Chapter 3: Ghost Hand
“Holy shit!” Liu Bing wanted to run, but seeing the patch of darkness beside him, he didn’t dare leave the team. “Brother Wang, you… don’t scare me.”
“Fuck, why would I scare you.” Brother Wang stopped his footsteps and looked behind. The surroundings were enveloped in darkness, completely unable to see how many people there were.
Suddenly, not knowing who suggested it: “Shall we count off? This way we can know how many people there are. I’ll start, one.”
“Sounds good, two.”
“You guys better not mess around on purpose, three.”
“Four.”
“Five.”
“Six…” Brother Wang gritted his teeth and squeezed a number from his mouth. “Fuck! Scaring people, huh?”
He took a small section of candle from his backpack. “Let me see what kind of thing you are!”
This was a supernatural item that Brother Wang had stripped from the corpse of another messenger during his first delivery. According to that messenger, the candlelight could illuminate things that ordinary people couldn’t see.
He struck a match to light the candle, and the orange-yellow flame whooshed to life. The surrounding darkness slowly receded.
Brother Wang slowly raised his head along the firelight, a chill rushing straight to his forehead.
Feet.
All kinds of feet.
Dense feet crammed full of the surrounding space.
“Seven.” “Eight.” “Nine.” “…”
Moments later, the corridor returned to silence, leaving only the candle flame flickering eerily.
……
“This is the place, right?”
Zhang Qian had already reached the end of the corridor. The stairwell had disappeared, replaced by a pitch black door. On the sign by the door, the words “Director’s Office” were crossed out with heavy lines, and below, “Operating Room” was written crookedly in fresh blood.
As if sensing Zhang Qian’s arrival, the black door opened automatically. In the crude operating room, a doctor was methodically overseeing the surgery.
He extended his elongated fingernails, slicing open the patient’s neck as easily as a red-hot knife through butter, then took a head from the nurse’s hand and pressed it on.
Amid the drip-drip sounds, the doctor raised his head and asked kindly, “Zhang Qian, what do you need from me?”
“What kind of demon are you?” Zhang Qian took a slight step back, feeling that this guy was completely different from the previous puppets.
“I’m Director Liu. Don’t you even recognize me?” Director Liu walked across the operating table toward Zhang Qian at the doorway. “Looks like you’re quite ill. Let me heal you.”
“…” Zhang Qian was about to speak when he suddenly felt his body stiffen, as if he’d been injected with anesthetic, losing all strength. The scene before his eyes gradually blurred, and his upper and lower eyelids involuntarily began to fight.
He bit his tongue hard to force his spirit awake, circulating his cultivation method to make true qi rise from his dantian and spread throughout his body. When the true qi circulated to his shoulder, with a “chi—” sound, his body recovered to normal.
Tilting his head to look, a pale palm was limply resting on his shoulder. Blue veins bulged on the back of the hand like long worms wrapped around it, but there was no movement, as if it had been injured by the true qi.
Delayed by this moment, the doctor had already approached. He raised his hand to slash at Zhang Qian’s throat. But this speed was really too slow; Zhang Qian easily dodged the attack with one step back.
Director Liu stopped his action and looked at Zhang Qian again, asking, “Zhang Qian? What do you need from me?”
This time Zhang Qian didn’t answer, but took a step back, circulating true qi and warily staring at him.
Getting no response, Director Liu made no further moves, like a program that had run halfway suddenly freezing.
After a moment of stagnation, he turned and walked back into the operating room to continue the surgery.
Zhang Qian watched him warily, cautiously shifting his body a little, and was not attacked.
“Why didn’t it attack me this time?” Zhang Qian pondered inwardly. “Wang Shang said he wasn’t attacked because he was unconscious…”
“A person who is unconscious can’t move and also can’t speak, and these guys seem to always be trying to get me to speak…”
To verify his idea, after the glasses-wearing man in the operating room came out, he smashed a fist into him. The eyes instantly shattered, but even so, the glasses man didn’t attack him, instead lying on the ground and asking puzzledly, “Why did you hit me?”
Zhang Qian ignored the glasses man and summed up the pattern in his mind. “Sure enough, these ghosts are just like computer programs; they only attack people who satisfy the condition.”
“Maybe there are more than one conditions, but as long as you don’t answer their questions, you definitely won’t satisfy the condition.”
“So Wang Shang didn’t die not because he didn’t move, but because in his coma he couldn’t make sounds or speak.”
“Just knowing how to survive isn’t enough; I still need to find a way to rescue Senior.”
Zhang Qian entered the operating room, his gaze instantly drawn to Director Liu’s right hand.
That hand didn’t fit with the surrounding environment; its skin was pale, knuckles clear. Overall, it looked slender and powerful—not like a ghost, but more like a work of art.
Only the black fingernails extending from the fingertips looked a bit eerie; unknown what material, they were deeply embedded in the metal table.
“This should be the main body, right?”
Zhang Qian observed for a while, then suddenly grabbed a stool and smashed it onto Director Liu’s arm.
“Bang!”
The stool shattered, but Director Liu wasn’t affected at all. Instead, he turned his head to look at Zhang Qian. “Zhang Qian, what do you need from me?”
“As expected, useless.”
Zhang Qian steeled himself, wrapped his finger in true qi, and tapped Director Liu’s right hand.
A burst of icy cold aura actually broke through the true qi’s defense, drilling up along his index finger, numbing everywhere it passed. He quickly withdrew his hand and drove true qi to confront this yin energy.
Fortunately, this aura was just water without a source; it soon melted under the continuous offensive of the true qi, only leaving a black line on his arm that meandered and crawled for twenty or thirty centimeters before disappearing.
He clutched his hand and felt it; though somewhat icy cold, there was no major issue.
“Such strong demonic power. Then let’s see whose cultivation is deeper…”
Zhang Qian channeled true qi into his hand and slapped toward the ghost hand. True qi surged out continuously, locked in stalemate with the yin energy.
Time passed minute by minute; neither side showed any intention of stopping. Zhang Qian even felt his true qi strengthening a bit in the confrontation.
Director Liu’s sleeve had already torn, revealing the hideous wound hidden under his clothes. The wound’s edges were full of irregular protrusions and flipped skin, just like someone had torn off the original hand and forcibly stuffed the ghost hand in.
Zhang Qian scanned around, trying to find a way to break the deadlock, but noticed pale red spots emerging on Director Liu’s neck, and with time, the color was deepening.
“The ghost doesn’t play fair!”
Seeing Director Liu’s body about to give out, Zhang Qian had a sudden idea and channeled true qi along that black line. The true qi, tainted with the icy cold aura, entered the ghost hand unimpeded. The ghost hand actually gave up resistance and dropped onto the table with a thud.
At the same time, Director Liu’s body fell backward, and the dim lighting returned to normal.
Zhang Qian hurriedly stepped forward to catch Director Liu’s falling body and gently placed him on the ground. The surrounding puppets collapsed limply, but unlike the still-breathing Director Liu, they directly had their heads separated from their bodies, lifeless.
The environment outside the door also returned to normal, with hurried footsteps coming from the stairwell. With no time to think, Zhang Qian stuffed the icy cold ghost hand into his pocket.
Several figures burst through the ajar doorway, all pointing guns at the only one who still looked alive, Zhang Qian. “Don’t move, police!”
