Chapter 176 There’s a Ghost!

At that time, in the puppet carving room behind the old theater.

A brick smashed through the glass. Jiang Ying was the first to vault through the window. After taking a look around, he popped his head back out.

"No problems for now. Come on in."

The young man accompanying them was a bit fearful. "Uncle Ying, are you sure we’ll be fine courting death like this? I asked around and found out the three ironclad rules here: no performing on stage after midnight, no women touching the puppets, and no lighting red candles in the middle of the night."

The woman beside him nodded in agreement. "Right. This squad mission we triggered insists we light two red candles and perform a puppet show on stage after 12:00 AM. Isn’t this obviously sending us to our deaths?"

Jiang Ying rubbed his nose. "What are you afraid of? I am the orthodox fifth-generation successor of the Lin Family. I’ve got all the gear ready. Even if I can’t destroy the ghosts, bringing you guys out alive won’t be a problem."

The woman said, "But that’s a fictional character! Besides, the person in the movie is called Uncle Nine, not Uncle Ying."

Jiang Ying said impatiently, "You were the ones who insisted I lead you in the first place! Getting cold feet now is just screwing me over. If I get my word count deducted, are you going to take responsibility?"

The two exchanged a glance. Thinking of their own word counts and the rich rewards of the squad mission, they ultimately bit the bullet and vaulted through the window into the puppet carving room.

Meanwhile, Guan Lan brought Guan Xing to find a place to stay in town.

As they walked down a street, Guan Xing suddenly said, "Mom, there’s a big sister who keeps following us. Is she lost?"

Guan Lan tilted her head slightly, sweeping her peripheral vision behind them, but found nothing. A chill crawled up her spine, but she immediately stopped any inappropriate thoughts and raised a hand to give Guan Xing a light smack on the head.

"There’s no one there. Stop talking nonsense and hurry up!"

"But Mom—"

"The periodic table of elements. Recite it!"

"Huh? Why?"

"Because I’m your mom! Now recite!"

"Auntie, I don’t want to recite it."

"One! Two!"

"Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron..."

Guan Lan pulled Guan Xing along, walking briskly.

Of course, she wasn’t brainless, but she had to brainwash herself. Right now, she couldn’t believe or agree with what Guan Xing said—not even a little bit!

As the protagonist, she naturally had a golden finger. She and Guan Xing were bound together, and their golden fingers complemented each other.

Guan Xing’s exclusive Talent was called "Mom, Listen to Me," and her own Talent as a guardian was called "No, Child, You Don’t Want to Talk."

If Guan Xing said something and she believed it, then what Guan Xing said would come true. The degree and power of it coming true depended on how much she believed.

If Guan Xing said something and she didn’t believe it, then nothing would happen. If she hesitated, half-believing and half-doubting, the event would still occur, but to a weakened degree.

She didn’t have the Yin Yang Eye, but Guan Xing did. She had reason, but Guan Xing didn’t. This was the biggest problem with this golden finger: she couldn’t control Guan Xing’s thinking, and Guan Xing couldn’t manipulate her reason.

For example, if Guan Xing insisted that the feather duster in her hand was the Heavenly Master Sword, Guan Lan wasn’t blind.

Or, for example, after Guan Lan had truly seen ghosts in this world, it was now very difficult to convince herself that ghosts didn’t exist. Therefore, the cold and gloomy aura behind them had been there the whole time. She could even gradually hear footsteps—TAP, TAP, TAP—getting closer and closer.

Guan Lan pulled along Guan Xing, who was reciting the periodic table, and they kept walking down the main street. Before they knew it, they arrived outside the old theater in the west of the town.

"Treasure!" Guan Xing suddenly pointed at the old theater and shouted excitedly.

At the same time, on a mountain road fifty kilometers outside of Sanmen Town.

Ye Mingzhe was driving alone along the winding mountain road, eating a mint-flavored lollipop to stay awake.

A call from the Abnormal Investigation Bureau came in. Ye Mingzhe pressed the speakerphone button and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.

"Boss, what are your orders?"

Zheng Shu’s stern voice came through. "I told you to follow up on Qiao Mu’s lead. Where did you run off to this time?"

