Mysterious Awakening

Chapter 578: Chapter 575: The Released Curse

"Hello? Hello, Yang Jian, are you going to talk? What were you trying to say just now? Hello

At the headquarters, Cao Yanhua, who was on the call, discovered that suddenly there was no sound coming from Yang Jian’s side. The conversation had cut off mid-sentence, and the phone line had not disconnected, nor had the signal been affected in any way.

"Yang Jian, are you still there? Hello.”

Cao Yanhua called out several times, but there was still no sound from Yang Jian on the other end of the phone.

He frowned and subconsciously assumed that Yang Jian had deliberately moved the phone away, not wanting to continue the conversation with him, especially since he hadn’t been satisfied with what had been said just before.

"Liu Xiaoyu, keep trying to connect with Yang Jian. No matter what, we need to hold him steady. Tell him not to go out and cause trouble tonight. I’ll continue to negotiate with people in my network and assure him that I can give him a satisfactory answer by tomorrow morning,” Cao Yanhua put down the phone and instructed Liu Xiaoyu from the switchboard room.

...

"Alright, I’ll try my best to persuade Yang Jian,” Liu Xiaoyu nodded, indicating she understood.

However, he couldn’t afford to ignore this situation either. Although Yang Jian was just one person, the trouble he caused was significant.

After Cao Yanhua left, Liu Xiaoyu had no choice but to work overtime to try and get in touch with Yang Jian, hoping to keep him stable.

But what they didn’t know was that Yang Jian hadn’t suddenly gone silent during the call; rather, he had been subjected to a terrifying attack by some unknown supernatural force and couldn’t attend to the unfinished call anymore.

On a street near the Ping’an Hotel.

A very bizarre scene had unfolded; the entire street, along with the nearby buildings and the vehicles and pedestrians on the road, were all shrouded in a dense red light. This red light seemed to have become everything on this street, changing all the colors, even obscuring the sky above.

"What’s going on, what happened?” someone exclaimed, clearly shocked by the sudden change.

"Am I seeing things? Why has everything turned red here? Could there be some special astronomical phenomenon?” Another person looked up at the sky, trying to confirm their guess.

"This road, something’s not right.”

However, the drivers on the road felt an inexplicable panic because they found that no matter how they drove forward, they could not leave this street. The road was still the same, the speed of the car was as before, but the surroundings hadn’t changed at all.

This was an unimaginable and eerie feeling.

People on the street began to panic slightly.

But for Yang Jian at this moment, all this was already insignificant. He was in a terrifying state, lying prone on the sidewalk by the street, with a ferocious gash across his neck leaking blood profusely, staining the ground red in the space of just a few moments.

And his head had rolled off to the side, no longer connected to his neck.

Such a scene had terrified the passersby, who fled the scene as if running for their lives, not one daring to come closer.

Although Yang Jian’s head lay beside his own body, he still retained consciousness, and his thoughts were relatively clear. His eyes were slightly open, showing an expression of disbelief and shock.

But for how long can a human head retain consciousness after separating from the body?

Three seconds? Five seconds? Or ten?

Regardless of the duration, this lingering consciousness would be extremely short-lived because with the significant loss of blood and lack of oxygen, one would rapidly lose consciousness.

Yang Jian was no exception.

He was a ghost controller, but not all ghost controllers could survive without their heads.

Feng Quan could.

That was because Feng Quan’s entire body had already been eroded by the bizarre grave soil; inside his body was all mud, devoid of any trace of human flesh and blood.

Wang Xiaoming’s brother, Wang Xiaoqiang, could as well, since his body was that of a ghost. He was merely a tattered shell parasitizing a ghost’s body, long detached from the realm of the living.

But Yang Jian couldn’t, because most of his body still belonged to the category of the living, not much eroded by fierce ghosts.

This was both an advantage and a flaw.

The body of a living person signifies health, represents the mental stability of a ghost controller, but it also indicates frailty and susceptibility to death.

Yang Jian, however, had overcome the shortcomings brought by the living body because he had tamed the Headless Ghost Shadow, which could attach to his body in times of danger, allowing his body to retain human health while possessing some characteristics of a ghost.

Yet, the Headless Ghost Shadow was flawed.

Due to its lack of a head, Yang Jian’s head wasn’t covered by the Headless Ghost Shadow, causing his body to have a fatal weakness.

As long as Yang Jian’s head hit the ground, he would truly die, just like any ordinary person.

Now, Yang Jian had no time to ponder why that sudden attack had aimed for his neck, nor to consider why such an eerie assault could ignore the obstruction of the four-layered Ghost Domain, even preventing the Headless Ghost Shadow from stitching back together.

"I must find a way to survive The only thought in his head now was to keep living.

Beyond that, everything else wasn’t his to consider because there was simply no time left.

He was unclear how long his consciousness could last in his severed head, only knowing that once his eyes closed, everything from his time at No. 7 Middle School to the present—all his efforts, everything he had been through—would be wasted.

Yang Jian didn’t want to die; he, like any ordinary person, had a strong will to live.

If he had harbored thoughts of suicide, he would have died back in Dachang City.

Light the Ghost Candle? To isolate from all paranormal activities around and then take advantage of the opportunity to figure out how to put the head back together using the Headless Ghost Shadow?

Or should he rush to use the death-dodging doll to block all fatal attacks at this critical moment?

Or perhaps do nothing and bet everything on the bizarre Eight-Tone Music Box he had placed on himself but had never used?

Three choices—these were the best solutions Yang Jian could think of while his consciousness was at its clearest.

