Mysterious Resurrection: What If

Chapter 16 Lake and Wind (Part 6)
Between the two realms, the golden light tinged with an eerie crimson hue. A composed figure stood silently at the crossroads, holding an octagonal golden pagoda.

Dachang City

The entire sky was tinged with a faint blood red, and an eerie silence permeated the city.

At the top of the tower, an old, dark red coffin sits quietly in a secluded room.

"boom!"

With a loud bang, the coffin lid was blown off, and a man slowly sat up from inside the coffin.

"team leader?"

Li Yang stood on the rooftop, looking at the iconic scarlet ghost domain in the sky, his eyes flickering uncertainly.

Suddenly, a huge crack appeared in the sky above Dachang City. Looking into the crack, a continent was being split in two by some unknown force.

Countless figures were scattering and fleeing, some riding swords, others flying.

"Holy crap! Honey! Come out and see the gods!"

"Mom! Come quick, look at the mirage!"

"Fellow Daoist, who is undergoing tribulation here? I have come to assist you!"

In an instant, everyone in Dachang City saw the scene within the crack.

Television stations rushed to report on the incident, and various experts discussed it at length during the live broadcast.

Mirages, atmospheric refraction, and the latest drone technology for playing movies...
Li Yang stared intently at the huge crack in the sky; he knew this was an anomaly caused by the captain.

"A new paranormal event? Thirty years have passed. Has the captain been fighting such terrifying supernatural phenomena all this time?"

"Huh? What is that?"

Li Yang's gaze fell on an inconspicuous corner of Dachang City.

A small spatial rift was suspended within the alleyway. The entire city of Dachang was so focused on the enormous rift in the air that no one noticed the anomaly.

Looking through the crack, Li Yang could only see a street filled with howling winds.

"The captain is dealing with that extremely terrifying supernatural event in the air. Huang Ziya and the others are still in their coffins. I'm the only one who can move around in Dachang City right now."

Without the slightest hesitation, Li Yang stepped into the crevice.
The rain poured down, and the raging winds destroyed everything in sight. The entire city looked like it was the end of the world. Beside a giant tornado that stretched to the sky, three figures stood.

After Fang Shiming successfully controlled the quicksand, he used the new supernatural force to find Yang Jian and Liu San inside the hurricane.

The entire tornado was composed of countless fragments of corpses, with cold lake water flowing rapidly between them.

Yang Jian and the other two were glowing with a rich red light, only able to get so close to the source of the hurricane thanks to the Ghost Domain.

"These people are not dead yet."

Liu San looked at the man's head, which was now only half-hidden among the remains of the limbs and fragments. The man looked at him with terror in his eyes, trying to speak, but his mouth was buried under countless pieces of corpse.

Fang Shiming stood aside, observing the fragments of the corpses. "The person who manipulated this hurricane must be trying to conduct some kind of experiment; these people are slowly transforming into ghost slaves."

“They are not quite the same as ghost slaves. Their state is closer to that of ghost tamers.”

Yang Jian keenly discovered that every living person's body was filled with a trace amount of lake water. It was precisely because of these extremely small supernatural puzzle pieces that so many ordinary people could control them.

"I must say, this is an incredibly forward-thinking idea... After using a hurricane to scatter the Ghost Lake, then forcibly implanting the supernatural fragments of the Ghost Lake into the body using some method to mass-produce Ghost Tamers?"

"Watch out!"

Suddenly, the giant tornado, composed of countless pieces of corpses and living people, began to spin wildly at an accelerated speed.

A foul-smelling wind, carrying the chilling lake water, attacked the three of them.

"Can't move?"

To Liu San's surprise, a crack had appeared in the old corpse inside his body.

"Don't panic. The battle between vengeful spirits is mutual, and the people on the other side are not having an easy time either."

Looking at his ghost realm, which had been blown to pieces, Yang Jian pondered his next move.

A layer of dark yellow mud slowly enveloped the three of them, protecting them from the supernatural attack.

"We can't hold out for long, we need to find a way to get in as soon as possible."

Yang Jian looked at the patch of blackish-yellow mud and sand, and pondered for a moment before speaking.

"Fang Shiming, cooperate with my operation."

A burst of red light suddenly exploded out and adhered to the bodies of the three people amidst the mud and sand.

Fang Shiming instantly understood what Yang Jian wanted to do and replied, "Five seconds. This level of supernatural phenomenon can only be delayed for five seconds."

"enough."

A red light flickered within the black and yellow mud and sand, then suddenly pierced into the rapidly spinning horde of corpses.

Several people in the eye of the hurricane turned around at the same time to look at the three intruders.

"Not bad young men, I didn't expect you to actually get in." An old man, who was as thin as a rake, was holding a rotting ball of flesh oozing with putrid fluid in his hands. He looked at Yang Jian and the other two with a sense of satisfaction.

"But we can't let you disrupt our plans now. You can leave. Just pretend you were never here. The Reform Society simply has different ideas from yours, not..."

"Do it!"

Before the gaunt old man could finish speaking, a dark shadow swiftly swept towards him.

"court death!"

A strange, slow-moving gale rushed upwards.

"Save Li Jun first!"

Liu San saw Li Jun's body lying on the edge of the area, and paper figures appeared all around him.

Just as Yang Jian's dark figure rushed close to the old man, it was scattered by a gust of wind that mingled with the lake water.

This pure supernatural suppression made Yang Jian's eyelids twitch. In just a moment of contact, the ghostly figure was almost dismembered.

The gaunt old man raised the fleshy ball oozing from the corpse towards Fang Shiming. Fang Shiming instantly felt an immense force pressing down on the surrounding space, his body firmly pinned to the spot, unable to move.

"Huh? What did the ghost inside me do..."

