Chapter 141: Two Chess Players

There's a certain faction in the Inner World. They were ghost hunters when they were alive, and after turning into ghosts, they maintained their sanity through some unknown means. Even this old man doesn't know how.

Their leader is a lethal bastard named Xu Yuan. I've never fought him face-to-face, but I've run the combat simulations. You could say we're evenly matched—two masters of the same game.

"Overall, our odds are a three-to-seven split. Three minutes to end the fight, and I carve him into seven pieces."

Old Man Sun sounded quite relaxed while discussing Xu Yuan.

Gao Tian already knew this.

Back at the Divine Tree, Xu Yuan had personally admitted that Old Man Sun was the only person in all of Shanghai City he feared. As for the rest of the ghost hunters combined, he could slaughter them all in a single day.

"But since his ghost transformation, he has never set foot in Shanghai City himself. If this drawn-out waiting game continues, the loser will inevitably be this eighty-nine-year-old geezer."

Over the mobile phone, Old Man Sun's heavy smoking habit was obvious—he took a drag every three sentences. "Because I am human, and he is a ghost.

"I will age and grow weak. Eventually, my body will hit its limit, and I'll leave this world.

"Birth, aging, sickness, and death—that is the law of nature. This old man accepts it calmly.

"But Xu Yuan is different. He will never die. On the contrary, as the death toll in this world rises, his power will only grow stronger.

"Time is not on our side.

"In all of Shanghai City, no one is a match for Xu Yuan but me. The day my time is finally up, Xu Yuan will descend on Shanghai City in person and slaughter every ghost hunter in the Supernatural Disaster Bureau."

Old Man Sun revealed his true motive. "This war absolutely cannot drag on. Everything must be settled while I'm still alive. While I still draw breath.

"Xu Yuan has been incredibly patient all these years. He's been lying low in the Inner World, just waiting for me to die. Those fools at the Supernatural Disaster Bureau are a bunch of cowards. Without me, Xu Yuan can do whatever he pleases.

"You can't stand guard against a thief forever.

"So, this time, I've decided to give Xu Yuan an opening. I'll let him choose the battleground and twist Shanghai City into whatever shape he wants.

"The moment Xu Yuan thinks the time is right, he'll dare to enter Shanghai City. Then I'll root him out, smash him to death with a single strike of my staff, and this whole game will be over."

That was Old Man Sun's plan.

Xu Yuan planned to unleash three S-Level Fierce Ghosts upon Shanghai City to bleed Old Man Sun dry.

And Old Man Sun worried that if he eliminated one of those S-Level Fierce Ghosts prematurely, Xu Yuan might scurry back into the Inner World, too afraid to set foot in Shanghai City.

He might as well let the Woman in the Rain reach the peak of her strength, giving Xu Yuan enough reinforcements and confidence to invade Shanghai City. Why not?

In Old Man Sun's eyes, combat was just that simple: wait for Xu Yuan to stick his head out, then finish him off with a single swing. Game over.

Old Man Sun believed time was on Xu Yuan's side, but in truth, Xu Yuan was also running out of time.

Through his Ghost Eye, the future he witnessed showed that humanity's extinction had been compressed to within two thousand years.

Xu Yuan had to take over Shanghai City immediately to advance his world-saving plan. He could no longer afford to sit back and leisurely wait for Old Man Sun to die of old age.

When it came to confronting Old Man Sun head-on, the arrow was already nocked; it had to be fired.

Both of them were racing against Death.

"What about the rest of Shanghai City, then?

"Because of your absence, it will be reduced to a hunting ground for an S-Level Fierce Ghost."

Old Man Sun replied, "If Shanghai City is destroyed, it can be rebuilt.

"But if I die of old age before Xu Yuan, everyone will die."

Calmly, ruthlessly, he stated an objective fact: "When this farce in Shanghai City ends depends entirely on when Xu Yuan shows up.

"The moment he shows his face, I'll find him. It will only take a few minutes for this entire farce to end.

"If Xu Yuan refuses to appear, then I will keep waiting. I will sit quietly until this farce runs its course.

"Even if everyone in this city dies in the process."

What if Xu Yuan never appeared at all?

No.

Xu Yuan would definitely appear.

Because just as Old Man Sun was waiting for Xu Yuan, Xu Yuan was also searching for Old Man Sun.

The two of them were like two apex predators in a forest. No matter how fate twisted, their paths were destined to cross.

Before hanging up the mobile phone, Old Man Sun offered a word of reassurance. "Shadow Headquarters has already prepared the Supernatural Item to handle the Woman in the Rain.

"The moment Xu Yuan is imprisoned, they will step in to take care of the Woman in the Rain.

"Anyway, until the final battle begins, I hope you kids can patrol the streets of Shanghai City and resolve as many supernatural events as possible. Slow down the destruction of this city, even if just a little.

"You're a smart kid. You know what I mean.

"I'm hanging up."

Beep, beep, beep. The line went dead, leaving an endless busy signal.

This game of chess between heavyweights was an unmitigated disaster for the ordinary citizens of Shanghai City.

The deaths of tens of thousands of ordinary people were just meaningless statistics. In the match between these two powerhouses, the citizens were nothing but cannon fodder—not even qualifying as pawns on the board.

