The Mysterious Revival: Starting by Controlling the Person-Hiding Ghost, Part 20

Its intentions could not have been clearer: it, too, wanted the Hunger Ghost's body.

Bloodstained newspapers filled the sky, fluttering down onto the faces of the surrounding ghost children. They soon covered their original faces and changed the patterns governing their actions as fierce ghosts.

The ghost children corroded by the newspapers did not die. Their skin gradually turned a scarlet close to the color of the newspapers, making them the third kind of ghost child present.

Countless ghost children of different skin colors collided and tangled with one another, constantly clashing and suppressing one another with their supernatural powers. The Hunger Ghost merely watched it all happen in silence, still making no move.

Following the path opened by the scarlet ghost children, the Newspaper Ghost stepped onto the mound with a newspaper in its hands and walked toward the Hunger Ghost.

At the sight, Yang Jian, waiting by his building's stairwell, frowned and spoke in a low voice.

"Looks like it's time for us to act. The ghost pretending to be my dad is more terrifying than Zhao Kaiming's ghost. If we don't do something soon, the Hunger Ghost will become my stepdad."

"No, wait a little longer," Jiang Li said, stopping Yang Jian. "The Wishing Ghost is more terrifying than this, and the Hunger Ghost still hasn't moved either. The unsolvable supernatural power hasn't been dealt with yet. If we enter the fray now, the danger we face will be more than we can bear."

"An unsolvable supernatural power... You mean that terrifying restart ability?" Yang Jian pondered for a moment and chose to keep waiting for an opportunity.

Things did indeed unfold as Jiang Li had expected.

After the Wishing Ghost was restrained by the newspapers, it struggled, bending down to pull the paper off its feet. But it did little good: it could not tear the paper away as fast as it stuck back on.

As the Newspaper Ghost passed the Wishing Ghost, it even reached for the Wishing Ghost's face, seemingly intending to peel off its skin.

Before that hand could touch the ghost child possessed by the Wishing Ghost, everything on the mound suddenly began to blur.

The flying newspapers returned to the Newspaper Ghost's hands as though time were flowing backward, and many of the scarlet ghost children reverted to their original colors.

This time, the Wishing Ghost did not look back at the Newspaper Ghost below. Instead, it swiftly approached the Hunger Ghost at the top of the mound with an uncanny gait.

As it passed the ghost children hanging ahead, the form of the ghost child it possessed suddenly flickered and blurred, passing straight through the ghost children blocking its path.

Bloodstained newspapers continued to drift through the air, sticking to the Wishing Ghost once more.

But this time, things were different.

The instant a newspaper stuck to the Wishing Ghost, a small-scale restart began.

After a moment of reversal, the Wishing Ghost moved back slightly, and the newspaper stuck to it flew back to where it had been an instant earlier.

When the newspaper tried to stick to the Wishing Ghost again, its form blurred, allowing it to evade the attack.

Once it avoided the newspaper's attack, it made its body solid again and continued toward the Hunger Ghost.

"Restart can be used like that? That's just unreasonable. To any ghost controller, it would probably be unsolvable."

Yang Jian, who had witnessed it all, spoke in shock.

"Yes, an ability like that is terrifying... It reminds me of an ability from an anime," Jiang Li mused. "Right, I think it was called Kamui. It also made the user intangible to avoid damage."

"But it's still uncertain which ghost will last until the end."

Chapter 30: The Newspaper Ghost's Retreat

In a residential complex near Dachang No. 7 Middle School.

More and more ghost children poured in from every corner of Dachang City, a sea of bodies that nearly filled the entire complex.

The ground was packed with ghost children, writhing and trampling one another, while the air was filled with countless others hanging from the Ghost Rope.

For the survivors in the complex, it was a nightmare frightening enough to scare a person to death.

Although most of them had shut their doors and windows and were safe from ghost children accidentally barging in for the time being, some were too timid to bear it. The moment they saw the writhing, twisting ghost children outside their windows, they began screaming in terror.

A piercing scream rang out from the third floor of a nearby apartment building. Someone seemed to have been frightened into a complete mental breakdown by the scene of a hundred ghosts parading through the night outside.

In an instant, densely packed bluish-black heads turned toward that apartment, and the ghost children began walking stiffly toward it.

Making no sound would have been fine, but a scream triggered the killing patterns of hundreds of third-stage ghost children almost instantly.

