Chapter 179 - 165: Fierce Ghost Confrontation

The stage foundation was about two meters high. It wasn’t a large stage. Beneath it lay a hollow space with a small door, requiring one to bend over to enter. Typically, theatrical troupes stored less important items inside.

Zhang Hai had already cleared the clutter and pried up quite a few of the gray bricks on the ground. With a flashlight set to the side, he was currently digging into the dirt with a shovel.

Liu Hua stood far away, holding a lighter and trying to light a stick of incense, but it simply refused to catch fire.

Sweating profusely from anxiety, Liu Hua said, "What do we do? The incense won’t light. There’s no way to notify the boss that the situation here has changed. The Abnormal Investigation Bureau definitely did something to that Qiao Yun. I knew it—how else could she have escaped from the Abnormal Investigation Bureau’s holding cell completely unscathed?"

Zhang Hai stopped digging. He raised the flashlight and shone it toward the entrance, only speaking after confirming no one was there.

"Even if the Abnormal Investigation Bureau really did something to Qiao Yun, we have to pretend we don’t know for now. Let’s be careful, get the goods out, and break this Ghost Realm. We’ll let the boss handle it after we get back."

Giving up on lighting the incense, a thought flashed through Liu Hua’s mind. She deliberately said, "I just feel a bit resentful. That girl obviously has a powerful Ghost Device in her hands. She repelled that ghost in one strike earlier."

Zhang Hai also recalled that scene. The ghosts sealed within the two of them had absolutely no power to resist when facing the Puppet Ghost; the Puppet Ghost’s resentment and hatred were exceptionally strong.

Yet, Qiao Yun had charged forward and repelled the Puppet Ghost with just two slashes. That Ghost Device in her hand was even stronger than the antique dagger the boss had given them. Moreover, seeing how she looked completely fine afterward provided an Explanation that using the Ghost Device came with no price, or at least an extremely small one.

"If the boss knew there was a problem with her, he definitely wouldn’t keep her around," Liu Hua added fuel to the fire.

Zhang Hai remained silent. It was hard to tell if he was truly foolish or just deliberately playing dumb. Covered in sweat from digging, he simply took off the soaked tank top clinging to his body. He spat into his palms, hoisted the trenching shovel again, and dug down fiercely.

Before long, the sharp CLANG of the shovel striking a hard object lifted his spirits.

"Found it!"

Liu Hua hurried over. Zhang Hai tossed the shovel aside and clawed away the surrounding dirt with his hands, revealing a small, dark red coffin. It looked like it could only hold a three- or four-year-old child.

The surface of the coffin was wrapped in dense red threads, but near the corner at the bottom, the threads had clearly been gnawed off by something, leaving jagged, uneven ends.

"Oh no!" Liu Hua’s heart sank heavily.

Zhang Hai couldn’t worry about that right now. He carefully pried the small coffin out of the pit. Only then did he notice a fist-sized hole at the bottom of the coffin, alongside obvious holes in the pit that had been dug by rats.

"Rats chewed through it!"

"Quick, see if the thing inside is still there!" Liu Hua urged anxiously.

The seal on the coffin was long broken, so Zhang Hai had no more reservations. He made quick work of snapping the remaining red threads and flung the coffin lid open.

Empty! There was nothing inside!

"Where are the goods?"

Zhang Hai looked up in astonishment. He was just about to ask Liu Hua what to do when he saw her eyes wide with extreme terror. She was staring fixedly at his back, her face deathly pale.

A bone-chilling cold instantly shot from Zhang Hai’s tailbone straight to the crown of his head. Every hair on his body stood on end as he stiffly turned his neck to look behind him.

A face! A puppet’s face, painted with exaggerated greasepaint, was pressed tightly against the back of his neck. Those hollow, pitch-black eyes were staring unblinkingly at him. The puppet’s mouth stretched open into a stiff, eerie smile, and the stench of rotting wood mixed with the smell of a corpse puffed into Zhang Hai’s face.

"Fuck your Immortals!!!"

His hair standing on end, Zhang Hai let out a hysterical roar. The Evil Spirit sealed within his body, triggered by his fury, materialized beside him in an instant and raised the steel pipe in its hand to smash the puppet.

Countless puppet silk threads suddenly shot out from the puppet’s joints, wrapping around the phantom figure of the Evil Spirit beside Zhang Hai with absolute precision.

