Mysterious Revival: Starting by Controlling the Person-Hiding Ghost

Jiang Li stood completely motionless, his head hanging limply. At some point, the ghostly face on his neck had fully emerged.

At the sight of the eerie scene, Zhao Kaiming was suddenly unsure what to make of it. He muttered to himself:

"This kid's dead, and then the malicious ghost revived?"

"Leaving him alone will always be a problem. I'll deal with him now."

After thinking it over, Zhao Kaiming decided to leave Yang Jian, whose ghost eyes could no longer open, and kill Jiang Li first, suspecting the ghost inside him had revived.

But he had barely taken one step when he stopped again.

Jiang Li was nowhere to be seen. Only the Hunger Ghost remained, motionless where it stood.

"Good thing I had it take control of this Hunger Ghost beforehand. Otherwise, I'm afraid what happened last time would have happened all over again."

"But that kid seems to have used some method to leave. I can't sense his presence anymore."

"Wait, where's Zhang Han?"

Zhao Kaiming turned around again, only to discover that Yang Jian, whom he had thrown on the ground, had also disappeared at some point.

"Don't bother looking for them. I'm not dead yet."

A hoarse voice suddenly rang out.

Jiang Li appeared again, his voice coming simultaneously from the two mouths above his neck.

"The price of this move is too steep. Even the malicious ghost inside me that had shut down is about to wake up. I was supposed to use this on the Hunger Ghost, but the ghost inside you is far too terrifying..."

As he spoke, Jiang Li's figure flickered in and out of sight, closing in on Zhao Kaiming at an extremely unnatural speed.

"Restart! Hurry up and restart!"

Zhao Kaiming fired repeatedly at Jiang Li in a panic, growling to urge on a certain ghost inside his body.

But before he could shout the words, a withered, blackened finger had already landed lightly between his brows.

"I'll take you out."

Countless supernatural curses, each certain to kill, erupted all at once, spreading outward from Zhao Kaiming's forehead.

A deathly gray rapidly spread across Zhao Kaiming's face. Even the ghost that had remained attached to his body gave no response, quietly falling still.

In the last moment of Zhao Kaiming's conscious awareness,

he saw only a gaunt, sunken dead face. Its eyes, clouded with white film, looked down at him as it smiled.

Zhao Kaiming fell.

All that remained on the ground was a corpse with a blackened, rotting head.

But Jiang Li knew full well:

Zhao Kaiming might be dead, but the ghost inside his body definitely had not been dealt with.

For now, though, he could no longer concern himself with that.

Because the Person-Hiding Ghost was about to revive.

Chapter 18: Two People Hanged Together

"What happened?"

"I'm still alive. Where's Zhao Kaiming?"

Zhang Han slowly came to and sat up on the ground, looking around in utter confusion.

His back was still covered in blood, but the bleeding had stopped.

What he didn't know was that a black fingerprint had appeared on the vivid, glaring malicious ghost tattoo on his body, temporarily suppressing the ghost's revival.

Zhang Han then noticed Zhao Kaiming's corpse on the ground and got a fright.

"Whose corpse is that? Zhao Kaiming's?"

"Finally awake, Zhang Han?"

Jiang Li, who had been waiting nearby for a long time, slowly raised his head and spoke in a low voice.

"Good thing you woke up. A few minutes later, and Yang Jian and I would both have been beyond saving."

"Huh?" Zhang Han scratched his head in confusion. "What happened?"

"Holy shit, why's Yang Jian convulsing on the ground? Is his malicious ghost about to revive too?"

"Long story short, pry Yang Jian's hand open and see if he's still holding anything," Jiang Li said.

Zhang Han didn't dare waste time. He immediately leaned over the unconscious Yang Jian and forced his tightly clenched hand open.

"There's something."

"Looks like... a small piece of soap. It's almost completely melted."

"Good, it hasn't melted completely. Don't touch the soap," Jiang Li said. "Next, keep following my instructions. Don't doubt them for a second, or there'll be serious trouble."

"Looks like things have gotten worse than I thought," Zhang Han said. "Don't worry. Before we set out, Professor Wang told me to trust you and Yang Jian completely from here on. Whatever you say, I'll do."

"Now search Yang Jian's pockets. Find a hemp rope covered in gold foil," Jiang Li said.

"Found it. What next?"

"Then..."

Jiang Li paused briefly, then said with absolute certainty:

"Loop one end of the rope around Yang Jian's neck, then loop the other end around Zhao Kaiming's neck. Be quick."

"That's a pretty crazy thing to do, but I'll do it."

Watching Zhang Han at work, Jiang Li couldn't help swallowing.

