Ghost Painting

Biodata

Power Progression

The documented changes concern acquired abilities and additional manifestations, rather than a named cultivation sequence.

Appearance

The Ghost Painting’s ghost takes the form of an indistinct woman dressed in red, with unusually clear, pale hands 4.

• Female manifestation: Blurred facial features and a shadowy body; its hands appear solid, cold, and lifelike 4.
• Source painting: An oil painting approximately half a person’s height, enclosed by a bright-red frame. When revealed, its interior is empty grayness because the ghost has emerged 8.
• Surrounding haze: The source remains enclosed in a blurred gray region that excludes the combined golden flames of Yang Jian and Li Jun’s domain 8.
• Contained form: Two bright-red frames join into a heavy, double-sided oil painting depicting a shrouded black coffin with two bluish-gray arms embedded in its sides 10.

Abilities & Skills

Ghost Domain

The Ghost Painting contains an expansive gray-white world with distorted distances and multiple spatial layers 1 7 8.

• Its domain spreads over Dajing City and engulfs headquarters, filling the sky with drifting gray clumps 6.
• Streets, high-rises, and the ground can fold like paper, turning the surrounding world into a sealed rectangular box 7.
• Distances inside can become too great for the trapped handlers’ ghost domains to cross, while communications and positioning become unreliable 7.
• Its source occupies a different layer. Su Fan determines that every location within the painting world can lead to it, but cannot identify how to make that passage 8.
• Breaking into the domain does not guarantee an escape route: the opening made by Ye Zhen and Fang Shiming closes before they can evacuate Li Jun’s team 4.

Conversion into Paintings

The red-clad ghost can transform a target and the surrounding scene into an oil painting 4.

• After Ye Zhen strikes it, gray matter spreads along his arm and repeatedly turns his skin deathly gray 4.
• When its hand reaches toward his face, he begins becoming an oil painting while his Substitute Ghost seems to separate from him with the receding world 4.
• Fang Shiming interrupts the conversion with the Ghost Scissors, assisted by Li Jun’s Ghost Fire. A scorched, slit oil painting depicting Ye Zhen’s location remains afterward 4.
• The complete killing rule is not established; Ye Zhen cannot explain precisely why he was attacked 4.

Invasion Through Supernatural Materials

The Ghost Painting contaminates Liu San’s paper figures and turns them into gray matter 1 4.

• A Hong initially uses paper-figure corpses as canvases to preserve the surroundings’ original appearance, but both pigment and corpses are gradually consumed 1.
• Liu San later discovers that his paper figures outside the painting have also been invaded. Their scraps lose their color and become gray haze that spreads across headquarters’ walls 4.

Supernatural Suppression and Balance

The painting restricts other supernatural powers, although its effects vary by target 2 4 6 7.

• Yang Jian’s Ghost Eye is completely suppressed inside it, and Li Leping’s ghosts are also restricted 2 7 8.
• Its slight suppression of Ye Zhen’s Substitute Ghost is specifically attributed to acquired Ghost Messenger power 4.
• After drawing in the Hungry Ghost, it temporarily limits that ghost’s blue-black domain to approximately ten meters. The gray clumps overhead simultaneously stop moving 6.
• These balances are unstable. Yang Jian and Shen Lin warn that outside supernatural interference could immediately alter the confrontation 6.

Restart and Multiple Manifestations

The red-clad ghost can restart into its painting after being disabled 10.

• Fang Shiming cuts one manifestation in half with Li Leping’s assistance; its body fades, and the woman reappears inside the frame 10.
• A second Ghost Painting appears during the confrontation at the source, accompanied by another red-clad woman and Ghost Messenger 9.
• Containment depends on acting during the restart and preventing the ghost from emerging again 10.

