Chapter 73: Ghost Log

Ghosts could die and fail countless times, but a living person only had one life.

Therefore, the one holding the log and stepping out of the Study first was, of course, the Wind Attendant Buddha—an entity with a build perfectly identical to Zhao Zhenjia's.

The moment it stepped out of the Study and was attacked, the ghost hiding outside the door was exposed.

It was a strange woman wearing a gothic lolita dress similar to Xia Ta's, wielding an ax caked in dried blood. Clearly, she had killed before.

But the woman was deathly pale. Her face was oversized with impossibly small features, as if they had been pasted on with scraps of paper, giving her the intense, unsettling aura of an imitation human. A gleaming knife was buried in the back of her neck.

Everything about her seemed like a desperate attempt to imitate the real Xia Ta. Yet the imitation was so clumsy it only made her more hair-raising.

Facing this paper-doll creature, Jiang Yang raised the revolver in his right hand. The six rounds in the cylinder merged into one, charging for two seconds before he unleashed his most powerful shot:

"Pneumatic Bullet."

The revolver instantly erupted with the force of an artillery shell. A massive shockwave blasted the bizarre woman. The tiny features on her oversized face twisted as she was launched backward, crashing heavily against the wall behind her.

Although the Pneumatic Bullet was tremendously powerful, instantly emptying the cylinder overheated the revolver, making it impossible to reload immediately.

"Go!"

Jiang Yang didn't dare linger; there was another one of those things in the living room. Escaping was their only priority.

Zhao Zhenjia bent down, snatched the dropped log from the floor, and fled the damn place.

Behind them, thunderous bangs echoed from the nailed-shut wardrobe, as if some colossal beast trapped inside were about to smash through the ice and charge out.

Overhead, rustling sounds echoed across the ceiling, as if a giant gecko were rapidly scuttling past.

In the shadows on the far side of the living room, a pair of deathly pale eyes slowly opened. A head turned in the gloom, fixing its gaze in their direction.

Jiang Yang fired another shot with his left hand, shattering the door lock. Outside lay the pitch-black corridor. Judging by the layout, they had returned to the fourth floor.

Rows of door numbers lined both sides. 419, 420, 421... The two men had no time to look, sprinting straight for the stairwell. Heavy panting echoed in the darkness behind them as a chaotic stampede of footsteps surged from the room. The foul things inside had chased them out, refusing to let Jiang Yang and Zhao Zhenjia escape down the corridor.

Jiang Yang glanced back, aimed his left hand into the darkness at the approaching footsteps, and pulled the trigger.

Bang.

The brief muzzle flash illuminated half the corridor. In the darkness, a hulking figure—identical to Zhao Zhenjia in height and build, but with a deathly pale face and minuscule features—was sprinting wildly after them.

The big guy's eyes, nose, and mouth were equally tiny, looking just like features pasted onto a paper doll. The bullet had struck its pectoral muscle, spraying a mist of blood. Yet the hulking figure didn't seem to feel a thing; its pace didn't slow in the slightest as it continued its relentless pursuit.

Behind it followed the rest—tall, short, fat, and thin. A girl, a madwoman, a silver-haired young man, and a guy in a white shirt. Gripping an assortment of bloodstained weapons, they chased tenaciously.

These five from the Study were clumsy imitations of the five people in reality—Xia Ta, Gao Tian, and the rest.

...

Month 18, Day 105. Sunny.

Today, two new visitors entered my Study.

They read the contents of my log and evaded the sudden attacks from the murderers in the room.

But the moment I saw their faces, I suddenly understood why those five murderers—who sneaked into my room and killed me all those years ago—looked so clumsy and ridiculous.

It was because of today.

A big guy and a silver-haired young man. They were the very "genuine articles" the two murderers had been painstakingly imitating all this time.

That's right. These five murderers all had corresponding original versions in reality.

As long as they killed the originals in reality, they could acquire new identities and become human once more.

Although the big guy and the silver-haired young man escaped the Study, they were still caught in the outside corridor and killed 1 minute and 2 seconds later.

The two counterfeits peeled the skin off their corpses and claimed their identities.

The madwoman was the second to die.

Having no sense of danger, she stepped forward to greet her "accomplices" upon seeing them in the corridor, only to be hacked to death with an ax.

The guy in the white shirt bumped into three "accomplices" at the door of Room 413.

He was relatively sharp and had already grown suspicious, asking them two questions. But in the darkness, his counterfeit quietly crept up behind him and skewered him to death with a pitchfork.

Finally, only the girl in the thick skirt remained. For some reason, she couldn't be found in any room along the corridor.

But it didn't matter. The five ghosts had waited seven years; they had the patience to keep searching.

I don't know why, but as a corpse watching this play out, perhaps I had stayed with the five ghosts for so long that I'd developed feelings for them. I actually felt a trace of excitement on their behalf.

...

"Can you stop reading that log? What kind of nonsense is that?"

