The Mysterious Revival: Starting by Controlling the Person-Hiding Ghost, Part 14

But, incredibly, even after being gnawed on for so long, Yang Jian remained completely unharmed, without the slightest change.

Zhao Kaiming, who hung from the other end, was covered in wounds. His face had been mangled beyond recognition, with the bones exposed.

Until he died completely, the Ghost Rope would continue transferring all the damage Yang Jian suffered to him.

"Huh? Why did the hand on Yang Jian's face fall to the ground?"

Zhang Han, who had been watching from the side, noticed the severed hand on the ground and was puzzled.

"Why is it clutching a crumpled piece of paper?"

The Human Skin Paper struggled and writhed wildly in the severed hand's palm, but it could not break free no matter what it did.

Seeing that all its struggles were futile, the Human Skin Paper stopped moving again and once more pretended to be an ordinary, motionless object.

Just as Zhang Han was about to take a closer look at the severed hand and the Human Skin Paper,

a slightly hoarse voice sounded beside him.

"Zhang Han, Zhang Han."

"Who's calling me?"

Zhang Han turned and saw that Jiang Li, who was lying on the ground, was speaking. Shocked, he asked, "Jiang Li? Didn't your vicious ghost already revive?"

Jiang Li raised his head with difficulty and said:

"It did start to revive, but I'm not completely dead yet. The ghost inside me seemed to be stimulated by something just now and fell briefly dormant."

"I gave Yang Jian a vicious ghost's severed hand earlier. It seems to have revived now, so you'd better be on your guard against it." Jiang Li glanced at what was happening around the Ghost Rope and immediately understood everything.

The Hunger Ghost had eaten Zhao Kaiming.

That was just as well.

After all, the entire Hunger Ghost Incident had been allowed to run its course by Zhao Kaiming, the person in charge of Dachang City. Even if the Wishing Ghost had instigated and directed him, he still deserved to die ten thousand deaths.

Now that he had fed himself to a ghost, Zhao Kaiming had met a fitting end.

Jiang Li pondered for a moment, then continued:

"Yang Jian should wake up soon. The Hunger Ghost has almost finished eating Zhao Kaiming's body, after all, so there's no reason for him not to wake up."

"When he does, tell him about my vicious ghost's revival and have him come give me a hand suppressing it."

"All right."

Zhang Han replied, but when he looked again, he found that the pale severed hand on the ground was gone, leaving only a crumpled sheet of Human Skin Paper.

Zhao Kaiming's body was still hanging from the Ghost Rope, reduced almost to an empty skeleton. The vicious ghost attached to him also seemed to have been damaged and was gradually separating from his body.

As Zhao Kaiming's body twitched, a mass of murky black bubbles emerged from his mouth and nose and slowly floated toward the sky above Dachang City.

Blurred human faces faintly appeared on the surfaces of some of the bubbles. One face was twisted and fierce, as though it had suffered tremendous pain in life.

Zhang Han watched the bubbles fly away, but did not dare interfere.

To him, any supernatural thing present was incomparably deadly and could take his life with ease.

"That ghost is still gnawing on Yang Jian's body. Even though Zhao Kaiming's body is still taking the damage, I can't tell when this will end."

"Damn it, should I intervene or not? I could end up getting myself killed without even dealing with the ghost."

Zhang Han felt the gruesome gash on his back, and his heart trembled.

As he hesitated, a circular black shadow appeared on the ground at some unknown point and slowly swam toward Yang Jian's body before his eyes.

"What's that?"

Zhang Han wasn't sure exactly what the shadow was, but a scene from a movie suddenly flashed through his mind.

A shark hidden beneath the water looked like a shadow like that too.

As though to confirm Zhang Han's guess,

the shadow reached Yang Jian and slowly extended something black from beneath him.

Judging by its outline, Zhang Han guessed that it might be a dead person's hand.

No.

There was no need to guess anymore. It was a hand.

It had clamped tightly around Yang Jian's exposed ankle, gripping him so hard that it seemed intent on dragging his entire body into the earth.

Chapter 21: Hongfa Temple in the Dark

"Where did he go?"

"He just got dragged into the ground like that?!"

Zhang Han lost his composure and stood there completely dumbfounded.

Just now, a bizarre hand had reached out of the shadow beneath the ground and grabbed Yang Jian's ankle.

In the blink of an eye, Yang Jian had vanished from the Ghost Rope, and Zhao Kaiming on the other end had disappeared along with him.

Had that dead hand taken out two people at once, even with the Ghost Rope still in effect?

Wasn't that taking the joke a little too far?

While Zhang Han's thoughts ran wild, a hand suddenly landed on his shoulder.

"Zhang Han, what's going on?"

"How come I woke up hanging from the Ghost Rope, with the Hunger Ghost standing right in front of me? If I hadn't opened my ghost domain quickly, I would've been eaten. What have you and Jiang Li been doing?"

Yang Jian turned his head, still somewhat unaccustomed to moving it. The several ghost eyes open on his forehead rolled uneasily a few times, then all fixed on the Hunger Ghost beside the Ghost Rope.

