Wan Jie Hospice Care Company

"boom!!!"

The violent explosion shook the ground many times, each tremor deeper than the last. White ash fell from the ceiling. An Ling almost instinctively covered her ears, but through her fingers she could still hear the roar rolling through the empty mall.

"Holy crap, what did you do?"

The man in paper clothes looked at Xiang Yu with a blank expression. It was already exaggerated enough that the other party had slaughtered everyone in the ghost horde before, but now he had punched through a concrete pillar?

Is this even human?

But before he could catch his breath, the thing deep inside the hole made his pupils shrink suddenly, as if he had been pricked by a needle.

Inside the pillar... there was a person buried.

A human figure was embedded in the concrete in a posture that should never belong to a living person, its back bent backward, its limbs twisted, and all ten fingers spread out, the knuckles digging into the hardened cement, as if in its last moments it was still trying to tear open the wall that was swallowing it up.

One can imagine how desperate he must have been before he died.

He was probably buried alive inside that pillar... which means...

He was still awake at the moment the grouting began.

"This is called 'driving a live stake'," Xiang Yu said to everyone present before they could react.

Seeing this scene, An Ling clenched her fists, her whole body trembling. She stammered, "How...how could this happen..."

"Driving live stakes, a secret construction technique." Xiang Yu bent his knuckles and tapped the pillar twice, the sound muffled. "When construction begins, living people are buried in the construction site, using several lives to ensure the smooth construction of a building."

"The ancients believed that disturbing the earth would disrupt the feng shui and disturb the things beneath the earth. Every accident that occurred during construction was the result of these things demanding an explanation. So, sacrifices were made, and living people were fed to them, like feeding river gods or mountain gods. Once the people were buried, those 'accidents' would stop."

He paused, glanced up at the row of silent pillars, and something in his eyes turned cold.

"However... the people inside these pillars probably aren't just doing this to ensure the building goes smoothly." He scoffed. "That fat boss, in order to make his business boom and for this mall to be packed with people every day, will believe in all sorts of weird methods. He listens to that so-called 'master' without question, and the one who taught him to do this is probably that 'master'."

"But how do you know about the live stake? I've been observing this place for months and haven't found anything!" the man in paper clothes said bitterly.

"Sealed inside a pillar, it would be a miracle if you could find it." Xiang Yu turned to look at the corpse in the wall. "Eight missing construction workers, eight pillars at the site, and you even said there was a strange stench emanating from here, and that the eeriness appeared before the mall was completed..."

"That's right, those eerie true forms are these eight corpses."

When Xiang Yu said this, he suddenly paused for a moment, as if he had suddenly thought of something, and his brows furrowed.

And just as the skeleton was brought back to light and exposed to the stark white of the emergency lights, the large swarm of dark ghosts behind him inexplicably thinned out, as if something fundamental had been removed from it.

"What's wrong, Brother Xiang?" An Ling tugged at Xiang Yu's sleeve. She looked at the twisted and terrifying skeleton in the pillar and couldn't help but feel a chill run down her spine.

"We encountered three strange things in total. If we were to list their commonalities, what would come to mind?"

As Xiang Yu spoke, he once again gathered his energy into his fists and tore the little devils in front of him into countless pieces.

"What do they have in common?" An Ling was taken aback. "They're both attached to objects?"

"I've mentioned this before, anything else?"

"Hmm..." An Ling frowned, but after thinking for a long time, she still couldn't come up with any ideas.

Xiang Yu didn't urge her. He just sharpened his eyes, turned around, and strode towards the second pillar, his steps as fast as if he were racing against something.

Another loud bang, and the skeleton inside the second pillar slowly emerged.

The man in the paper clothes standing nearby said tremblingly, "Could it be... that my brother is among them...?"

Xiang Yu sighed.

That's most likely the case.

"Does that mean my brother has also become a ghost? But even if he has become a ghost, why would he want to kill me? My brother would never harm me!" The man in paper clothes suddenly lost control of his emotions.

"No, this ghost is different from the ghosts that people are familiar with," Xiang Yu said slowly. "It's not a ghost that has been transformed from a dead person, but rather... something that attaches itself to things."

"But the dead themselves can become things possessed by ghosts, which is why your brother became a ghost... But this ghost is not your brother, and you could even say they have no relation."

"He is merely a vessel for the growth of ghosts, just as the fungi growing on a corpse are not the corpse itself."

After explaining these things, Xiang Yu did not hesitate and hurriedly led his people to the third pillar.

If we just dig out these eight things and then destroy them all, that should be enough...

As for how to destroy it...

Xiang Yu clicked his tongue, wondering if he would have to eat this thing himself again this time.

That's absolutely disgusting!

But just as he was thinking this and rushing to the third pillar, something unexpected happened.

The song that had been playing in my ears has disappeared.

The group paused, realizing what had happened.

That singing voice... had been lingering in their ears ever since that beautiful woman on stage opened her mouth.

The singing was like background music. The group had stopped paying attention, but the sudden disappearance of something they had been ignoring drew their attention instead.

In that instant, the surrounding scenery flipped upside down without warning. The group suddenly realized that they were standing on a soft, bouncy castle, with cheap plastic mats from a children's playground beneath their feet.

The surroundings were empty, with only two broken pillars remaining.

Inside, there was nothing. No bones, no ghosts, no crawling shadows.

They've returned, back to the shopping mall that should have been closed long ago.

There were no ghosts, no horror, only an empty room.

"..."

"What happened?" Ji Zhuo's hand, holding the gun, tightened. "We're back? Doesn't that mean we succeeded?"

"No, we haven't completely destroyed the monster yet, how could we have succeeded?" Xiang Yu felt something was really wrong. "It knows we've cracked its methods, so it's afraid and chose to send us out!"

"Scared? Ghosts can be scared too?" Li Yiheng was taken aback, then felt a sense of peace. So ghosts, like people, can be scared too.

"Perhaps it's not fear. This thing probably doesn't have any emotions. It's more like an instinct to seek advantage and avoid harm." Xiang Yu pursed his lips. "But the problem is, if we end it like this, this ghost will still stay here permanently, and we won't have solved any problems."