followed by withered yellow hair, a hawk-like nose bridge, and dry, pale lips.

Mao Chen's breath caught. His entire body went numb, and he nearly cried out.

The next moment, a bloodshot pupil suddenly rolled upward. A completely crimson iris burrowed out from beneath the eyeball, casting a bewitching red glow.

The scream caught in Mao Chen's throat gradually subsided. His eyes turned dim and lifeless, and his entire person became muddled, as though possessed.

The placid fog suddenly churned. A light, drifting figure swayed with the wind and slowly floated to a spot not far from Mao Chen.

It was a woman with a swaying, graceful figure, plump and smooth, soft as though boneless. When her tiny feet touched the ground, waves of folds appeared in her flesh, as if her entire body had no bones and was supported solely by a gust of wind.

She hopped along, inch by inch making her way behind Mao Chen. Her arms gently wrapped around his neck, and her entire body pressed against his back.

The next second, a huge slit split open from the top to the bottom of the woman's body, revealing a scarlet inner wall. Like wrapping a dumpling, she enveloped Mao Chen within herself.

Perhaps because Mao Chen was a man, her entire sheet of human skin could not swallow him whole at once. It could only squeeze and deform him bit by bit.

"What... what is this!!?"

Golden light flashed in Mao Chen's eyes, and he abruptly broke free from the illusion. Before he could even catch his breath, he suddenly discovered that a layer of tough human skin had wrapped around his body.

Golden light flickered all over him as he struggled desperately to break free.

Yet the more he struggled, the faster the human skin wrapped around him.

Terror filled Mao Chen's heart. Remembering Han Zhong's words, a surge of hope immediately erupted within him, and he roared with all his strength into the dense fog outside.

"Senior Brother! Senior Brother, save me!!"

The figure descending from the sky in his imagination never appeared.

The human skin, which was about to spread to his neck, began constricting his throat and squeezing his windpipe bit by bit. Panic flooded his heart as he struggled desperately.

Senior Brother must be too far away and had not heard him.

Yes, he definitely had not heard!

He gathered his breath in his chest and unleashed the loudest voice of his life.

"Senior Brother! Senior Brother! Senior Brother... Han Zhong!!"

His howls rang through the fog again and again, his shouts deafening, yet Han Zhong seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth and never showed himself.

Every howl seemed to carry an emotion—from anticipation to anxiety, fury, then despair, and finally a venomous hatred that made his teeth crack!

"Han! Zhong!!"

At the instant the human skin was about to swallow Mao Chen, he let out one final cry, grinding his teeth as though he wanted to drink Han Zhong's blood and strip his bones!

Just as the Skin Ghost swallowed Mao Chen, the ritual array made of black hair around them rose without wind. Like a spinning lotus, strand after strand twisted around the Skin Ghost, finally binding it tightly.

The black hair wriggled and interwove, forming a massive cocoon.

The Skin Ghost struggled violently, making the cocoon's surface bulge and dip. But as the black strands bound tighter and tighter, the entire cocoon gradually became still.

A short while later, the mist rippled, and Han Zhong strolled out as though taking a leisurely walk. He crouched beside the black cocoon, stroking its surface with one hand, his expression indifferent.

"Junior Brother, your senior brother came too late."

Chu He forcibly suppressed his endlessly churning vital energy and blood. Carrying a burlap sack, he headed toward an abandoned, uninhabited house at the eastern end of the village.

As he passed a fork in the road, his eyelids flicked slightly. He immediately stopped, then changed direction and walked toward something ahead.

The moment he arrived before the writhing thing, Chu He gave a half-smile.

"Senior Brother Li, what a coincidence."