Chapter 220: Death
“Hmm… At least the escape route is no problem. Even if this place has danger, I can still escape back through the door frame.”
After glancing at the door frame behind him, Zhang Qian stopped paying attention to it and began checking his own condition.
Although the waiter said that supernatural phenomena would be strengthened after entering the dining area, based on the perceived situation, there seemed to be no change.
Moreover, the influence of the dining area on body form also did not appear.
“Speaking of which, I don’t have any fierce ghost parts on my body. Besides true qi, there’s no difference from an ordinary person, so I should have turned into that appearance of the waiter.”
The only difference might be that the waiter is a starved ghost, while he himself is a starved ghost with a built-in white LED light?
But when he lifted his palm, the arm in the darkness did not become withered and emaciated; the skin was still fair.
The cracks on it had not disappeared either, densely like a large net enveloping Zhang Qian’s hands.
Perhaps it was the supernatural influence of the severed limb ghost that allowed him to retain his original appearance?
Moreover…
He touched his pocket; the notebook, handgun, and such items were still quietly lying in it, including the long gown stripped from the audience member on his body, which was also intact.
Not only that.
With a slight thought from Zhang Qian, several ghost hands immediately crawled out from the edge of the darkness, circled around in front of him, and then crawled toward the depths.
Watching the ghost hands disappear into the darkness, he silently withdrew his gaze. “The restrictions on items carried on the body and supernatural power should have disappeared, and the number of ghost hands that can be summoned seems to have increased.”
Obviously, those constraints only targeted customers and could no longer affect Zhang Qian, who had become the shopkeeper.
But the problem was that eliminating these restrictions was not Zhang Qian’s purpose; he had entered here to leave from here.
“No feeling of detachment has appeared. Is there some problem somewhere?” Zhang Qian murmured.
However, the surroundings remained completely silent; except for the occasional sound of ghost fingernails scraping the floor, there were no other movements.
Where had that waiter guy run off to…
Puzzled, he raised his head, and only then did Zhang Qian discover that the waiter was lying on the floor not far away, limbs spread wide open, seemingly having lost consciousness.
“Something’s up?” Zhang Qian frowned, his line of sight sweeping over the surrounding darkness.
There were no other things present. Could there be some invisible fierce ghost here too?
He cautiously walked toward the waiter.
Dull footsteps echoed sporadically in the pitch black space, feeling somewhat strange, but after looking around left and right, he indeed found no other figures.
Moreover, the source of this sound was indeed from under Zhang Qian’s feet, but this force seemed off.
“The rhythm and position of the footsteps are completely identical to mine, but I didn’t use much strength; the movement shouldn’t be this loud…”
The moment that feeling appeared, Zhang Qian had consciously lightened the force on his feet, even tiptoeing.
However, the footsteps that followed like a shadow were still dull. Just listening to the sound, they didn’t even seem like footsteps, more like a meat mountain smashing the ground one thud after another.
This feeling was simply like there was a person overlapping with Zhang Qian, moving along with his actions.
Before Zhang Qian could think more, he had already reached the waiter under that eerie footsteps sound.
Looking at the waiter on the ground, Zhang Qian could only withdraw his thoughts. “For now, it’s just the sound. Since it hasn’t launched an attack yet, I’ll ignore it first.”
After all, it was an unknown supernatural space; some incomprehensible phenomena weren’t unacceptable.
Rather, what was the reason this waiter sprawled on the ground?
Maybe asking him directly would be the easiest way to get answers.
Looking at the waiter, who resembled dried bones in the appearance of a starved ghost, Zhang Qian did not hesitate and poked his kidney with the wooden stick.
“Hey hey? Still alive?”
The waiter’s body swayed from this force but showed no sign of waking up.
Asleep? Or rather… already dead?
He turned his head to check the surroundings, confirmed no other threats, then squatted down to carefully observe this guy’s state.
He reached out to check; there was no breathing from the nasal cavity, but given this appearance, it wouldn’t be strange even without breathing.
There were plenty of wounds on his body—cheeks, throat, abdomen… many gruesome and terrifying wounds openly exposed, revealing the corrupted rotten flesh inside.
But these injuries should have been left from the previous meal and had no relation to the waiter’s unconsciousness.
“No obvious external injuries, so it must be supernatural power, right? And the kind that can injure from afar, but why target this guy?”
After another attempt to wake him failed, Zhang Qian frowned at the surrounding environment.
Probably the waiter wasn’t unconscious but already dead.
However, given his near-fierce ghost posture, truly dying wouldn’t be easy; the greater possibility was that he had crashed.
Something lurked in the darkness, capable of defeating a fierce ghost in one strike; its terror was probably something even Zhang Qian himself couldn’t withstand.
“Good thing it targeted the waiter first; otherwise, caught off guard, I’d have a hard time blocking such an attack too, right?”
After silently mourning for the waiter for half a second in his mind, Zhang Qian immediately summoned more ghost hands. This time, he didn’t let them delve into the darkness but had them form a circle, scattered around.
Although the ghost hand’s strength wasn’t enough to stop a fierce ghost’s approach, if something invisible really stepped on them, he could detect it in advance.
“Next, let’s see if I can revive him.”
A fierce ghost’s crash wasn’t irreversible; as long as the residual supernatural power could be cleared and the waiter’s own supernatural power awakened, it should be fine.
Moreover, true qi also had the effect of healing wounds; he just didn’t know if it worked on this kind of non-physical injury.
He glanced at the surrounding darkness, lightly exhaled, and gathered a layer of hazy gray true qi on his palm.
Without hesitation, he immediately slapped his palm on the waiter’s forehead.
The true qi then invaded the waiter’s body, extending in all directions, and actually found two strands of supernatural power.
One kind, more abundant, naturally belonged to the waiter himself, while the other, lesser in amount, clearly came from the fierce ghost that launched the attack.
But Zhang Qian always felt that aura oddly familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere before.
“Ugh…”
Before he could think more, the waiter on the ground suddenly convulsed a few times.
Several streams of viscous black blood flowed out from his facial features, sticking together like asphalt, then slowly dripping to the ground.
Accompanying this eerie change, the waiter’s eyelid trembled slightly, then suddenly opened wide.
