If No One's There, I'm Coming In

On the sports field, Sun Zheming, the Running Ghost who usually loved forcing people to chat with him and making them run dozens of laps until they died of exhaustion, felt his legs weaken when he sensed the killing intent coming from the classroom building.

The female homeroom teacher was connected to that girl, and the terror she had become after death was on an entirely different level from him.

Sun Zheming had no doubt that if he had been standing in front of her just now, he would already have been torn into scattered pieces.

The mere thought of that horrifying scene made his calves tremble, and he slowed down.

"Come on, buddy! You're done after just a few laps? Is this physical therapy?" Jiang Chen, on the other hand, was bursting with energy. He turned around up ahead, jogging as he kept waving Sun Zheming onward.

Sun Zheming opened his mouth, overwhelmed by conflicting emotions.

Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that he, a Running Ghost, would one day have someone urging him to run faster.

"Come on, Sun Zheming! Get those legs moving! Running is like life. When you feel like you can't go on, it means you're climbing a mountain. Get over that mountain, and you'll find an even more beautiful view!"

"Reach the summit and let the world hear your voice!"

Holding up the Megaphone, Jiang Chen poured out a stream of motivational platitudes that could get anyone's blood pumping.

Sun Zheming's blood wasn't pumping, though. His ears were buzzing, and he was nearly deaf, because Jiang Chen had practically shoved the Megaphone into his face.

Ghost Qi +60.

"Enough! I've fucking had it with you!"

A vicious expression spread across Sun Zheming's face. He dropped his disguise, black resentment engulfing his body as he reached out to grab Jiang Chen.

He had given up on killing this living human through running.

Although that meant he wouldn't be able to devour the man's living essence, and would suffer certain problems himself, he couldn't take it anymore. This living human was too fucking obnoxious!

Sun Zheming felt that if he didn't attack now, he would be driven into becoming an insane ghost.

"A superior vicious ghost." Jiang Chen's gaze sharpened. That seemingly casual grab sent a chilling sense of danger through him.

Demonic power erupted beneath his feet, and he shot backward.

Whoosh-

Sun Zheming's hand closed on empty air. His expression grew even more vicious as he prepared to advance again.

Just then, Jiang Chen smiled and shouted, "Now!"

"Heaven and earth's profound source, root of all primordial qi; through countless eons of cultivation, manifest my divine power."

"Golden Light Talisman!"

Chen Xue's sharp cry rang out, and a brilliant golden light flared in the darkness behind Sun Zheming.

His pale eyes widened.

When had someone gotten behind me?

"You're asking for death!" With no time to think, Sun Zheming spun around and lashed out with a resentment-laden hand, intending to trade blow for blow.

But at that moment, a whipping kick swept out of the darkness, tearing through the air with a thunderous crack.

Thud!

The kick smashed Sun Zheming's right arm clean off. Yang Chan stepped back, looking valiant and composed, while Chen Xue pressed the Golden Light Talisman in her hand against Sun Zheming's chest from behind her.

Boom-

A huge hole blasted open in his chest, dispersing most of his resentment.

Jiang Chen then charged up behind him. With demonic power coating the Switchblade in his hand, he drove it into the back of Sun Zheming's head and twisted hard.

Ding, ...

Li Zheming's body decayed and blackened, then collapsed limply.

Although the three had never worked together before, they had moved as if sharing an unspoken understanding, dispatching a superior vicious ghost in an instant.

For D-Rank Unusual Persons, this was an impressive achievement, and excitement appeared on all three faces.

The two women looked over at Jiang Chen.

They had called it teamwork, but he had actually been the one controlling the flow of the fight.

First, he had rattled the ghost with a string of outrageous antics, then signaled for the two women to sneak over while he delivered his motivational speech.

Throughout that process, Sun Zheming had been subjected to Jiang Chen's relentless noise and psychological torment, leaving him completely oblivious to the two women.

That was what had made their flawless teamwork possible!

"Jiang Chen, you were incredible. You helped us take down a superior vicious ghost at the smallest possible cost," Chen Xue praised him freely.

"Hmph. I wouldn't have guessed it. Your strength is mediocre, but at least your brain works," Yang Chan said coldly, tilting up her pretty face.

