Logging Into the Website

Stifling, oppressive, almost impossible to breathe.

It felt like sleep paralysis. His mind was clearly awake, yet he could not move a single part of his body.

The dim room seemed to have become a dark prison. Yang Jian was the prisoner within it, unable to break free, unable to escape, seemingly doomed to sink forever, for all eternity.

Suddenly.

The darkness on the pitch-black ceiling gradually gathered, as if taking the shape of an eye.

The eye was enormous, filling the entire ceiling. Though it had not opened, Yang Jian could feel that gigantic eye watching him, its strange gaze fixed upon him the entire time.

"Gurgle~!"

Yang Jian felt a chill in the flesh of his cheek, as though something had forcibly pried it apart. A red eye rolled into view from within the bloody flesh.

A bizarre perspective flooded into his mind.

At the same time, something seemed to be burrowing and writhing through his body. It pushed against his flesh, nearly tearing through his skin. Excruciating pain spread through him, as if he were being subjected to brutal torture, unbearable to endure.

Yet Yang Jian remained conscious, while his body still could not move.

He could only let that ghostly thing inside his body move about without restraint. The pain made him want to howl, but his mouth only twitched slightly. He could not open it or make any sound.

This did not last for only a short while.

It lasted a full two or three hours.

Yang Jian had not fallen asleep at any point. He endured that tearing agony for two or three whole hours. Even he did not know how he had survived it. He only knew that period had felt as long as an entire lifetime.

A little after six in the evening.

The pain in his body finally vanished rapidly, and feeling returned to him.

The instant he could move, he shot upright from the bed. Sweat poured from his entire body as he gasped for breath.

Yang Jian raised his hand, and it was trembling almost instinctively.

"What... what happened to me? My body was completely out of control, and just now it felt as though I was about to split apart, like something was trying to crawl out from inside me. Was it affected by that eye?"

He stared at his trembling palm in silence for quite some time.

Then, he took a dark brown sheet of paper from his pocket.

"Tell me what happened to me earlier," Yang Jian said to the Human-Skin Parchment.

Words soon appeared on the Human-Skin Parchment: Today, I woke up in pain. I could feel the vicious ghost gradually reviving within my body. Because of what happened at school, I used too much of the vicious ghost's power. I do not have long to live. But now, I still have to endure the pain of being tormented by that thing in my body, because... I still want to live.

A vicious ghost reviving?

As expected.

Yang Jian fell silent once more.

He was beginning to follow Zhou Zheng's path, enduring the torment of a reviving vicious ghost until one day, he would be killed by the ghost within his own body.

Was this the price of surviving?

"How much longer can I live?" Yang Jian continued.

More words emerged on the Human-Skin Parchment: If I do not quickly find another way, I estimate that under this kind of torment, I will not survive for more than three months.

Three months?

That was even faster than dying of cancer. If he had to endure this torment every day, then just as Zhou Zheng had said, death really would be a release.

It was impossible for Yang Jian not to panic.

He was still young, still in school. His parents would need him to care for them in the future.

What would happen to his parents if he died?

No.

I can't die. At least, not yet.

Yang Jian suddenly stood up, his gaze locked onto the Human-Skin Parchment before him. "You're a very strange thing. I can't trust what you say. You say I'll die in three months, and that means I'll die in three months? You said before that I would die at school, yet didn't that change? You don't know the future at all. You can only judge what is most likely to happen next based on the current situation."

"But one thing is certain: you know a great, great deal."

"What exactly are you?"

The Human-Skin Parchment did not react. No words appeared, as though it had chosen silence.

"It doesn't matter if you won't say. Sooner or later, I'll figure it out," Yang Jian said.

Thinking about the vicious ghost, he suddenly remembered something. He picked up Zhou Zheng's satellite phone from nearby and saw a text message on it.

It was a website address.

"That website Zhao Jianguo gave me might have some useful information." Yang Jian immediately turned on his computer and entered the address.

It was a special website. There was nothing on it but a blank page, as if the website did not exist.

He knew that was merely a security measure.

Then he picked up Zhou Zheng's phone and typed the identification code printed on it into the keyboard.

The webpage immediately refreshed, the site redirected, and the page appeared.

Yang Jian roughly browsed through it. It was filled with emergency incidents from all over the world, requests for Ghost Tamer support, and bounties offered by governments around the world.

Most of them started at over a hundred million dollars, though there were also bounties in the tens of millions.

He opened one of them. "A C-class vicious ghost has appeared in a certain state in the United States, codenamed Ghost Church. Reward: thirty million dollars for resolving the incident."

There was also a video attached.

In the video was what looked like a church. The walls outside were covered in moss, and the peeling paint made it look extremely old. But at the entrance, Yang Jian saw a blurry figure standing there. Though he could not make out its features, he could sense that it was a person—or rather, a humanoid shape. Yet it emanated a terrifying, eerie presence.

But soon after, a fighter jet suddenly roared across the sky above the church. A missile came crashing down and struck the church with perfect accuracy.

The flames of the explosion swallowed the church.

The American military had clearly chosen a forceful and direct military strike.

"Will that work?" Yang Jian watched intently.

But as the intense light gradually faded, his eyes narrowed.

The church was still standing in the flames, completely unharmed. A missile with such a massive blast radius had not even blown off a single flake of paint from its walls.

Then, in the video, he saw the shadow standing at the church entrance slowly walk out. It approached the camera step by step.

Crackle.

The video instantly blurred, and the image vanished.

There were many comments below the video:

"Fuck, thirty million dollars to deal with this thing? The American president can go to hell. Save your money to buy lollipops for your kids. This thing is only rated C-class? Are you trying to trick us into becoming cannon fodder?"

An American netizen had posted the comment. However, there were Chinese translations and translations in other languages below the English, making it easy to understand at a glance.

"Although the video conceals some details, it can be determined that this is already a ghost capable of affecting surrounding objects. It is probably not far from forming a Ghost Domain. At minimum, it should be B-class. If they had any conscience, even rating it A-class would not be excessive. Americans truly are living in dire straits. Newcomers who do not understand this will probably get fooled to death," replied a domestic netizen.

"Anyway, I'll be dead soon. Looking for teammates to make a fortune together. Please carry this cutie away."

"You can't trust even a single frame of those Yankee bounty videos."

Yang Jian looked through the comments and fell into thought. "Ghosts have ranks too? Let's look into it."