Chapter 53: Find It, Eliminate It

Over the skies of Daxia City, a hovering helicopter descended from the heavens.

Fang Heping had dispatched one of the military's more advanced models, and their speed was significantly faster than anticipated.

After disembarking, Shen Lin looked into the distance, using the binoculars handed to him by Chen Zuo.

It was early morning, yet the Daxia City Central Hospital was plunged into a dead silence, devoid of any light or vitality, completely shrouded in darkness and a sense of ominous dread.

The Ghost Staircase had made its move. That terrifying entity had awakened even earlier than Shen Lin had predicted; the only uncertainty was what stage it was currently in.

There was no precedent for a ghost possessing a human, and no one knew what the process or the consequences might be. They could only cautiously seek out and grope their way forward.

"Do the frontline personnel have any clues?" Shen Lin looked at Chen Zuo. As a high-ranking official within the official forces of Daxia City, Chen Zuo always held the first-hand information.

Chen Zuo shook his head.

"None. The moment I received the report, I arranged for people to keep watch, but so far there is no news. We have temporarily and secretly sealed off the streets surrounding the Central Hospital."

Had it fallen? Shen Lin frowned. The worst-case scenario now was that the ghost had already escaped.

However, that entity had just completed a certain stage of transformation and shouldn't be able to evacuate so quickly. It seemed they needed to pick up the pace.

"We can't wait any longer. Let's move." Shen Lin motioned to Zhou Bin and Xu Fang. Their abilities would play a significant role in this operation.

Xu Fang, who had just woken up, had been informed of the current situation by Zhou Bin. Learning that not long after escaping the clutches of the Rapping Ghost, he was once again plunging into a dangerous zone, left Xu Fang utterly dejected, looking as though he wanted to cry without tears.

"You two stay here to control the scene. Do not let anyone in or out of the cordoned area for now, and do not let any suspicious individuals slip by," Shen Lin instructed.

The Ghost Staircase was more cunning than he had imagined; it was entirely possible it might pull some tricks to fish in troubled waters. If this entity managed to escape this time, catching it again would be as difficult as ascending to the heavens.

Without excessive preparation—time was money now—Shen Lin had Chen Zuo prepare several foldable gold-lined containment boxes before calling for Zhou Bin and Xu Fang to hit the road.

The official forces had done an exemplary job; the roads near the Daxia City Central Hospital had been completely cleared, bearing scarce traces of living human activity.

In the early morning, the empty streets paired with the chilly spring breeze imparted a desolate and bleak atmosphere to the entire scene.

Shen Lin and the others cautiously approached the main gates of the Central Hospital. The security booth was empty, and no traces of activity were found within the courtyard.

"There's a high probability that something happened to the entire hospital," Xu Fang said. He possessed seasoned experience in locating corpses, and a glance at this scene roughly told him what was going on.

The ghost inside here was no benevolent entity.

"What do we do?" Zhou Bin asked, cautiously scanning his surroundings. The Rapping Ghost incident had matured this swaggering young hooligan quite a bit.

Just as Shen Lin was about to speak, he sensed something. He abruptly looked up, and through the faint morning light, he vaguely saw a human figure standing at a second-story window.

The figure stood in a bizarre posture right by the window, its neck twisted at an angle no normal person could possibly achieve, flashing a eerie smile down at the people below.

That smile vanished in a flash, and when Shen Lin tried to lock onto its precise location, the figure was already gone.

"That thing knows we're here."

The two of them took a sharp intake of breath and nodded.

"We need to move quickly. That thing should be somewhere on the second floor. I caught a glimpse of its movement just now; its overall limb movements were extremely uncoordinated, which means its movement speed won't be very fast."

"We only need to do two things: find it, and take it down."

"The terror level of the Ghost Staircase is not very high. Its primary ability is to influence other ghosts, but activating this ability requires time and a large number of living humans as batteries. It has just awakened, and its physical coordination is still impaired; it hasn't had the chance to do those things yet."

Shen Lin knew very well that this was the best time to deal with the Ghost Staircase. That entity had plotted a series of events specifically to achieve human possession.

Yet a ghost was ultimately a ghost. Though it possessed intelligence, it did not understand what a "human" truly was.

This gap was so vast that it resembled some comical species trying to mimic another; no matter how closely it resembled the real thing, it would inevitably leave behind flaws.

And this flaw would be the fatal element for the adversary.

"Underlaid." Zhou Bin and Xu Fang nodded. A small team model with Shen Lin as the absolute leader was beginning to take shape. They had grown accustomed to obeying Shen Lin's commands; the fact that he had led them out of the Rapping Ghost incident alive was ample proof of his capability.

The three of them set off immediately.