At those words, Chen Xue stared at Yang Chan in astonishment.

Are you serious?

She had witnessed Jiang Chen's strength firsthand. He had chased a top-tier vicious ghost all over a building with his bare hands. She would never forget that overwhelming pressure.

He surely had his reasons for not showing his formidable strength now, so Chen Xue naturally refrained from blurting anything out.

She looked at Jiang Che. "Where do we go next?"

Hearing this, Yang Chan instinctively looked toward Jiang Chen as well, then remembered that she had declared earlier that she would lead the team.

Her face warmed, and she finally muttered, "Since you just earned some credit, we'll let you take command for now!"

Her tone was reluctant, and she turned her head away after speaking.

Looking at this girl whose prickly pride was off the charts, Jiang Chen smiled helplessly. As a grown man whose two lifetimes added up to over forty years, he could hardly squabble with a young girl.

"All right, then I'll be so bold as to give our young lady Yang a few orders."

Having given her a graceful way out, Jiang Chen looked toward the lone building standing on the sports field. "Let's take a look over there."

[Equipment Room]

To Jiang Chen, this was the creepiest building in any school.

When he was little, he had heard the village elders say something.

Never enter a solitary house, and never fight the dead for space.

A solitary house meant a building with only one room, with no other buildings for several hundred meters around it.

Unless someone had an exceptionally resilient fate, they couldn't live in such a house. In an ordinary home, if spirits sought shelter in the middle of the night and meant no harm, they would find a room without any living people in it.

But in a solitary house, the spirits had no choice but to share a room with its owner.

Afterward, the owner would fall seriously ill.

And solitary houses left uninhabited for years might have long been occupied by something. Moving in recklessly meant fighting the dead for their home.

That situation was even more dangerous, and the consequences were terrifying!

"Be careful. A lot of people died in the Equipment Room," Chen Xue warned.

"Oh?" Jiang Chen looked at her. "Tell me more."

The information had been too lengthy, so he had only read the key points.

Chen Xue nodded. "The first person to die here was a security guard. He was a crafty old hand. After getting hired as a school guard, he ended his rental lease, secretly had a key to the Equipment Room made, and slept inside at night."

"On the sixth day, the guard died a sudden, inexplicable death. The inside of the door was covered in bloody handprints. He seemed to have been trying to push it open, but the problem was that the Equipment Room was secured with a large lock on the outside. Every night, after the guard went in, the door was left open."

"No one knew what he had experienced. After that, several more people went missing at the school, and their bodies were all found in the Equipment Room."

"Later, people kept saying that when they passed the Equipment Room at dusk, they heard a lively commotion inside. But when school staff opened the door, there wasn't a single person there."

"So there's probably more than one ghost here. Everyone, be careful!" Chen Xue's face was grave.

As she spoke, the three of them arrived outside the Equipment Room.

"Knock... knock... knock."

Jiang Chen stepped forward and knocked on the door, calling, "Anyone there? If no one's there, I'm coming in!"

Then he waited three seconds. Everything around them was deathly silent.

The next moment, Jiang Chen yanked open a nearby window and tossed in the Running Ghost's corpse, which he had dragged over.

Both women behind him stared in disbelief.

You tactical types really do play dirty.

You knocked on the door, only to go in through the window.

No!

You didn't even go in yourself. You tossed in a corpse. That's fucking shameless!

The corpse Jiang Chen had thrown inside hit the floor with a dull thud. He then wrenched off the iron lock, pulled the door open, and shone his powerful flashlight inside, getting a clear view of the entire Equipment Room.

There was no one inside, but the temperature was very low.

Jiang Chen gathered demonic power in his eyes and saw that the walls were covered with handprints thick with resentment, along with drag marks.

"Where pure radiance shines, all evil is revealed."

Chen Xue sent a talisman flying into the Equipment Room.

The yellow paper talisman burned in midair, giving off a faint white glow that illuminated the handprints on the walls before quickly fading.

"Judging from these lingering resentment-filled handprints, there were several ghosts here, but they left a few hours ago." Chen Xue's gaze turned slightly odd. "I wonder whether they all went out to harm people, or someone dealt with them."