Mystery Revival: Starting by Controlling the Person-Hiding Ghost

But honestly, judging by what their group had just done, no matter what the ghost's killing pattern actually was, He Tianxiong should have died dozens of times over.

After all, when Guo You had entered using his own supernatural ability, he had merely walked normally and been found and killed by the ghost in less than a few minutes. There was no reason He Tianxiong should have survived so long without being attacked.

As Jiang Li continued to ponder, a pitch-black crow perched on one of his shoulders at some unknown point, facing He Tianxiong.

After staring for a few seconds, the crow flew down soundlessly and slipped into the darkness nearby, turning into a mass of feathers that twisted and swelled without cease.

A moment later, a pitch-black figure appeared in its place and walked off in a certain direction through the cave.

If Jiang Li himself could have seen this, his expression would undoubtedly have turned extremely grim. Not only did the figure look exactly like him, even the Person-Hiding Ghost on his shoulder had been replicated perfectly.

The ghost following He Tianxiong hesitated for a moment, as if considering something.

In the end, it dropped the corpse it had been dragging and turned toward the pitch-black figure.

After it left, He Tianxiong jerked his head up as though granted a pardon. His entire face was covered in cold sweat, and he looked behind him with lingering fear before finally confirming that the terrifying presence behind him had truly gone.

Soon, the clear ringing around them vanished again, and the entire cave returned to a suffocating silence.

After confirming that the figure behind He Tianxiong had disappeared.

Jiang Li became completely certain of two of his suspicions.

The Daoist priest and the master had both long since kicked the bucket.

This ghost's killing pattern would change as certain conditions changed.

However, the pattern of killing those who moved should exist; the ghost simply had not reached that pattern yet.

Thinking this, Jiang Li gradually came to a small downward slope with Zhang Mao, who was ahead of him.

After walking down for a few dozen meters, Zhang Mao stopped.

Though he did his best to keep his voice down, he still could not conceal the immense excitement in it.

"We're here... my god, it really does exist..."

"We're here?"

Jiang Li immediately looked in the direction of the flashlight beam.

There was indeed an underground hole before them, descending almost vertically. An upside-down corpse was wedged tightly inside it, as though someone had forcibly stuffed it in, leaving only its two feet exposed.

All that could be seen were two withered ankles, like those of a dried corpse, and dark blue pant legs stained with hard, dried mud.

It was hard to imagine what suffering it had endured in life, trapped in this narrow fissure in the rock dozens of meters underground.

But now, it was only a dormant fierce ghost.

Jiang Li fell into thought again.

How do we get this thing out?

At that moment, Zhang Mao glanced behind him, then asked Jiang Li in a low voice:

"The woman in the qipao behind us seems to want to come in. What should we do?"

"Let her in. It's too narrow here, so you go out," Jiang Li said.

Zhang Mao nodded, quickly took a photo of the corpse, and promptly retreated.

Liu Qingqing ducked inside right after him, holding a yellowed envelope, which she gently placed on the corpse's feet.

A bizarre scene unfolded.

After coming into contact with the envelope, the corpse that had been lodged deep in the hole underwent some obvious, unknown change. Its whole body abruptly shot a long way upward, leaving nearly more than half of it outside.

"Let's pull together and get the rest of it out."

Jiang Li spoke in a low voice, reaching for the corpse's pant leg as he did so.

But just before his hand caught the corpse's pant leg, a livid, blackish hand covered in corpse spots and bearing thick knuckles emerged from the darkness ahead.

The hand seized the corpse's pant leg first and pulled it out effortlessly, then vanished into the darkness with the entire corpse.

"That's impossible?!"

Jiang Li and Liu Qingqing let out low cries and reached forward at the same time, attempting to intercept the corpse.

But all that remained ahead was a smooth rock wall. The corpse was nowhere to be found.

Clearly, a Ghost Domain had affected reality.

There had only been a rock wall there all along, yet the ghost had been able to appear there out of thin air and snatch the corpse away.

Liu Qingqing's expression immediately turned grim as well.

As a second-floor messenger, no matter how slow-witted she might have been, she understood perfectly well that ghosts generally did not take the initiative to interfere with one another. Once such a thing happened, it meant that some terrifying change would occur in the two ghosts that had met.

This change was like an undocumented chemical reaction; no one knew what horrifying existence it would produce next.

Jiang Li frowned deeply and said in a low voice:

"The situation is completely out of control."

"Let's get out, warn the people outside to stay on absolute alert, and try returning from where we are."

But when the two turned to look back again, they found that there was no one behind them.

Chen Mo, Zhang Mao, and the others had vanished without making a sound, completely unnoticed by Jiang Li and Liu Qingqing.

