YM778.TV Chapter 50 - 51 All the Missing Persons.
Not a single sound, save for the footsteps of Yang Jian as he made his way through.
Outside, dusk must have settled, the sun shining through the glass windows bringing a trace of light to the dim mall.
But this light wouldn’t last for long.
Once night fell,
with the mall’s lights turned off, it would be pitch-black, where one couldn’t see their hand in front of them.
“Sssss… left, on your left, there’s someone standing there,” Jiang Yan’s tense voice transmitted from the satellite navigation cell phone on Yang Jian’s chest, accompanied by the sound of static.
A middle-aged man with a pale face and emanating a stench of decay stood calmly on the left side at the bend in the corridor, with eyes closed, motionless like a puppet.
Yang Jian strode forward, glanced left, and his eyes flickered, “I see him.”
He sidestepped and continued forward, passing directly by the middle-aged man.
The man, however, did not move, not even when Yang Jian walked in front of him.
“You’re amazing, your deduction was right, it’s really possible—the ghost didn’t attack you.” Inside the surveillance room, Jiang Yan couldn’t hide her excitement at the sight.
Yang Jian, however, was not so pleased. He said, “No, I now suspect these are not real ghosts, they are likely just being controlled by a ghost. The real ghost must be hiding somewhere, or in someone. Don’t waste time. The surveillance footage in the control room can be kept for fifteen days. I’ve looked into the mall’s situation; everything happened in about ten days from the incident to the shutdown for repairs.”
“If you search carefully, you can certainly find the source.”
“Don’t worry, I know what to do now,” replied Jiang Yan, her confidence gradually building and her fear subsiding.
“Behind you, in that shop behind you, I see someone,” she quickly warned him.
Yang Jian immediately turned to look.
Behind the glass door of a shop, a youthful and pretty girl now stood, her skin darkened, signaling she had been dead for several days—longer than Wuei Xiaohong, and severe decay had set in. With a slight movement, her once shiny black hair fell in a rustling shower.
Thick, foul-smelling fluid dripped from her nose and eyes.
Yet such a corpse raised a hand as though to reach through the glass door, grasping towards Yang Jian.
“Are there more inside the doors?” Yang Jian’s face twitched, and he quickly turned back.
He walked backward, sidestepping.
By not turning his back to them, he could avoid being attacked first. Escaping out of fear would undoubtedly lead to a gruesome death.
Having discerned a pattern, Yang Jian felt that these ghosts were not so difficult to deal with.
“Zhou Zheng’s three sentences really summed it up well—as long as one understands the ghost’s pattern of killing immediately, even an ordinary person could walk out of here,” Yang Jian mused to himself.
Of course, this was only true for ghosts of this level.
If it was a level higher, like that of the Ghost Infant, who killed indiscriminately, recognized patterns could not guarantee one’s survival one hundred percent of the time; they could only increase the chances of survival significantly.
Having evaded two ghosts that had drawn near, Yang Jian picked up his pace once again.
He could hear footsteps closing in all around him, as well as the eerie operation of the elevator.
Yang Jian knew that whichever direction he faced, ghosts would appear on the opposite side, just that those behind were farther away and needed some time to close in.
If he delayed too long and got surrounded… it would be a death sentence.
Of course, Yang Jian’s daring came from being a ghost controller; an ordinary person would never dare play so recklessly.
“The storeroom is ahead, turn left, move fast. More ghosts are closing in behind you, and I see ghosts continuously coming up the elevator,” Jiang Yan grew tense again; “I’m checking the surveillance footage right now; soon I should be able to locate where that ghost first appeared.”
“I know,” glanced Yang Jian.
Indeed, the elevator on the fourth floor operated, and in the dimness, he could just make out two people traveling to the fifth floor in the lift.
Moreover, the sound of the elevators moving on the third and second floors kept ringing out.
Yang Jian saw several shadowy figures moving about several places downstairs.
“How many people have gone missing in this mall?” Yang Jian shivered inwardly.
He estimated roughly, at least twenty people, and the number was still increasing, emerging from every corner and floor of the mall… The stench of decay in the air grew even more intense.
“This ghost really knows where to pick its spots, choosing such a bustling mall. Under normal business, a dozen people disappearing in a few days would be unnoticeable. In a less crowded place, there wouldn’t be so many chances for a ghost to kill this many people.”
“Now, those who’ve died have become my problem.”
Moving cautiously, he ran toward the storeroom.
Right now outside the storeroom, a man with a face of deathly stillness and pale color stood rigid. His head belonged to a man in his thirties, but his body was female, dressed in a long skirt and wearing coffee-colored high heels.
