Advance Instead of Retreat

"Not a chance!"

Shen Luo roared inwardly and frantically activated the Minor Transforming Yang Art.

A layer of red light radiated from his body, trying to fend off the invisible entity attacking him.

At the same time, a surge of yang force poured madly into the rune on his chest.

Though this was his first attempt at drawing a ghost-banishing rune, circumstances left him no choice but to take a desperate gamble.

To his disappointment, aside from a slight warmth where the rune had been drawn on the front of his clothes, nothing happened.

But immediately afterward, Shen Luo felt a faint warmth around his eyes. Then his vision darkened, and a black figure appeared before him.

The figure stood over ten feet tall. Its hair was immensely long, trailing all the way to the ground and concealing its face. Its features could not be seen clearly; only a pair of crimson eyes showed faintly through, radiating chilling malice and greed for life.

Its two long arms wreathed in black mist were gripping his throat!

"It really is a ghost!"

Shen Luo was horrified. Though breathing had become difficult, he instinctively launched a flying kick at the ghost.

Before his kick could reach it, the ghost let out a shrill, piercing wail.

Shen Luo's head buzzed violently, and the red light around him shattered with a crash. A hot stream surged from his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. Everything he saw seemed veiled in red, while his other senses dulled sharply as well.

The icy hands clamped around his throat tightened further. Shen Luo's consciousness gradually blurred. His raised leg stiffened in midair before dropping weakly.

He vaguely heard a deafening clap of thunder in the sky, followed by torrential rain crashing down all at once. After that, he knew nothing.

In his daze, Shen Luo felt as if he were in an endless darkness. Not a single sound could be heard around him. Everything was utterly still.

He wanted to open his eyes, but it felt as though he had lost control of his own body. Not only could he not lift his eyelids in the slightest, he could not even move his hands or feet.

He vaguely sensed that something was wrong, but the deep exhaustion rising from within made him want to simply let himself drift. He just wanted to lie here, do nothing, and rest properly.

Just then, a chorus of insects suddenly chirped by his ears, breaking the silence.

Shen Luo jolted and abruptly opened his eyes.

The next moment, he discovered in utter astonishment that he was once again lying on that country road.

The familiar road, the familiar fields, the familiar night mist, the familiar crescent moon... and the mountain village hidden amid distant fog, along with that dim point of lamplight.

"No! A dream cannot be this real, and reality cannot repeat itself like this! Where exactly am I?" Shen Luo sprang to his feet, countless thoughts churning through his mind.

He suddenly thought of something, crouched down, and dug deeply into the ground.

Though the surface was slightly damp with dew, the earth beneath remained dry. When he had lost consciousness earlier, he had clearly seen a torrential downpour descend. Though he did not know how long it had rained afterward, the ground should not have looked like this.

He then looked up and down the road, as well as to either side. There were no traces of anyone having walked there. Yet he had run back and forth several times before, so it was impossible for him not to have left footprints.

"Could this place constantly restore or repeat everything? Maybe I wasn't killed by the ghost before—I died, came back to life, and returned to the moment I first entered this place?" Shen Luo had read many bizarre tales in miscellaneous books. With his quick mind, he soon formed a vague guess.

He then remembered something and raised one hand.

The index finger he had bitten to draw the rune earlier was now smooth and unmarked, without even the slightest wound.

"So that's how it is. But this is far too unbelievable!" A trace of alarm flashed through Shen Luo's eyes.

Having figured out part of what had happened to him today, his tightly wound nerves relaxed somewhat, and he became calmer.

But Shen Luo immediately recalled what had happened before. Knowing that the ghost would attack again shortly, he could not help frowning.

Though he knew he seemed able to revive here, he naturally would not be as terrified when facing that ghost as before. But if he truly had to be strangled alive by it over and over again, he absolutely did not want that.

Besides, he could not be certain that, after reviving twice already, he would still be able to "revive" normally a third time.

What if he could not "revive" again?

He only had one life. He dared not gamble with it!

In that case, he could only go all out!

As Shen Luo silently considered his options, most of his fear faded, replaced by a faint eagerness to try. He began recalling every method of banishing ghosts that he had seen in the texts.

He suddenly tore off his shirt, bit his finger, and used his blood to draw all kinds of talismanic patterns directly onto the skin of his upper body. He did not stop until he had drawn eight of them.

It was not that Shen Luo did not want to keep drawing. Rather, for some reason, every time he completed a rune, he felt a little of the strength in his body drain away, as if it had been siphoned off.

After drawing eight runes in succession, he was already quite exhausted. Continuing would likely affect his movements, so he stopped.

These were all various runes he had previously studied and copied, including the Minor Thunder Talisman he had tested last time. He did not know the precise effect of the white light it produced, but something was better than nothing.

Shen Luo quickly put his clothes back on. Having experienced something like a Ghost Wall before, he did not head in any other direction and instead ran straight toward the small mountain village.

He had never been one to shy away from trouble. Everything before had simply been too bizarre. Now that he had figured out some clues, he might as well investigate it to the bottom.

He also wanted to know whether escaping the ghost's pursuit—or even destroying it—would allow him to leave this place.

In no time, Shen Luo reached the village entrance.

The two broken wooden stakes lay crossed on the ground before him, exactly as they had when he first entered the village.

Seeing this, Shen Luo became even more certain of his guess.

He was about to enter the village when he seemed to think of something. He bent down, picked up the two wooden stakes, tucked them into his waistband, and only then continued running toward the house with the lamplight.

When he arrived before the house, he first grabbed a handful of incense ash from the overturned shrine by the door. Then he leaped to the entrance and, before any blood could flow out from inside, raised a foot and kicked the wooden door hard.

With a bang, the wooden door flew open.

Yet the scene behind it made him pause in surprise.

A frail little girl of seven or eight, dressed in a gray short-sleeved tunic, stood there trembling. She held a wooden bucket filled with black blood in her arms and appeared to be about to pour it out the door.

Seeing Shen Luo burst through the door, terror appeared on the girl's face, and she staggered two steps backward.

Shen Luo quickly recovered and ignored the little girl. His gaze swept through the room before settling on a corner, where the stiff corpse of a pure black dog lay without a single patch of different-colored fur.

"Black dog blood." Shen Luo looked at the bucket in the girl's hands, frowned slightly, then shifted his gaze elsewhere.

Beside the black dog was a wooden bed. An elderly man with graying hair lay atop it, his eyes tightly shut, seemingly unconscious.

In the center of the room stood another shrine, with candles burning atop it. Inside was a miniature idol with a dog's head and a human body.

Moreover, the walls throughout the room, as well as the doors and windows, were smeared with black blood, apparently applied deliberately.