The steel pipe raised by the Evil Spirit paused for a second. Yanked by the puppet silk threads, it suddenly swung down and smashed directly toward Zhang Hai.

THUD! With a muffled sound, Zhang Hai was knocked to the ground, blood oozing from his forehead.

Zhang Hai felt the connection between himself and the Evil Spirit being forcibly twisted and invaded by a powerful external force. Sprawled in the dirt pit, he watched in absolute horror as the Evil Spirit bound to his soul glared at him with furious eyes.

The tiny puppet was perched on the Evil Spirit’s shoulder, poking half its head out to smile fiercely.

A bloody gash suddenly burst open on Zhang Hai’s back. The sound of breaking bones cracked from inside him as he spewed a large mouthful of blood.

The Evil Spirit just stood there, yet Zhang Hai was being frantically beaten as if by an invisible steel pipe. His whole body jolted around in the dirt pit like a punching bag. Bloody gashes appeared on his body one after another, and broken teeth mixed with blood sprayed directly from his mouth. He could neither dodge nor defend himself.

"Liu Hua!!!" Zhang Hai roared in anger.

Liu Hua finally made her move. Her male White-faced Ghost, whose face and attire were near-perfect, silently appeared beside the puppet and pressed a hand onto its shoulder.

Under the erosion of its eerie Strength, the mottled greasepaint on the puppet’s face, along with the wood underneath, began to peel off at a visible rate, as if being frantically carved by an invisible scalpel.

The pockmarked face skin that had been gnawed by rats was brutally destroyed and forcibly smoothed out. The entire face shrank a size, reshaping toward a rigid state of "perfection."

The Puppet Ghost’s body beneath its tattered clothes also began shedding wood shavings. Its original two arms looked as though they had been ripped from different puppets and attached to its own body—one long, one short. At this moment, under the erosion of the White-faced Ghost’s Strength, the overly long arm was suddenly severed by a section, forcibly corrected to a symmetrical length matching the other.

At the same time, every bloated, asymmetrical, and imperfect part of the Puppet Ghost’s physique suffered the same brutal treatment. The invisible carving knife worked frantically upon its body, forcing it closer to "perfect proportions."

However, this "perfection" caused the puppet to lose large portions of its body, and its own Strength leaked away along with the carved-off parts.

Zhang Hai felt some of his control over the Evil Spirit return. The fury of having nearly been beaten to death by his own ghost erupted completely. The Evil Spirit violently snapped the Puppet Silk, spun around, and brought the steel pipe down ruthlessly onto the puppet’s head.

The puppet’s head was sent flying, shattering into pieces as it hit the wall. Large cracks fractured across its remaining body before it instantly turned into a twisted dark shadow, melding into the shadows of the wall and vanishing from sight.

Drained of their energy, Zhang Hai and Liu Hua collapsed onto the ground simultaneously, panting heavily.

Zhang Hai’s back was dripping with blood, crisscrossed with bruises. The emotional toll left him listless and suffering from a splitting headache.

Liu Hua’s meticulously styled high ponytail was a mess, and her exquisite makeup was ruined by sweat. The White-faced Ghost flashed back to her side, staring down at her from above.

Liu Hua shuddered all over. With trembling hands, she fished a compact from her pocket to touch up her makeup. She didn’t need to push it to the absolute extreme, but she couldn’t be too sloppy, either. If she displeased the White-faced Ghost, he would personally come and "carve" her, just as he had "carved" the puppet a moment ago.

She flipped open the compact. The scene suddenly reflected in the mirror caused Liu Hua’s heart to skip a beat.

Yin Zhen was leaning casually against the wall behind them!

She was unhurriedly munching on a piece of bread, crumbs clinging to the corners of her mouth. Her unreadable eyes slowly lifted, meeting Liu Hua’s wide, terrified gaze through the mirror’s reflection.

The compact slipped from her grasp and dropped to the ground. Liu Hua was frightened out of her mind—this was even more terrifying than seeing the Puppet Ghost just now!

She whipped around and asked in a trembling voice, "You... when did you get there?!"

Hearing Liu Hua’s voice, Zhang Hai looked over and spotted Yin Zhen in the darkness, jolting in shock himself.

Yin Zhen lazily stuffed the last bite of bread into her mouth, unscrewed the water bottle she carried with her, and tilted her head back to take a swig. Only then did she slowly raise her eyes to look back at the panic-stricken Liu Hua, revealing a wickedly amused smile.

"Take a guess."