Suddenly, just as Li Mo had predicted, the candle in the room went out. The doorknob began to turn as if twisted by something unseen.
"Hey, the doorknob is moving..."
"I know."
Li Mo took out the Bizarre pistol. Although the notebook had stated that this gun had no effect on the ghost lurking in the shadows, it didn't prevent it from suppressing other ghosts that had a physical form. That was enough.
The candles in the Outer World and the Inner World were connected. If one went out, it would directly affect the other.
Li Mo's breathing slowed. He opened the door. There was only the cold, dark, and worn-out wall, which seemed to stare at him like a twisted human face. The pitch-black corridor was deathly silent. Li Mo didn't look towards the end of it but turned to face the entrance of the corridor, looking straight at the main hall.
"Need to pay extra attention to the ceiling at the corridor entrance..."
In the notebook's prediction, his head was devoured by a shadow, and he couldn't resist. Did the devouring and suppression come from the same ghost?
Li Mo held the thermometer tightly in his hand. The temperature had already dropped below zero, yet there was still no sign of a ghost. The ceiling, however, was covered with a dense swarm of small spiders, weaving a white web.
At the corner of the corridor entrance, the shadow of the web on the ceiling formed a strange human leg. It had no toes, and its tip was like a sharp sickle, stepping on the web's shadow.
"Just sit by the door," Li Mo commanded, telling the injured Kanagawa Yume to sit at the entrance.
"Fine. If you die, I won't live either. This is to avoid being 'alone,' right?" Kanagawa Yume was quick-witted, immediately guessing Li Mo's thoughts.
She then half-crawled, half-scrambled, writhing darkly and twistedly to the doorway, propping herself against the door and quietly watching how Li Mo would deal with the bizarre things in the endless darkness.
"When I was saving you, it didn't show any other special abilities, especially when we avoided the shadow it created."
"This house is very big. It would take a long time for it to weave a shadow large enough to cover the entire first floor, but it's not an impossible task. Yet I've waited for so long and haven't seen it happen."
"This means that unless the 'Being Alone' condition is met, it can't directly create a shadow under our feet. It can only extend it bit by bit, like now. It can't even attack someone who is alone."
Li Mo took out the Bizarre pistol and, after a short interval, fired two shots at the dense swarm of small spiders on the ceiling. The blue-purple flames, as if finding kindling, burned fiercely, incinerating the spiderwebs that had extended into the corridor. One shot could only kill the small spiders; two were needed to clear the webs.
"Your aim is terrible. Good thing you don't need to be precise. One shot and you get a firebomb effect." Kanagawa Yume couldn't help but comment on Li Mo's awkward marksmanship.
"It's all the same," Li Mo replied.
"Since that gun of yours can stop the shadow from spreading, it looks like we'll be safe today. We just have to wait for the president's side to relight the candle... Hey, watch your feet!" Kanagawa Yume shouted loudly. Li Mo immediately looked down.
A pair of pale, withered hands reached out from the darkness at his feet, their fingers digging straight into the flesh of his ankle, gripping the bone. Before Li Mo could fire, the corpse-like hands gave a sharp tug, and he lost his balance, his back hitting the ground hard. The Bizarre pistol fell to the floor.
"Can't get up?" Li Mo found that he had lost the ability to stand. He could only turn over and grab the ground with his hands, trying to break free from the hands' grasp. Without a doubt, this was what had tripped him before. A ghost? Or a derivative? Was this thing responsible for his inability to resist?
His body was being dragged bit by bit out of the corridor. Just as Li Mo was about to be pulled completely out, another drop of viscous black blood fell on Kanagawa Yume's head.
Before Li Mo could look up, Kanagawa Yume knelt on one knee, picked up the Bizarre pistol, and fired a shot, accurately hitting the corpse hand gripping Li Mo's ankle.
"If you suck, practice more," Kanagawa Yume wiped her nose with her thumb, looking at Li Mo with great pride. She lifted her white neck like a haughty swan.
"..."
Freed from the hand's grip, Li Mo immediately pulled back into the corridor.
"Th..."
Before Li Mo could finish saying "thank you," a human-spider dropped from the ceiling. Four of its legs were entangled in the shadow web, while the other four easily pierced through Kanagawa Yume's head and body.
Its grotesque teeth opened and closed, instantly devouring half of the prey's head under its claws, leaving only a teetering body that fell with a thud. She still held the Bizarre pistol tightly in her hand, not letting go even as she collapsed.
Li Mo's pupils contracted. He immediately smashed his fist against the wall opposite the corridor room. In his once-dead state, his recovery ability wasn't strong. After several brutal punches, he finally broke through the tiny crack in the wall. Countless spiders suddenly swarmed out from inside, instantly engulfing Li Mo.