Clearly, his head had been swapped.
The man numbly pounded on the door, each knock like the heavy strike of a hammer, creating loud booms, almost shattering the door.
But the man’s arm was already a blur of blood and flesh, chunks of skin falling away, even exposing his bones, twisted into an abnormal angle.
After all, human bodies are not as hard as doors.
But all this did nothing to deter his determination to break in.
Those people hiding in the storeroom, upon seeing the door shake and about to swing open, one by one were scared into a cold sweat, trembling throughout their bodies.
“Not, not again, Yan Li, you have to think of something fast, the door’s about to open, and that thing is still outside, it really hasn’t left…” Manager Li said in frightened horror.
“Five million, I’ll give you five million, just as long as you can get me out of here, I will give it to you.” Boss Tang was no longer miserly, hastily extending his hand as he shouted out the price in fear.
Money is important, but one’s life is even more so.
At this moment, Yan Li’s face looked particularly ghastly. He looked at his hands, bloodied and soaked through his gloves, with blood continuously seeping out.
The pool of blood on the ground could no longer be completely reabsorbed.
“I can’t use this ability anymore, or I’ll die even faster,” he took a deep breath.
Now, the blood on the door had stopped flowing, no longer seeping out, because his hands were no longer pressing against it.
“Bang, Bang Bang~!”
The loud noise from the door resumed, the door frame vibrating as dust fluttered down from above.
The force was becoming stronger…
While they were huddled together in terror,
in an inconspicuous corner, Elder Sister Li, who from start to finish hadn’t let out a single scream or said a word, slowly stood up.
She closed her eyes, her face pale, her body rotating at an odd angle. She faced the group of people with their backs to her, then slowly extended her hands.
But just at that moment, a loud crash suddenly came from outside.
Something had fallen to the ground with a smash.
Yang Jian’s voice sounded from outside: “Hey, people inside, are you still alive? If you aren’t dead, open the door; I have a way to get you all out of here?”
“What? There’s still someone outside.” At this point, the most shocked was Yan Li.
He heard the voice outside with complete disbelief. With so many ghosts in the mall, there shouldn’t be any living people, or if there were, they should have already died.
“It’s, it’s the voice of that young security guard. Quickly, open the door and see, ask him if he really has a way to get out of here.” Boss Tang had a good memory and immediately recognized Yang Jian’s voice.
“Don’t, don’t open the door, who knows whether the one talking outside is human or spirit.” Manager Li said in terror.
Reminded thus, Yan Li’s heart chilled as well, immediately becoming more solemn.
Indeed, there was no evidence to prove that the security guard outside was human.
What if it were a trap?
Yang Jian had finally managed to throw the person at the door of the storeroom down from the fifth floor. Although the fall wouldn’t kill them, it would take some time to come back up—temporarily relieving the immediate crisis.
However, hearing the words from the people inside the storeroom, his expression darkened: “Right, it doesn’t matter if you don’t come out. I had already watched the surveillance footage before. Among you, Elder Sister Li is also a ghost. I don’t know if Elder Sister Li has started to act, but if she has, all of you are going to die in there, so please, make a decision quickly.”
“Huh?”
Upon hearing this, everyone in the storeroom immediately broke into a cold sweat.
What? Elder Sister Li is a ghost?
Almost reflexively, all of them turned their heads to look back.
But in the next moment, they saw that Elder Sister Li, who had gotten up without them noticing, was… headless.
“Ah~!”
Several screams erupted from inside the storeroom.
Outside, Yang Jian couldn’t help but cover his ears.
This sound was loud enough; it would be a shame not to sing soprano.
The next moment.
The storeroom door burst open with a loud bang.
A group of people scrambled and stumbled out as if escaping for their lives, sobbing and sniveling, some even wetting themselves.
“Quick, run!”
“Help! I don’t want to die.”
Yang Jian reminded them again, “It’s okay to shout, but don’t run around blindly; there are more ghosts outside, and the faster you run, the quicker you’ll die.”
Boss Tang, Manager Li, Master Luo, and their group hadn’t gotten far before they were scared into paralysis on the ground.
Without knowing when, the paths on the fifth floor had become filled with people,
In every direction—front, back, left, and right—there were people everywhere.
These individuals were deathly pale, their eyes shut, emitting a rotten stench, with stiff, uncoordinated steps they kept inching closer, blocking all possible escape routes.
All of them were people who had gone missing in the mall.
Today, they all showed up.