Chapter Summaries

Yang Jian used the sixth layer of his Ghost Domain to freeze his surroundings, escape the corpse pinning him, and snap Fang Shiming’s neck. Fang Shiming resisted Yang Jian’s attempt to suppress him, and the two fell together from the building toward an uncertain outcome.

• Yang Jian activated the sixth layer of Ghost Domain and discovered that it froze people, objects, and ghosts, though Fang Shiming and Yang Jian’s ghost hand gradually began to move again.
• Yang Jian used the Ghost Domain to escape the heavy corpse, then abandoned his attempt to take the Ghost Scissors and grabbed Fang Shiming’s neck.
• The stasis ended, and Yang Jian snapped Fang Shiming’s neck while trying to suppress the ghosts in his body; Fang Shiming revealed he knew about Yang Jian’s past and drove back his ghost shadow with a supernatural wind.
• Fang Shiming and Yang Jian were swept out of the building, and Yang Jian destroyed Fang Shiming’s substitute doll with his fifth-layer Ghost Domain.
• Their Ghost Domains weakened each other as they fell, but Yang Jian kept gripping Fang Shiming, and the two crashed into the ground.

After their battle inside Ping An Building’s Ghost Domain, Yang Jian and Fang Shiming fell to the street below, where Headquarters Ghost Tamers discovered them. Both survived the fall and faced each other again, while Fang Shiming realized he was still trapped in Yang Jian’s Ghost Domain.

• Li Jun and the others saw the Ghost Domain vanish and then watched two bodies crash down outside Ping An Building.
• Li Jun’s group identified the fallen bodies as Yang Jian and Fang Shiming and connected their fight to the Friends Circle.
• Fang Shiming revived, revealed that his earlier cloth doll had been bait, and tried to leave the area.
• Fang Shiming discovered that Yang Jian’s Ghost Domain still surrounded the city and turned back toward him.
• Yang Jian’s body began repairing itself under the Music Box’s curse, and the two men prepared to face each other again.

Yang Jian survived the fight at Ping An Building, but Fang Shiming escaped when Yang Jian reached the limit of the music box’s curse. Yang Jian then left in pursuit, determined to kill Fang Shiming before ghost resurgence overtook him.

• At Headquarters, Wang Xiaoming ordered the team leaders and Deputy Minister to resign over their decision concerning Yang Jian and told Shen Liang not to interfere in the fight.
• Yang Jian recovered with the Headless Ghost Shadow, but Fang Shiming refused to continue fighting and prepared to escape.
• Yang Jian failed to activate the sixth level of the Ghost Domain again, allowing Fang Shiming to vanish from the area.
• Yang Jian ignored the onlookers and departed in his Ghost Domain to pursue Fang Shiming, while Li Jun and Cao Yang discussed his condition and the consequences of the incident.
• Cao Yang left to report to Headquarters, and Li Jun stayed behind to handle the situation and the ongoing Ghost Painting operation.

Yang Jian returned to Caesar Hotel to find the ghost whose footprints could kill, hoping to gain its supernatural ability before the Music Box's curse ran its course. After discovering an unidentified corpse and finding no trace of the ghost in the hotel itself, he entered the strange fourth-floor corridor to search for it.

• Yang Jian reached the sealed Caesar Hotel and used his Ghost Domain to pass through its cement wall.
• Yang Jian searched the first and second floors but found no sign of the ghost, whose black footprints covered the hotel.
• Yang Jian found a woman's corpse in a third-floor room and determined she had died within the past fifteen days, apparently not from the ghost.
• Yang Jian searched the fourth and fifth floors, then concluded the ghost had likely vanished into the corridor beyond the fourth floor.
• Yang Jian entered the strange corridor of numbered rooms to find the ghost as quickly as possible.

Yang Jian searched the Caesar Hotel for the tall male corpse and the supernatural object it had mentioned, while trying to stay close enough to retreat. He followed the Music Box Curse’s melody to Room 71, where a woman in a red qipao played a piano, and entered to investigate.

• Yang Jian explored the hotel’s maze-like corridors, noting that his Ghost Domain could not see through the walls and that Room 31 would not open.
• After finding no sign of the corpse, Yang Jian heard piano music matching the Music Box Curse and left a golden bullet as a marker before following it.
• Yang Jian found the melody coming from Room 71 and opened its door, which was not locked.
• Yang Jian saw a woman in a red qipao playing a piano; when her rhythm began to falter, he entered the room to investigate.

Yang Jian found Xiang Lan and A Nan, two living people trapped in the corridor, and learned they mistook him for a ghost. After they fled deeper into the corridor, he resumed searching for the wandering ghost, but different piano music began playing in Room 71.

