Chapter 39: Ancestral Home's Jar

The thug hiding under a black cloth behind the debris suddenly sprang up. He fired a single shot at the kitchen window, shattering the glass, and leaped through without a second thought.

He knew very well that the White House had limited hiding spots. With Woman Face searching them one by one, it was only a matter of time before he was found. It was a miracle he had managed to hide behind the debris this long.

More importantly, the sky outside the window was already clear and bright.

The timing roughly matched Burned Ghost's prediction in the Chat Group: after about ten minutes, the ghost domain had completely dissipated.

He was back in the normal world. As long as he left the White House, the ghost inside couldn't chase him. If he didn't run now, when would he?

The hitman acted with absolute decisiveness. After years of doing dirty work for mob bosses, he wouldn't have survived this long without sharp reflexes. The moment the female ghost crouched over Gao Tian to inspect his condition, the hitman pounced like a leopard. He leaped up, fired, and vaulted the wall, completing the entire sequence in less than ten seconds.

But he underestimated the female ghost's speed.

The instant he jumped, the female ghost sensed the movement behind her. As he escaped through the window, she shot forward, driven by her long neck like a lightning strike. She reached the shattered window and screamed outside:

"Zhang Youguang..."

"Zhang Youguang."

"Zhang Youguang!"

After the third call, the hitman who had just managed to escape the house exploded into a bloody mist in the backyard, dying a gruesome death.

Unfortunately, he was a fraction too slow. If he could have instantly reached past the yard, he might have escaped the female ghost's curse.

In that moment, Gao Tian knew the final and best opportunity he had been desperately waiting for had finally arrived.

The ghost domain outside had receded. He could leave the White House at any time.

The female ghost looming over him was now distracted by the fleeing thug. Her neck stretched toward a window in the opposite direction, straining to reach outside.

Gao Tian sprang from the floor and sprinted in the opposite direction.

But he wasn't heading for the front door. Instead, he bolted straight for the stairs to the second floor!

Gao Tian didn't just want to escape. Xu Yuan had screwed him over too badly this time; if he didn't take the Ancestral Home's Jar before leaving, he would never be able to quell his bitter anger.

The female ghost guarded the Third Floor so strictly, which meant the Pot was most likely up there.

At the same time, Gao Tian was extremely curious why Xu Yuan was so obsessed with this Pot in his old home, going as far as to lay down so many traps to defend it.

Gao Tian moved the exact moment the female ghost floated to the window to kill the fleeing thug. By the time Gao Tian barreled up to the second floor, the female ghost had finished off the escapee outside and turned, flying back toward the second floor.

The pale neck stretching across all three floors of the house retracted rapidly to defend against Gao Tian's advance.

Gao Tian dodged left and right, narrowly evading the long neck's repeated attempts to strangle him.

"Zhao Qiang."

"Zhao Qiang."

"Zhao Qiang."

"Zhao Qiang!"

The female ghost's resentful voice echoed continuously behind him. With her low intelligence, she simply couldn't comprehend why her Killing Rule was completely useless against this man.

Fierce Ghosts had low intelligence, which was why Gao Tian couldn't use the Memory Ghost on her—she was too mindless to even hold a normal conversation. However, this type of ghost had a very straightforward behavioral pattern. Even after failing so many times, she just kept repeating Zhao Qiang's name.

By the skin of his teeth, Gao Tian used his nimble footwork to dodge the snake-like sweeps of the long neck, finally bursting onto the Third Floor he had been aiming for.

Outside, dawn was breaking. Golden sunlight trickled through gaps in the ceiling, spilling across the dim Third Floor. It gave Gao Tian just enough light to make out the scene before him.

The layout of the Third Floor was open and simple. A broken table sat there, holding an incense burner with three sticks that had long since burned to ash. Above the burner rested a black-and-white portrait of a woman with a long, horse-like face. She looked rather gentle in life, with clean white teeth—a stark contrast to the dark, hollow cavern that remained after her death.

This was obviously the ghost Xu Yuan kept in the White House. Using some unknown method, he had placed the portrait and ashes of a deceased woman on the Third Floor of his ancestral home. The Fierce Ghost she became after death entrenched herself here, killing any living person who dared set foot on the Third Floor.

Beneath the table sat two large pots, half a person tall. One pot was white, and the other was blood-red.

The long, slender neck supporting Woman Face extended right out of the white pot. Gao Tian glanced at it from a distance and noticed some white powder visible near the rim. There was a ninety-nine percent chance the woman's ashes were inside, anchored to this spot by Xu Yuan.

Just as he prepared to make his next move, Woman Face retracted back to the Third Floor like lightning. Gao Tian turned his head, only to see a massive maw lunging toward him, seemingly large enough to swallow the world. He reached out to block it, but before he could put up any resistance, his body was drenched in moisture as if swallowed into a writhing organ. His consciousness quickly faded into an endless abyss.

...

...

You have died.

