"Whatever you want to ask, I'll tell you! Hurry up and ask!!"
Lu Ding turned his head. The savagery in his eyes terrified the old ghost, even though he was a monster himself.
"What's your commander called? His surname and given name? And why are you garrisoning troops here?"
The old ghost knew what was good for him and answered quickly, without the slightest hesitation. "Our commander's surname is Fang, given name Du. We're garrisoning troops here to await the general's revival. I advise you to leave at once. Otherwise, when the commander returns, you'll suffer for it. The child in your hands is the commander's youngest son."
Fang Du?
Never heard of him. I'll look through historical records using Bureau 749's resources later.
As for the general's revival...
Lu Ding tore another arm off the little ghost. "I don't like being threatened, and I don't want to hear tough talk."
"Now tell me where your commander went, and where your general is. What's his name? When will he revive?"
"I'll talk, I'll talk."
Blood was still pouring from the old ghost's mouth.
But he could no longer worry about that.
"The commander went out tonight to find his wife. The young master let her go. Our general's surname is Pei, and his name is Pei Ziyi. He was granted the title Jade-Faced Great General of Broken Ridge. He'll revive on the fifteenth of the seventh lunar month, when yin energy is at its strongest. As for where he is, I don't know, and neither does the commander. But we know the general is in Yunhai."
Lu Ding's expression turned odd as he listened.
Although he had no idea who this Pei Ziyi was, the Jade-Faced Great General...
He remembered that one of the Living-Molt Living Corpses he had killed seemed to have been wearing a jade mask.
Lu Ding asked tentatively, "Then I think I know who he is. Was your general buried in a suspended coffin using a secret art, with a jade mask on his face?"
The old ghost looked shocked.
"Yes!! Yes!! How do you know? Have you seen our general!!?"
So that was it.
By a strange twist of fate, he had already dealt with a major problem.
Lu Ding twisted off the little ghost's head, separating it from its body, and casually tossed it aside.
"I've seen your general. That doesn't seem quite accurate. I should say, I opened your general's coffin and killed him. He died just like this little beast, a piece here and a piece there. Not even an intact corpse was left."
"You!!! You!!!! Impossible!! Absolutely impossible!!! You contemptible wretch, spouting empty words! How could the general..."
Before he could finish, Lu Ding walked straight past him into the bedroom. Behind him, a head slowly rolled into view, its face filled with resentment and fury, frozen in that moment forever and ever.
A wardrobe with yellow wood grain stood before him.
This was the wardrobe the person who had reported the case said contained a monster.
But no matter how Lu Ding looked at it, it did not seem like a yin artifact capable of housing ghosts.
He raised a hand and split open the wardrobe doors.
Blood flowed from the damaged wood.
Rumble, rumble, rumble...
The building began to shake. Had Lu Ding been outside at that moment, he would have seen the building he was in flickering nonstop.
It was like footage played on an old video player with a faulty connection.
Flickering, ghosting, overlapping, stuttering.
Inside the wardrobe, which had been completely empty, an old doorway covered in cracks now appeared out of thin air.
Yin energy drifted out of it.
Looking in from outside, he saw a room exactly like the bedroom outside.
"Yin Domain Overlap?"
Lu Ding named the strange phenomenon before him.
Yin domain overlap was something only powerful ghosts could bring about.
People were divided into the living and the dead, and things into yin and yang. The place where the living resided was the world of the living, while the place where the dead resided was the underworld.
In myths, that was where underworld deities such as the Yama Kings of the Ten Courts, Ox-Head and Horse-Face, and Black and White Impermanence resided.
The underworld was different from the world of the living. It possessed different rules.
A Yin Domain, meanwhile, was something condensed from a powerful ghost's own power.
The birth of a Yin Domain reflected the rules of a powerful ghost's own power. From the moment it was born, the rewriting of its rules was already inevitable.
As for what rules were...
Simply put, the living needed oxygen-that was a rule. Falling from a great height would kill you-that was a rule. Most of a living person's body consisted of water-that was also a rule.
A monster that generated a Yin Domain had the authority to rewrite that domain's rules, but only within the Yin Domain, and only once. Once rewritten, they could not be rewritten again.
A Yin Domain could exist independently or attach itself to something in reality.
Yin domain overlap occurred when the balance between reality and a Yin Domain attached to it was broken, causing the two to overlap.
The door that had appeared inside the wardrobe before him was the connection point between the Yin Domain and reality.
He felt the yin energy surging inside.
Footsteps sounded chaotically outside. Lu Ding understood that this must have alerted the monsters within the Yin Domain, along with those "people" in his current building who had been replaced by monsters.
Downstairs, in 706.
A woman preparing to rest watched as her husband, who should have been washing up in the bathroom, suddenly rushed out and sprinted naked toward the door.
Downstairs, in 514.
Her husband had already gone to bed. The old woman, tired after a long day, was just about to sleep when she saw the old man, who needed a wheelchair to go out every day, sit bolt upright and run toward the door as swiftly as though flying.
The old woman stared blankly.
Was she hallucinating?
Situations like these kept occurring in other households throughout the building.
In some, it was one person. In others, it was the whole family.
These sprinting "people" all had only one destination: 1911.
Meanwhile.
A sedan was parked on the road outside the Baofan District Public Security Administration.
A man sat inside, gripping the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the Public Security Administration before him.
"My wife, you shouldn't have discovered these things. Heaven and earth can bear witness to my true feelings for you. Why? Why must you do this..."
As he spoke, his expression grew increasingly ferocious. Armor appeared on his body, and his ordinary middle-aged face transformed into a vicious ghost's face covered in scars.
This was the commander the old ghost had mentioned. He had followed the woman's scent all the way to the Public Security Administration.
An inner battle raged in his heart. He did love the woman.
But the woman who had reported the case had tried twice to ruin his plans. He could only make the decision to silence her with a heart full of grief.
But before he could storm into the Public Security Administration...
He sensed something. Someone had broken the wardrobe in 1911, upsetting the balance between the Yin Domain and reality, causing yin domain overlap and exposing it to the world.
The man instantly flew into a rage, his towering body bursting through the human skin wrapped around him.
"You deserve to die!!! Whoever you are!!!! You must die!!!"
Now, it could no longer bother with the people inside the Public Security Administration. It flew straight through the car roof, sweeping toward the distant Dinghao Residential Complex amid billowing black mist.
Room 1911.
Lu Ding took out his phone and dialed Bureau 749's live operator line.
"Hello, this is Lu Ding, patrol investigator for Baofan District, Yunhai. I have a situation to report."
"Of course. Go ahead."
"Building Five, Dinghao Residential Complex, Baofan District. Yin domain overlap has occurred. Powerful ancient ghosts are stockpiling provisions and raising troops here."
"Yin domain overlap!!!!"
In the Bureau 749 headquarters' call center, the headset-wearing staff member shot to his feet and shouted.
Everyone's attention was immediately drawn to him.
"Patrol Investigator Lu, please hold out a little longer, or withdraw now and wait for the other investigators to assemble, then join forces to eliminate the monsters and seal off the Yin Domain."
Lu Ding turned to look. Monsters that had replaced living people had already rushed to the doorway.
The instant one stepped through the entrance, a surging slash erupted. The wall, the doorframe, and the monster exploded together.
"There's no retreating now. Hurry up and send people to clean up. This is going to turn into a huge incident today."