Chapter 19

Feng Yang's temple twitched, and his headache only grew worse.

The culprit, Miss Vengeful Ghost, flew excitedly above the graveyard. Her long hair streamed behind her, her blood-red gown whipped wildly in the wind, and her fingers spread wide. Black ghostly energy spilled from her black nails, which had suddenly grown over a foot long, rapidly seeping into the bones within the graves. Invisible crimson threads drifted up from the skeletons and floated toward the foot of the mountain as though they possessed a will of their own.

At the same time, every villager in Sheep Village suddenly felt their heads grow heavy and became drowsy.

Chapter 19

Sheep Village was inexplicably eerie and strange tonight.

Villager A stood at the entrance of the village with a confused expression. He did not know why he was standing there either.

Dark clouds blanketed the sky, and distant thunder rumbled faintly. Worried that it might rain soon, Villager A hurried toward his home.

The village was especially dark. Not a single household had lit a lamp. The haystacks and tiled houses lining the road rose and fell beneath the pitch-black night, like monsters crouching in the darkness, ready to spring up and kill at any moment.

Gusts of sinister wind howled. The already dilapidated, pothole-ridden country road seemed even deeper and more secluded beneath the black night, stretching endlessly with no end in sight.

A point of light suddenly appeared ahead. Uneasy, Villager A ran toward it. He thought he would encounter someone else from the village. Yet when he approached the light, he discovered in horror that the girl carrying a white paper lantern wore a blood-red dress, with black hair hanging loose around her. When she slowly raised her head, her face was a terrifying sight, blood streaming from all seven orifices—

"Ghost! A ghost!"

Villager A was scared out of his wits and turned to run in the opposite direction. The blood-smeared Vengeful Ghost flew after him, her long nails plunging into his back. In an instant, blood and flesh splattered everywhere. The villager's terrified scream of pain erupted alongside the Vengeful Ghost's delighted shriek of laughter—

"So unoriginal!"

Feng Yang let out a long sigh, so bored he nearly yawned.

After waking the unconscious bodyguards, police officers, and production crew members, the group discovered, both confused and terrified, that their memories had gone blank. They only remembered the wild winds and ghostly flames dancing over the graves. As for what had happened afterward, they had forgotten everything.

If only one person had experienced this, it could have been dismissed as a coincidence. But everyone had suffered the same thing, and they all inevitably thought of those folk tales of ghosts and monsters beyond the bounds of scientific belief.

For a moment, even the most steadfast materialists broke out in cold sweat. Even Director Li Baihua, who had been the most dedicated of them all, no longer insisted on filming at the graves. The group lugged their equipment back to the village in dejection and left that very night.

Along the way, they chattered nonstop about what had just happened.

Feng Yang did not join their discussion. Instead, he leaned against the back seat with his eyes closed, resting while his soul slipped back into Miss Vengeful Ghost's Illusory Spirit Array to see exactly how Huo Yanran was frightening the villagers to avenge herself and vent her anger.

What he saw were those cliché scenes indispensable to tacky ghost movies.

Miss Vengeful Ghost, who had been having the time of her life, immediately froze. She felt the embarrassment of acting in a cringe-worthy domestic ghost movie only to have a bystander expose it with one cutting remark.

"Then what kind of good script do you have?" Miss Vengeful Ghost snapped in humiliation, believing Feng Yang was all talk. "I think this is already terrifying. Didn't you see those villagers nearly wetting themselves in their dreams?"

Feng Yang gave a soft laugh. They were wetting themselves over something like this? It looked like these villagers had never watched a domestic ghost movie before!

Feng Yang's merciless criticism left Miss Vengeful Ghost momentarily speechless before she angrily said, "If you're so capable, you do it!"

Feng Yang did not hesitate to take up the challenge. In his previous life, he had partnered with a Vengeful Ghost for more than twenty years, and he had accumulated more than enough relevant experience. Miss Vengeful Ghost's domestic ghost movie gave people some visual shock, but after seeing it too often, people grew numb to the horror. The Illusory Spirit Array was sustained by devouring human negative emotions for energy. Therefore, maximizing the fear of the humans within the array was also necessary to maintain it.

With Feng Yang taking action, the Sheep Village villagers, who had already been fleeing for their lives in panic within their dreams, discovered in astonishment that the nightmares to come were hundreds of times more terrifying than being hunted by a Vengeful Ghost.

"...It's been so long and we still haven't sold him. This little brat has no value anymore. Chop off his legs and send him to Second Brother's place to beg!"

What? No! Stop! Stop right now!

"The two Wang brothers in the east of the village bought a wife from traffickers. They're treating everyone to a feast tomorrow, so slaughter this pig!"

Don't kill me! I'm a person! Not a pig! Don't kill me, don't kill me!

"Beat this filthy bitch to death for trying to run away. I paid money to buy her, and she actually dared to escape. I'll teach you to run! Run, then!"

Stop hitting me! Stop hitting me! I'm your mother, not your wife!

He forcibly stuffed the villagers' souls into pigs and sheep about to be slaughtered, stray cats and dogs being abused to death, and women and children being trafficked and harmed, making the villagers relive those brutal deaths over and over with all their memories intact.

Miss Vengeful Ghost floated at Feng Yang's side, watching coldly with her eyes wide in shock. She had never imagined Feng Yang had so many terrifying scenarios in his head. Even she, a Vengeful Ghost, felt a chill run down her spine.

Feeling the suddenly abundant negative energy being absorbed by the core of the Illusory Spirit Array, Feng Yang nodded in satisfaction and offered Miss Vengeful Ghost a suggestion. "You can read more horror novels when you have nothing to do. The ways of scaring people need to be diversified."

What the hell did he mean, diversified!

With dark lines all over her face, Miss Vengeful Ghost complained, "Why study this stuff so deeply? Didn't you promise that you'd soon let me reincarnate as my parents' second child?"

Feng Yang suddenly fell silent. When he had said that, he had instinctively thought he was with his own Vengeful Ghost. He had completely forgotten that time had gone back twenty years, and his Vengeful Ghost was no longer here. There was no longer any ghost in this world who would, for the sake of one of his casual jokes, go study the topic of diversifying methods to scare people.

Miss Vengeful Ghost watched Feng Yang suddenly disappear and was immediately left somewhat baffled.