The next moment, the ghost children surged toward the apartment like a bluish-black tide. The tightly shut window did not last even a second before it shattered.

Panicked, desperate screams immediately rang out from inside, then quickly gave way to complete, deathly silence.

It was all over in less than half a minute, so fast that Yang Jian and Jiang Li did not even have time to react.

But they could not spare their attention at the moment and had no time to concern themselves with the residents making noise.

The Wishing Ghost was already very close to the Hunger Ghost at the top of the mound. The Newspaper Ghost seemed to have failed to stop it.

Both men knew full well that it might be time for them to act.

That half of the Person-Hiding Ghost had left Jiang Li's shoulder, becoming a black shadow on the ground that crept toward the Wishing Ghost.

Yang Jian had used his ghost domain to send away all the ghost children the shadow might pass on the ground, preventing the Person-Hiding Ghost from accidentally attacking other targets that met its killing pattern along the way.

The Person-Hiding Ghost's killing pattern now seemed much easier to use than before.

The essence of appearing and then disappearing had not changed, but now Jiang Li could not only use supernatural power to conceal himself; he could also send the Person-Hiding Ghost to hide in a shadow on the ground and actively approach a target he had set his sights on.

Perhaps after the Ghost Hand was controlled by the Person-Hiding Ghost, one of its shortcomings had been remedied: the condition requiring both feet to leave the ground no longer needed to be triggered.

Anyone who touched the shadow would be dragged underground by the pale Ghost Hand. Anyone who met the Person-Hiding Ghost's death pattern of disappearing three times would be struck by its curse of certain death upon contact.

When both conditions were met at once, they would trigger a double supernatural attack, producing an effect far greater than one plus one.

Still, Jiang Li was somewhat puzzled.

Ever since he had put on the Person-Hiding Ghost disguised as a sweater in front of the Newspaper Ghost, not only had its supernatural power grown stronger, but the stirring of its revival had also been calmed once more, even erased.

Judging by the Newspaper Ghost's ability... its supernatural power had probably altered the Person-Hiding Ghost's instinct to revive, leaving it in a state resembling dormancy once again.

As long as he did not force it into a head-on confrontation with a powerful fierce ghost, the Person-Hiding Ghost might never revive in his lifetime.

But the Newspaper Ghost would never be kind enough to take the initiative to solve his problem of a fierce ghost's revival.

Not unless it was plotting something.

At that thought, Jiang Li felt a sudden chill of belated fear.

Perhaps it was no accident that the Hunger Ghost and the Ghost Rope had appeared in this complex at the same time. Not just the Wishing Ghost, but the Newspaper Ghost as well had quietly made some arrangements without him or Yang Jian noticing.

In the original story, the Newspaper Ghost's scheme seemed to have been delayed for some reason, allowing the Wishing Ghost to control the Hunger Ghost without obstruction.

But this time, events had taken a different turn. What factor had changed?

Jiang Li had no time to think. The situation on the mound changed again.

The Wishing Ghost was less than ten meters from the Hunger Ghost, but its movements grew slower and slower, as though it could no longer walk.

Bloodstained newspapers stuck to it one after another, making its already indistinct, hazy form even more unstable.

Seeing this, Zhang Han, who was crouching beside Zhao Lei, asked in puzzlement, "Strange. Didn't you say that ghost could restart? With so many newspapers stuck to it, why isn't it restarting again? Can ghosts get tired too?"

"No. Ghosts aren't living people; they can't possibly get tired," Yang Jian said. "Some supernatural power we can't perceive is at work, interfering with its restart."

"It's the supernatural power to alter things," Jiang Li said thoughtfully. "I know a little about the ghost pretending to be your dad. Since its supernatural power can alter a person's perception, it can certainly alter some of a ghost's patterns too."

"Perhaps... one of its newspapers altered the Wishing Ghost's perception of itself, making it mistakenly believe it doesn't have the ability to restart. That would make it even less able to resist the Newspaper Ghost's corrosion."

By now, the Wishing Ghost was covered from head to toe in bloodstained newspapers, with not an inch of skin exposed. It had stopped moving altogether.

The Hunger Ghost was right in front of it, but it could no longer move even half a step.

The Hunger Ghost standing opposite opened its jaws, seemingly wanting to bite into and devour the fierce ghost before it.

