Chapter 172: Rebuilding Order After the War

One month had passed since the great war in Minghai City.

While Gao Tian lay unconscious, much had happened in the outside world.

Global media, government officials, and ordinary citizens worldwide had watched the unprecedented battle in tense anticipation, only for it to end in a way that left onlookers utterly baffled.

The giant covered in human heads had suddenly collapsed into a man in a black trench coat.

The Smiling Man had vanished in a flash of black light.

The remaining man stood before a black door that had materialized out of thin air on the ruined earth, remaining motionless for a long time as if pondering a question.

He showed no immediate signs of aggression. The world leaders stationed on an offshore aircraft carrier argued briefly before deciding on a conservative approach, opting against a direct attack.

A helicopter carrying a ghost hunter, a negotiator, and a journalist took a massive risk, flying over the evaporated riverbed of the Huangpu River to hover above the man. They intended to open negotiations.

The King of All Ghosts merely raised his head and gave them a casual glance. An invisible force snapped the helicopter in half, and the four people on board, including the pilot, died instantly in four different ways.

Having snuffed out four lives without lifting a finger, the man in the trench coat suddenly lost interest in everything else. He pushed open the black door and stepped inside.

The moment the black door closed, it vanished as well.

At 6:13, the Woman in the Rain—temporarily dispersed by the effects of the Supernatural Die—descended upon Minghai City once more. The sky above the entire city was shrouded in endless rain, and countless tall women holding umbrellas began to wander the streets.

Although the King of All Ghosts was gone, the disaster unleashed by the Galan Society was far from over. To force Old Man Sun out, they had released a massive number of Fierce Ghosts from the Inner World, and those spirits remained.

There were now more ghosts in Minghai City than living people. A supernatural incident could occur on any block and along every road.

After Xu Yuan swallowed the Smiling Man, a temporal distortion had warped his body. Countless human heads reverted into Fierce Ghosts, scrambling over one another to claw their way out of him. Like prisoners granted amnesty, these filthy entities burrowed into every sewer, every dark corner, and beneath the pavement of the city.

Not to mention the space-time reversal that occurred wherever the Smiling Man had walked. In the city center, which had been leveled by Xu Yuan's ghost domain, high-rises began to sprout from the ground once more.

These "skyscrapers," pieced together from countless human limbs and chunks of flesh, made the area look like literal hell. In these towering monstrosities of flesh, casually resurrected and molded by the Smiling Man, every organ and limb seemed to possess a life of its own, fused together in a grotesque yet harmonious symbiosis.

The living people who had previously inhabited the area were dismantled and reassembled after death by the Smiling Man into a new lifeform: the towers of flesh.

Whether the municipal government tearing down these "buildings" counted as murdering these resurrected people sparked fierce debate among the media and ethicists.

Furthermore, whether the city should hire a construction crew or a hospital to demolish them, and whether the funds should come from the demolition budget or health insurance, caused another round of endless arguments.

These trivial matters would be argued over for a long time. They would be debated endlessly.

Two months had passed since the great war in Minghai City.

Xia Ta, Jiang Yang, Zhao Zhenjia, and the others still had not returned.

On that rainy night, the Apartment residents had gathered for the last time. Then, they pushed open the door and left.

Gao Tian had chosen to go to the Liberation Building, while Xia Ta and the rest headed to the most heavily devastated areas of Minghai City, intending to use their expertise to help as many ordinary people survive the night as possible.

They went their separate ways to meet their respective destinies.

After that came the battle between Old Man Sun and Xu Yuan, followed by the Smiling Man against Xu Yuan. Minghai City was completely shattered. The city center was leveled, and the terrifying purgatory permanently altered Minghai's topography. Countless people died that night; no matter who perished, it was a completely normal occurrence.

On the television, lines of victims' names scrolled across the screen continuously, day and night.

Behind each of those names was a person's entire life, and a shattered family.

The public didn't know what had happened. They knew nothing of the King of All Ghosts, Xia Country's number one ghost hunter, the filthy entities from twenty years in the future, or the grand cause and the sacrifices of the majority.

Gao Tian sat before the television day and night, watching every victim's name.

No Xia Ta.

No Jiang Yang.

No Zhao Zhenjia.

They had neither returned to the Apartment, nor had their remains been found.

Legally speaking, their status remained "missing."

But rationally speaking, their chances of survival were practically zero.

The excavation for the remains of Minghai City's victims was still ongoing. However, many corpses had been reduced to ash by the Heaven-Incinerating Ghost Domain, molded into towers of flesh by the Smiling Man's temporal reversal, or dragged into a new world by the Woman in the Rain. Killed by all sorts of bizarre Fierce Ghosts, many hadn't left so much as a scrap of a corpse behind.

Gao Tian continued to wait for the daily lists of the deceased.

Waiting was all he had left, and it was what he ought to do.

Three months had passed since the great war in Minghai City.

During this time, Shunjin City's Supernatural Disaster Bureau transferred a massive amount of personnel from all over the country to assist in rebuilding Minghai City.

Even Old Man Sun's beloved disciple—the Eighth Young Master, widely acknowledged as Xia Country's number one ghost hunter after Old Man Sun's death—temporarily set aside his heavy responsibility of defending Shunjin City. He stayed in Minghai City for a week to help research how to contain the Woman in the Rain.

The Black Cross Exorcism Company and various foreign corporations also donated vast sums of money. These funds were used to hire their own ghost hunters to contain and handle the various supernatural incidents leaking throughout Minghai City.