Logically, Gao Tian knew Old Man Sun's choice was the optimal solution.

To achieve a greater goal, the interests of a few had to be sacrificed.

Emotionally, however, accepting that fact was incredibly difficult.

These were tens of millions of lives. They weren't pigs, dogs, or insects.

But by that same logic, Xu Yuan's world-saving plan was actually more righteous than Old Man Sun's.

Both required sacrificing a fraction of humanity, but Xu Yuan genuinely had a chance of saving the world. As for Old Man Sun, even if he smashed Xu Yuan to death, new Fierce Ghosts would just keep popping up.

They would continue appearing until they completely exceeded humanity's limit to endure them, bringing about the apocalypse. The endgame wouldn't change at all.

Deep down, those two were the exact same kind of person.

Gao Tian stood there. For the first time in his life, his conviction on which side to choose wavered.

At this crossroads of fate, which path should he walk?

Right.

The Future Urn.

Only the Future Urn could pierce through the fog of destiny and show him the optimal solution.

Without a moment's hesitation, Gao Tian activated his Mirror Ghost and pulled himself inside. There, within the Mirror World, he picked up the most mysterious red jar among all his Supernatural Items.

It had been a while since he last checked it. The Skeleton Master inside had already moved to the center of the urn. It tilted its hollow skull upward, staring directly outside.

This was an incredibly abnormal sight. But with more pressing matters outside, Gao Tian had no time to ponder the Future Urn's strange changes. "Show me the future."

At the bottom of the urn, a gray fog slowly welled up, swallowing the entire space.

Normally, once the gray fog dissipated, the future would unfold before his eyes like a slideshow.

But that didn't happen.

Three minutes passed. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes passed.

The bottom of the urn remained shrouded in gray fog. The thick, heavy mist showed no signs of clearing.

Occasionally, sparks splattered across the bottom, accompanied by the shadowy silhouettes of things collapsing in the mist.

It took a long time for Gao Tian to realize the truth—the Future Urn was already showing him the future. This was the future of Shanghai City: shrouded in the thick smoke of war, the sky choked by an impenetrable haze of death and ruin.

Beneath the blanket of war, he could barely make out the Huangpu River dividing the land. The architectural marvels that once lined its banks had been reduced to battlefield ruins. Only a single, sharp spire pierced the gray canopy, standing stubbornly above the ashes. For whatever reason, it still had not fallen.

Amidst the scattered corpses and devastation, a lone figure slowly pierced through the gray fog, ascending into the gloomy sky.

Straining his eyes, Gao Tian finally managed to make out the features of the figure hovering over the ruins of Shanghai City.

The figure's build and clothing looked remarkably like his own.

Except, a massive steel rebar impaled its chest front to back, and the bloodstains on its body had long dried to pitch black. A chunk of its head was caved in, smashed by some heavy object.

If it had been an ordinary human, it would have been a corpse long ago.

Yet, the corpse clearly retained consciousness. The stiff body moved autonomously, pointing one hand toward the heavens and the other toward the earth. Suspended in mid-air with an air of absolute arrogance, it quietly gazed down upon the war-torn devastation and all living creatures beneath its feet.

"Above the heavens and below the earth.

"I alone am the honored one."

That clear voice rang out like a massive bell, its echoes lingering in the air. The words reverberated throughout all of Shanghai City, projecting so clearly that Gao Tian heard them outside the urn.

Without any further explanation, the gray fog dispersed, once again revealing the portrait of Master Yunshan painted at the bottom of the urn.

Gao Tian set the Future Urn down. Searing that bizarre scene into his memory, he hurriedly exited the Mirror World.

As he headed downstairs, Gao Tian couldn't stop thinking about the miniature world inside the Future Urn.

First of all, he was almost certain that the mangled corpse impaled by rebar and ascending into the sky was him. The future Gao Tian.

It wasn't just because the figure's silhouette looked like his. Every prophecy the Future Urn had shown him so far had centered on Gao Tian's fate as the primary viewpoint. It wouldn't randomly shift focus to some passing stranger.

The future Gao Tian had died in battle.

This was unlike the incident at Longshu Temple, where time-loop interference had caused the Future Urn to bug out and endlessly display his deaths across different parallel worlds.

This time, it showed a clear, definitive future. Gao Tian would die in that exact, confirmed state.

But the real question was: why could Gao Tian still take to the skies after dying? Why did he retain enough consciousness to point to heaven and earth, and speak such cryptic words?

That posture was the iconic gesture Shakyamuni made upon his birth. It symbolized an Awakened One descending into the mortal world.

There was only one possibility.

He had finally been pushed to the absolute brink, forcing him to activate the combination of the Ghost Transformation Spear and the Time Coffin.

He had undergone a ghost transformation.

The Future Urn hadn't shown the normal Gao Tian, but rather Gao Tian in his fully ghostified state.

The good news was that his theoretical combo actually worked.

The problem was figuring out exactly what kind of Killing Rule, or even ghost domain, Gao Tian had awakened after "death."

What kind of terrifying power made his descent into the world so overwhelmingly imposing?