Jiang Yang yelled. Zhao Zhenjia's voice reading the log lingered in his ears like a specter. The five somewhat deformed knock-offs were rapidly closing in from behind, making it impossible for him to even think.

Zhao Zhenjia was furious:

"Look closely! I haven't been reading the log at all!

"I have no idea where that voice is coming from."

The five counterfeits behind them were steadily closing the gap. Firing the pistol was useless. At this rate, they would be caught before they even reached the next stairwell.

As they fled for their lives, the doubts in Jiang Yang's mind only grew stronger.

Why would five ghosts enter Lin Nan'an's Study seven years ago, kill him, and then hide in the room for seven years?

Could the five ghosts have predicted the arrival of Jiang Yang and the others seven years in advance?

Even for a supernatural event, this was excessively bizarre.

There was something even stranger.

After Lin Nan'an was killed, during his time as a corpse, the entries in the log had continued to update.

That made no sense. Just who was writing the log?

Lin Nan'an had said that after becoming a corpse, he couldn't so much as move a finger.

Yet the subsequent contents of the log continued from his first-person perspective.

Especially the last entry—it didn't even pretend anymore, plainly detailing everything that was happening now and everything that was about to happen.

Was everything happening right now just a hallucination?

Jiang Yang suspected that the log itself was a Supernatural Item steeped in psychological suggestion. As the reader delved deeper, unconsciously immersing themselves, they would gradually fall under the log's influence.

As long as they believed the events written in the log, those horrors would manifest into reality.

The earlier content by Lin Nan'an had been written by a real person; the latter half had simply morphed into a Ghost Log.

They had read a Ghost Log, so their destined ending within it was naturally to be killed by ghosts.

Of course, these were all Jiang Yang's deductions.

However, overthinking it was meaningless now. The ghosts from the Ghost Log had already crossed over into reality.

If this really was a hallucination constructed by the log, how could they break it?

Seeing the Team of Five closing in from behind, Jiang Yang suddenly slowed his pace at a corner without warning.

Behind him, Zhao Zhenjia was sweating profusely:

"Are you crazy? Keep running!"

Jiang Yang raised his pistol, aiming at the five silhouettes bearing down on them in the corridor:

"I suspect these five never existed to begin with. Our psychological suggestion created them.

"Running any further is pointless. Our method of death has already been sealed by the log.

"I'm going to use my own method to verify this theory."

Of course, he was well aware that if his verification failed, he would be killed on the spot.

But if they kept running, they still couldn't escape the ending the log had woven for them. It was better to fight for survival on their feet than to die on their knees.

Jiang Yang had no confidence in his verification method either. He held a special Supernatural Item in his hand. It might be useful, or it might mean nothing at all.

What he was doing now was gambling with his life.

Cold sweat rolled down Jiang Yang's neck as he waited for the distance between the two sides to close.

Right at this life-and-death juncture, a muffled female voice suddenly rang out, sounding as though it were coming through a thick wall:

"What are you two idiots doing?"

This female voice was—

Lan Zhu?

Why was Lan Zhu here?

Zhao Zhenjia and Jiang Yang subconsciously turned their heads, searching everywhere for Lan Zhu. But at either end of the corridor, there was absolutely no sign of that madwoman.

"I'm over here.

"Where are you looking, you two idiots?"

A pile of clutter sat in the corner, stacked with abandoned furniture like old sofas. Among the heap was a dust-covered full-length Mirror, and Lan Zhu's voice was coming from right inside it.

What made them feel as if they'd truly seen a ghost was that Lan Zhu's figure actually surfaced from within the Mirror. She held a Dog Leash in her hand, the other end collaring the ghost of an old man missing a layer of skin.

Jiang Yang was startled:

"Hell, how did you get inside this Mirror? Did you trigger some Killing Rule?"

It really was a case of when it rains, it pours. Lan Zhu had also been sealed inside the Mirror by some Fierce Ghost. There was no time to worry about her now, though. Hiding inside the Mirror was actually a stroke of luck; he and Old Zhao out here were about to die.

"Lan Zhu, remember the scene happening in front of you.

"These five people are here to replace us. They waited in a Study for seven years just to kill us and become us.

"Don't be fooled. If I die, the ghosts can disguise themselves as us..."

Lan Zhu wore a look of pure confusion:

"What are you talking about, Jiang Yang?

"I think you and Old Zhao have completely lost your minds.

"Right from the start, you both bafflingly sprinted over to this corner, started muttering nonsense, and backed up step by step. You're sweating buckets, acting like you're fighting some bitter battle.

"Just what exactly is chasing you down the corridor? I don't see anything at all."

Hearing this, Jiang Yang slowly turned his head.

Down the corridor, the five counterfeits that had been relentlessly pursuing them had vanished. The hallway was completely empty, as if they had never been there at all.

Everything had returned to normal.

Everything except Lan Zhu, who still hadn't vanished from the Mirror.