According to the effect of the Ghost Card, you are about to be resurrected.

The card you have drawn this time is—

Three of Clubs.

Your soul has no other cards, and there is no point conflict. Resurrection successful.

There are 51 cards remaining in the deck. The drawn card will be permanently branded on your soul. Upon the next occurrence of a duplicate point value, the user will die instantly.

We wish you a pleasant resurrection.

...

...

It felt like waking from a terrifying nightmare.

Gao Tian felt his consciousness returning bit by bit. First his head, then down to his neck. The freezing sensation of his body lying face-down on the floor returned, and he began to regain control of his limbs.

He was back.

Gao Tian knew he had crashed right into the female ghost earlier. Seeing that her Killing Rule had no effect on him, she had simply swallowed him whole with her massive mouth, crushed his internal organs, and spat his corpse out onto the Third Floor.

Thank god he had a Supernatural Item like the Ghost Card, or it really would have been over.

At the cost of a Three of Clubs branded onto his soul, Gao Tian, who should have been dead, was resurrected on the spot in perfect condition.

But even though he had regained control of his body, he remained completely motionless on the floor. He suppressed his breathing to the absolute limit, playing dead.

Even with his eyes closed, he could feel a massive, terrifying shadow drifting slowly overhead, emitting a series of horrifying giggles.

After killing all the intruders, the female ghost enshrined on the altar had retreated back to the Third Floor to guard her ash urn and that strange red pot.

Gao Tian guessed that the red one was almost certainly the Ancestral Home's Jar Xu Yuan had mentioned. It was what he constantly obsessed over, terrified that someone would find it.

But the question remained: now that he had resurrected, how was he supposed to lure away the female ghost hovering above him, snatch the Red Jar, and escape in one piece?

Just making it out alive wasn't going to be easy. After all, the moment he stood up from the floor, the female ghost lurking on the ceiling of the Third Floor would spot him. To her, it would simply mean killing him all over again.

Getting up meant instant death. It wouldn't matter how many Ghost Cards he had; they would never be enough.

There was another way: activate the Black Card in his pocket and teleport straight back to the Living Apartment.

But Gao Tian felt he still had a play to make. He didn't want to waste his one and only precious Black Card here.

Earlier, when he was lying on the first floor, he had prepared a backup plan.

He had deliberately hidden his mobile phone under the sofa and set an alarm for fifteen minutes later, turning the volume all the way up.

Thinking about it now, it was just about time.

As long as the mobile phone on the first floor suddenly went off...

"Don't look at me, I'm just a sheep!~"

A deafening blare, accompanied by vibrations, suddenly erupted from the floor below.

"Hehehehe!"

Hearing the strange noise, the shadow hovering overhead didn't hesitate for a second. Like a white streak of daylight, it shot past the stairs on the third and second floors, hurtling straight down toward the first floor.

Once Woman Face reached the first floor, she spun around and quickly located the source of the noise beneath the sofa. She slammed her face down hard, pulverizing the already battered sofa. Along with it, the ringing mobile phone was smashed to pieces under her repeated headbutts, scattering plastic shell and components all over the floor.

After she destroyed the mobile phone, the strange noise finally stopped. Despite her low intelligence, the female ghost quickly realized there was no one here—it was just a mobile phone used as bait to draw her attention.

While the mobile phone lured the female ghost away to the first floor, Gao Tian made his move on the Third Floor.

He sprang up from his resurrection spot and lunged for the table. With a vicious kick, he knocked over the white urn housing the female ghost's ashes, scooped up the blood-red pot, and sprinted for the Third Floor window.

Screech!

Downstairs, sensing that the ash urn connected to her neck had been kicked over, the female ghost let out an indescribable, bizarre laugh. In that moment, she was in extreme pain and unparalleled rage. Dragging her massive face, her long neck darted back up the second and third floors at maximum speed, desperate to settle the score with the resurrected Gao Tian.

The female ghost was genuinely confused. Why was this human so hard to kill? She had clearly murdered him several times already, yet every single time, he got back up as if nothing had happened.

As fast as the female ghost was, there was still a gap of two floors between them. By the time her massive, deathly pale face rushed back to the Third Floor, Gao Tian had already climbed onto the windowsill. He was only one step away from jumping the wall and leaving this terrifying White House for good.

"Well then, goodbye."

Tossing a casual farewell to the lady of the house, Gao Tian didn't hesitate. Clutching the Red Jar tightly to his chest, he leaned back and let himself fall out the window.

Three stories was indeed quite high, but below was nothing but soft soil and weeds. As long as he landed at a good angle, the fall wouldn't be fatal.

Gao Tian's only worry was that the Pot in his hands would shatter. But it couldn't be helped—escaping this place alive was already a stroke of immense luck. Given how much Xu Yuan from the Chat Group treasured this Pot, Gao Tian would rather take a few broken shards back with him than let it sit intact in Xu Yuan's ancestral home.