Out of Control (9)

Ye Zhen hung in midair like a corpse, utterly motionless.

Wang Chaling's expression changed as he looked at Ye Zhen, whose throat was clamped in a death grip. "The Ghost Messenger?! You can't come into contact with it alone. Save him first, suppress it! Make it restart!"

Almost simultaneously, Li Leping and Wang Chaling grabbed that pitch-black, eerie arm.

The suppression took hold, and Ye Zhen's eyes flew open. But the suppression worked both ways. They dared not let go; once the suppression was lost, the Ghost Messenger would begin killing.

"Watch out beside you!" Su Fan pointed to the side and shouted as he looked at his phone.

The next second, an identical, eerily enormous picture frame appeared there, and another pair of utterly black hands reached out from within...

"You've got to be kidding! Two Ghost Paintings?!" Yang Jian's eyelids twitched violently at the enormous picture frame that had appeared so eerily.

Before he had time to be shocked, another red figure slowly emerged before him.

A gale reeking of rot howled toward it, and an old pair of scissors tangled with black hair stabbed fiercely at the red figure that had suddenly appeared.

Fang Shiming's expression changed. "They won't go in?!"

"Watch out!" Shen Lin materialized behind him, his figure blurred and nearly transparent.

As Shen Lin appeared, the woman in red before them seemed to come under some kind of supernatural suppression, and her figure slowly began to blur as well.

"Quick! I can't suppress her for long!"

Fang Shiming's body sank, and a cold, deathly pale corpse abruptly appeared on the woman in red's shoulders. The old scissors pierced her successfully. Her red-clad body shuddered slightly, then became motionless.

Ghost Fire and my scissors can counter the Ghost Painting...

"Find a way to restrain the Ghost Messenger! I have something of an idea for containing the Ghost Painting." Fang Shiming looked at the others with bloodshot eyes.

Miserable, chilling sobs and eerie laughter echoed in everyone's ears. This indiscriminate attack made no distinction between friend and foe, but at a time like this, no one dared tell Tong Qian to shut up.

Inside the other picture frame that had suddenly appeared, half of the pitch-black figure's body had already emerged. It wore a tattered outfit of the style worn by the people in charge, with heavy bloodstains remaining on it. Its entire head was stiff and blackened, giving off the stench of a rotting corpse.

"I can't suppress it! That corpse is still moving!" Tong Qian watched the corpse slowly crawling out of the picture frame, eyes filled with despair.

Something suddenly occurred to Yang Jian, and he shouted, "That coffin! Make the Ghost Messenger go back into that coffin!"

The situation was now desperately critical. Once the Ghost Messenger in the other painting emerged completely, everyone would die here.

The golden Ghost Domain carried everyone and the Ghost Painting toward the coffin in the air, reaching it almost instantly.

However, an ashen-blue Ghost Domain barred their way. After a brief collision, the golden Ghost Domain violently tore the ashen blue before it to shreds.

Once the ashen-blue Ghost Domain slowly dissipated, a person whose entire body was grayish white stood quietly beside the Ghost Coffin before them, motionless, as if thinking.

"You've got to be kidding! Tong Qian! Stop it!"

But before Tong Qian could act, the Hungry Ghost abruptly split its jaws open, stretching its mouth to an exaggerated size and swallowing the entire coffin in one bite. Strangely, after swallowing a coffin twice its size, the Hungry Ghost's body did not change at all.

The next second, the Hungry Ghost abruptly turned its head and stared fixedly at everyone.

At this point, only Tong Qian, A Hong, and Su Fan could still act, but in the current situation, the three of them could play no decisive role.

Yang Jian could not free himself at all. The sudden appearance of the second Ghost Painting and Ghost Messenger left him and Li Jun afraid to completely suppress the woman in red before them, for fear that a third Ghost Painting would appear.

"There's no time. Li Jun, hold on!"

Yang Jian's figure flickered, and he appeared beside the Hungry Ghost, holding a tattered paper banner.

Abruptly, Yang Jian gouged the Ghost Eye out of his forehead. Blood instantly dyed his entire face red. Without any hesitation, he slammed the Ghost Eye onto the paper banner.