"The others have disappeared. Most likely, that ghost's Ghost Domain is changing too, distorting the space around us," Jiang Li said quietly. "Don't wander around, or else..."

Before he could finish, he abruptly looked around, only to find that Liu Qingqing was already nowhere in sight.

All that remained around him were the cold, damp rock walls and darkness as dense as liquid. The flashlight was completely useless now; its beam was swallowed whole by the darkness before it could travel half a meter.

"..."

Jiang Li stood where he was for a moment, then expressionlessly tossed the flashlight aside and walked alone into the dense darkness before him.

He had to take the initiative to find ghosts, the ghosts lying dormant in this cave, before the active ghost found him.

Chapter 62: The Desperate Messengers

"This is bad. We've gotten separated from the others."

Sun Xin kept his voice down as he spoke.

He did not know exactly what had happened, but the darkness in the cave abruptly growing thicker was clearly an extremely bad sign.

"What do we do now? I can't tell which direction we came from anymore. If this keeps up, we're dead for sure."

Guo You spoke from behind Sun Xin.

The two of them were pressed tightly together, with a hard, cold rock wall beside them.

In the darkness, only one sound could be heard clearly.

The scraping friction of something being dragged came from an unknown place.

The two could sense that the space around them had not actually changed much. Their group seemed to have been separated, but in reality, they were still relatively close to one another.

The darkness obscured their sight and cut off their hearing, allowing only the oppressive dragging sound to spread maliciously in all directions.

"We can't delay any longer. We have to find Liu Qingqing as soon as possible. Only with her supernatural power might we escape alive."

Sun Xin spoke in a low voice.

"Guo You, use your supernatural power to scout the way one more time. Be quick, or we'll both die here."

"All right."

Guo You struggled inwardly for a moment, but ultimately agreed.

His condition was already terrible. The fierce ghost that existed within his consciousness was on the verge of revival.

Guo You could feel that if he died one more time in the simulated dream that followed, the fierce ghost would completely erase his living consciousness and take over his body.

But to get out alive now, he had no choice but to stake everything.

Guo You then unzipped the inner pocket of his jacket and took out a small sealed vial of gas.

He barely opened it and took a single sniff before his eyes rolled back and he slumped limply against Sun Xin's back.

In less than a moment, Guo You woke up again, his voice betraying a sense of exhaustion.

"There's a pitch-black figure approaching from the front left. It's probably that ghost. Let's go right."

"All right."

Without hesitation, Sun Xin picked the weakened Guo You up on his back, dropped to the ground, and crawled right along the rock wall.

But as he moved forward step by step, a powerful, nauseating stench of decay gradually emerged around him.

Before Sun Xin could make sense of the situation, his foot came down on something soft, rotten, and sticky on the ground, sinking almost all the way into it.

Immediately afterward, something ahead seemed to stop walking.

The instant he lifted his foot, Sun Xin felt whatever he had stepped on being dragged away.

Then a series of dull footsteps sounded ahead, bringing a sense of suffocation and oppression.

"Guo You, you damned bastard, if you're going to lead the way, then fucking do it right!"

Gritting his teeth, Sun Xin flung Guo You off his back and faced the darkness ahead, where the fierce ghost lay in wait, his face grave.

"Now this is really going to get me killed. Sure enough, when the chips are down, you still have to rely on yourself."

As he spoke, he took out a crumpled white slip of paper and a fountain pen.

The slip gave off an icy aura, and it was faintly stained with some strange, foul-smelling liquid.

Sun Xin had obtained it by chance in a ghost casino while delivering a letter. He had not been the only one to get one back then, but he was the only one who had come out alive without using it.

"I hope this collateral note can keep me alive. Even if I have to pay a painful price, it'll be worth it."

Holding the paper and pen against the rock wall, Sun Xin wrote quickly, muttering to himself as he did so.

Dark red blood flowed steadily from the fountain pen, forming several lines of bright red writing on the slip:

[Mortgagor: Sun Xin]

[Collateral: entire left arm]

[Request: one minute of freedom from attack for the mortgagor]

The instant something terrifying reached out to him, Sun Xin finally finished writing. He pressed a fingerprint onto the slip and thrust it into the darkness.

With that, Sun Xin managed to draw a breath.

According to his previous experience, after triggering a fierce ghost's killing pattern, he could mortgage a limb to cancel the attack the fierce ghost had yet to launch.

It was only an arm. As long as he could get out alive, that was no problem at all.

But the next moment, Sun Xin froze.

The slip he had just thrust into the darkness was pushed back by some bizarre force, while the presence opposite him seemed to make another distinct movement.

Seeing this, Sun Xin understood at once.

This fierce ghost was different from the ones he had encountered before. One arm was not enough to satisfy its conditions.

After taking back the slip, Sun Xin gritted his teeth and began writing again.