Chapter Twenty-Six: A Mountain of Corpses and a Sea of Blood

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In the ghostly candle’s jade-green flames, Shen Lin clearly saw everything around him. The dark-red ghost domain originating from the Ghost Face seemed to tremble uneasily upon reaching this place, filling him with a vague sense of dread.

The jade-green flame of the ghostly candle flickered incessantly, as though heralding something.

As one of the headquarters’ most successful supernatural artifacts, the importance of the ghostly candle was beyond question. Its ability to withstand evil spirits with absolute certainty was unmatched among the many supernatural artifacts.

The flame of the ghostly candle was no ordinary fire. Fueled by supernatural material, it rarely displayed fluctuations of this kind.

It was not burning quickly, yet Shen Lin was utterly certain that something was nearby.

The surroundings sank into deathly silence. Shen Lin’s breathing grew heavy. Even with the ghostly candle held aloft, he could sense the strangeness concealed within the darkness, and the hairs on his back stood on end.

Suddenly, a whimper arose from the depths of the silent forest around him. It sounded like a call from an evil spirit, hollow and unlike anything belonging to this world—as though it had come from the void, summoning something.

Shen Lin spun around, hoping to catch sight of whatever it was, but saw nothing.

He could not understand what was happening.

There was no doubt that the thing had come for him.

Donghua Plaza had to be the source of this incident. His arrival had disturbed something.

All at once, it seemed as though something had been shut off around him. Shen Lin saw countless shadows emerging from the forest.

He was clearly standing in the garden of a residential complex, yet it was as though he had returned to a primeval jungle. Beneath the ghostly candle’s light, he watched the flowers, grass, and trees grow wildly, as if they intended to swallow the world whole.

“Whoosh!”

As though answering from across the void, the candlelight of the ghostly candle began to tremble even more violently. It had sensed something, and its body visibly began to burn faster.

“Damn it!”

Shen Lin cursed angrily. This eerie atmosphere was enough to drive anyone insane.

“Empty your mind. Empty your mind.” Shen Lin kept reminding himself. He was only a step away from those vines. Without the ghostly candle’s light, he would be devoured in the next instant.

His instincts told him that this was not the source of everything.

The lighting of the ghostly candle and his arrival had disturbed this evil spirit.

The spreading vines finally stopped at the very center of the plaza. By the time they ceased, flowers and trees resembling a primeval jungle had covered half of Donghua Plaza.

They had stopped as though they were afraid of something.

The entire plaza looked like a cake ruthlessly divided in two by a knife.

One half displayed a modern landscaped garden. The other looked like a primeval jungle.

The sight was indescribably bizarre.

Using the candlelight, Shen Lin avoided the spreading vines and slowly made his way toward the open ground.

“Thump, thump…”

The sound was extremely faint, like a heartbeat, but Shen Lin heard it unmistakably. He suddenly turned toward the mottled stone steps stained with blood, trying to anticipate what was about to happen.

He did hear something again. The sound was so faint that he could not describe it, yet it carried a strange sense of familiarity.

It was a different sound, one he had never heard during this incident.

Shen Lin froze for a moment. In the next instant, he saw something beginning to flow across the empty stone steps. From top to bottom, it ran like countless tiny streams before finally converging in the center of the plaza.

It was blood—crimson blood!

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The stench was foul, unforgettable.

As the blood flowed, the mottled stone steps that had already been stained were completely submerged, transforming into a solid expanse of scarlet.

Something was coming—an indescribable terror.

Shen Lin shifted slightly, and the agitation of the Ghost Face brought a sharp pain from within his chest.

He could not wait any longer. He had to do something.

That was what Shen Lin told himself as the suppressed ghost domain of the Ghost Face began to unfold.

“Clack.”

The sound of a leather shoe touching the ground was enough to make the hairs on Shen Lin’s body stand on end.

Then came the sound of countless shoes striking the ground. Accompanied by the flow of blood, it seemed that an endless number of people were descending from the far end of the steps. The blood staining their bodies gave them a color that could already be imagined.

Upon the stone steps, Shen Lin truly saw them—men and women, old and young, all soaked in blood.

Their gazes were vacant, their bodies rigid. Their eyes, filled with nothing but blackness, stared in unison at Shen Lin, while their stiff lips slowly curved into a horrifying smile.

The ghostly candle burned even faster. Terror from two directions closed in on Shen Lin, trapping him in the center like the filling of a sandwich.