"I am investigating! My informant gave me a tip. If I’m lucky, I can bring Zhang Yueqin and her daughter back together. But with all due respect, Boss, how exactly do you guys gather intel? Qiao Mu is an assassin! I nearly lost my life at Qiao Mu’s hands. You guys almost got me killed."

"Where are you now? I’ll send people to back you up."

"On the way to Sanmen Town. Don’t bother sending anyone. You know my fate as the Lone Star of Calamity. Whoever goes on a mission with me ends up dead."

"I’ll head over there myself."

Ye Mingzhe crunched the lollipop in his mouth. "No, no, I can’t afford to have a big shot like you tag along. I won’t say anymore, I’m driv—Holy shit!"

CRASH!

A massive boulder suddenly plummeted from the mountain, smashing a crater directly into the road ahead. Ye Mingzhe narrowly twisted the steering wheel and slammed on the brakes, sending the front of the car crashing into the cliff face.

"Ye Mingzhe? Ye Mingzhe, answer me! Ye Mingzhe—"

Inside the car, the airbags had deployed, and Ye Mingzhe had fallen unconscious. The small mirror in his pocket cracked once again. Blood seeped out from the fissures, forming two large words:

GHOSTS!

Inside the old theater, Yin Zhen took out a spray bottle and quickly spritzed it twice into her eyes.

As the icy liquid seeped into her eye sockets, she instantly saw something different.

Dozens of wooden puppets were hanging upside down from the theater’s roof beams. The puppet silk threads from their joints draped down, precisely connecting to the limbs of the male and female actors on the stage, manipulating their movements.

The people in the audience were the same, manipulated by the wooden puppets. Yin Zhen even saw a person nearby whose eyes slanted in their direction, brimming with tears and terror, silently pleading for help.

These people were still alive!

It was unclear what play was being performed on stage. A group of men hanged a woman in the center of the stage, and then everyone—including the audience—raised their hands and began to applaud.

It seemed as if this was a highly satisfying scene.

Beside Yin Zhen, Zhang Hai and Liu Hua unexpectedly raised their hands as well, their palms clapping together stiffly.

"Come... out!"

Zhang Hai squeezed the words out of his throat as a brutal, ghostly silhouette materialized. But in the next second, more threads dropped down from the roof. In an instant, they entangled Zhang Hai’s ghost, turning it into a puppet as well.

The impeccably dressed White-faced Ghost beside Liu Hua suffered the same fate. Threads wrapped around its neck and wrists, forcing it to mimic Liu Hua’s synchronized clapping.

Liu Hua’s face was as pale as paper. She stared at Yin Zhen and cried out, "Hurry... think of a way!"

Right at that moment, the CLACK, CLACK sound of shifting joints came from above Yin Zhen’s head. A female wooden puppet covered in theatrical face paint suddenly swung upside down from the beam, stopping almost face-to-face with Yin Zhen.

The puppet’s eye sockets were pitch-black, and its hair carried the foul stench of a rotting corpse. Clusters of puppet silk threads protruded from its joints.

In the instant Yin Zhen’s neck was strangled, her eyes turned cold. With a speed faster than supernatural power, she drew the antique dagger and plunged it into her own shoulder without hesitation.

Blood sprayed out, but Yin Zhen acted as if she couldn’t feel the pain, her expression remaining entirely blank.

The puppet’s face abruptly twisted. Smoke hissed from the exact same spot on its shoulder. It let out a shrill, inhumanly agonizing shriek and violently sprang backward, the entangling threads retracting right along with it.

The several main puppet silk threads connecting to Zhang Hai and Liu Hua loosened at that very moment and were snapped by the Strength of their Fierce Ghosts.

Both of them staggered a step as if drained of energy, regaining control of their bodies as they gasped violently for air.

A sudden moment of dead silence fell over the theater. In perfect unison, the heads of the actors on stage and the audience in the seats all snapped one hundred and eighty degrees backward!

Countless pale, agonized faces, brimming with terror and tears, were all fixed on Yin Zhen and the other two.

A silent, suffocating sense of oppression swept over them. Attempting to retreat first, Zhang Hai and Liu Hua discovered that the wooden door behind them had vanished.