Of course, their true intent was likely to advertise their own ghost hunters, or perhaps to use this period to probe the true strength of Shunjin City's Supernatural Disaster Bureau and gauge whether the Eighth Young Master could truly compare to Old Man Sun.

None of that mattered, though.

Meanwhile, the various photos and materials that journalists had risked their lives to capture after the war had long since circulated among the top echelons of various nations, becoming top-secret files analyzed countless times.

Before the barrier had been lifted, what exactly had happened in Minghai City? Why did Old Man Sun lose, and how did he lose? Even the United States remained completely in the dark.

Theoretically, it was impossible for any eyewitnesses to exist. The ghost domain Xu Yuan had unleashed was comparable to the epicenter of a nuclear explosion. Aside from Old Man Sun, no human could have survived within a hundred-mile radius.

However, ghost hunter organizations around the world had managed to piece together quite a bit of intelligence regarding Xu Yuan's identity, the existence of the Galan Society, and the secrets of the Inner World.

Xu Yuan had never intended to hide his identity to begin with.

As for the Smiling Man who took Old Man Sun's place to confront Xu Yuan, his identity remained unknown.

There were quite a few photos of him circulating. His face was twisted, covered in livor mortis and rotting flesh. With modern technology, using AI to restore the deceased's facial features and confirm his identity shouldn't have been a difficult task.

But the photos of the Smiling Man carried a severe Meme infection.

Staring at them for too long, or attempting to analyze them with computers, would trigger the collective deaths of the involved researchers.

It seemed the path of confirming more information about the Smiling Man through his facial features was completely blocked.

The whole world continued to discuss the various details of the great war in Minghai City.

Among them were plenty of people fabricating facts out of thin air—people who knew absolutely nothing but still manufactured and spread rumors across the internet.

Such people had existed since ancient times, in every country.

Four months had passed since the great war in Minghai City.

Gao Tian's "rehabilitation training" was just about finished.

Even though the Apartment had forcibly suppressed the Smiling Man inside him, for the past half-year, Gao Tian had constantly heard a faint, bizarrely soft, and malicious laughter echoing in his ears. It had become background noise.

Sometimes, when he got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom or brush his teeth, he would turn to the mirror and see "Gao Tian's" face staring back at him, the corners of its mouth twisted into a smile at an inhuman angle.

After falling asleep, Gao Tian would sometimes wake up suddenly without warning, only to find himself standing in the kitchen with a pair of scissors in hand, the blades resting against his lips. It was as if his sleepwalking self wanted to cut open his mouth so he could laugh even louder.

Even with the Apartment suppressing the Smiling Man, once it was born, it could never truly vanish. The contamination on his body was simply too heavy.

Gao Tian began to suspect that he might never leave the Apartment for the rest of his life. To prevent the world's destruction, would he have to stay in the Apartment until he died of old age?

By the fourth month, the various strange contaminations and mutations on his body had grown fewer and fewer. Now, Gao Tian had largely returned to his pre-war life.

He wasn't much different from a normal person.

Yet, he remained confined to the Apartment, refusing to take a single step outside, just in case.

Additionally, there was one other strange matter.

That day, after the Gray Card activated on its own and sent him back to the Apartment, Gao Tian had fallen into a prolonged coma. In his dazed state, he had distinctly felt a woman lift his exhausted body from the sofa and carry him back to his room.

Gao Tian had always assumed it was Xia Ta. But the problem was that four months had passed, and Xia Ta and the others had never returned.

If not Xia Ta, then who could it have been?

Gao Tian had even wondered if his brain had been fried at the time, causing him to hallucinate.

But when he woke up, he was indeed in his own room. In his state at the time, it wasn't like he could have magically flown up to the Third Floor.

Over the past four months, Gao Tian had reviewed and analyzed the Minghai City incident countless times.

He found that the bizarre, unfathomable clues within it were only increasing.

Aside from Old Man Sun and Xu Yuan—the two heavyweights standing at the very peak—there was another figure operating behind the scenes. This person had never even set foot in Minghai City, yet he had written the entire script, forcing Xu Yuan and the others to dance to his tune. This mastermind had been completely overlooked.

Yusheng of Longshu Temple.

The Time Coffin paired with the Ghost Transformation Spear was indeed a formidable combo. However, it only bought enough time for a single ghost's temporal gap. Under normal circumstances, it would have been absolutely impossible to contend with Xu Yuan, the King of All Ghosts.

Why had Yusheng valued that coffin so highly? Why had he chosen him, doing everything at all costs to ensure he took that coffin away?

Could it be that he had read the script for the Minghai City incident long ago? Did he know that Gao Tian would turn into the Smiling Man after his death?

Not to mention that the Gray Card had also been given to him by Yusheng.

The Gray Card was the final countermeasure against the Smiling Man. When both Xu Yuan and the Time Coffin failed, Yusheng's backup plan transferred the Smiling Man into the Apartment, successfully suppressing it.

Every link in this chain was tightly connected; a single misstep would have ruined everything.

If it had been too slow, Xu Yuan, the King of All Ghosts, would have truly succeeded. If it had been too fast, the Smiling Man would have been released, and the entire world would have been contaminated.

It was perfectly timed to force Xu Yuan away and suppress the Smiling Man.

Under near-impossible circumstances, Yusheng had penned a virtually perfect ending.