Fang Shiming stared in astonishment at the strange ball of flesh, unable to leave the frozen space.

"If you can hold back even this hurricane and the ghost lake, then you young man are even more formidable."

The old man glanced at Liu San, who was supporting Li Jun, and waved his hand.

“Take that major general with you. The Reform Society’s purpose is not to kill. We don’t want to commit any more murders.”

The old man seemed unwilling to get entangled in the matter.

"You seem to have misunderstood something. This is not a game where you can come and go as you please. This is a life-or-death struggle."

Fang Shiming looked at the old man coldly.

"You created that quicksand, didn't you? If I don't kill you all today, I'll be the one who dies. Hand over that fleshy ball, and I can let you go back and live a few more years."

Fang Shiming stood still, his hands behind his back, gripping an old pair of scissors tightly in his hand. Ten seconds, just ten seconds, and he could escape.

"Heh heh heh, what a big mouth, Lao Gan! Make your move! He's stalling for time!"

As soon as he finished speaking, an old woman next to him reached out and grabbed at Fang Shiming. Fang Shiming immediately felt an unimaginable suction force. An unknown supernatural force was attracting the vengeful ghost that Fang Shiming was controlling in a way that he could not understand.

"Foolish old man."

Fang Shiming's eyes narrowed, and his shoulders lowered slightly. Instantly, a strange corpse pressed down on the old woman's shoulders.

The body was incredibly heavy, so heavy that the old man on the ground was completely unable to move.

"Old Gan, be careful!"

On the far left, a tall, thin young man with a pained expression watched the old woman being attacked. Just as he was about to make a move, a flash of bright red appeared in his field of vision the instant his attention was diverted.

"Where are you looking?"

Yang Jian's ghostly hand gripped the tall, thin youth's neck tightly, and the hideous tattoo on the ghostly hand slowly invaded the youth's body.

The situation reversed instantly, with Yang Jian and Fang Shiming almost simultaneously countering the two men.

The old man holding the ball of flesh and another short, stout old man looked on with surprise and uncertainty.

Yang Jian coldly stared at the two of them, still exerting force with his hands.

"A bunch of cowards who are afraid of death. They would never dare to make a move unless absolutely necessary. It's time to send you on your way."

The ghostly hand had already gripped the young man's neck, and blood dripped down his arm onto the ground. The members of the Reform Society dared not move at all; judging from Yang Jian's stance, he was truly prepared to fight to the death.

Yang Jian was half right about them; after so many years, they indeed no longer easily used the vengeful spirits within them.

But another, deeper reason is that the old man named Qin has been observing the future. Although intelligence shows that the future Qin is seeing now is incomplete, no one dares to bet on when Qin will drive a bus and run them over.

Most importantly, they never expected that the ghost tamers of this era would be so ferocious, ready to fight to the death before they could even finish a sentence.

The short, stout old man carrying the corpse said to Yang Jian, "Young man, I admit you are very capable. Let go, there is still room for negotiation."

Yang Jian simply looked at him, then forcefully snapped the young man's throat.

"court death!"

The corpse behind the old man suddenly opened its eyes, and instantly, the whole world froze. Yang Jian was very familiar with this feeling; it was very similar to the time stop after activating the sixth level of the Ghost Domain.

The demon's eye slowly rotated, unaffected. 'It can actually do that?'

But before Yang Jian could make a move, to his surprise, his own movements became uncontrollable, and he slowly loosened his grip on the young man's neck.

Everything around him began to slowly recede and move backward, the hurricane began to rotate in the opposite direction, and the blood on the ground flowed back into the young man's body.

"Are you kidding me! A widespread reboot?!"

During the out-of-control incident in Dajing City, Yang Jian briefly restarted the area for four seconds using the Death Banner, but the restart in front of him has long exceeded four seconds.

"Seven, eight... nine..." Yang Jian silently counted, his Ghost Eyes fixed on the corpse behind the short, fat old man.

"The entire system restarted, but only that corpse remained unaffected; it's because of that corpse."

"Wait a minute! That ball of flesh can move too!"

A gust of wind, mixed with cold rain, swept towards Yang Jian along with pieces of limbs scattered high in the air.

"It's too late; we have to withstand this attack."

Just now.

There was a loud "Bang!"

An old wooden door flew in from nowhere, crashing between Yang Jian and the meatball, and embedding itself diagonally into the ground.

With another "bang!", the door was suddenly pushed open by a figure.

The gale-force winds mixed with rain dissipated instantly, and large pieces of corpses fell from the sky, their fall halted. A man stood in the rain of corpses, turning his head slightly to look at Yang Jian.

"Captain... it's been a long time."

　In case some viewers are watching too fast, here's a brief explanation of the plot.

　　Li Yang's timeline takes place thirty years after Yang Jian entered the Golden Sculpture in the original story. He has been silently protecting Dachang City for thirty years, during which time he was on his deathbed several times (his strength has increased significantly since then).

　　You can think of the "what if" series as another timeline or another world. For example, the world where Yang Jian is in the original work is numbered 36 in Tianqing, so you can think of the "what if" world as 37.

　　The purpose of introducing Yang Jian is simply to explain why Li Yang was able to travel between worlds, making the whole thing seem plausible (although it's not really plausible in the novel).

　　One could imagine that Yang Jian overexerted himself when crossing over to the Xuanxian Continent, causing multiple interdimensional portals to crack. (Whether Yang Jian knew about the "what if" scenario is hard to say, since he's already practically omniscient and omnipotent in the lore).

　　At this time, Li Yang did not know that the world he had gone to was another world, nor did he know that Yang Jian in this world was not his captain in the true sense.

　　He completely trusted Yang Jian, so he crossed over without hesitation.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)