Lake and Wind (VI)

Between worlds, the golden light took on an eerie scarlet hue. A composed figure stood silently at the crossing between worlds, holding an octagonal golden pagoda.

Dachang City.

The entire sky was tinged a faint blood-red, and an eerie, silent atmosphere permeated the city.

At the tip of the pagoda, an old black-and-red coffin rested quietly in a concealed room.

Bang!

With a tremendous crash, the coffin lid was blasted away, and a man slowly sat up inside.

"Captain?"

Li Yang stood on the rooftop, watching the signature scarlet Ghost Domain in the sky, his gaze flickering.

Suddenly, a massive rift split open in the sky above Dachang City. Through it, a continent could be seen being cleaved in two by some unknown mighty force.

Countless figures fled in all directions, some riding swords, others flying.

"Holy shit! Honey! Come out and look at the immortals!"

"Mom! Come look at the mirage!"

"Which fellow Daoist is undergoing a tribulation here? This humble Daoist has come to help!"

For a time, everyone in Dachang City saw the scene within the rift.

Television stations scrambled to report the incident, while all kinds of experts spoke at length on live broadcasts.

Mirages, atmospheric refraction, the latest drone technology projecting a movie, and so on...

Li Yang stared fixedly at the enormous rift in the sky. He knew this anomaly had been caused by his captain.

"A new supernatural incident? Thirty years... Has the captain been fighting something this terrifying all along...?"

"Hm? What's that?"

Li Yang's gaze fell on an inconspicuous corner of Dachang City.

A small spatial rift hovered in an alley. Everyone in Dachang City was focused on the massive rift overhead, and no one had noticed the anomaly here.

Looking through the rift, Li Yang saw only a street filled with raging wind.

"The captain is handling that extremely high-threat supernatural incident in the sky. Huang Ziya and the others are still in their coffins. I'm the only one in Dachang City who can act right now."

Without the slightest hesitation, Li Yang stepped into the rift...

Rain filled the sky in an unbroken sheet. Rampaging winds destroyed everything in sight, and the whole city looked as though the apocalypse had come. Beside an enormous tornado reaching into the heavens stood three figures.

After Fang Shiming successfully gained control of that patch of quicksand, he used his new supernatural power to locate Yang Jian and Liu San within the hurricane.

The entire tornado consisted of countless corpse fragments, with icy lake water coursing rapidly between them.

The three of them were now enveloped in a dense red glow. Only by relying on the Ghost Domain could they get so close to the hurricane's source.

"These people aren't dead yet."

Among the severed limbs and fragments, Liu San watched a man's head with only half of it remaining. The man looked at him in terror and tried to speak, only to be swallowed up by countless corpse fragments again.

Fang Shiming stood to one side, examining the corpse fragments. "Whoever's controlling this hurricane must be trying to conduct some kind of experiment. These people are slowly turning into ghost slaves."

"No... They're not quite like ghost slaves. Their condition is closer to that of ghost riders."

Yang Jian keenly noticed that every living person had a trace of lake water inside them. Only because these supernatural puzzle pieces were so minuscule could so many ordinary people control them.

"I have to say, this idea is far ahead of its time... Using the hurricane to scatter the Ghost Lake, then forcibly implanting its supernatural fragments into people's bodies somehow. Mass-producing ghost riders...?"

"Watch out!"

Suddenly, the enormous tornado made up of countless corpse fragments and living people began spinning faster at a frenzied rate.

Putrid winds carried icy lake water toward the three of them.

"I can't move?"

Liu San discovered, to his astonishment, that the ancient corpse inside him had actually been split by the wind.

"Don't panic. Confrontations between ghosts work both ways. The people over there aren't having an easy time either."

Watching his Ghost Domain being torn apart by the wind, Yang Jian considered his next move.

A mass of black-and-yellow sand slowly enveloped the three of them, shutting out the supernatural attack.

"This won't hold for long. Find a way inside, quickly."

Yang Jian looked at the black-and-yellow sand and spoke after a moment's thought.

"Fang Shiming, coordinate with me."

A burst of red light erupted, clinging to the surfaces of their bodies within the sand.

Fang Shiming instantly understood what Yang Jian intended and replied, "Five seconds. Against supernatural power of this level, I can only delay it for five seconds."

"That's enough."

Flashes of red light flickered within the black-and-yellow sand. Then it thrust forward, penetrating the rapidly spinning mass of corpses.

Several people at the hurricane's center turned around at the same time, looking at the three intruders.

"Promising youngsters. I didn't expect you to actually make it inside." An old man as thin as a stick held a rotting ball of flesh that seeped corpse fluid in his palm. He looked at the three of them, seemingly very pleased.

"But we can't let you disrupt the plan now. Leave. Pretend you were never here. The Reform Society merely has different ideals from yours. We aren't..."

"Do it!"

Before the skeletal old man could finish speaking, a black shadow surged toward him.

"You're courting death!"

An eerie, slow-moving gust of wind rushed straight up.

"Save Li Jun first!"

Liu San spotted Li Jun's corpse lying at the edge, and paper figures appeared around him.

Just as Yang Jian's black shadow reached the old man, a gust interwoven with lake water scattered it.

