Return

His sanity plunged straight to zero. A jolt of ice shot from his tailbone straight to the crown of his head. Like a cat with its fur rubbed the wrong way, Zhang Yuanqing leaped straight into the air and spat out an instinctive curse: "Holy fucking shit!" It was the involuntary reaction of anyone subjected to sudden, overwhelming terror. Now he finally understood why his shoulder had been aching so terribly, and why the corpse beneath the window had kept a bronze mirror on hand. It was to check whether a wraith was clinging to his back. *When did it latch onto my shoulder? When I walked into the courtyard, or when I stepped into this room?* *And who gave me the courage to wander around exploring—Fish Leong?!* His mind felt as if it were exploding, chaotic thoughts racing through his head all at once as panic crashed over him like a tidal wave. Even though he had known this temple harbored bizarre, terrifying things and had mentally prepared himself, coming face-to-face with an actual ghost still filled him with unspeakable dread. *Wait, I have a talisman!* With trembling fingers, Zhang Yuanqing fished the yellow paper talisman from the left pocket of his storm jacket and slapped it onto his shoulder like a desperate man grasping at straws. *Smack!* The Corpse-Suppressing Talisman struck his shoulder. Raising the bronze mirror, he cautiously angled it to look. The man with the deathly pale face, black lips, and lifeless white pupils was still perched right on his shoulder. *It's useless. This thing doesn't count as a corpse-type yin creature...* The last shred of hope evaporated. Zhang Yuanqing felt his shoulder growing increasingly sore and swollen, his hands and feet turning icy cold. These were no illusions—his yang energy was truly bleeding away. At this moment, he thought of the skeleton tucked beneath the table in the main hall, and the unfortunate predecessor who had met a gruesome end beneath this very window. In all likelihood, he would soon die here just like the two of them. A bone-chilling dread gripped his heart. *Click-clack!* Suddenly, at this critical juncture, faint footsteps echoed from the corridor outside. The steps were light, yet in the dead silence of the night, they were unmistakable. Zhang Yuanqing's heart seized. He dropped into a crouch instantly, hunkering down beside the corpse beneath the window. The footsteps sounded familiar—very much like what he had heard when first entering the temple. *Click-clack, click-clack...* The sound drew nearer, heading in his direction. Zhang Yuanqing didn't dare breathe, his whole body taut as he faintly heard his own frantic heartbeat. As the footsteps passed outside the window, he couldn't help glancing at the floor. Moonlight streamed in, casting a latticed window shadow across the flagstones. The windowsill was low, reaching only to his waist. Any person of normal height passing by outside would have cast a shadow on the floor under the moonlight. Yet he saw nothing at all. Which meant whatever had walked past the window had no upper body. Fortunately, the footsteps did not pause at the window, nor did they enter the room. They gradually faded away. *Phew...* Zhang Yuanqing exhaled quietly. Straining his ears to track the retreating steps, he heard them step into the courtyard, kicking up the dry, rustling scrape of weeds. Then the sound stopped. A few seconds later, footsteps sounded once more. This time, it wasn't mere walking—it had a deliberate cadence and rhythm, like steps in a dance. *What is it doing in the courtyard?* Propping up his chilled, sluggish body, Zhang Yuanqing pushed himself to his feet with some effort and peered outside through the tattered paper of the window. In the moonlight, amid the wild grass, a brand-new pair of Western-style red dancing shoes was tap-dancing through the darkness. A moonlit night, an abandoned temple, red dancing shoes, a solitary dance. The scene was as absurd as it was eerie, tinged with an inexplicable sense of... loneliness? How could a Ming dynasty mountain god temple harbor a pair of Western-style dancing shoes? *This ruined temple just keeps getting weirder...