Mysterious Revival

Chapter 633: Chapter 630 Displaying the True Picture

The ghost accompanied by footsteps had not left, still lingering on the fourth floor. It could move to the third floor at any moment, but so far there had been no one on the stairs, so the ghost had temporarily taken no action, choosing to fall into silence.

Yang Jian’s ghost sight was subdued now, making him unable to see the ghost, but he knew it was an extremely terrifying fierce ghost.

Because just a moment ago, he had been killed by this very ghost.

The Undying Curse of the Eight-Tone Music Box had preserved his consciousness, allowing him to come back to life.

“From what just happened, this ghost seemed to be attracted by the sound of footsteps, or perhaps the noise of going up and down the stairs… The pattern must be related to footsteps, once someone makes a footstep sound the ghost will keep approaching, and as soon as a person comes very close to the ghost, the living person is doomed.”

Yang Jian’s eyes flickered, he was analyzing the situation just now.

Although his analysis might not be correct, he felt that he had grasped the ghost’s general killing pattern; it was just not detailed enough.

After all, he had tried with his life at stake, and had gained some useful insights.

“Mister Yang, what happened just now? Are you all right?” Li Yang asked anxiously from below the stairs.

“There was a minor incident, the ghost had already come to the fourth floor recently, very dangerous. You guys stay put there, don’t attempt to leave by the stairs, otherwise, the ghost will follow you to the third floor, or even leave the building… then no one can save you,” said Yang Jian calmly.

“I understand.”

Li Yang trembled, looking at the dim stairs, he felt an inexplicable sense of danger.

Fortunately, they had discovered the presence of a ghost on the stairs early on during their ascent, otherwise he and Jimmy would certainly have died here.

Yang Jian no longer dared to act recklessly now.

He couldn’t be sure whether he would be attacked by the ghost again, nor could he say with certainty that the curse of the Eight-Tone Music Box would save him the next time.

After all, the ghost had the ability to kill him in an instant.

“Could the ghost on the stairs also be left behind by the foreign ghost tamers’ team? If so, that’s good news. It’s scary to imagine how terrifying the person who controlled such a ghost must have been,” Yang Jian couldn’t help but think.

The previous Door-blocking Ghost had been confirmed to be a paranormal event formed after the death of a foreign ghost tamer, but that person’s ghost wasn’t particularly terrifying and was still within Yang Jian’s ability to handle. However, regarding the stair ghost, he felt that he currently couldn’t deal with it and if it were outside, he could only use his ghost sight at a distance to cope.

If he got close, he was certainly doomed.

And to think that the formidable person who had tamed such a ghost had faltered in the incident with the ghost painting, it was gratifying to contemplate.

Because after that person died, the ghost was also trapped here, unable to leave.

Although this increased the danger inside the ghost painting, at least the outside was safe, and there was no need to encounter such strange and terrifying footsteps.

“Continue the search.”

Yang Jian’s exploration was not over; he had searched the third floor without finding the ghost painting and had now come to the fourth floor; therefore, the operation must continue.

But now, with a terrifying fierce ghost wandering the corridors of the fourth floor, Yang Jian was extra cautious in his movements.

He didn’t make any sound of footsteps, moving forward carefully, searching alone.

It was lucky that the curse of the Eight-Tone Music Box was still in effect; otherwise, Yang Jian would definitely not have risked this haunted place, which was no less dangerous than any of the paranormal events he had encountered before.

Ghost Shadows beneath Yang Jian’s feet explored; he wasn’t just relying on his eyes to look for the ghost painting but was using the Ghost Shadow to cover the area, searching for that concealed picture frame.

Time passed by slowly.

Because he had to avoid being attacked by the ghost in the corridor, his searching efficiency wasn’t very fast.

At first, Yang Jian didn’t find anything.

But soon enough, Yang Jian discovered some traces; this floor had been deliberately damaged in places, with golden bullet casings left on the ground, as if someone had confronted something here at some time.

“As expected, the ghost tamer who died on the third floor had also been up here. They encountered danger here, then fled to the third floor, where they were trapped by the ghost painting and couldn’t leave, only to fight desperately, but in the end, they were all killed by the ghosts in the painting. However, I can’t understand why a top-notch team of ghost tamers would die inside a ghost painting?”

Yang Jian felt he was getting closer and closer to that thing, but his unease grew stronger.

The ghost painting was somewhere on this floor.

It might be found very soon, but what worried him more was whether anything truly terrifying would happen after making real contact with the source of the ghost painting.

Would the curse of the Eight-Tone Music Box really be able to withstand the source of the ghost painting?

However, Yang Jian hadn’t forgotten his mission this time; he simply didn’t need to confront the ghost painting directly. He just needed to find it and take a quick look before getting out right away to complete the task given by the Ghost Cabinet.

Soon,

Yang Jian came to a room on the fourth floor.

But the moment he opened the door, he immediately heard something fall to the floor behind it, seemingly knocked over by his action of opening the door.

Looking down, Yang Jian’s expression changed instantly.

It was a painting.

There was nothing in the painting, just pitch black, at first glance it looked like a piece of black paper had been mounted onto a picture frame, with no patterns or features on it.

But unlike ordinary black paper, the blackness on this painting varied in density, the shadows changing with the light sometimes forming a handprint, sometimes like the outline of a face concealed in the darkness, yet more often than not, two black dots within the painting were like a pair of black pupils, peering out from the shadows.

A very eerie painting, but not the ghost painting.

Yet Yang Jian’s instincts told him that a ghost, or perhaps even a ghost hiding inside this frame, waited for an opportunity to escape.

But before Yang Jian could take a closer look,

What shocked him even more was that the walls and even the ceiling of this room were covered with various paintings, differing in size, with diverse contents but one common feature: all of these paintings had a very dim, oppressive background.

Looking at them was decidedly uncomfortable.

“This is a room exhibiting all sorts of eerie paintings; the ghost painting is very likely to be in this room,” Yang Jian’s body shook, feeling that he had come to a quite remarkable place.

For the first time, a notion of retreat blossomed in his heart, the desire to close the door and immediately leave this place.

But the music echoing in his mind warned him, he was still under a terrible curse, and leaving now would mean missing a chance to survive.

However, entering this room was undoubtedly going to subject him to a considerable and frightening danger.

Perhaps once he entered, it would be very difficult to come out alive again.

He weighed his options.

In the end, Yang Jian didn’t choose to retreat, but he also didn’t opt for a forceful search of the room displaying various paintings. Instead, he decided to tentatively look around, ready to immediately withdraw if he encountered anything abnormal, without any hesitation.

He picked up the black painting that lay at the doorway.

Instead of carrying it with him, he chose to flip it over and cover it on the ground, out of sight, out of mind.

After that, Yang Jian stepped into the room.

His gaze darted everywhere, searching and vigilant.

He saw a painting hanging on the wall. The background was dim, but you could vaguely make out that it was the inside of a building. However, what caught his attention was not the background of the painting, but the old staircase depicted in it. One end of the staircase disappeared into the darkness, and the other end extended to the very bottom of the painting.

And it seemed that there was someone standing on the staircase, a person with only a blurry outline, like a shadowy existence, indiscernible.

“This staircase…” Yang Jian’s expression hardened.

The staircase in the painting was exactly like the wooden staircase he had just stepped on. No, this painting was based on that very staircase.

Most importantly, the ghost that was invisible on the staircase was faintly revealed in this painting.

From the background in the painting, Yang Jian deduced that the ghost’s location was on the third step of the fourth floor downstairs, nearly the same spot where he had been attacked.

Shortly after, Yang Jian discovered another painting.

It depicted a dimly lit living room with a black-screened television in one corner and a single-seat sofa in front of it, the sofa empty and desolate, as if the ghost that had been sitting there had now vanished.

“It’s the same room Li Yang and I entered earlier. There was originally a ghost in that room, but now the ghost is on Li Yang, so it isn’t shown in the painting.”

Yang Jian seemed to understand a bit.

Each painting here corresponded to a specific place, whether it was a room or a staircase, all could be found here. The only difference was that these paintings revealed the real situations from outside, including the hidden, unseen ghosts.

With this realization, he couldn’t help but walk a few steps forward, trying to get a clearer view of more paintings.

Before long,

a particularly unusual painting appeared before his eyes.

The painting depicted a gray, overcast sky, and underneath it, a village set in the middle of the fields flickered in and out of visibility.

The village was painted with black dye, blurry and indistinct, only a general outline visible. Yet Yang Jian could see it clearly: the contours of many houses in the village pieced together, forming the vague shape of a coffin from a distance.

And in the most prominent part of the painting stood a sign with three characters on it. The handwriting was blurry, only roughly recognizable as the name of a village.

It must be the name of a village.

“That is… the Ghost Envoy,” Yang Jian’s expression turned grim.

He was familiar with this village, that coffin-shaped Ghost Domain even more so. It was the Ghost Envoy that had disappeared into the haunted paintings.

This S-ranked fearsome ghost had also been trapped in the haunted paintings.

Besides the Ghost Envoy, Yang Jian saw yet another painting. The background was an old, rural bungalow. Standing at the front door of the bungalow was an old man, his figure blurred, clothes neat and tidy. Although his features were not clearly defined, he could still make out the old man’s smiling face, as if he was looking in this direction.

Originally, a painting combined with the background and an old man wearing a peculiar smile instantly gave Yang Jian the feeling of facing a memorial portrait.

This painting felt even more eerie than the ghost on the staircase.

Yang Jian dared not gaze too long, aware that the ghosts in these haunted paintings were more numerous than imagined. Perhaps long before, these haunted paintings had already trapped many ghosts, not all of them left behind by the deceased members of the foreign team of ghost tamers.

“If I encounter any of the places described in the paintings next time, I must avoid them. These places are all haunted, and I must not touch them.”

After briefly noting a few dangerous spots, Yang Jian walked a few steps further.

Although the room was filled with paintings, they took up a lot of space. Having entered, he had only looked at a few, and the paintings ahead were unclear due to distance and angle, appearing merely as frames on the wall, their content not displayed before his eyes. To see more, he would need to delve deeper into the room.

Fortunately, there were no anomalies around.

Despite each painting housing a ghost, none appeared before Yang Jian.

Soon,

Yang Jian stopped in his tracks, his eyes fixed on a painting that took up a large area.

This long painting stretched from the ceiling all the way down to the floor.

The background was high-rise buildings, but the true focus was on a single building.

A building shrouded in a dim world.

It had seven levels… just like the building Yang Jian was in.

“This painting corresponds to the situation in this building,” Yang Jian immediately stared at the painting, scanning from top to bottom quickly.

But soon, his eyes narrowed.

Because he saw a ghost standing at the entrance of the building.

The ghost was familiar, dressed in red clothes, with blurry features, but surely a woman, with pale hands that exuded an indescribable eeriness.

The ghost he had been searching for all this while turned out to be just standing downstairs.