None of these methods might work; perhaps the Ghost Candle couldn’t block that terrible attack, maybe the death-dodging doll would only delay the inevitable death a bit, or perhaps the Eight-Tone Music Box fetched from headquarters wasn’t as powerful as imagined.

Which to choose?

This thought echoed in Yang Jian’s mind.

He had to make a decision within the shortest possible time.

At that moment, his eyelids were growing increasingly heavy, everything before his eyes was gradually darkening, and his thoughts seemed to be sinking into darkness… He was about to die, barely hanging on to a few seconds of consciousness. In these final moments, he could only do one thing.

And at this moment,

Inside the office of Ping’an Tower,

Fang Shiming’s scissors once again fell upon an ordinary photograph identical to the one he had previously cut—a copy. The content had not changed in the slightest, displaying a full-body image of Yang Jian.

As for the ruined photograph, he did not continue to use it, as its incompleteness prevented the activation of the Ghost Scissors’ murderous rule.

Therefore, a photograph could only be used once.

But for him, replicating the same photo dozens or even hundreds of times posed no difficulty whatsoever.

This time, Fang Shiming’s scissors aimed at the head of Yang Jian in the picture.

It only took a snip to bisect Yang Jian’s head into two parts.

If this still wouldn’t kill him… Fang Shiming took a brief look around.

In the dark office, the peculiar smell grew even stronger. Several incomplete humanoid silhouettes stood right by his side, almost sticking to him, and the office desk in front of him was no longer distinguishable, its surface saturated with blood and strewn with various dismembered limbs.

There were ghastly white heads with eyes closed facing this way, split legs eerily standing there, and severed fingers that seemed to wriggle ever so slightly.

Within these remnants lurked the real ghosts.

If Fang Shiming were to touch a real ghost, he would have to bear the terrifying curse of the Ghost Scissors.

What the consequences would be, Fang Shiming did not know, but they were certainly not going to be good.

So using the Ghost Scissors twice in quick succession was already his limit. Combined with a Ghost Candle, he could ward off the surrounding eeriness for a while and seize the opportunity to use the Ghost Scissors twice before the candle extinguished.

But Fang Shiming did not have a Ghost Candle at hand, so after the second use, no matter the outcome, he would stop using the Ghost Scissors.

However, he believed that these two attempts were sufficient to thoroughly kill Yang Jian, leaving no chance for survival.

Even if he didn’t die, the vengeful ghost would revive.

The outcome was inevitable.

Fang Shiming’s withered palm moved slightly, and the photo immediately underwent the same transformation as before. The colorful photograph suddenly lost its vibrancy, aging instantly—a curse from the Ghost Scissors. Then, the figure of Yang Jian in the photo began to blur, with a layer of red pigment contaminating it.

The curse reflected some of the subject’s condition in the photo. The blurriness of the photo and the indistinctness of the person indicated that the individual was using a ghost’s power to resist.

Unfortunately, this ghostly power was still far from enough.

The figure in the photo did not disappear, and the sudden layer of red paint did not completely obscure the photo either.

Fang Shiming’s scissors met no obstacle or disturbance as they successfully made a cut in the photograph, and the crack swiftly spread forward, soon reaching the forehead of Yang Jian in the picture.

He cut sideways, so this fissure could completely tear Yang Jian’s head from slightly above the eyebrows.

And if a ghost controller could live without a head, well, if his brain were split open too, he was surely doomed.

Fang Shiming’s movements, compared to before, were somewhat slower, his desiccated palm trembling slightly because he had already seen that the ghastly white Dead Man’s Head on the desk had opened its eyes.

At his back, at the nape of his neck, an icy breeze seemed to rise, as if someone was breathing behind him.

Tap, tap!

In the not-so-large office, from a pitch-black corner, there came clear footsteps, which seemed to be approaching him the moment they started.

A ghost had sensed Fang Shiming’s presence and had begun to draw near.

Bearing the curse of the Ghost Scissors, summoning an unpredictable fierce ghost.

Even so, Fang Shiming was set on killing Yang Jian.

But in these short ten seconds, on the street covered by the Ghost Domain and now a heap of corpses, Yang Jian—who had become one himself—took advantage of the last bit of consciousness in his decapitated head to make his choice.

At that moment, his body twitched, and the red Ghost Candle he held loosened and fell to the ground.

This movement signified that Yang Jian had given up on lighting the Ghost Candle.

Then his arm twisted in an unnatural way and reached into a pocket of his shirt, retrieving a golden box.

The golden box was opened, revealing a wooden Eight-Tone Music Box inside. Its red paint was mottled and peeling as if it had weathered decades.

He didn’t place his bets on the life-for-a-life doll but on this terribly cursed Eight-Tone Music Box instead.

However, now Yang Jian’s eyes were gradually closing. His Ghost Shadow still connected to his body from beneath, allowing him to control the ghost shadow to momentarily move his body and make some small movements that were still possible.

"Open it,” his consciousness was about to dissipate.

His unwillingly closing eyes were firmly fixed on his body’s movements. At the very last moment, he needed to open the Eight-Tone Music Box to unleash the curse that could grant immortality.

Meanwhile, a crack appeared on Yang Jian’s forehead.

That haunting sensation of being attacked was coming again…

Unavoidable, unstoppable, and not even the overlapping of four layers of the Ghost Domain could prevent it.

Crack

Yang Jian’s corpse’s palm grasped the Eight-Tone Music Box, gave a slight nudge, and finally managed to open a corner of the box.

But at the same time, the crack on Yang Jian’s forehead intensified further.

Just like the previous occurrences,

His head was completely bisected by this peculiar attack.

Yet faintly, Yang Jian heard a serene, pleasant tinkling near his ear.

The curse of the Eight-Tone Music Box was released.