Chapter 54: Night Parade of a Thousand Ghosts (III)
“Yes!” Dozens of voices echoed from the mouths of the white-coated figures surrounding him. Their fingers worked furiously at their keyboards, commands issued at lightning speed.
“Sir!” At that moment, the door opened and a young officer with two stripes strode in quickly, saluted, and spoke in a low voice, “Bao’an City… the ten predation zones have moved.”
A chill flickered in Zhang Chenghai’s gaze.
The lesser spirits were insignificant. Their numbers were troublesome, but ultimately, it was only a matter of time. The true difficulty lay in the predation zones. Each one harbored a vengeful spirit of an underworld messenger’s caliber. There were countless cities like Bao’an across the nation; the Soul Detainers could scarcely keep up.
“Master Mei.” Zhang Chenghai closed his eyes, gritting his teeth as he spoke.
“I am here,” answered Mei, bowing and stepping forward.
Zhang Chenghai drew a deep breath, forcing himself to say, “Order the apprentice cultivators… to move out.”
Mei paused, unsure. “Sir, I must remind you—the apprentice cultivators… have not yet reached the underworld messenger level.”
“If they can stall one, that’s enough!” Zhang Chenghai’s voice was steely, tinged with blood and iron. “I said it before—this battle… victory is permitted, defeat is not!”
“Tomorrow, in every place, I want to see the banners of the living! No matter how many must be sacrificed!”
He closed his eyes and said, “Any responsibility I will bear. I trust… headquarters will approve my decision.”
Mei fell silent, then sighed after a few seconds. “There are only two or three hundred thousand who can cultivate out of one and a half billion… a ratio of five or six thousand to one… Since it is your order, I will pass it on…”
“Go.”
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Pale blue ghostly energy formed a vast sea of mist, enveloping the entire Bao’an City.
Inside the hotel, Qin Ye’s gaze burned like fire. In his eyes, thousands upon thousands of shadowy spirits carried blood-red lanterns inscribed with the character “Cao.” They resembled countless crimson pupils, surging through the city like a tide, ten million eyes searching relentlessly for his trail.
He was waiting.
Cao Youdao had made his move, reckless and unrestrained. How would the living respond?
What would you do?
Time ticked by; half an hour had passed since the outbreak of the spirits. Suddenly, at the heart of the city, Bao’an Square erupted with an intense, overwhelming aura!
“It’s begun…” He stared fixedly toward the central plaza, not far from where he stood. Hundreds of meters away, the Taiji-shaped square emitted a deafening hum, and then… it began to open slowly from the center!
The small garden above, the fountain, the benches… all parted amidst thunderous tremors. A statue, missing half its body and half its head, five meters tall, rose slowly from the underground.
As the statue emerged, Bao’an City’s parade of spirits seemed to pause. Under the enormous insignia, Cao Youdao looked up at the sky, holding a glass of red wine, and nodded after a long moment.
“The Bao’an City God statue… personally consecrated by the underworld. I heard it was smashed during the destruction of the old customs, yet it was hidden here…”
“Well done… So that campaign was just a pretext to conceal these things? The world of the living struggles more fiercely than I imagined…”
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Boom! An indistinct pressure swept through the city, making the ground tremble. Countless citizens at home felt it. Soon after, seven lanterns around the City God statue lit up one by one. On the statue’s half-remaining head, its sole stone eye slowly opened.
Swish!
A ripple of pure white swept across the ground. In the next moment, a faint glow appeared around Bao’an City, vanishing almost instantly.
Bao’an City, Huizhou Province: the supernatural alert line was fully activated!
From this moment on, the entire city was sealed—no entry, no exit. It would become an arena for the living and the dead. And moreover… it was a call for aid sent to other cities and the provincial capital!
At the same time, the entire city was ablaze with light!
From the direction of the armed forces, the military, the police barracks, the police station… dozens, even hundreds of vehicles rolled out like a dragon, shattering the deathly silence of the night.
“Hoo…” In the hotel, Qin Ye saw the distant sea of red lanterns pause in unison, then, as if mad, charge toward the military vehicles. He took several deep breaths, calming his restless heart, closed his eyes, and desperately sensed the strongest ghostly aura.
Rumbling… In his mind, the whole city trembled; yang energy, true energy, and ghostly energy collided in a world-shaking clash. He paid no heed to other places, for he had only one target.
Predation zone!
“Here!” Seconds later, he opened his eyes, donned a mask, as chilling winds whipped through the room, and dashed out.
Tonight… the hunters were not alone!
