Lake and Wind (End)

A deathly pale female corpse, soaking wet, lay against Yang Jian's back, stiff and cold to the touch.

Countless strands of cold, sinister hair entwined his body, spiraling through the hurricane with Yang Jian.

His body was filled with vast quantities of lake water. As soon as it filled his entire body, it poured continuously out through the cracks.

Yang Jian was in terrible shape.

The icy lake water constantly scoured his body, while the putrid hurricane ceaselessly dismembered the ghosts he controlled. His perfectly balanced state began sliding rapidly toward revival.

"It still came to this..."

The next moment.

Seven eerie, scarlet eyeballs suddenly emerged from Yang Jian's cracked skin.

A dense red exploded across Yang Jian's body. Amid the raging winds, everyone saw a flash of scarlet.

An enormous scarlet eyeball suddenly appeared in the center of the hurricane, gazing eerily at everything.

The instant the eyeball appeared, the tornado packed with corpses actually showed faint signs of slowing.

The hurricane, mixed with lake water, kept dismembering the eyeball in the air, but whenever it was about to fall apart, dense red light surged from its center, restoring it again.

Yang Jian was constantly restarting himself, but this state could not last long. What he was doing now was like walking a tightrope. Once the Ghost Eye fully revived or the hurricane completely dismembered him, he would die immediately.

"Seven layers. The threshold I can control right now... As long as I don't exceed this limit, I won't immediately die from ghost revival."

Holding the machete, Yang Jian rapidly considered his next move.

Fang Shiming stood where he was, not blown away, watching the enormous Ghost Eye that had suddenly hung suspended in the center of the tornado.

"This Yang Jian... But the wind is showing signs of easing now. A perfect opportunity..."

A wooden door stood in place. Li Yang clung desperately to its frame as lake water and fierce winds battered its old panels. Under the impact of these two supernatural forces, he could not push the eerie wooden door open.

A mass of blackish-yellow mud and sand stood out starkly within the raging, deathly pale hurricane. It slowly approached Li Yang, and a voice reached his ears.

"Somehow, Yang Jian has slowed the wind down. The ghost I control is highly compatible with this hurricane. Next, I'll restrain the wind for an instant, but I can't suppress the Ghost Lake."

Li Yang could not speak at all just then. He merely nodded once.

Then the slowly writhing blackish-yellow mud and sand gradually dissipated into the gale.

Little by little, a faint trace of blackish yellow appeared within the deathly pale tornado.

At the same time that blackish yellow appeared, a succession of eerie wooden doors abruptly rose around the enormous Ghost Eye within the hurricane.

Hundreds of old wooden doors appeared in an inconceivable manner, their backs facing the Ghost Eye as they floated in midair.

The next second, the blackish yellow flashed past, yet it gave the bizarre impression that the flash was exceptionally slow. Then the entire hurricane abruptly ground to a halt.

But in that instant, the Ghost Lake remained unrestricted. Sky-blotting lake water cascaded down with densely packed corpses, while sheets of yellow paper drifted in from nowhere and covered countless bodies.

Suddenly, one of the doors banged open, followed by an unbroken series of bangs like firecrackers going off.

Hundreds of eerie wooden doors opened one after another.

The stacking of the certain-death supernatural effects was completed in an instant. Irresistible suction surged from behind the doors, drawing in the sky-blotting lake water.

The icy lake water was sucked into the wooden doors, then rushed out behind them, all converging on the enormous Ghost Eye in the center.

Within the dense red light, Yang Jian stood on a stretch of lake water, drenched from head to toe. Icy water dripped constantly from him, and a female corpse clung tightly to his back.

Yang Jian's state was very delicate.

After the supernatural suppression of Li Yang's countless eerie wooden doors, the Ghost Lake had converged within the Ghost Eye. Its level of terror was now at its lowest.

But even working together with the Ghost Eye, the Ghost Hand and the tattoos still could not fully suppress the female corpse on his back.

The female corpse constantly attacked and invaded Yang Jian, while Yang Jian constantly attempted to control the Ghost Lake.

Amid the supernatural clash, neither could overcome the other. The female corpse simply clung tightly to Yang Jian's back.

But Yang Jian could not afford to wait. Any human using a ghost's abilities had a limit, whereas ghosts did not. If the stalemate continued, Yang Jian alone would ultimately lose.

"While I'm controlling the Ghost Lake, the Ghost Lake is also invading and controlling me. In a sense, this ghost has already fused with me..."

"If I use the machete to dismember it, I'll be dismembered too..."

Yang Jian pondered...

The hurricane was gradually accelerating. Fang Shiming had already been blown somewhere unknown, and that mass of blackish yellow had vanished.

A battered paper figure fell from midair, clutching a charred body. The yellow paper that had drifted down earlier had been Liu San's last measure before losing consciousness.

Li Yang crouched beside the wooden door, looking up at the enormous scarlet eyeball in the air. He had reached his limit as well.

"That corpse from the Reform Society gave me inspiration, but every ghost handler's method of controlling ghosts is impossible to replicate. Perhaps I don't need to completely replicate that state of Ghost Controlling a Person..."

