"Did you find anything unusual?"
"No, we've checked this table thoroughly. Apart from the few items placed on it, there's nothing else worth noting."
Zhang Qing and Wan Tong carefully examined the wooden table.
After ruling out other suspicious spots, the two refocused their attention on the notebook on the table.
The handwriting, akin to cryptic symbols, was utterly indecipherable no matter how they flipped through it.
Yet, out of caution, they dared not take any of the objects lying on the table, fearing that disrupting so kind of balance might worsen the situation.
"If there's nothing else to discover, let's not waste ti here. We should find another way out and try to leave this cursed place." Wan Tong suggested.
"Don't rush. If we leave now, we'll likely run into Yang Jian. This spot is secluded enough, and I believe we can avoid his attacks by staying here for now. Once the situation calms down, we can make our move." Zhang Qing countered.
Zhang Qing saw this place as a perfect refuge.
Though eerie and dangerous, it was relatively safe.
There was no way Yang Jian could find them here.
"That works too. By the way, what's the situation with Liu Baimu? He won't survive much longer like this, will he?" Wan Tong glanced at the pale, severed head on the table.
Liu Baimu's eyes were shut, his breath cold and lifeless, as though he were already dead.
"I won't last long. Without a body, relying rely on the Pendulum Clock curse to extend my ti is futile. That Yang Jian is brutal—he directly used a paranormal artifact against , giving no chance to respond..."
He felt utterly aggrieved by his defeat.
Yet, he was resigned to the outco.
That's the nature of ghost tars' confrontations—anyone can kill the other if they seize the right opportunity.
"Do you have any ideas right now?" After hesitating for a mont, Zhang Qing asked the disembodied head.
Liu Baimu had kept his eyes shut, pondering the question.
Given the current situation, the odds were stacked against him, and he was unlikely to make it out alive.
"I don't have any ideas." He fell silent after uttering these words.
Perhaps he had accepted this cruel reality.
That he was on the brink of death.
Zhang Qing and Wan Tong exchanged glances, stunned to realize even Liu Baimu had hit a dead end.
Could Yang Jian truly be that terrifying?
After the team's reboot, they had lost half an hour of mories, so they hadn't actually crossed paths with Yang Jian's team. They hadn't experienced the despair of being effortlessly wiped out.
Ti ticked by.
But when the ancient mansion's tiline reached a certain mont, the eerie sound of the clock returned.
"Dong! Dong! Dong!"
A series of dull, resounding chis echoed throughout the mansion, perating every corner. Even outside the mansion, faint traces of the Pendulum Clock's sound could be heard.
"The Pendulum Clock is ringing again." Waiting on the mansion's third floor, Yang Jian's heart instantly tightened upon hearing the sound.
He imdiately took out his pocket watch, scrutinizing the mansion's current ti.
At that mont, the impossible happened once more.
The pocket watch's minute hand moved rapidly under an unseen force, accelerating forward.
This ti, the tiline didn't reset back half an hour as before; instead, it sped ahead.
Yang Jian's expression shifted slightly.
He had acted at six o'clock, killing the other ghost tars within the mansion again before six-thirty. Now it was seven o'clock.
As the chis reverberated, the mansion's ti unexpectedly surged forward.
The pocket watch's ti sped up to seven-thirty.
But the outside world's tiline remained unchanged since the Pendulum Clock's supernatural power only impacted the mansion. Even if outsiders heard the chis, they would be unaffected.
The echo of the clock's chis quickly faded away.
"No movent; everything seems normal. The ones killed earlier haven't co back to life."
"And none of us seem off either."
"Wait, there's a signal—we've located Li Yang's position."
Feng Quan, Tong Qian, and Huang Ziya were each assigned tasks to stay vigilant, monitor themselves, and locate Li Yang. After the chis rang out, they unexpectedly discovered Li Yang's signal.
"As long as those people haven't revived, we're in the clear. Reach out to Li Yang and prepare to withdraw from the mansion. Ignore the few survivors for now—this place's tiline is seriously warped. I'm worried if we linger, we might lose ourselves." Yang Jian decided.
The others nodded in agreent.
The mission objectives had been achieved; risking further complications wasn't worthwhile.
But as they passed the third-floor stairway, the enigmatic door that had appeared and vanished earlier suddenly reerged before them.
The old wooden door was slightly ajar, revealing steep stairs leading upward.
The steps were narrow, oppressive, allowing only one person to pass at a ti.
"That's the vanished door from before. That's where the ghost entered earlier." Feng Quan abruptly stopped.
Yang Jian glanced at it. Clutching his cracked golden spear, he hesitated. "Leave it alone. I have no intention of reliving the paranormal events in Room 301."
The Room 301 incident in Dachuan City had nearly killed him before, and this ti he was leading a team, so he dared not venture into such an inexplicable room.
Should the next round of chis cause the door to disappear again, the entire team might get trapped inside.
"You're right; no need to take unnecessary risks." Feng Quan nodded, withdrawing his gaze.
He suppressed his curiosity about the place.
But just as they were about to leave, footsteps echoed from the stairs above.
The sound was steady, heavy, and unnervingly rigid.
"No living person would walk like that." Yang Jian signaled the team to back away slightly.
"If the ghost erges, I'll deal with it."
He decided to observe further.
Soon enough.
Yang Jian saw it—a headless corpse in modern clothing, trudging chanically down the dark, narrow stairway.
It was... Liu Baimu's body.
But while the corpse was here, its head was missing.
The body descended.
Yang Jian's spear struck instantaneously.
The Coffin Nail's suppression took effect instantly, leaving no room for resistance.
The corpse froze and crumpled to the ground.
"It's Liu Baimu's body, right in the middle of ghostly resurrection." Yang Jian imdiately understood what was happening.
Earlier, Liu Baimu had attempted to escape by climbing the stairs, only to be fatally cursed by his Firewood Knife midway.
"But Liu Baimu wasn't traveling alone." Yang Jian thought aloud, sending his Ghost Shadow to extend toward the stairs as a dium, hoping to discern how many people had entered that room.
Through the Ghost Shadow, he glimpsed Liu Baimu, the wheelchair-bound Zhang Qing, Wan Tong, and a lifeless middle-aged man standing on the stairs.
Wait.
Suddenly.
The dium was disrupted as viscous, blood-like ink oozed from the stairwell walls, corrupting the image seen through the Ghost Shadow.
The dium cut off, the vision vanished.
Yang Jian instinctively stepped back, sensing an indescribable danger.
"Even the Firewood Knife's dium can't extend further—it seems a stronger supernatural force is blocking it."
anwhile.
After the Pendulum Clock's chis subsided.
In the dim, suffocating study, behind the desk.
At so unknown point, a sinister figure had appeared, seated at the desk, head bowed, scribbling away. anwhile, the incomprehensible notebook on the table began revealing its remaining contents.
Incomplete strokes were gradually filled in, making the unreadable writing legible.
Zhang Qing and Wan Tong, still looking around aimlessly, hadn't noticed.
They were searching for the clock's source.
Clearly, they hadn't found the Pendulum Clock's location.
Rustle, rustle!
As the chis faded, silence reclaid the room, but faint scratching sounds behind them imdiately seized their attention.
It was the sound of pen on paper.
Subtle, yet glaringly loud in the tense stillness.
Their nerves tightened instantly.
"Is soone sitting at the desk behind us?"
The sa thought crossed both their minds.
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