Mysterious Awakening-Chapter 524: I love you

After exploring for so long, Li Jun and the others had thought that although they hadn’t successfully completed the plan, they had still created some hope.

In this village with only so many households, as long as their luck wasn’t too bad, it wouldn’t be difficult to find the Ghost Envoy by simply groping their way forward—of course, that was assuming nothing unexpected happened with the ghost paintings.

But what none of them had expected to find inside this house, suspected of being haunted, were many incredibly bizarre and inexplicable things.

One after another, paper effigies, each incomplete.

Every paper effigy bore the likeness of Leuk San, with a sickly yellow pallor and a lifeless gaze. On what remained of their expressions were traces of terror mingled with disbelief, creating an especially eerie scene under the greenish glow of Li Jun’s Ghost Flame.

One, two, three... a total of five paper effigies.

Leuk San’s face grew grave as he counted them.

"Five times, we have come to this house a total of five times," he said with a trembling voice, because this was a terrifying scene beyond his comprehension.

No paranormal event they had handled before had ever undergone such an incredible change.

The others, staring at the five paper effigies in the room, fell silent and somber.

"Impossible, Leuk San, your conjecture must be wrong. This is the first time we’ve come here; we’ve never been here before, I remember clearly," Su Fan immediately interrupted from behind, dismissing his speculation.

Perhaps the familiar paper effigy had made Leuk San think of some horrific truth.

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But he simply couldn’t agree with Leuk San’s guess.

Leuk San said urgently, "If we have never been here, why would my paper effigy be left behind? Each time I am killed by a ghost, a paper effigy would take my place in death. Now there are five, which means I have been killed by ghosts five times since entering here, but from before until now, I haven’t been killed even once."

"Has our memory been compromised? Or did we encounter the Ghost Envoy before, fail to contain it, leading to it restarting, and now we are repeatedly living through our past experiences?"

Restart?

The Ghost Envoy indeed has this strange ability.

But such a restart is only self-applicable to the Ghost Envoy and can’t affect others, let alone everyone’s memory.

"Leuk San, that’s just a guess from your personal perspective. If we’ve been here before, not just you, but we all should have left some trace," Li Jun said coolly.

The others fell into silence.

Although they hadn’t found any personal traces in this house, the appearance of Leuk San’s five paper effigies was incredibly peculiar, as if something indeed had killed Leuk San five times here, and their current visit constituted the sixth.

Had they truly been here before, triggering some kind of restart by the ghost?

Or was there another reason for this situation to occur?

Incomprehensible.

Yet Leuk San’s words had reminded everyone.

"Let’s get out of here. Regardless of whether we’ve been here before, a change we can’t understand has occurred again in Huanggang Village. This change is quite bad, and if we don’t leave now, we might find ourselves unable to leave at all," Su Fan put down the phone he was holding, which lit up, and after a moment of silence, made a cautious suggestion.

"Makes sense. If Leuk San’s guess is true, then we can’t even trust our own memories anymore. Containing the Ghost Envoy would be a joke at this point, and moreover... the Ghost Candle is still out there," another man said.

Before he could finish, he glanced outside the house.

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The sky remained a drab gray, the whole world devoid of color and void of any sound, oppressively silent to the point of fear.

Most people would be scared to death just coming to this place, let alone searching for malevolent ghosts in this unknown land.

The pressure was unimaginable.

Li Jun was now faced with a difficult decision.

As the team leader on this occasion, he had to make a choice when faced with a split decision.

Should they continue searching this terrifying village, or should they leave immediately?

Each choice carried a price. Leaving would mean mission failure, but continuing could potentially lead to the total annihilation of the team here.

The Ghost Candle incident had already wiped out a team before; there was precedent.

"Leaving now would be such a pity. The Ghost Envoy’s realm has been suppressed, Professor Wang’s plan has succeeded; we just need to ascertain the location of the Ghost Envoy. We can resolve this S-level paranormal event. If we miss this chance... there will never be another, and we can’t afford to lose this time," Li Jun’s expression shifted as he finally clenched his teeth and spoke.