For an instant, as though his life were flashing before his eyes, Yang Jian suddenly recalled Wang Xiaoming's words.

"I conducted an experiment with this paper banner once. It was too dangerous, so I left it here. When necessary, you can put your Ghost Eye into it. Perhaps it can turn the situation around."

The paper banner emitted an intense red glow. The Ghost Hand with which Yang Jian held it turned deathly pale, and its skin began cracking all over. Yang Jian's body was being torn apart. Through the widening cracks, several Ghost Eyes could be seen turning eerily inside him...

With difficulty, he raised the paper banner and lightly touched the Hungry Ghost with it. Instantly, the space around the Hungry Ghost twisted and warped, flowing like a stream of water into the paper banner along with the Hungry Ghost.

But before anyone could breathe a sigh of relief, an ashen-blue figure abruptly appeared before Yang Jian.

Rotten and foul-smelling, it stared fixedly at Yang Jian with a pair of dead-gray eyes.

Right... the Ghost Messenger's unsolvable restart... Am I going to die? Yang Jian looked at the Hungry Ghost that had appeared before him again. Having eaten the Ghost Coffin, it now possessed the same supernatural power as the Ghost Messenger.

There was no longer any point in using the Dead Man's Banner again. Despair shrouded everyone's hearts.

The golden flames began flickering. On his own, Li Jun was already beginning to lose his hold on the Ghost Painting.

Ye Zhen, Wang Chaling, and Li Leping were firmly suppressed by the Ghost Messenger, unable to move.

The woman in red before Fang Shiming and Shen Lin was slowly regaining her ability to move.

The Ghost Messenger inside the other enormous picture frame had only one foot left before it stepped out completely.

From making contact with the source of the Ghost Painting until now, the entire process had taken less than thirty seconds. Despair was spreading...

Suddenly, a voice shattered the despairing, deathly silence.

"Yang Jian! Where are you looking?! The Hungry Ghost's hands are still there! We still have a chance! Don't stand there like a dead man!" Ye Zhen, held aloft in the Ghost Messenger's grip, shouted at Yang Jian.

These are... what formed after the Hungry Ghost ate the Coffin Nail... My Dead Man's Banner can't affect them? In other words, the Hungry Ghost that has now restarted doesn't have the Coffin Nail's suppression ability...

What should I do...

Back at No. 7 High School, the Hungry Ghost seemed to have restarted an entire area... Can I do that with the Dead Man's Banner... I can only take a gamble...

But I can't let these hands restart back into place too... What should I do...

I'm out of time...

Without further hesitation, Yang Jian threw the Hungry Ghost's arms toward the others, then violently thrust his hand into the split in his body over his heart. Grabbing hard, he tore out a handful of eerie, scarlet eyeballs.

The Ghost Shadow was slowly piecing Yang Jian's shattered body back together, but it could not remotely keep pace with the speed at which his body was splitting apart. Yang Jian's entire body was now torn into pieces and drenched in red, with dazzling red light pouring out of the cracks.

"I'll send you on your way..." With that, Yang Jian smeared the eyeballs clutched in his hand across the Dead Man's Banner.

Instantly, the entire Dead Man's Banner turned blood-red, and an intensely scarlet radiance violently burst forth.

The fifth-layer Ghost Domain skipped straight past the sixth and seventh layers. The entire world sank into blood-red. This was an unknown taboo Yang Jian had never touched before.

Some kind of taboo capable of reversing life and death was unfolding within this blood-red world.

From everyone else's perspective, the intense scarlet swelled in an instant, enveloping Yang Jian and the Hungry Ghost.

But this seemed to be an imperfect restart. The space around Yang Jian twisted and gave off repeated humming sounds, keeping the red light confined around him. He himself did not take part in the restart.

An area-wide restart began.

One second...

Two seconds...

The Hungry Ghost stood there with both hands missing, staring fixedly at Yang Jian.

Three seconds...

The Hungry Ghost had just swallowed the Ghost Coffin.

Four seconds...

A shrill screech like fingernails scraping a blackboard rang out, and the intense red light instantly scattered in all directions.

The Hungry Ghost stood before the Ghost Coffin, gazing motionlessly into it...