It was a breathtakingly bold idea.

So bold that Jiang Li was willing to gamble with his own life.

After all, if he lost the bet, Yang Jian would perish here for good, and there would be no Yang Jian in the future to dominate the supernatural era alone.

But Jiang Li firmly believed his guess was right.

The supernatural had its rules, and finding those rules meant survival was possible.

He remembered that when he first obtained this length of Yin-Yang Ghost Rope, the note in the box had said:

[When the rope rises, one lives, one dies.]

The rules of the supernatural made no mistakes.

The people he had Zhang Han hang were one living and one dead, exactly matching the rule on the note: "one lives, one dies."

There were only two possible outcomes.

One was that the dead man would come back to life, and the living man would die for good.

The other was that the living man would live even better, while the dead man would be dead as dead could be.

Jiang Li firmly believed that only the second outcome would occur.

Just as Zhang Han finally finished looping the rope around both men, a certain supernatural rule was triggered.

The center of the ghost rope began to rise slowly, lifting the bodies at either end little by little, their backs facing Jiang Li and Zhang Han.

Seeing this, Jiang Li suddenly remembered something and spoke up.

"Wait."

"What is it? Did I do something wrong?" Zhang Han asked, puzzled.

"No, you did well," Jiang Li said thoughtfully. "It's just that I'm in very bad shape right now and can't move. Carry me around to their front."

"Sure, but why?" Zhang Han asked in confusion as he hoisted Jiang Li's heavy body onto his back.

"Seen from the front, Yang Jian is on the left end of the rope," Jiang Li replied. "I once heard that if you have to choose between two parallel paths, the left is usually the better choice."

"In other words, I put more stock in the idea that the left means life and the right means death."

The two stood in front of Yang Jian, quietly waiting for the outcome.

Time ticked by.

Two chilling presences appeared at the ends of the ghost rope, as though two figures had materialized out of thin air, superimposed over Yang Jian and Zhao Kaiming.

The figure on the left had a fierce, twisted face and tightly furrowed brows, as if it were undergoing tremendous pain.

The figure on the right was the exact opposite. Its face was calm and completely expressionless.

Feeling uneasy, Zhang Han couldn't help asking Jiang Li:

"The figure on the right looks a little more like a living person. Maybe..."

"There's no maybe," Jiang Li cut him off. "Only the living feel pain. The one on the left is alive."

As soon as he finished speaking,

Yang Jian's body suddenly began to convulse violently, swinging back and forth on the rope.

From Jiang Li and Zhang Han's perspective,

Yang Jian's lips gradually turned the purplish black of a dead man's. Numerous bluish-black corpse spots appeared on his once-fair face at a speed visible to the naked eye. The Headless Ghost Shadow on the ground also began to squirm restlessly, slowly sinking into Yang Jian's body.

Zhao Kaiming, on the other hand, had not only escaped any attack but had also come back to life at some point. His chest began to rise and fall visibly.

"This is bad. Yang Jian's condition is getting worse, but Zhao Kaiming is about to wake up. I'm afraid we got it wrong."

Seeing this, Zhang Han could no longer stand still. He wanted to go forward and take Yang Jian down from the ghost rope.

"Don't move. Once this supernatural process has been triggered, it can't be interrupted," Jiang Li said sharply. "Unless you want to get us all killed."

Even at this point, Jiang Li kept his eyes fixed on the two men hanging from the ghost rope, firmly convinced that his judgment was right.

Hearing this, Zhang Han had no choice but to stop and continue waiting to see how the two men changed.

Suddenly,

Jiang Li noticed that Yang Jian's throat and cheeks were bulging, as if something were blocking his windpipe.

"Zhang Han, there seems to be something in Yang Jian's mouth. Pry it open and take a look."

"All right. I'm just a tool here anyway," Zhang Han said helplessly, then walked toward Yang Jian.

But before he could pry it open, Yang Jian's mouth suddenly opened on its own.

A large amount of black foam poured from his mouth and nose at once, bringing with it an indescribable stench of decay.

The foam didn't fly everywhere. As though directed, all of it flew toward Zhao Kaiming and burrowed into his nostrils and ears.

In an instant, Zhao Kaiming's face, which had taken a long time to recover and only just begun to regain its color, turned deathly gray again. Even the skin all over his body began to swell and develop corpse spots.

The sight made Zhang Han's hair stand on end, and goosebumps covered his body.

Jiang Li frowned and said thoughtfully:

"That's probably the ghost in the Corpse Oil Soap. It seems to exist in the form of foam... so is it Ghost Foam?"

But the strange changes were not over yet.