Chapter 77: The “safe” Wooden House
“Didn’t you hear the knocking sound?”
Zhang Dongxing’s voice made Jiang Shan furrow his brows, and he narrowed his eyes to look over.
He discovered that Zhang Dongxing was now standing by a wooden house about a few hundred meters away from him.
This wooden house was in a very remote location, as if it had been ostracized by the village, standing alone beside what seemed to be the Ghost Tree Forest.
His gaze continued to extend.
Vaguely, he could see that behind the Ghost Tree Forest was that weird rural slaughterhouse. Apart from the most conspicuous pigsty made of mud bricks, Jiang Shan couldn’t make out the other buildings outside the woods.
As early as when Jiang Shan and the others decided to launch an attack on the Wooden Fish Ghost, Zhang Dongxing, seeing no one paying attention to him, had stood by himself watching the large mass of dark shadow writhing and struggling at the mouth of the porcelain bottle.
Just as Zhang Dongxing was nervously watching the dark shadow, a sudden discomfort made him sneeze.
While sneezing, his peripheral vision caught sight of three greenish paper money notes, like those used for burning paper, pressed down by a stone on the wooden table beside the wooden house not far away.
“Paper money? How is there paper money in this place?”
Zhang Dongxing was curious in his heart. He walked forward vigilantly while looking around, but after tripping over a stone, a branch pierced his calf.
“Ah, my calf, my kneecap, it hurts so much.”
Just like that, he limped to the wooden table. After taking away the paper money, Zhang Dongxing saw that Jiang Shan and the others’ faces didn’t look right. After asking Liu Yingying, he learned that the killing knocking sound had rung out again.
“Why didn’t I hear anything? Can this place avoid ghost killing? I have to tell that little brother.” Zhang Dongxing thought to himself.
Thus, he had shouted that sentence to Jiang Shan and Liu Yingying and the others.
And at this moment,
Hearing this sentence, Jiang Shan did not set off immediately, mainly because he had some concerns in his heart.
The knocking sound was a special curse of ghost killing, just like the Knocking Ghost’s knocking.
Besides avoiding the ghost’s killing pattern, another way to avoid being killed by the curse was to find a stronger curse to counter it.
“Is there a stronger curse at that wooden house, so Zhang Dongxing couldn’t hear the knocking sound, or is it for some other reason?” Jiang Shan thought to himself.
When Yang Jian opened the music box back then, the terrifying curse of the music box had to some extent ensured his safety. Without special means to transfer the curse, once the curse erupted, Yang Jian would still die, and even faster.
This approach was nothing more than drinking poison to quench thirst.
“Damn it! I’ll go then. Better to die standing than live on one’s knees. If the knocking sound rings twice more, I’ll die under the Wooden Fish Ghost’s curse. Rather than dying now, better to go to the wooden house and see if there’s a turning point.”
With that thought, Jiang Shan steeled himself and prepared to use his ghost domain to rush to the wooden house. Before leaving, he said to Ren Ying and Ren Xue:
“Let’s go. This ghost is not something we can suppress. Go to Zhang Dongxing. There might still be a way out there.”
“I thought you could figure out this ghost’s killing pattern. But this is fine too, saves us from all three reviving as fierce ghosts later.” Ren Ying immediately replied.
After the first attack failed, they had known the terror of the Wooden Fish Ghost. If running could keep them from being killed by the fierce ghost, they would have run far away to watch coldly from the sidelines long ago.
But reality was that even if they ran, they probably couldn’t avoid the Wooden Fish Ghost’s attack, so the two of them had no choice but to continue cooperating with Jiang Shan.
Either use a ghost to forcibly suppress the Wooden Fish Ghost again, or find the Wooden Fish Ghost’s killing pattern.
As for only caring about oneself?
Like when Lin Bei and Xu Feng faced the Grave Crying Ghost, with no one stepping in to suppress the fierce ghost, they used their own ghost’s ability to avoid the fierce ghost’s attack.
In front of the Wooden Fish Ghost, such actions made no change to the situation. The final outcome would only be death.
Jiang Shan glanced at Ren Ying. If the Wooden Fish Ghost could kill this pair of sisters, he would wish for it. Although he despised them, he had to cooperate with the two to face the Wooden Fish Ghost together.
