Kuang Feifan watched as his legs passed right through He Shaoqing’s abdomen, his feet suddenly finding nothing to push against, while He Shaoqing before him elongated, distorted like smoke, and vanished into the air.

“He Shao…” Kuang Feifan cried out, scrambling back to his feet. He looked wildly around the room, only to realize the door was still shut tight. The paper effigy and He Shaoqing seemed never to have existed; the empty room held nothing but the sound of his own ragged breathing in a deathly silence.

Kuang Feifan vigilantly scanned every corner, cold sweat tracing a path from his neck down to his chest. He slowly backed away, intending to retrieve the backpack he’d brought in with him. When he reached the spot where he’d set it down, he froze. The backpack was gone.

This sudden loss startled him greatly. That bag held all his implements for dealing with malevolent spirits; its disappearance was impossible to comprehend. He searched the room thoroughly, desperately, only to confirm the grim truth: the backpack had vanished.

He patted himself down next. Aside from a few talismans tucked into his back pockets, he was completely unarmed. Even his collapsible baton and flashlight were gone without a trace.

This blow hit Kuang Feifan hard. Feeling defeated, he sank onto the floor, trying to puzzle out why the bag had disappeared, yet found his mind utterly blank on the matter.

Lost in thought, he suddenly felt something brush the nape of his neck, immediately bringing on an intense itch. Thinking it was only sweat, he raised a hand to scratch, but his fingers encountered several strands of fine, silky material.

Kuang Feifan instantly knew something was terribly wrong. He shifted his body away sharply and whipped his head around. What he saw made him gasp. From the ceiling, a massive curtain of long hair had appeared, growing thicker, writhing slowly like snakes, and beginning to drape down. Following the inky black strands upward, he saw the entire ceiling was covered in a thick blanket of hair, and vaguely discernible within that darkness were a pair of red eyes fixed upon him.

The sight of those eyes made Kuang Feifan jump back several steps, desperate to put distance between himself and the horrifying strands. But as he retreated, a wave of cold air swept over the back of his neck, as if someone were breathing chillingly upon him.

Kuang Feifan instinctively dodged sideways and glanced behind him. No one was there.

From somewhere unseen within the room, an empty, cold laugh echoed.

Kuang Feifan’s mind sharpened. He snatched two talismans, holding one in each hand, and nervously scanned his surroundings. In a blur, a red shadow flashed and vanished in a corner. He lunged toward the spot, peering closely, but not a single ghostly trace remained.

Kuang Feifan spun back, fixing his gaze on the ever-descending mass of hair. He sprang forward, chanting an incantation as he slammed one of the talismans onto the hair.

The Five Elements Thunder Talisman failed to erupt in the expected blue sparks; instead, it fluttered softly to the floor.

Kuang Feifan stared, unable to process what he saw. Useless? Had the talismans gotten damp?

Before he could bend to retrieve the fallen charm, the hair, now nearly reaching the floor, suddenly surged. It lunged at him like a monstrous black tide, fangs and claws extended.

Kuang Feifan cried out in terror, instinctively raising both arms to shield his torso.

The black tide of hair halted just as it was about to engulf him completely. After a brief pause, it retreated with incredible speed. In the blink of an eye, as if it had never been there, the black hair receded from his front, drawn back into the ceiling like a collapsing wave.

Kuang Feifan felt momentarily bewildered. Everything happening felt strangely unreal, as though events appeared quickly only to vanish even faster.

In that moment of stunned silence, a single drop of liquid struck his cheek. He instinctively wiped it away, but the faint smell of rust and a slick texture shocked him—this was not water; it had to be blood.

He looked up. On the ceiling, a large patch was saturated with a deep, dark stain, and the drop of blood had fallen precisely from there.

He stared intently at the spreading stain, and gradually, he realized the watery patch seemed to possess a life of its own. Little by little, a human shape began to manifest within it.

Kuang Feifan’s pupils contracted violently. That silhouette was terribly familiar. By shape alone, he knew with certainty that the figure on the ceiling was the very female ghost in red he had faced before.

Though his mind confirmed it was the Red-Clothed Ghost, Kuang Feifan could not believe this was actually happening. He had burned her corpse; how could she possibly reappear? Was Bai Ru wrong? Did burning the body not banish the spirit?

The figure on the ceiling began to writhe slowly toward the nearest wall, gradually sliding down the interior surface until it stopped just inches above the floorboards.

Kuang Feifan stared numbly at the black-and-red silhouette facing him on the wall, his brain a chaotic mess, finding no thread of logic to grasp.

He remained still, and the figure remained still, seemingly watching him in return, locked in a tense standoff.

Suddenly snapping back to awareness, Kuang Feifan snatched a talisman and hurled it forward. But alas, as the chant left his lips, the talisman drifted listlessly to the floor, failing entirely to activate.

In response to his action, the figure on the wall began to move. It squirmed like wet clay, squeezing itself out from the plaster. Though the entire form remained a uniform black and red, the limbs, head, and torso were discernible, resembling a moving clay sculpture as it spread its arms and lunged toward Kuang Feifan.

Unsure how to defend himself instantly, Kuang Feifan sidestepped to the right. As he brushed past the figure, he instinctively drove his left fist toward it.

The punch definitely connected. Though he couldn’t tell where it landed, his hand felt as if it had struck a large piece of gelatin—soft, yielding, and slightly elastic. Strangely, even though Kuang Feifan hadn't struck with tremendous force, the figure he hit was flung sideways, scattering in mid-air like a stack of blocks, breaking into fragments of varying sizes that rained down onto the floor.

Kuang Feifan involuntarily glanced at his own fist, disbelieving that a single punch could possess such power.

Yet, in reality, it seemed his fist hadn't been the source of the great force. The scattered pieces on the floor did not dissipate; instead, they began to crawl and writhe randomly across the ground.

Faced with the countless wriggling shards, Kuang Feifan felt a chill creep over him. He instinctively backed away to the side, intent on seeing what these broken pieces intended to do next.

His hesitation—his failure to attack immediately—gave the fragments time to recombine. Before long, the chaotic debris on the floor flowed together like water, slowly coalescing into a crooked, unstable human shape that staggered unsteadily toward Kuang Feifan once more.