Should he leave?

Shen Lin asked himself the question once more.

Although the Ghost Face’s ghost domain was being suppressed, he had ultimately glimpsed the truth of this bizarre world. Given enough time, he could find a way out.

But that would take time. He might be swallowed by the spreading terror while searching for an escape route.

How should he choose?

The number of people on the steps continued to increase, while the shadows from the forest seemed poised to emerge.

If everything erupted, Shen Lin had no chance of surviving.

Should he take the gamble?

His arrival had disturbed everything here. Perhaps, within all of this, he might glimpse an opportunity to resolve the incident.

If he chose to leave, Li Meng and the others would be reduced to a state of certain death. No ordinary person could survive under such circumstances.

He would gamble!

As always, Shen Lin made the most reckless choice.

There was still one-third of the ghostly candle in his hand, and another one in his arms. He could afford the risk.

Everything around him trembled. The small patch of ground illuminated by the ghostly candle’s jade-green light became the safest place in existence. Shen Lin could feel the malice emanating from both sides.

The ghostly candle was burning faster and faster. In an instant, the one-third that remained was reduced by nearly half.

Was the ghostly candle restraining everything?

Shen Lin stood atop a huge stone sculpture, looking down upon it all.

The next second, his face twisted into a grim expression.

“Then I’ll add a little more fuel to the fire!”

He extinguished the ghostly candle.

A madman. He was absolutely a madman. If anyone had been there, that was certainly what they would have called him.

He was a madman willing to pay any price, someone bold enough to stake everything on a heaven-shaking gamble.

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At the moment the ghostly candle’s jade-green flame vanished, all the agitation around him disappeared. Everything fell silent, as calm as the stillness before a storm.

The next instant, vines spread everywhere, and rivers of blood began to flow.

“Go!”

A dark-red radiance surged around Shen Lin. He appeared beside the figures on the stone steps, bringing the stone sculpture with him.

The ghost domain of the Ghost Face expanded rapidly in every direction.

This was a ghost domain powerful enough to contend with the bizarre inverted world. The result was entirely predictable.

Like wheat being harvested in autumn, the figures on the steps abruptly stopped moving. One by one, their blue-black heads rolled down the stairs like scattered footballs, ultimately disappearing into the strange forest.

As the blood continued to flow, the remaining rigid bodies were submerged.

The blood below surged like a river. One by one, the stiff bodies tumbled downward like rice dumplings, until Shen Lin could no longer see them. The depths of this thing seemed bottomless.

“Heh heh.”

The chilling sound made Shen Lin turn around in panic. What he saw was horrifying beyond words.

Within the dense forest, the severed heads Shen Lin had cut apart hung upside down from the branches. He clearly saw the bark of the blue-black trees rippling. They seemed to open their enormous mouths, spitting out body after body.

It was a scene like a shadow play.

Those grotesque trees manipulated the corpses like puppets behind a screen, unleashing the most genuine terror upon Shen Lin.

A tremendous sense of danger suddenly enveloped him. For the first time, he realized that he had fallen into a blind spot in his thinking.

Ever since he had entered this area, whether it was the surging forest or the rivers of blood, the two sides had appeared to be locked in conflict.

But judging from the current situation, that was clearly not the case.

They were working together!

Shen Lin reached this bold conclusion, and the result was almost impossible to accept.

This was clearly not a simple Class C or even Class B incident. For some reason, various kinds of evil spirits had become mixed together within this inverted world. It was a composite incident that could reach Class A—and even rank near the very top among Class A incidents.

The dark-red ghost domain spread once more. Shen Lin attempted to sever the surging vines and the corpses that moved like puppets in a stage play.

The next second, his expression darkened until it seemed capable of dripping water.

He had failed. Something had blocked his ghost domain from the outside.

This was beyond Shen Lin’s understanding. Several kinds of evil spirits had been described in detail in Records of Supernatural Resurgence, but nothing like what he was witnessing had ever occurred.

Was it a piece of a larger puzzle? Or an ability of an evil spirit?

The thought of one evil spirit being able to influence another was terrifying enough in itself.

Before Shen Lin could finish thinking, a sinister wind swept toward him.

Amid the surging forest, he caught sight of the corpses, reassembled like patchwork puppets. Their bodies were rigid, their cheeks blue-black, and they turned toward Shen Lin.

Then they revealed strange smiles.