* He quietly crouched back down and waited patiently. Minutes ticked by. The wraith clinging to his shoulder steadily siphoned away his yang energy. His body stiffened, and the dull ache in his shoulder sharpened into piercing agony. He felt that if this continued, he would either die from the complete drain of his vitality or perish from a shattered shoulder. In the midst of this excruciating torment, the dancing in the courtyard finally stopped. Still not daring to show himself, Zhang Yuanqing waited a moment longer before cautiously poking his head up to peer through the window. The courtyard was bathed in moonlight, the wild grass standing silent and still. The bizarre dancing shoes were gone. "Phew..." He blew out a breath of stale air in relief. Just as he tried to stand, his knees buckled, sending him tumbling back to the floor. Once his frayed nerves relaxed and the adrenaline ebbed, he realized his condition was far worse than he had imagined. His shoulder burned with fiery, stabbing pain as though the bone were fracturing. His knee joints were rigid, and the blood in his veins felt thick and frozen. Trembling, he picked up the bronze mirror. In its dusty surface, Zhang Yuanqing saw his face: pale as ash, hollow-eyed, and haggard. He looked nothing like a healthy young man, resembling instead an invalid at death's door. On his shoulder, the wraith with black lips stared back at him in eerie silence. If this went on, death was certain. But what could he do? He couldn't even touch the wraith on his shoulder. The fierce agony in his shoulder bone forced him to lean against the wall for support. Glancing sideways at the worker's skeleton, he noticed that his posture mirrored the corpse's perfectly. "So that's how it is..." Zhang Yuanqing managed a bitter smile. It was as if he could already see his own end and hear the sigh of the Grim Reaper. Yet Zhang Yuanqing refused to give up his will to live. His brain continued to race, like an overclocked CPU searching for a glimmer of hope amid desperation. In a flash of inspiration, the skeleton beneath the table in the main hall cut through the jumbled storm of thoughts. *The degree of shoulder fracture was different on the two skeletons! The shoulder injury on the corpse in the main hall wasn't fatal. Did the clinging wraith spare him? No, a wraith wouldn't show mercy...* *Why did he hide under the table?* *The red dancing shoes were secretly following me when I entered the temple, but the moment I went into the main hall, they left...* At this thought, a spark of hope ignited in Zhang Yuanqing's dull, glazed eyes. *Back to the main hall—get back to the main hall right now!* He struggled to his feet and stumbled out of the room. Every step felt excruciatingly heavy, as though he were carrying an entire mountain on his back. *Thump!* He collapsed in the courtyard, tumbling into the wild grass, unable to stand again. Zhang Yuanqing's teeth chattered violently, clattering against each other as if he had been plunged into the dead of winter. The bitter cold robbed him of his warmth and eroded his resolve. Clawing forward inch by inch, Zhang Yuanqing dragged himself toward the main hall with every ounce of strength he had left. He kept his head tilted upward, fixing his gaze on the silhouette of the building ahead. Only by doing so could he keep the spark of hope from dying in his eyes. Walking from the main hall took barely a minute under normal circumstances, but now the distance felt as vast as the ends of the earth. Finally, the instant he dragged himself beneath the eaves of the main hall, an ethereal shriek rang in his ears. The weight on his shoulder vanished, and the chill, dizziness, and stiffness instantly melted away. Scrambling and tumbling up onto the stone plinth, Zhang Yuanqing staggered around to the front of the hall, shoved open the lattice doors, and collapsed across the threshold. The single bean-sized candle flame inside held the gloom at bay, radiating a gentle warmth like a spring breeze. He sprawled out in a spread-eagle on the floor, his chest heaving as he gasped for air. He lay there for two or three minutes before finally feeling like he had returned to the land of the living. "Too terrifying... absolutely terrifying. My deduction was right—the main hall is a safe sanctuary." From the differing shoulder injuries on the two skeletons, he had deduced that something had halted the wraith's assault on the man in the hall. And the fact that the worker under the table had died curled in a fetal position matched the psychological instinct of someone hiding in sheer terror. In that predecessor's mind, the main hall had been safe. The red dancing shoes abandoning their pursuit of him had indirectly confirmed that theory. Zhang Yuanqing stayed in the main hall for the rest of the time until the ache in his shoulder subsided and his body temperature returned to normal. Sure enough, he encountered no further danger. *If the main hall is a safe house, my chances of survival have increased considerably. Even if that shoulder wraith drains my essence again, I can just flee back here. But if I run into the wraith and get chased by the red dancing shoes at the same time, I probably won't make it back in time.