Yang Jian was making an entirely new attempt.

Within the pitch-black Ghost Shadow beneath his feet, the Ghost Eye slowly opened. Then the Ghost Shadow abruptly rose and completely covered the female corpse.

Yang Jian had not chosen to restart himself. Instead, he intended to restart the female corpse to a state before it had begun eroding him. Normally, he could never have restarted a ghost, but here, the Ghost Lake's supernatural power had already been suppressed to its lowest point by Li Yang and the other two.

This was a race against time. Every time the Ghost Shadow enveloping the female corpse restarted through the Ghost Eye, Yang Jian gained a little more control over the Ghost Lake's supernatural power.

But conversely, without the Ghost Shadow and Ghost Eye, Yang Jian faced the risk of death from rapid ghost revival.

Lake water constantly seeped from his entire body. The Ghost Hand slowly turned deathly pale, hideous tattoos covered his skin, and his whole body began to rot and stink.

Yang Jian did not know how the Reform Society had managed to retain clear consciousness after Ghost Controlling a Person.

But supernatural incidents often offered no choice. Yang Jian had no option but to control the Ghost Lake this way.

Yet ghosts had no consciousness. They only ever followed their killing rules. Even though Yang Jian had now restarted the female corpse to a state before it had invaded him, it still continued to rise from the lakebed and attack him again. It had to carry out its own killing rule.

The next moment, Yang Jian's entire body rotted completely in an instant, and he toppled stiffly over. But the lake water beneath his feet suddenly surged up, sinking his corpse into the lake.

Yang Jian had succeeded. No, he could only be said to have mostly succeeded.

He had controlled the Ghost Lake, and the risk of ghost revival was gone. But the female corpse was invading Yang Jian through the Ghost Lake at every moment. Once it succeeded, he would die immediately.

And whenever the female corpse surfaced, Yang Jian would restart himself through the Ghost Eye, turning the Ghost Lake against it to suppress it beneath the lakebed.

Yang Jian's current state was neither the dormancy nor balance of an ordinary ghost handler, nor the Reform Society's state of Ghost Controlling a Person. He lay somewhere between the two, in a state of an anomaly.

To kill Yang Jian, one had to kill the female corpse. But ghosts could not be killed...

From Li Yang's perspective, the enormous scarlet eyeball in the sky radiated an eerie red light. Suddenly, vast quantities of lake water streamed ceaselessly from it, as though it were a weeping eye.

Then the lake water slowly submerged him.

Under the eerie red light, Yang Jian slowly approached across the lake's surface, carrying an old machete. His cold, emotionless voice rang out.

"Don't resist. I'm taking you out."

On a tall mountain several thousand meters away, fierce winds whipped their clothes as Yang Jian and the others stood at the summit, gazing at the distant hurricane that had already engulfed the entire city.

Clearly, this operation had ended in failure.

Several helicopters were approaching from afar.

"Yang Jian... No, Captain Yang."

Liu San spoke to Yang Jian.

"I'm leaving. Headquarters' people are here. I'll leave Li Jun to you."

Yang Jian said nothing. The Ghost Eye on his forehead observed Liu San. Liu San paid it no mind either, turning and leaving after he finished speaking.

"Another hard-to-kill anomaly..."

Even a seven-layer Ghost Domain could not withstand this hurricane, yet Liu San was now completely fine. Yang Jian even suspected that this supposed real body was merely a relatively special paper figure.

A slowly blowing mass of blackish-yellow wind enveloped a female corpse.

"Come visit the Circle of Friends when you have time, Captain Yang..."

With that, the eerie mass of wind sped off into the distance. Fang Shiming intended to make a trip to Taiping Ancient Town right away.

Yang Jian turned around and looked at Li Yang, who sat on the ground.

He did not know this man, but without a doubt, if not for him, Yang Jian and the others might have been wiped out in the hurricane.

Li Yang's body was rotting rapidly. A heart-palpitating noise came from his chest, as though something inside him were about to burst out.

Yang Jian did not understand why this unfamiliar man had fought to such lengths.

"You still haven't told me who you are."

"We've been through quite a lot. For me, perhaps this is the end of a stretch of memories."

His body was stinking, and his deathly pale bones were clearly visible. Li Yang felt he was about to die.

"Have you known me for a long time?"

"You had a stretch of the future in the past. My past, your future."

Yang Jian did not understand what Li Yang meant.

Perhaps only now did Li Yang realize that the Yang Jian before him was not the captain he knew.

But Li Yang had no regrets. He believed that as long as Yang Jian remained alive, this world would return to normal one day.

"Where should I go to find you?"

"I'm dying. I can't revive here. Captain..."

A broken, tattered shell bore a will of steel, but this ghoul-like body ultimately could not withstand the terror of the supernatural.

Yang Jian gazed silently at the completely rotten corpse. He did not even know this man's name.

The corpse was placed in a golden coffin, and the helicopter slowly took off.

Dense red light flashed. An intensely scarlet edge shot straight into the sky, speeding toward Dachang City.

Yang Jian was going to seek answers, whether about the Reform Society or that man who had called him captain...