• Yang Jian entered the room and discovered Xiang Lan was a living woman playing the piano.
• A Nan rushed in from the neighboring room, and Xiang Lan and A Nan tried to escape from Yang Jian.
• Xiang Lan mistook Yang Jian for someone who had found an exit and begged him to take them out.
• Yang Jian let Xiang Lan and A Nan run deeper into the corridor, then turned to search for the wandering ghost.
• Yang Jian heard different piano music coming from Room 71 and wondered whether a ghost had been inside.

Yang Jian encountered lethal supernatural dangers in Room 71, then found the decayed corpse carrying a machete and tried to suppress it with his ghost hand. The corpse cut through his Ghost Domain and severed him at the waist, leaving his fate uncertain.

• Yang Jian heard eerie piano music from Room 71, realized Xiang Lan and A Nan had fled because of a ghost inside, and chose not to reenter.
• The piano stopped and a deadly curse nearly killed Yang Jian, but the lingering music box curse restored his consciousness.
• Yang Jian retraced his route, noticed fresh corpse fluid and footprints, and followed them past another ominous room.
• Yang Jian found the tall, decayed male corpse holding a rusted machete and cautiously tried to suppress it with his ghost hand.
• The corpse turned and swung its machete through the third layer of Yang Jian's Ghost Domain, cutting him in half before continuing down the corridor.

Yang Jian survived being dismembered by the woodcutter’s axe and realized it could split ghosts apart, possibly explaining the Headless Ghost Shadow’s missing head. He tested the ghost’s attack and prepared to use the corpse-wrapping cloth to take the axe without touching the ghost.

• Yang Jian saw that the axe had cut both him and the Headless Ghost Shadow in half, and he inferred that the shadow’s missing head had been severed by the same axe.
• Yang Jian pieced his body back together with his Ghost Domain but found that his legs could not move because the split shadow was recovering too slowly.
• Yang Jian abandoned the idea of using Fang Shiming’s footprints to take the axe and decided to keep testing methods while the Music Box Curse protected him.
• Yang Jian followed the rotting corpse and approached within five meters without being attacked, concluding that distance alone did not trigger the ghost’s attack.
• Yang Jian suspected that contact triggered the attack and opened the golden box containing the corpse-wrapping cloth, intending to use it on the ghost.

Yang Jian used the burial shroud to restrain the wandering corpse in the hotel and tried to carry it away. As he left Room 82 with the immobilized corpse, blood-red handprints began spreading toward him, leaving him trapped between advancing and retreating.

• Yang Jian cautiously spread the burial shroud over the rotting corpse, and the ghost within the cloth slowly wrapped and restrained it.
• Yang Jian followed the corpse past the open Room 82, where he saw bloody handprints covering the walls and ceiling but encountered no immediate attack.
• The burial shroud completely immobilized the corpse, and Yang Jian discovered that neither it nor the wrapped corpse could be affected by his Ghost Domain.
• Yang Jian lifted the restrained corpse onto his shoulder and turned to leave, but blood-red handprints appeared outside Room 82 and began crawling toward him.

Yang Jian used the rusty hatchet to repel the ghost that had followed him from Room 82, discovering that covering a bloody handprint revealed the source of the curse. The handprints vanished, and Room 82’s door slammed shut as its lamp dimmed.

• Yang Jian carried the corpse back toward the exit while bloody handprints followed him from Room 82.
• At the corridor by Room 1, Yang Jian stopped to keep the ghost from leaving Caesar Hotel and used his ghost hand to take the hatchet from the corpse.
• Yang Jian covered a bloody handprint and saw a corridor full of eyeless, decaying people whose bloodied hands created the prints.
• The figures reached for Yang Jian, so he swung the hatchet and severed their arms, making the handprints fade away.
• Room 82’s door slammed shut, and the lamp beside it dimmed almost completely.

Yang Jian discovered that the rusty hatchet could repel ghosts, but using it permanently cost him one of his ghost-suppressing slots. After sealing the dangerous passage at Caesar Hotel with the corpse and burial cloth, he headed back to Ping An Building to use the hatchet against Fang Shiming.

• Yang Jian realized the hatchet had driven away the bloody handprints, then found that using it had permanently cost him one ghost-suppressing slot.
• Yang Jian deduced that the hatchet’s curse had been offset by a slot inherited from Ghost Messenger, and worried that using it again could leave him defenseless.
• Yang Jian used the corpse wrapped in burial cloth and cement to seal the passage, confirming that his Ghost Domain could not pass through the barrier.
• Yang Jian left Caesar Hotel and returned toward Ping An Building, intending to trigger the hatchet’s killing rule with Fang Shiming’s palm prints or footprints.