Vulnerabilities and Countermeasures

• Ghost Scissors: Can interrupt its attacks and cut its manifestation, although Fang Shiming initially needs additional suppression before the scissors can pierce the woman in red 4 9 10.
• Ghost Fire: Can counter its manifestation. Yang Jian and Li Jun’s combined golden domain reveals the hidden source and suppresses the attacking woman 8 9.
• Coordinated suppression: Shen Lin, Li Leping, and the Wang family ghosts help create openings for attacks and containment 9 10.
• Mutual restraint: Its confrontation with another powerful ghost can produce a deadlock or balance rather than a decisive victory. Wang Xiaoming exploits this principle to send Li Jun’s team inside 14.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Earlier Ghost Painting Incident

Li Yang is caught in a Ghost Painting incident while traveling abroad and disappears while still an ordinary university student. After learning that he later became a powerful ghost handler, Yang Jian concludes that Li Yang must have controlled a ghost inside the painting. How he escaped remains unexplained 34 36.

Dajing City Outbreak

Wang Xiaoming’s containment arrangement relies on the Ghost Painting and Ghost Messenger restricting one another. At the beginning of the crisis, Li Jun, Liu San, A Hong, and Su Fan are already trapped inside that unstable balance. A Hong’s attempts to preserve the environment fail as gray matter consumes her painted paper corpses 1 14.

The Hungry Ghost’s outbreak disrupts the arrangement. Wang Xiaoming traces the crisis to Zhao Jianguo’s altered memories and a Hungry Ghost medium in A Hong’s makeup case. The Hungry Ghost moves toward the painting to assemble its missing pieces, indirectly causing the painting and Ghost Messenger to separate 2 4.

Ye Zhen and Fang Shiming break inside, but cannot immediately take the trapped team out. The red-clad ghost nearly converts Ye Zhen into a painting, revealing that it has acquired some of the Ghost Messenger’s suppressive power 4.

The painting’s domain subsequently engulfs Dajing City and headquarters. Yang Jian’s team witnesses it absorb the Ghost Messenger, only for the Messenger to restart and return. It also draws in the Hungry Ghost, Wang Chaling, and Shen Lin, creating another temporary supernatural balance 6.

Locating the Source

As the painting world folds into a sealed box, the separated teams struggle to reunite. Following Wang Xiaoming’s instructions, Fang Shiming severs the Hungry Ghost’s connection to A Hong’s makeup case. A Hong then paints a door that Li Jun uses to connect locations within the painting 7.

Yang Jian and Li Jun combine their ghost domains into golden flames, exposing the source painting on another spatial layer. The red-clad woman attacks A Hong while a Ghost Messenger hand reaches from the frame toward Ye Zhen. A second painting then appears, making the confrontation harder to contain 8 9.

Double-Sided Containment

After Yang Jian’s four-second restart creates an opening, the group forces the Hungry Ghost into the Ghost Coffin. Fang Shiming and Li Jun, supported by the others, drive the two red-clad manifestations back into their frames 10.

Ye Zhen and Fang Shiming press the paintings over the coffin from opposite sides. The frames impossibly enclose it and join into a double-sided painting, releasing everyone above Dajing City. Successive waves of supernatural light spread from the frame before withdrawing; the gray wave briefly reaches the outskirts of neighboring cities 10.

Headquarters personnel place the painting in a gold box. Yang Jian warns that the group has reached its limit and could do nothing further if it escapes containment again 10.

Later References and Imitations

Yang Jian later confirms that the source of the Ghost Painting was the entity sought by the Ghost Cabinet, allowing him to submit his next request in their transaction 19.

During the dream investigation with Lin Bei and Xiao Yuan, the painting’s gray domain and ghostly form appear again. These are imitations connected to the dream and Yang Jian’s fears, not evidence that the contained Ghost Painting has escaped; the copied forms lack the originals’ supernatural power 41 42.

Relationships

• Ghost Messenger — Opponent in a supernatural balance and the source of some of the painting’s acquired suppression. Ghost Messengers later emerge through both painting frames 4 6 9.
• Hungry Ghost — Drawn toward the painting by a missing supernatural medium; later trapped in its world and ultimately enclosed alongside it 4 6 10.
• Yang Jian — Helps expose its source, coordinates the containment effort, and identifies it as the Ghost Cabinet’s target 8 10 19.
• Fang Shiming — Rescues Ye Zhen from conversion, identifies effective counters, and helps join the two paintings around the Ghost Coffin 4 9 10.
• Li Yang — An ordinary student when caught in an earlier incident; becomes a ghost handler inside the painting and escapes by an unexplained means 34 36.