The sheer supernatural suppression made Yang Jian's eyelid twitch. After just an instant of contact, Ghost Shadow had nearly been dismembered.

Holding the flesh ball dripping with corpse fluid, the skeletal old man raised his hand toward Fang Shiming.

Fang Shiming instantly felt an immense force pressing down on the surrounding space. His body was restrained, pinned firmly in place, unable to move.

"Hm? The ghost inside me... What did he do...?"

Fang Shiming stared at the eerie ball of flesh in shock and uncertainty. He actually could not leave this immobilized space.

"It can immobilize even this hurricane and the Ghost Lake, let alone you, youngster."

The old man glanced at Liu San, who was supporting Li Jun, and waved a hand.

"Take that major general and leave. The Reform Society's goal isn't to kill people. We don't want to add to our blood debt."

The old man seemed unwilling to linger over this.

"You seem to have misunderstood something. This isn't a game where you come and go as you please. This is a life-or-death struggle."

Fang Shiming watched the old man coldly.

"You were the ones who created that quicksand, weren't you? If I don't kill you lot today, I'm the one who dies. Hand over that ball of flesh, and I can let you go back and live a few more years."

Fang Shiming stood in place with both hands behind his back, gripping an old pair of scissors tightly. Ten seconds. He needed only ten seconds to break free.

"Hehehe. Such big words. Old Qian! Do it! He's stalling!"

The moment he finished speaking, an elderly woman beside him reached toward Fang Shiming and made a grabbing motion. Fang Shiming immediately felt an unimaginably powerful pull. Some unknown supernatural power was drawing out the ghosts he controlled in a way he could not comprehend.

"Stupid old fool."

Fang Shiming's gaze sharpened. His shoulders dipped slightly, and an eerie corpse instantly pressed down on the elderly woman's shoulders.

The corpse was heavy, absurdly heavy. It pinned the old woman down so completely that she could not move.

"Old Qian, watch out!"

A tall, thin young man on the far left, his expression pained, saw the elderly woman being attacked and was about to act. But the instant his attention shifted, a streak of scarlet flashed across his vision.

"Where are you looking?"

Yang Jian's Ghost Hand clamped tightly around the tall, thin young man's neck. The hideous tattoo on the Ghost Hand slowly invaded his body.

The situation reversed in an instant. Yang Jian and Fang Shiming had countered and subdued two people almost simultaneously.

Shock and uncertainty crossed the faces of the old man holding the flesh ball and another short, fat old man.

Yang Jian watched the two coldly, continuing to tighten his grip.

"A pack of cowards clinging to life. You'd never dare act unless you had absolutely no choice. Time to send you on your way."

The Ghost Hand had already dug into the young man's neck. Blood ran down Yang Jian's arm and dripped onto the ground. None of the Reform Society members dared move now. From Yang Jian's posture, he really intended to fight until the fish died and the net tore.

Yang Jian was half right about them. After so many long years, they indeed no longer used the ghosts inside them lightly.

But there was another, deeper reason: the old man called Elder Qin had been observing the future all along. Although their intelligence indicated that the future Elder Qin could currently see was incomplete, none of them dared gamble on when he might drive a bus over and run them down.

Most importantly, they truly had not expected the ghost riders of this era to be so fierce, ready to fight to the death before a sentence was even finished.

The short, fat old man carrying a corpse on his back said to Yang Jian, "Youngster, I admit you're very capable. Let go. There's still room for negotiation."

Yang Jian simply looked at him, then crushed the young man's windpipe.

"You're courting death!"

The corpse on the old man's back abruptly opened its eyes. In an instant, the entire world froze. Yang Jian knew this sensation well. It was much like the time stop produced by activating the sixth layer of his Ghost Domain.

The Ghost Eye slowly rotated, unaffected. "It can actually go this far..."

But before Yang Jian could act, he watched in astonishment as his own movements slipped beyond his control, and he slowly released the young man's neck.

Everything around him began slowly moving backward. The hurricane started spinning in reverse, and the blood on the ground flowed back into the young man's body.

"You've got to be kidding! An area-wide reset?!"

During the incident in Dajing City when things went out of control, Yang Jian had briefly performed a four-second area-wide reset using the Dead Man's Banner. But the reset before him had already far exceeded four seconds.

"Seven... Eight... Nine..." Yang Jian silently counted the seconds, his Ghost Eye fixed on the corpse on the short, fat old man's back.

"Only that corpse is unaffected by the entire area-wide reset. That corpse is the cause..."

"No! That flesh ball can move too!"

A gust carrying icy rain swept toward Yang Jian, together with the fragments of limbs high above.

"There's no time. I'll have to take this attack head-on..."

Just then.

Bang! A tremendous crash rang out.

An old wooden door flew in from somewhere, smashed down between Yang Jian and the flesh ball, and embedded itself diagonally in the ground.

With another bang, a figure shoved the door open.

The rain-laden wind instantly dissipated. Swathes of corpse fragments stopped in their tracks and fell from the sky. A man stood amid the rain of corpses, turning his head slightly toward Yang Jian.

"Captain... Long time no see."