Although the Ghost Rope hanging around its neck had been gnawed nearly beyond recognition, it seemed just short of breaking completely, preventing the Hunger Ghost from lunging forward to bite.

But that did not matter.

With nothing in its way, the Newspaper Ghost below soon reached the ghost child possessed by the Wishing Ghost.

It reached out with both hands, seemingly intending to remove the Wishing Ghost's face, but after a moment's hesitation, it gave up and began wrapping scraps of newspaper around the Hunger Ghost instead.

A pitch-black circular shadow had appeared at some point and was rapidly, silently approaching the Wishing Ghost.

The instant it made contact, a pale dead man's hand emerged from the shadow and gripped one of the Newspaper Ghost's feet tightly.

The Newspaper Ghost shuddered, and one foot was immediately dragged into the shadow, but the rest of its body barely managed to remain outside.

Jiang Li dodged several times and used the Person-Hiding Ghost's supernatural power to reach the Newspaper Ghost's side in an instant. He thrust out the eerie finger in his hand, capable of pinning down a fierce ghost.

The scraps of newspaper flying around them instantly grew agitated and surged wildly toward Jiang Li.

But the eerie finger was already in front of the Newspaper Ghost and would come down completely in the next instant.

The captured Newspaper Ghost froze for only a moment before moving again.

The seized foot suddenly broke off on its own and turned into a pile of newspaper scraps. Free to move again, it tried to raise the newspaper in its hands to block the finger.

Before it could raise the newspaper, another cold hand seized its head and shoved it forward.

That hand was the only part of the Wishing Ghost to break free of the newspapers. It seemed unwilling to accept its fate and had forcibly pulled one hand out of the paper.

The withered finger pierced the Newspaper Ghost's head, pinning it to the ground.

The Newspaper Ghost seemed somewhat surprised. The half of its face with the flesh turned inside out began to writhe ceaselessly.

Red paper scattered as the figure on the ground rapidly collapsed, turning into countless tiny scraps of paper that flew away on the wind.

The Newspaper Ghost had vanished.

Only half a piece of facial skin remained on the ground, the one it had taken from Zhao Lei's face.

Chapter 31: Zhao Kaiming's Assistance

The newspapers gradually vanished, and the Wishing Ghost lying on the ground fell still as well.

Now only the Hunger Ghost itself remained standing atop the mound, silently chewing on something as its pitch-black eyes looked down at Jiang Li.

Coarse scraps kept falling from its jaws, mixed with a short piece of worn hemp rope.

For some reason, it gave off a very strange impression at that moment, as though some unpredictable change were taking place.

Jiang Li abruptly grew alert. The surrounding ghost children also seemed to have been quiet for some time.

No, it was not that they had been quiet. They had disappeared.

Not a single one of the vast host of hanging ghost children remained in the air. Even the mound of ghost children beneath his feet was shaking, on the verge of collapse.

This was definitely not a good sign.

Looking at the Ghost Rope around the Hunger Ghost's neck, Jiang Li had a guess.

A truly terrifying guess.

He remembered that after the Ghost Rope revived, its supernatural power produced large numbers of identical Ghost Rope offshoots in the surrounding area, attacking passersby indiscriminately.

If those offshoots possessed the same supernatural power as the Ghost Rope itself, what would happen once the Hunger Ghost completely controlled the Ghost Rope?

The ghost children throughout the city would disappear, replaced by offshoot ghosts no different from the Hunger Ghost itself.

After all, the Hunger Ghost already possessed three known supernatural powers from fierce ghosts: the Ghost Teeth, the Ghost Shroud, and the Ghost Rope.

If every offshoot ghost afterward possessed all those supernatural powers, Dachang City would become a true purgatory on earth, a forbidden zone of death.

If that really happened...

Jiang Li immediately shook his head, deciding not to dwell on it. Right now, he had to contain the Hunger Ghost before it completed its transformation.

Using the Person-Hiding Ghost's supernatural power, Jiang Li and the shadow on the ground arrived in front of the Hunger Ghost almost in the blink of an eye.

Seeing Jiang Li approach the Hunger Ghost without regard for anything else, Yang Jian understood at once. He used his ghost domain to send the Coffin Nail flying, and it landed in Jiang Li's hand.

But instead of attacking Jiang Li in front of it, the Hunger Ghost strangely began to stagger backward. Dense darkness spread from its body, immediately enveloping Jiang Li from head to toe.