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East District, Shuncheng Street, Plot 28, Bao’an City—a thirty-story abandoned building.
Once rumored to become Bao’an’s tallest structure, city leaders had attended the ribbon cutting. Yet after five years, the real estate company’s funding collapsed overnight, leaving only this unfinished tower.
No one knows when it began, but this place has become the city’s greatest urban legend. It is said that anyone entering after six o’clock never leaves alive. By day, no bodies are found. Some say that every night, a woman can be seen dancing on the rooftop from nearby windows.
But tonight, atop the city’s foremost haunted building, three men in camouflage stood back to back, watching the roof above with utmost vigilance.
This was the rooftop.
A place untouched by human feet.
Where legend says, at midnight, a woman dances.
Bloodstains covered the surroundings, walls drenched with copious blood. Who knows how many had died here—perhaps vagrants, perhaps others. And that dancing woman, hung like a spider above them.
She wore a filthy dress, once white, now caked with crimson blood and dust. Dense pale-blue ghostly energy seeped from her body. Her hair, black and dirty, hung in clumps, exposing the pallid skin beneath, mottled with purplish corpse marks. Her teeth were black, her mouth oozing foul, dark red blood. One blood-red eye peered out from beneath her hair, her throat emitting short, continuous, hair-raising sounds.
“Sss… Haa…”
She suddenly opened her mouth to an exaggerated degree, and her black hair erupted behind her, like a vast web, stabbing wildly at the three men!
“Dodge!” The leader, a square-faced young man with resolute features, shouted. The three leapt away instantly, but though their reflexes were sharp, the ghost woman was faster! Her hair whipped and lashed through the air, and with three muffled grunts, the men were swept five or six meters away.
“Cough… cough, damn it!” The square-faced youth clutched his chest, cursing, “They said she was a schoolteacher raped to death! This is more like anti-rape! How desperate was she?!”
“You have the nerve to joke?” The tall man on the side wiped blood from his mouth, leaning against the wall to stand. “This is Bao’an’s first predation zone… at least fifteen years of vengeful haunting… my ribs are broken…”
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“All together! If we drag this out, we’ll die!” The last, a bespectacled, scholarly man, face pale and lips bloodied, trembled as he rose.
“Sss… Haa…” The ghost woman’s head spun three hundred sixty degrees atop the ceiling, as if sizing them up. The three men dashed into action. The square-faced man drew a rope from his waist, adorned with over a hundred talismans.
“Go!” he shouted, retreating as he spoke. The bespectacled man took a deep breath, his chest swelling unnaturally. Meanwhile, the tall man grabbed both ends of the rope, pulling it taut like a giant bow.
Crackling… The air was filled with the tense twang of bowstrings, the tall man’s eyes bulging, muscles flexing. With a thunderous shout, a muffled impact sounded, and the bespectacled man spat out a meter-long rocket toward the ghost woman!
Boom!!!
A mass of fire exploded several meters wide on the ceiling. The square-faced man, sweating and gasping, asked, “Is it over?”
“No…” replied the bespectacled man, voice trembling, “She’s… on me…”
The other two froze, then whipped their heads to look at him—only to see his chest swelling ever larger, rising to a full meter!
Next moment, two bloodied, corpse-marked hands stretched out from inside his shirt, seizing his throat!
They could see, through the camouflage, the ghost woman’s twisted face, her gaping mouth lined with foul black teeth!
She was not dead… not even injured…
With a shout, the other two rushed at the bespectacled man, icy fear gripping their hearts.
Was this the power of an underworld messenger-level ghost?
Compared to the lesser spirits they’d trained against… the difference was vast as heaven and earth.
The three were among the best apprentice cultivators, having fought together many times, but against a true vengeful spirit, they were utterly outmatched…
They moved quickly, but the vengeful spirit was faster. In a flash, her black nails dug into the bespectacled man’s neck, slicing clean through as blood poured out. She opened her mouth, nearly a foot wide, finally emerging from his camouflage.
“Stop!” “You’re courting death!”
The two men’s eyes were bloodshot. The bespectacled man bit his trembling lip, reaching for a wooden sword at his waist, ready to stab, when suddenly, a voice rang out.
“Hm? Little monsters?”
“I wondered why all the attached spirits in this predation zone were gone—so there are still a few reckless little ghosts left…”
The ghost woman, her mouth hovering over the bespectacled man, paused in confusion.
The three men were stunned.
Before they could react, the ghost woman let out an incredulous shriek, and a hand seized her hair. With a powerful tug, the woman—who had been unstoppable—was dragged entirely out of the bespectacled man’s shirt!
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