* *Besides, the source of this temple's weirdest, most terrifying horrors definitely isn't limited to wraiths...* He took no pride in surviving a brush with death. This ancient temple was far from simple. After all, an entire construction crew had perished here before him. Having rested for a long while, his fear gradually receded, and he began hesitating over whether to venture out and explore further. Just then, the voice in his mind rang out once more: [Main Quest 1: Survive for three hours (Completed)] [Main Quest 2: Explore Spirit Realm No. 0079, Progress: 20%] [Yuanshi Tianzun, congratulations on completing a main quest. Calculating rewards now...] [Obtained Item/Prop: Corpse-Suppressing Talisman (viewable in inventory).] [Obtained EXP: 15%] [Inventory unlocked.] [You will receive 36 hours of rest. Spirit Realm No. 0079 will open next in: 35:59:40.] The surroundings within the main hall distorted, rippling like water stirred by the wind. When his vision cleared, Zhang Yuanqing saw the bright glow of an energy-saving light, a spacious bed, a study desk, a PS5 console, and an open window with curtains gently swaying in the breeze. He had returned to the human world. "I'm back?" Stunned, he looked left and right. Once he confirmed that he was truly back in his room, his knees softened, and he flopped onto the plush mattress. Taking a deep breath, he found that even the air smelled sweet. It was good to be alive. It was good to be back in the mortal world. After recovering for several minutes, Zhang Yuanqing sat up and unzipped his storm jacket. Sure enough, the Corpse-Suppressing Talisman was gone from his pocket. The thought of retrieving an item arose naturally in his mind. The next instant, a row of five glowing blue grid slots materialized before his eyes. Lying quietly in the very first slot was the yellow paper talisman. It was a wondrous sensation. Once the inventory unlocked, using it felt as natural as breathing—no instruction needed; he instinctively knew how to open and manage it. *Aside from the Corpse-Suppressing Talisman, I also gained 15% EXP, but my level is still zero. That means I haven't become a Night Wanderer yet—I'm still an ordinary human.* *Surviving for three hours already pushed me to the brink of death. How am I supposed to complete the second quest? Is this what S-rank difficulty is like...* The more Zhang Yuanqing thought about it, the more hopeless he felt. He had truly been screwed over by Brother Bing. That damned black card could indeed change a person's life, but it was just as true that it was nearly impossible to master. He knew his own limits. He was just a college student who had never even slaughtered a chicken. Relying solely on himself to survive the second quest would be next to impossible. As a red-blooded, upright youth raised under the socialist banner, his natural instinct at a time like this was to rely on the state and the government. Reaching for his phone, he prepared to dial his cousin's number. But just as his finger touched the screen, he paused. A better option crossed his mind. He swung out of bed, opened his desk drawer, and found the business card left by the man with the slicked-back hair. Printed on it were a name and a contact number. Tonight's ordeal reminded him of Brother Bing's bizarre disappearance. If he hadn't managed to make it out alive, he would have vanished without a trace, too. Without a doubt, Brother Bing had come into contact with the Spirit Realm long ago. Could his disappearance mean he had entered a Spirit Realm as well? Going by that logic, the investigators from the Public Security Bureau were trustworthy. There was another reason he chose to contact the slicked-back man: the investigator had warned that he might go missing, too. That had been a veiled hint about entering the Spirit Realm. Coupled with the fact that his cousin had been completely out of the loop, Zhang Yuanqing had good reason to deduce that those three were specialized personnel dedicated to handling supernatural incidents of this nature. Having sorted out his thoughts, Zhang Yuanqing dialed the number printed on the card. After several rings, the call connected, and a mature, deep male voice answered: "Who is this?"