After all, more people meant more strength.
Actually, in situations where there was no deep hatred between the two sides, ghost wielders would mostly set aside their grudges and cooperate together to survive in the ghost’s hands.
No matter what conflicts there were between them before, or what calculations were in their hearts.
From the moment the ghost appeared, all of that became unimportant.
After all, there was no way out.
The three who had made their decision immediately gave up all attacks on the Wooden Fish Ghost. Jiang Shan took the Ghost Rope into his hand, then activated his ghost domain and began rushing toward the wooden house where Zhang Dongxing was.
Ren Ying and Ren Xue followed closely behind.
As Jiang Shan was rushing toward that wooden house, he suddenly discovered that Liu Yingying had somehow run ahead of him.
Moreover, she was very close to that wooden house, with the distance between them less than ten meters.
But just as she reached near the wooden house, Liu Yingying was suddenly suspended in mid-air out of nowhere. In an instant, a strong suffocation hit her brain.
Undoubtedly, the ghost had launched an attack on her!
Seeing this scene, Jiang Shan’s expression changed slightly. He immediately stopped his ghost domain and stood dozens of meters away from the wooden house, quietly observing Liu Yingying’s abnormality.
The sudden unexpected change made Zhang Dongxing, who was grimacing in pain by the wooden house, lose his focus for a moment. After coming to his senses, he limped hurriedly under Liu Yingying and said anxiously:
“Sister, what’s wrong with you sister, little brother come save her quick, she’s about to die!!!”
Liu Yingying’s face was turning purple from holding her breath. Her hands were at her neck, constantly pulling at something, but as Jiang Shan’s gaze swept over, he saw nothing on her neck.
It was as if an invisible rope had hung Liu Yingying up.
This feeling couldn’t help but make Jiang Shan’s expression change slightly. Liu Yingying’s current manifestations were no different from those of someone hung by the Ghost Rope!
Suffocation, hanging up, death.
The only difference was that the Ghost Rope had a physical form, clearly showing an old, rough straw rope strangling the neck.
While the ghost that attacked Liu Yingying seemed to have no physical form, hanging the person up out of thin air and strangling them to death in mid-air.
“A puzzle piece of the Ghost Rope?”
This was the first thing Jiang Shan thought of.
When the Dead Face Ghost’s ghost domain was still at three layers of strength, he had been attacked by the revived Ghost Rope and discovered at the other end of the Ghost Rope what seemed to be a puzzle piece existence.
But now was not the time to think about that. The urgent matter was to figure out this ghost’s killing pattern.
After all, an unknown killing pattern could completely lead to the annihilation of a team.
In comparison,
Liu Yingying’s life or death seemed not so important.
A patch of gray fog began spreading toward Liu Yingying. This was Jiang Shan’s ghost domain.
He wanted to try if he could use the ghost domain to find this unknown ghost.
When the gray fog touched Liu Yingying who was hanging in mid-air, an extremely thin black line was discovered by Jiang Shan.
In the air above Liu Yingying’s head, there was a small patch of darkness. A black line as thin as a hair extended from the darkness, knotting and wrapping around Liu Yingying’s neck, then hanging her up.
“Big sister! Big sister! Wake up a bit, don’t fall asleep no matter what, I’ll come save you right away!”
Zhang Dongxing moved the wooden table that had been pressing the “paper money” to under Liu Yingying’s feet, then climbed onto the table and hugged her feet, lifting them upward.
In his view, Liu Yingying’s current situation was no different from hanging suicide, and he had two ideas on how to save someone hanging:
The first way was to cut the hanging rope.
But Zhang Dongxing looked around and didn’t find where the “rope” strangling Liu Yingying was.
The second way was to get the person out of the hanging noose.
So lifting the person up was the best method he could think of.
“Hey hey, oof… oof, I’m being strangled too, save… .”
Just a few seconds after Zhang Dongxing climbed onto the table, his expression suddenly changed drastically. His hands involuntarily went to his neck, making the same motions as Liu Yingying.
Immediately after, his body shot upward sharply. Hanging in mid-air, his face was full of panic, his mouth still mumbling something nonstop:
“Help.”