And on Zhao Kaiming's corpse, which was almost entirely buried, with only a small portion of its head still exposed.

"Wait, is Jiang Li dead? Why is he lying on the ground without moving?"

"Yang Jian? You're finally awake!"

Zhang Han, enveloped in red light, was both surprised and delighted. He hurriedly said:

"Jiang Li's vicious ghost is about to revive, and he can't move for now. He said to have you help him as soon as you woke up."

"Is that so? I understand."

The red light flashed.

A sheet of yellowish-brown Human Skin Paper suddenly appeared in Yang Jian's hand.

Holding it by one corner, he murmured:

"This thing really is creepy. It even opened the gold box I had in my pocket. I have no idea what the Human Skin Paper did while I was unconscious."

"I'll have to treat it with more caution from now on... For example, before each operation, I could use gold to bury it several thousand meters underground."

Yang Jian then used his ghost domain to move all three of them to a corner of the sports field.

It was a full hundred meters away from the Hunger Ghost.

About twenty minutes later.

Jiang Li slowly opened his eyes. Seeing the scarlet ghost domain around him, he immediately understood that Yang Jian had woken up, and said:

"Yang Jian, you took a little too long to wake up."

"I shouldn't be too late. At least you're still alive," Yang Jian replied.

In the red light, Zhang Han looked at Jiang Li and felt that something about him had changed.

"Strange, where did the ghost face on your neck go?"

"That's the problem," Jiang Li said helplessly. "While I wasn't paying attention, the ghost inside me dragged half its body out of mine. Now I can only sense half a ghost in my body."

"So you mean the ghost ran away from home, and now you need us to help find it," Yang Jian said. "No wonder I found extra ghosts in my ghost domain just now. Yours might be one of them."

"That's about the size of it, but the strange thing is, I still seem to have some connection to the half that escaped. It feels like a lotus root severed with its fibers still joined."

Jiang Li pondered aloud, "We'd better find it quickly. If the Hunger Ghost eats it, I'm afraid something terrible will happen. I could also die on the spot from a supernatural imbalance."

"I understand, but you're already in bad enough shape. Are you still coming with Zhang Han and me?" Yang Jian asked.

"I've long heard that your Headless Ghost Shadow can command and control other people's bodies. Just use it to take me along. I won't be at ease unless I'm there in person," Jiang Li said calmly.

"We haven't spent much time together, but I still have a lot of faith in your character, Detective Yang. Don't let me down."

"As you wish, then. I'm in good shape right now anyway, so I'm not worried about my vicious ghost reviving."

A tall, headless shadow rose from the ground and gradually sank into Jiang Li's body.

An indescribable chill and numbness swept over him, taking over his entire body except for his head.

The next moment, Jiang Li involuntarily climbed to his feet and even stretched his limbs in a convincing imitation of Yang Jian.

"This feels really weird. I won't want to experience it a second time," Jiang Li said with a frown.

"Uncomfortable?" Yang Jian sighed. "Looks like I got the wrong idea. I thought your body would be stiff after lying on the ground for so long, so I stretched your limbs for you. But if you don't like it, never mind."

"Do fewer unnecessary things and let's get going," Jiang Li said. "The longer the night, the more dreams."

Yang Jian took out his satellite phone and glanced at it. "It's been over ten hours since we set out. We really do need to pick up the pace. I told headquarters I'd resolve this incident within five days."

"But we used too many resources on Zhao Kaiming. Now we don't have a trump card powerful enough to settle things in one blow and directly restrain that Hunger Ghost."

"What do you mean?" Zhang Han asked.

"I know of something else we can use to restrain vicious ghosts, but we'll have to go somewhere to get it," Yang Jian said.

As soon as he said that, Jiang Li understood what Yang Jian had in mind.

He was going to get the Coffin Nail.

"Let's go together. I could use some more time to get myself back in shape."

"All right."

"But that place is rather unusual. Don't touch things at random when we get there."

As Yang Jian spoke, the five ghost eyes on his face cast an even brighter red light, as though it had been poured from fresh blood.

A scarlet road immediately appeared before the three of them, leading to a place.

Hongfa Temple in Dachang City.

The red light faded, and the three of them were already inside the temple.

"This is the temple's Mahavira Hall. I've been here a few times before," Zhang Han said, looking around. "There doesn't seem to be anything special about it. Is what we're looking for really here?"

"It's definitely here, but we'll have to search for it. It's a rusty Coffin Nail." As Yang Jian spoke, he began rummaging through the hall.

Jiang Li stayed where he was, stroking his chin as he pondered a few things.

The Headless Ghost Shadow at his feet stretched out, becoming almost a thin black line connecting Jiang Li and Yang Jian, allowing Jiang Li to move on his own using the ghost shadow.

Suddenly, a bald head poked out from a corner of the hall, and someone walked in shakily with a flashlight.

"W-who are you? What are you doing here in the middle of the night?"

When the monk got a clear look at the frightening bloodstains on the three of them, he began to tremble with fear and said in a faint voice: