The Hunger Ghost Appears Without a Sound / Sun Yi Exits the Stage

He had walked dozens of paces already, so why was he still in the first-floor lobby?

A ghost wall?

It seemed the Hunger Ghost's ghost domain was affecting reality, causing certain unpredictable changes to the surrounding scenery.

But that was no great problem. As long as he was careful and didn't court death by charging recklessly through the ghost domain, he would generally be fine.

If he kept going step by step, it wouldn't take long to find the place where the golden box was kept.

With that, Jiang Li hesitated no longer and continued down the dim corridor.

After walking for an unknown length of time, he looked up.

The sign for the department in front of him stood out: Dermatology.

"Strange. It's been far too quiet all the way here. I haven't run into a single ghost infant."

"By rights, this place has already become the ghosts' lair. There can't be so few of them... Are they deliberately avoiding me?"

The idea was unnerving. Just thinking about it sent a chill down Jiang Li's spine.

People always said ghosts had no consciousness and mostly acted on their instinct to kill, but encountering something so strange made it impossible not to wonder whether they really did have minds of their own.

At last, the first stairwell corner appeared in Jiang Li's sight. The room where the golden box was kept was on the twenty-fourth floor, as he remembered it.

But the instant Jiang Li stepped into the stairwell, he froze.

Ghost children.

A densely packed mass of ghost children, every last one of them in the third stage.

Both sides of the staircase leading to the hospital's second floor were filled with seated third-stage ghost children. They looked like a huge group of middle schoolers on their lunch break, leaving just enough space for one person to squeeze through.

Those ghostly things had their black eyes open in the darkness, every one of them staring blankly downward.

If a living person accidentally triggered these ghost children's rules, they would likely die without a burial place in an instant.

Chapter 7: The Hunger Ghost Appears Without a Sound

"What's going on here?"

Looking at the ghost children covering the floor, Jiang Li fell into thought.

He didn't know why those ghostly things were all sleeping here together, or when they might suddenly wake up.

With so many ghost children, even though he had harnessed the crashed Person-Hiding Ghost, he would be killed in an instant the moment he showed himself.

Then not only would the severed hand be useless, but even the red ghost candle that could withstand vicious ghost attacks would probably burn out in an instant.

The stairs to the second floor were right in front of him.

Go, or not?

He had to decide immediately.

Under these circumstances, hesitating for even one more second could leave him beyond redemption.

Jiang Li gritted his teeth and resolutely stepped onto the staircase packed with ghost children.

That choice was undoubtedly the right one.

Not long after he stepped onto the stairs, a dense patter of footsteps came from the direction he had come.

The footsteps were slow and densely packed, their rhythm nothing like that of living people.

Besides, even all the ghost controllers outside the hospital put together couldn't have made such a dense patter of footsteps.

By a conservative estimate, at least twenty or thirty active ghost children were approaching him, and they were so close that they would run straight into him almost immediately.

Damn it, have the ghosts set their sights on me?

When did it happen?

Jiang Li grew anxious and climbed the stairs faster and faster.

The instant he reached the second floor, the stairway entrance on the first floor was swallowed by boundless blue-black darkness. Nothing remained.

But Jiang Li felt no relief at having escaped.

In front of him, a very unusual ghost child emerged and stiffly approached him.

The figure was covered in blue-black livor mortis, and the fingernails on its outstretched hands were long, thin, and smeared with blood.

The old-fashioned burial shroud it wore, covered from top to bottom in the character for "longevity," stood out starkly.

It was... a long-dead ghost controller who had harnessed two ghosts.

Now it should be called the ghost child Ye Feng.

But that wasn't the deadliest part.

Jiang Li's eyes widened. He could feel the Person-Hiding Ghost's supernatural mist around him being distorted and disrupted by a supernatural force.

The ghost domain in the hospital had undergone another extremely disastrous change.

At some unknown point, a figure in a windbreaker, its abdomen bulging high, had appeared and was gradually becoming clear beside Ye Feng.

It stood where it was, facing Jiang Li without moving.

In the gloom, Jiang Li saw its entire lower jaw begin to writhe. A few ragged fragments then fell from its mouth.

Immediately afterward, a pair of eyes unlike those of a living person opened and stared straight at Jiang Li.

Before he could react, the densely packed ghost children behind him silently opened their eyes and slowly stood up.

Outside the hospital gates.

"It's about time. We can go in now."

Wang Xiaoming looked at his watch as he spoke.

"Huh? Why did we wait so long to go in?" Sun Yi scratched his head and asked in confusion. "Didn't we agree to split up and act separately? Isn't it a little unfair to him for us to go in so late?"