Yang Jian returned to Ping An Building and used Fang Shiming’s footprints as a medium to strike him with the strange hatchet. Fang Shiming was killed in his hideout, while Yang Jian’s curse worsened and left him with only one slot to suppress a ghost.

• At Headquarters, Cao Yang recounted the battle, and Wang Xiaoming predicted Yang Jian would return before dawn and asked Cao Yang to locate Fang Shiming.
• Fang Shiming hid in a basement outside the city, told He Tianxiong he was leaving the Moments Club in his care, and claimed Yang Jian would soon die.
• Yang Jian returned to Ping An Building, reviewed the surveillance footage, and found photographs of himself that Fang Shiming had cut with Ghost Scissors.
• Yang Jian spread his ghost shadow across Fang Shiming’s office to reach the footprints there, then slashed Fang Shiming’s shadow with the strange hatchet.
• Fang Shiming and the corpse on his back were split in half in his hideout, and Fang Shiming died before he could use his emergency measures.

Yang Jian waited for Fang Shiming to retaliate, then learned that Fang Shiming had died and was summoned by Wei Jing to meet Wang Xiaoming. He decided to attend because Wang Xiaoming might know how to deal with the Music Box Curse, though Yang Jian still planned to resign from Headquarters.

• Yang Jian waited through the night for Fang Shiming to attack, while worrying about recovering Ghost Scissors and eventually resolving the Music Box Curse.
• At dawn, Wei Jing invaded Yang Jian's Ghost Domain and told him that Fang Shiming was dead, showing him a photograph of the corpse.
• Wei Jing said Wang Xiaoming wanted to see Yang Jian at ten in the morning and mentioned that Wang had ideas about the Music Box Curse.
• Yang Jian initially refused the meeting and said he planned to resign from Headquarters, but decided to go because he needed advice about the curse and his imitation coffin nail.

Yang Jian skipped Headquarters' meeting because he feared they might try to eliminate him, and he prepared to leave while considering how to survive the Music Box Curse. Wang Xiaoming realized Yang Jian was at the Ping An Hotel and hurried there with Cao Yanhua as Yang Jian told his companions about his curse and showed them a photograph of the woman in Ghost Paintings.

• Cao Yanhua waited for Yang Jian at Headquarters, and Wang Xiaoming explained that Yang Jian likely suspected a trap and would not attend.
• Wang Xiaoming inferred that Yang Jian was at the Ping An Hotel, so Cao Yanhua and the others rushed there before Yang Jian left the city.
• Yang Jian packed his supernatural items at the hotel and explained to Huang Ziya that he had avoided Headquarters because he feared being ambushed.
• Huang Ziya and Zhang Lei met Yang Jian, who showed them a photograph of the woman in Ghost Paintings and told them to remember her appearance.
• Yang Jian revealed that the Music Box Curse would kill him within days unless he found a way to resolve it, then noticed Cao Yanhua and Wang Xiaoming arriving.

Yang Jian met Wang Xiaoming in his Ghost Domain to discuss Headquarters’ response to the conflict with Friends Circle and a way to survive the Music Box Curse. He agreed to Wang Xiaoming’s proposal while deciding to pursue every other possible solution as well.

• Cao Yanhua arrived at Ping An Hotel with Wang Xiaoming, Wei Jing, and Liu Xiaoyu, and Yang Jian took Wang Xiaoming to the rooftop to speak privately.
• Wang Xiaoming proposed blaming the dead Jiang Shangbai for the conflict, keeping Yang Jian as Dachang City’s person in charge, and changing his resignation to indefinite leave.
• Yang Jian learned that Wang Xiaoming’s imitation Coffin Nail was weakening and heard his warning that boarding the bus might suppress Yang Jian’s consciousness along with the Music Box Curse.
• Wang Xiaoming offered to help separate the curse from Yang Jian’s consciousness if Yang Jian agreed to Headquarters’ terms and gave him two days to prepare.
• Yang Jian accepted Wang Xiaoming’s proposal but resolved to also locate the bus, pursue the Ghost Cabinet’s transaction, and consult the human skin paper.

Yang Jian reached an agreement with Wang Xiaoming for help lifting the Music Box curse, while warning that he no longer trusted Headquarters. He made preparations against the Ghost Scissors’ curse and left the Ping An Hotel, offering his companions the choice to join him outside Headquarters.

