Chapter 102: Strength Is The Only Thing In This Era
Jiang Shangbai’s expression changed drastically, and he suddenly shouted anxiously in a low voice.
He noticed that,
unbeknownst to them, the surroundings had taken on a hint of strangeness.
From the previous street all the way here, there had initially been some pedestrians and some shops with lights on, but when he arrived here, he suddenly discovered that the area was eerily quiet in a terrifying way, with not a single sound around.
The chilling feeling seemed even stronger here than in other places.
The main reason Jiang Shangbai was certain a ghost was following the three of them was,
at some inadvertent moment, their three sets of footsteps had suddenly become four, and the extra set of footsteps was very strange.
Normal people walking cannot maintain perfectly consistent frequency with every step; there will always be some slight differences.
But that footsteps sounded with machine-like regularity.
Numb, rigid.
“A ghost? Where!?”
Hearing Jiang Shangbai’s words, Guo Fan was startled. He abruptly turned around to look at his surroundings, trying to find traces of the ghost.
It was fine not turning back,
but upon turning back, Guo Fan was so scared he nearly jumped.
He saw a child covered in dark greenish-black with vacant eyes holding the broken head of a young woman standing right behind him.
Most importantly, the child was less than a meter away from him!
“Wc! Starving Ghost!”
Guo Fan’s expression tightened. Just as he was about to swap the ghost in his spirit tablet with himself, a greenish ghost fire suddenly appeared on the ghost child, then burned fiercely.
The process lasted about ten seconds or so, and it finally vanished quickly amid the ghost child’s eerie wail.
Only the woman’s head remained on the ground.
“Ghost children have even appeared here?” Guo Fan looked at the mutilated head on the ground, frowning tightly.
He knew the ghost child burned to death by Li Jun’s ghost fire was a derived supernatural of the Starving Ghost,
the second stage of the Starving Ghost.
Before entering Dachang City, they had all thoroughly studied the three stages of the Starving Ghost summarized by Wang Xiaoming, as well as its killing pattern in each stage.
But Guo Fan hadn’t expected that they were still on the outskirts of Dachang City, not even inside the third ring, yet they had already been attacked by a ghost child.
It seemed the extent of the Starving Ghost’s invasion in Dachang City was even more severe than he had imagined.
“What terrifying supernatural event. Jiang Shangbai wants to kill me?!”
Coming back to his senses, Guo Fan suddenly noticed that Jiang Shangbai was floating in midair, and the corpse-spotted, eerie, chilling soles of his feet were kicking toward him!
“I knew Jiang Shan wanted to kill me. Are you his dog, Jiang Shangbai?!”
Seeing that pair of people-crushing ghost feet like those of a dead person about to kick him, Guo Fan’s eyes turned mad, and his deathly pale face revealed a hint of eerie ferocity.
Just as Guo Fan was about to release the ghost from his spirit tablet, Jiang Shangbai’s furious cursing rang out:
“Idiot! If you want to die, wait until we solve this ghost, and I’ll definitely kill you then. Now get out of the way!”
“A ghost? There’s another ghost!?”
Most ghost wielders were experts at adapting to changing circumstances, though they often couldn’t avoid triggering a ghost’s killing pattern.
But that didn’t negate their ability to process information in an instant.
Hearing Jiang Shangbai’s words, Guo Fan’s expression tightened. He immediately thought of something and looked to both sides.
He saw a third-stage Starving Ghost, dark greenish-black all over and resembling a corpse, had appeared beside him at some point.
On that third-stage Starving Ghost was a thick layer of chilling green haze emanating coldness.
It seemed this haze was why the three of them hadn’t noticed its presence.
“This is bad!” Guo Fan’s heart filled with horror.
A dark greenish-black palm emitting the stench of a corpse, nearly rotted through, suddenly extended from the haze and directly grabbed his neck.
Ice-cold, rigid, with terrifying strength, as if it would snap his neck in an instant.
“Help! Sa.”
Seeing Guo Fan about to die, Jiang Shangbai and Li Jun simultaneously unleashed the fierce ghosts within them. Only under the combined assault of the people-crushing ghost and ghost fire did that ghost’s figure finally disappear.
Kneeling on the ground gasping for breath, Guo Fan was filled with terror. If that “ghost” had squeezed a few more seconds, he would have suffocated to death.
At this moment, the fear in his heart reached its peak.
At this time, Jiang Shangbai looked toward the city center with a grim expression. This brief encounter alone had made things extremely tricky for him.
The green haze that could hide its traces, the third-stage Starving Ghost with no weak terror level—everything made his scalp tingle.
“I shouldn’t have listened to Guo Jun and come here. That old thing told me this incident was simple. Damn it!” Jiang Shangbai cursed inwardly.
But recalling Jiang Shan’s words, he had no choice but to grit his teeth and continue heading toward Wang Xiaoming’s location.
In the next seven days,
the development of the Starving Ghost Incident seemed unaffected by the arrival of Jiang Shangbai, Li Jun, and the others.
Apart from one civilian ghost wielder being attacked and killed on his way home,
the plot was proceeding just as in the original work.
Hospital attack, phone meeting, Yang Jian hanging himself.
As for Jiang Shan, he stayed in the temporary command center the whole time, living a “retired” life.
He not only refused that important phone meeting but even skipped witnessing the grand scene of Yang Jian hanging himself.
“What?! You say Jiang Shangbai, Yang Jian, and Li Jun are trapped in Seventh Middle School? The Starving Ghost’s true body is there?!”
While Jiang Shan was studying the rusty chain in the tent, Cao Yanhua rushed in with a panicked expression and hurriedly said:
“Jiang Shan, Headquarters now hopes you can go to Seventh Middle School to handle the Starving Ghost Incident. I know you have the ability. Whatever you want, just say it—Headquarters will do everything to satisfy you.”
Because Jiang Shan had taken the coffin nail, this trip to Seventh Middle School wasn’t just Yang Jian handling it alone; all the ghost wielders in Dachang City were going together to detain the Starving Ghost.
Given the Starving Ghost’s characteristics, without that coffin nail, even Jiang Shan had no full confidence in successfully detaining it, let alone them.
So now they were in the predicament of being trapped in Seventh Middle School.
According to Cao Yanhua’s description, if not for Yang Jian, Jiang Shangbai, and Li Jun desperately suppressing the Starving Ghost, allowing the rest to escape from its true body,
perhaps by now the Starving Ghost had already grown to an unimaginably terrifying extent.
But what Cao Yanhua didn’t know was that although Jiang Shan seemed idly panicked these past few days, he was constantly monitoring changes in the Starving Ghost through the bug on Guo Fan.
Once an uncontrollable factor appeared, he would nail the Starving Ghost immediately.
The current situation could be said to be deliberately orchestrated by Jiang Shan.
Although he had cleaned up all the derived supernatural of the Starving Ghost, he had intentionally not nailed the Starving Ghost itself.
For no other reason,
Jiang Shan wanted to use the Starving Ghost Incident to claim some benefits and fame for himself.
Moreover, he wanted to tell Headquarters through the Starving Ghost Incident that,
in this era, power was no longer everything.
Strength was.
“Fine, no more nonsense. Three red ghost candles, one white ghost candle, and I want authority from International Criminal Police, but I won’t accept Headquarters’ orders—only employment terms.”
Brothers, happy Mid-Autumn Festival!!!
Slacking off today, only double updates!
Begging brothers for forgiveness!