Wang Xiaoming glanced at Sun Yi but offered no explanation.

"This is just a transaction. Fairness has nothing to do with it," Zhao Kaiming said with a cold sneer, leaning on his cane.

"All we did was trade a ghost candle for a helper who might or might not be reliable. Even if he dies in there, he'll have bought enough time for our operation, won't he?"

"You can turn anything into a conspiracy in that head of yours."

"Zhao Kaiming, you don't have some kind of persecution complex, do you? How about finding a psychiatrist in the hospital to fix your brain later?" Yang Jian, who was about to enter the hospital, looked back and mocked him without restraint.

Zhao Kaiming gave Yang Jian an icy look and said no more, leaning on his cane.

"There's no conspiracy. You're simply not in as good a condition as he is. Since he was confident he could go in alone, we let him draw the ghosts' attention a little longer, so we can retrieve what's in my office more easily. The plan to contain the source ghost can be postponed slightly," Wang Xiaoming said.

Soon, the ghost controllers followed Wang Xiaoming into the haunted hospital before them.

Before long, they arrived in the first-floor lobby.

The payment counter was deserted, and the walls were stained. There was nothing around them that seemed worth noting.

Just as they continued forward, a scream suddenly came from somewhere in the hospital.

"Ah!"

Someone in the group immediately frowned. "What's going on?"

"That's normal. A lot of patients who didn't evacuate in time are still in the hospital. The ghost infants in their bellies may have gotten impatient to crawl out," Wang Xiaoming said.

"Something's wrong," Yang Jian suddenly said in a low voice. "The smell of a burning ghost candle is lingering in the air. That Jiang Li lit one somewhere nearby. With a smell this strong, he must have burned through at least three-quarters of a ghost candle in one go."

"What? He wasted a ghost candle worth over a hundred million that quickly!" Zhang Han said, pained at the loss. "Looks like we shouldn't have given him that candle."

"Stop."

Wang Xiaoming suddenly raised a hand, signaling everyone to stop.

"Who's that?"

Following Wang Xiaoming's pointing finger, they spotted a mangled corpse slumped in a corner.

When they saw the corpse's face, someone lost his composure.

"Ye Feng? That's impossible!"

"He disappeared nowhere near this hospital. How could his corpse have ended up here?"

"One possibility," Wang Xiaoming said after bending down to examine the corpse for a moment, "is that he turned into a so-called fourth-stage ghost infant after he died, then came here."

"Both ghosts he had are gone. My preliminary conclusion is that the source ghost ate them."

"Is that so? Looks like the source ghost is nearby." Yang Jian patted the pure gold case on his back. "Let's find it and contain it in one decisive push."

Everyone nodded in agreement with Yang Jian's plan.

Suddenly, a rapid patter of footsteps came from the darkness ahead.

Everyone's heart tightened, and their bodies tensed.

"The ghost is coming. Everyone, get ready to meet it!" Zhang Han shouted in a low voice.

As the footsteps drew closer, the figure in the darkness became clearer.

"Wait, that doesn't look like a ghost."

The next moment, Jiang Li appeared in their sight, his face full of horror.

"Don't just stand there. The ghost is behind me."

"What?!"

The group, who had only just relaxed, grew tense again and turned their full attention to the space behind Jiang Li.

"He didn't die even after that. He really is something." Zhao Kaiming narrowed his eyes slightly and turned to look beside him.

There was nothing there, yet a hazy figure seemed to be faintly standing there.

Zhao Kaiming silently opened his mouth, communicating with the nonexistent figure beside him. "You think this guy will interfere with your plan, so you want to deal with him? Fine. There have been plenty of casualties along the way already. One more won't matter."

And so, a certain terrifying change quietly took place.

Chapter 8: Sun Yi Exits the Stage

"The space around us is changing. Has the ghost domain been affected?!"

"Could there be another vicious ghost?"

Wang Xiaoming stepped back several paces, his voice full of shock and uncertainty.

Jiang Li watched as the scene before him began to rewind, his expression growing increasingly grim.

This was probably a vicious ghost's restart ability. At this stage, of everyone present, only Zhao Kaiming's Wishing Ghost had the ability to restart a small area.

But he had barely interacted with Zhao Kaiming at all, so there was no question of a grudge.

It seemed his appearance had caused the Wishing Ghost on Zhao Kaiming to change certain plans, so it was willing to act ahead of time and risk exposure to eliminate an unstable factor like him.

The restart finally ended when the surroundings returned to the second floor.

The timing was neither early nor late, and for Jiang Li, it was quite deadly.