• Yang Jian refused Wang Xiaoming’s handshake, agreed to their cooperation, and demanded the Ghost Scissors from Fang Shiming’s corpse; Wang Xiaoming said Cao Yang might obtain them and promised not to stop Yang Jian from retrieving them if Cao Yang refused to hand them over.
• Wang Xiaoming told Cao Yanhua that Yang Jian had agreed to help resolve the Music Box curse without asking for anything, and explained that Yang Jian’s lack of demands showed how distant he had become from Headquarters.
• Yang Jian secretly asked Liu Xiaoyu to change his name in Headquarters’ identity system to guard against the Ghost Scissors’ name-based curse, and Liu Xiaoyu agreed to keep the request secret.
• Yang Jian took the human-skin paper, decided to leave the Ping An Hotel for He Tianxiong’s villa, and gave Zhang Lei, Huang Ziya, and Wang Jiang his address and the choice to leave Headquarters and team up with him.
• Yang Jian left before the three could respond, while Liu Xiaoyu rejoined Cao Yanhua and the others without mentioning his request.

Yang Jian weighed his options for dealing with the Music Box Curse and consulted the human skin paper, which described a failed attempt to uncover the secret of the piano in Room 71 of the Caesar Hotel. The paper’s final message changed from saying he had died to saying he had nearly died, suggesting that Yang Jian might survive.

• Yang Jian ranked using the Ghost Cabinet first, the human skin paper second, and returning to the supernatural bus last as ways to address the curse.
• Yang Jian questioned whether the Ghost Cabinet’s task of finding the person in a photograph referred to the ghost bride or only one piece of the ghost’s puzzle.
• Yang Jian took out the human skin paper and asked it how to resolve the Music Box Curse.
• The human skin paper described a future attempt to combine three melodies from a piano in Room 71, but said Yang Jian failed because he could not play the piano and died from the curse.
• After the paper’s account vanished, it stated that Yang Jian had nearly died from the curse, revealing a possible chance of survival.

Yang Jian doubted the human-skin paper’s claim that Wang Xiaoming could resolve the Music Box Curse and suspected the paper had manipulated events to make him distrust Wang. With the paper’s plan discarded, Yang Jian turned to the Ghost Cabinet as his remaining backup, while Wang Xiaoming and Wei Jing set off to prepare their own solution.

• Yang Jian read the human-skin paper’s message naming Wang Xiaoming as the person who had saved it from the Music Box Curse, but he questioned whether the advice concealed a trap.
• Yang Jian reasoned that Wang Xiaoming might have come to trust the human-skin paper after Wei Jing returned, and worried that the paper could be manipulating both men.
• Yang Jian concluded that he could neither safely trust nor reject Wang Xiaoming’s help, and recognized the paper as an increasingly direct threat to his life.
• Yang Jian buried the human-skin paper again, abandoned its plan, and decided to return to Dachang City to pursue the Ghost Cabinet.
• Wang Xiaoming told Cao Yanhua that he and Wei Jing needed to make preparations to resolve Yang Jian’s curse, then drove away from the convoy.

Yang Jian returned to Dachang City and learned from the Ghost Cabinet that he had seen, but not found, the woman he needed to locate, leaving him two days to pursue the Ghost Painting before the Music Box Curse became critical. Meanwhile, Wang Xiaoming arrived at Guo Fan’s home in J City to meet with him.

• Yang Jian secretly returned to Dachang City and told the Ghost Cabinet that he had found the woman and wanted it to resolve the Music Box Curse.
• The Ghost Cabinet replied that Yang Jian had only seen her and gave him a reminder that nine months and three days remained.
• Yang Jian considered whether the woman was the Ghost Painting’s source ghost or the Dried Corpse Bride, then decided to search for the Ghost Painting’s source within two days.
• Yang Jian saw his mother in the residential area but left without greeting her and set off to investigate the Ghost Painting.
• Wang Xiaoming went to Guo Fan’s home in J City, where Guo Fan and Zhong Shan received him.

Wang Xiaoming asked Guo Fan for the dangerous memorial tablet hidden inside his body, offering to help him survive in return. When Guo Fan refused, Wang Xiaoming revealed that he had trapped them in a Ghost Domain and intended to take the tablet by force.

• Wang Xiaoming reminded Guo Fan that his failure during the ghost-luring operation had led to the Ghost Painting Incident, but said he had come to negotiate rather than assign blame.
• Wang Xiaoming offered to help Guo Fan’s failing condition if Guo Fan lent him the memorial tablet, which Guo Fan used to resist the erosion of a fierce ghost.
• Wang Xiaoming proposed that Guo Fan enter the tablet again while he contained the ghost inside and arranged another body for Guo Fan, but Guo Fan refused to risk his life.
• Wang Xiaoming said he would take the tablet himself, and Zhong Shan noticed that a Ghost Domain had plunged the area into darkness.
• Wang Xiaoming admitted he had arranged the Ghost Domain to make taking the tablet easier, while Guo Fan threatened to fight him.