If it were anywhere else, pulling out would be the end of it.

But here was different. The city not far behind them absolutely couldn’t be dragged into a paranormal event. Otherwise, the consequences would be ten times worse than the previous Hungry Ghost incident.

"Are we risking our lives?"

The others stiffened upon hearing this.

From Li Jun’s words, it wasn’t difficult to see that this time they were resolved to confront the Ghost Envoy, risking total annihilation if necessary.

At that very moment,

Without waiting for further debate, in the midst of the silent environment, a clear sound of footsteps came from the next room.

The sudden appearance of footsteps instantly silenced everyone, and they all stared in unison at the opposite end of the corridor.

Five people, not a single one moved.

But the footsteps continued to echo.

The sound was heavy and stiff, lacking the lightness of the living, as if a walking corpse was on the move.

"Creak!"

The wooden door of the room next door seemed to have been pushed open by something, and the sound of the old hinges scraping against each other jarred everyone’s nerves.

Ghost!

The earlier judgment was correct; the ghost was indeed on the second floor.

It was only Leuk San’s opening of the first room and the discovery of five paper effigies that influenced everyone’s actions. Otherwise, how could they possibly have failed to inspect the second room?

By this point, everyone was prepared to be attacked by the ghost.

However, the wooden door of the second room stopped moving halfway open.

Through the half-open door, they could see nothing but darkness, and at the same time, the footsteps inside ceased.

"I’ll go." Without a word, Leuk San simply gave the others a look and moved forward.

The distance was short, no more than five meters; just a few steps were needed to open the half-closed wooden door.

Leuk San was confident he could survive an attack by the ghost. This was risking life for information, for the ghosts in this house might not be Ghost Envoys, and their usual tactics might not apply.

But just as Leuk San was about to act, Li Jun pulled him back and shook his head.

"Why?" Leuk San frowned, voicing his confusion.

Li Jun’s face was stern as he immediately lit the Ghost Candle.

If Leuk San’s guess was true and they had been here before, then would Leuk San’s action also end up like the previous unremembered incidents, dying here and leaving behind a paper effigy?

With that in mind, changing the plan of action might affect the outcome.

So, whether the restarts not remembered were real or not, Li Jun had to break the pattern they had been following.

The Ghost Candle was the item that ensured everyone’s safety.

There was no reason to conserve it now.

The next moment.

The flame of the Ghost Candle lit up, instantly dispelling the chilling, uneasy aura surrounding them.

"This burning speed is off," Li Jun’s eyes narrowed when he saw how slowly the Ghost Candle was burning.

The burn rate was too slow to suggest the presence of ghosts nearby.

"Together."

Li Jun gave a low shout and charged forward, kicking the ajar wooden door wide open.

A loud noise reverberated through the dark room.

The next moment, five people rushed in.

The light of the Ghost Candle illuminated the darkness, simultaneously bolstering their confidence that they wouldn’t be annihilated.

But after everyone charged in, the dim room was empty save for some old furniture and some farm tools that hadn’t been used in years.

"Nothing here? Impossible," someone exclaimed in shock.

They had clearly heard footsteps and seen the door being pushed open.

"Clack!"

At this moment,

An old portrait hanging on the wall fell to the floor.

It was an elderly person’s portrait, a common sight where portraits were kept in rural homes to commemorate deceased elders.

The fallen portrait lay quietly on the floor.

In the eerie candlelight, the face of the old person in the portrait appeared blurred and strange, with the upper half enshrouded in darkness obscuring the features, but the lower half seemed to carry a faint smile. This smile, though seemingly kind, exuded a bone-chilling horror.

Beside the portrait, there were also some illegible inscriptions.

They seemed to be the elder’s birth and death dates, details about descendants, and the like.