The interior was heavily saturated with the pungent smell of disinfectant. Corpses lay scattered about in twos and threes, most of them wearing expressions of terror, as if they had been startled by something right before death.

Shen Lin nodded at Xu Fang, who understood instantly and approached a nearby corpse to question it.

The ability to interrogate the dead was like heaven amidst a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. Corpses were Xu Fang's natural surveillance monitors, and he could always extract the information he wanted from their mouths.

The time of death for these corpses was not long, and Xu Fang quickly locked onto a clue.

"Their deaths were very sudden, and most of them didn't know what specific events had taken place. I didn't get much useful information."

Shen Lin frowned. It seemed that after the Ghost Staircase controlled Li Meng, some kind of chemical reaction had taken place.

Perhaps, much like Li Yang's conceptual chest door in the original work which could function as an ability to open or block passageways,

after the Ghost Staircase took residence in Li Meng, its underlying rules had also undergone a conceptual change.

Touching the Ghost Staircase would trigger its rule, and the Ghost Staircase was now equivalent to Li Meng.

In other words, had it now evolved so that touching Li Meng would trigger the rule?

One was a dead object, the other a moving, living creature; the difficulty had multiplied geometrically.

Shen Lin waved his hand, and the group pressed forward once again. To play it safe, they abandoned the elevators.

Strictly speaking, spreading a ghost domain was the fastest way to resolve the problem in this situation. Although the Reversed World of the Reversal Ghost primarily featured inversion, it was still, after all, a ghost domain.

The resurgence level of the Ghost Face was too high, and it had now become a constraint for Shen Lin. Unless absolutely necessary, he did not want to make a big fuss using the Ghost Face's abilities; he needed to leave himself enough time to resolve his own physical issues.

At the stairwell corner on the first floor, Shen Lin took the lead. The group moved very quickly; the physical fitness of a Ghost Controller far surpassed that of ordinary people.

The exact moment Shen Lin pushed open the fire door leading to the second floor, a strange commotion sounded, as if they had disturbed something.

In the blind spot of their vision around the corner, the piled-up corpses actually began to twist and stand up.

Their movements were extremely stiff, resembling marionettes or machines being manipulated. Beneath their peeled-back eyelids were no longer black-and-white eyeballs, but pure, pitch black, as if soaked in utter darkness.

An unknown number of heads turned in unison, fixing their gaze with an eerie angle on the spot where Shen Lin and the others stood.

They slowly began to take steps forward.

*Clack, clack...*

It sounded like the scattered and irregular footsteps of countless shoes treading on the ground.

Zhou Bin, who was the last to pass through the access door, was startled. He whipped his head back and, through the gap of the door that had not yet fully closed, saw a crowd resembling living corpses.

"Bang—!"

Hands reached through the final gap of the struggling, closing door without regard for themselves, crying out in incomprehensible words.

"Shen Lin!" Zhou Bin roared, throwing his weight desperately against the door valve to prevent those people from passing through.

Meanwhile, Shen Lin, who had already taken action, casually smashed a nearby fire extinguisher box, pulled out the fire axe housed inside, and swung it downward.

The axe was very dull, specially designed for breaking through doors and windows to escape.

Yet, no matter how dull an axe was, under immense physical force, it remained an exceptional weapon of offense.

A pair of hands was severed on impact, a crisp sound of bone fractures echoing through the surroundings, and the flailing limbs instantly went limp like soft clay.

After clearing away several pairs of hands in succession, Shen Lin wedged the fire axe between the two door handles, using it like a deadbolt to block the countless howling walking corpses on the other side.

Through the frosted glass, distorted human figures surged, elbowing and shoving one another in their eagerness to get to this side—a scene nothing short of terrifying.

"These are the ghost slaves of that entity. We need to hurry; the Ghost Staircase is constantly adapting." Shen Lin declared.

During the Longhu Courtyard incident, Shen Lin had witnessed the ghost slaves of the Ghost Staircase. Unlike normal ghost slaves, these seemed to be transformed from a portion of the corpses that originally served as the Ghost Staircase's batteries, subject to a certain numerical limit.

Now, having successfully possessed Li Meng, that restriction seemed to have vanished, turning the entire hospital into a natural paradise for this entity to hide in.

Did they have to find the host of the Ghost Staircase from amongst countless walking corpses? Shen Lin frowned.

Xu Fang was not idle either. He abruptly lunged forward, grabbing a walking corpse by the neck and activating his ghost interrogation ability. As strange, incomprehensible, and bizarre sounds spilled from his mouth, the surrounding walking corpses froze in their tracks, similarly chattering away with gibberish.

Throwing the corpse in his hand aside, Xu Fang shouted to Shen Lin.

"It's in a ward on the northeast side."

Shen Lin's eyes lit up.

"We found that thing?"