Chapter 216: Substitution Or Modification?
To create a “private space” alone with the Newspaper Ghost, Jiang Shan unhesitatingly urged the supernatural power of the Ghost Characters to its utmost, allowing it to madly and recklessly spread throughout the entire room.
In just a few short seconds,
The room where Feng Quan was located became as if it had been soaked in fresh blood, with nothing but a scarlet red in sight.
At this moment.
The air was not only filled with the fetid smell unique to dried blood, but also emanated a chilling coldness that made one’s heart involuntarily shiver.
“As expected, under the suppression of the Ghost Characters, those human faces stuck on the newspaper began to rot.”
Glancing at the wall and seeing those human faces undergo weird changes, Jiang Shan knew in his heart that his journey “south to seek the ghost” was about to end.
As his gaze shifted to the “Blood Person” in the room.
He saw that Feng Quan at this moment was still as if nothing had happened, standing motionless in the center of the room covered in “blood,” looking at Jiang Shan with a weird smile.
Although Feng Quan’s current behavior was no different from before, Jiang Shan felt no unease in his heart.
If idealistic fierce ghosts are compared to souls.
Then whether it is a living person’s body or a dead person’s corpse, they can both serve as the medium for the idealistic fierce ghost to anchor reality.
Under the indiscriminate suppression of the Ghost Characters, the Newspaper Ghost controlling Feng Quan’s corpse was like a prisoner in prison.
Ghost Characters as the prison,
Corpse as the cell.
In the situation where both sides had revealed their identities, Jiang Shan relied solely on the supernatural power of the Ghost Characters to firmly trap the Newspaper Ghost in Feng Quan’s body.
The Newspaper Ghost’s terror level is not particularly high, although it possesses some growth potential and even has the wisdom of a living person.
But in Jiang Shan’s eyes, the most difficult part of detaining the Newspaper Ghost
Is not how high its terror level is, but how to detain it perfectly.
So when Jiang Shan confirmed that the Newspaper Ghost’s origin was in Feng Quan’s body, he absolutely would not allow any deviation in this process.
As the Ghost Domain enveloped the room door, the dazzling silver light flashing outside the door formed a strong visual impact with the blood-red mirror image inside the room.
As if the world inside the door was Hell.
While the world outside the door was Heaven.
Time passed minute by minute, second by second.
Less than a minute after the Ghost Characters crawled all over the room, Jiang Shan, who had been standing guard outside the door, noticed:
At this moment, the newspapers on the room walls had all been soaked through with Ghost Blood and fallen to the ground.
And the human faces that were once stuck on the newspapers, now without the supernatural influence of the newspapers, every single face skin was aging at an extremely terrifying speed under the suppression of the Ghost Characters.
In just a few seconds, the room floor was covered with pus formed from incompletely rotted flesh and blood tissue, and the collagen remaining on the human faces made these pools of pus extremely viscous and nauseating.
“One human face, one memory. I’m getting more and more curious—what exactly is a ghost? And what kind of existence is a ghost like you with wisdom?”
After seeing all the human faces on the room floor “rot” away, Jiang Shan stood coldly outside the door, not entering the room for a long time.
He was thinking.
According to the hint in the Ghost Characters’ precognition, Jiang Shan actually already had a clear understanding of the Newspaper Ghost’s ability:
The moment he entered the room, he would immediately suffer the Newspaper Ghost’s attack.
This meant that he had satisfied the Newspaper Ghost’s killing pattern.
“This killing pattern is hard to pin down—it could be getting close to it, or being alone with it.”
But what the Newspaper Ghost’s killing pattern actually was, Jiang Shan didn’t care.
On the contrary,
Before entering the room, he wanted to make his own judgment as much as possible based on the information from the Ghost Characters and the current situation.
After all, ghosts are untrustworthy.
Jiang Shan, who had been tricked by the Ghost Characters once before, even after becoming an anomaly himself and nearly immortal, would be even more cautious in situations that seemed smooth.
Anomaly,
Is also a ghost.
But this does not mean that anomalies cannot die.
From the Ghost Characters’ precognition, Jiang Shan keenly noticed that the Newspaper Ghost’s attack was not to kill a living person’s flesh.
Nor was it to pull someone into a dream and kill them in the dream.
It attacks at the level of a person’s memory,
Whether it was Tong Qian’s brain death in the original work, or Zhao Jianguo whose memory was invisibly altered.
All the details about the Newspaper Ghost in his memory rang like alarm bells in Jiang Shan’s mind over and over.
“The Ghost Characters’ precognition says that when I am attacked by the Newspaper Ghost, the memories in those human faces stuck on the newspaper will substitute for my past memories, thereby substituting for the current me.”
“But from this, it seems the Newspaper Ghost’s killing method deviates greatly from what I initially thought—the Ghost Characters misled me by using the word ‘substitute’ in the precognition!”
“So the Newspaper Ghost doesn’t actually use the memories on the human faces to substitute my past memories and thus the current me; it wants to kill me from the memory level.”
Thinking of this, Jiang Shan’s face became extremely grim.
The word “substitute” in the Ghost Characters’ precognition had led his thinking into a dead end.
Because Jiang Shan had anchored his memories to the Blood Ghost through the supernatural power of the Ghost Lotus, in the supernatural conflict and collision between “past” and “present,” his past and present memories and emotions were forever fixed on a specific timeline.
This was the path for Jiang Shan to become an anomaly.
So he thought the “substitute” specifically emphasized in the Ghost Characters’ precognition
Meant that his past memories would be eroded by the memories in the human faces, tracing back to the source, so that the person in the human face’s memories would substitute for the current him.
After all, if the past self in his memories disappeared,
Then is the current self still himself?
Just as Jiang Shan was lost in thought over this issue and had not entered the room for a long time.
He suddenly thought of the various behaviors Zhao Jianguo exhibited after being supernaturally influenced by the Newspaper Ghost.
“The Newspaper Ghost can stack consciousness attacks through the human faces in the room, that is, enhancing the intensity of memory modification.”
“But it can even influence people’s memories without taking faces, like Zhao Jianguo who induced me to save Feng Quan, so the focus of the Newspaper Ghost’s attack is not on substitution, but on modifying memories.”
At this moment, Jiang Shan realized he had overthought it a bit.
What the Newspaper Ghost takes is faces,
Is memories.
Even if the Newspaper Ghost can modify memories, so what?
As long as he can ensure that the memories he anchored on the Blood Ghost via the Ghost Lotus are not modified by the Newspaper Ghost.
Then he is still Jiang Shan.
Still a ghost with Jiang Shan’s memories and emotions.
Although the descriptions of memory and soul in the original work are very vague, Jiang Shan who came to this world now knows one thing for sure:
No matter if his memories are stolen, annihilated by supernatural power, or modified.
As long as the person, or rather the ghost, who possesses his memories knows he is Jiang Shan and knows what he wants to do.
Then he is alive.
The person named Jiang Shan from beyond the heavens has not died.
And how could the Newspaper Ghost’s terror level alone affect his memories?