"I see..."
Li Mo suddenly understood.
While he and Kanagawa Yume were still in the room discussing their plan, the ghost had sent small spiders into the cracks in the walls, weaving webs in the small, dark crevices.
This way, when the living walked out of the room, they wouldn't be on guard, because they would only see the small spiders continuously weaving webs at the corridor entrance.
His hands, smashed to a bloody pulp, were unrecognizable, with only the stark white bones showing through the crimson blood. He should have thought of it sooner—why he hadn't seen the human-spider between the corridor and the main hall.
His entire body was covered in silk spat out by the small spiders.
Li Mo knew his death was imminent.
In his last moments, he went outside the corridor and found a human-spider leg entangled in webs, hanging at the corner of the corridor entrance. This ghost had been on the ceiling at the entrance from the very beginning, deliberately using one leg to attract their attention, making Li Mo focus all his attention on the ceiling near the corner.
He had been completely unaware of the human-spider on the ceiling above him after he left the room, its eight legs attached to the ceiling, watching him with a grotesque smile, motionless, waiting for the perfect opportunity.
When Li Mo was dragged out of the corridor by the corpse hand that suddenly appeared at his feet, Kanagawa Yume behind him triggered the "Being Alone" rule and was targeted by the human-spider, then died a tragic death.
After Kanagawa Yume died, Li Mo was the only one left in the corridor. The "Being Alone" rule was triggered again, and this ghost could kill again.
Li Mo turned and looked outside the room again. The candle on the wall had been relit. Was it safe now? The faint light of the candle brought Li Mo a little warmth. However, hope would soon vanish.
"The ghost is inside me..." Li Mo picked up the Bizarre pistol and, without hesitation, pulled the trigger against his own head. Even though the candle was relit, he would be safe as long as he hid in the room.
After Li Mo shot himself, his body pitched forward, falling straight to the ground.
The next second, his head was squeezed, the sharp fangs of an arthropod piercing deep into his brain from near his temples. The shadow of a web spread all over Li Mo's body. A giant human-spider burst out from his body, tearing Li Mo's body into countless bloody pieces.
Each piece of flesh was tightly wrapped in webbing, the blood still flowing, the shattered heart still beating, the alveoli expanding and contracting, even the eyeballs were still looking around, not losing focus. It seemed as if every part of his body hadn't died, but was living on its own.
The human-spider contentedly ate the pieces of the corpse one by one. Its body gradually changed, now having the hair of an Occult Club member, Li Mo's heart and alveoli, one normal eye, one slightly cloudy eye, and four other bizarre, otherworldly eyes.
Its strange gaze suddenly focused on the deepest room at the end of the corridor. It picked up the Bizarre pistol on the ground with its newly grown human hands, and then took out the notebook from inside its clothes. It had acquired Li Mo's wisdom and thoughts.
In an instant, everything froze. The clock on the phone began to turn backward. Time rewound—
---||---
"Your aim is terrible. Good thing you don't need to be precise. One shot and you get a firebomb effect." Kanagawa Yume couldn't help but comment on Li Mo's awkward marksmanship.
"Hey, your face... why do you look worse than before? You're so pale, you look like you're about to die."
"But if that gun of yours can stop the shadow, then we should be safe today. We just have to wait for the president's side to relight the candle... Hey, watch out...!"
Before Kanagawa Yume could finish, Li Mo immediately fired a shot at the corpse hand that had just emerged from under his feet. The blue-purple hellfire quickly engulfed the withered hand, burning it and the shadow beneath it to ashes.
"Kanagawa, don't look up. Look at me..." Li Mo's gaze focused on the black blood on Kanagawa's head. He walked towards her slowly, step by step.
"What are you doing? Look up? What kind of ghost could be up there? I'd like to see..."
"Wait, you mean..." Kanagawa Yume tensed up, suppressing her curiosity. There might really be a ghost on her head.
Kanagawa Yume suddenly felt a chill all over.
The thought of that terrifying, disgusting human-spider right above her, ready to pounce at any moment, made her want to hide in the room immediately. But she couldn't. If she went into the room, Li Mo would be left alone in the corridor.
Once the cunning rabbit is dead, the running dogs are boiled for food. If one person died, the other couldn't live either. She had to keep this guy alive.
"If you're scared, just close your eyes. It'll be fine," Li Mo said, looking down, and found that he was already in the human-spider's shadow. As expected, a shriveled, withered corpse hand reached out from the ground again. Li Mo recognized from the size and shape of the bones that it was a female limb.
The tattered clothes on it were probably what the person who had pretended to be a ghost had been wearing. If the human-spider had eaten that person and hidden the living person's limbs in the shadow, then there must be more such hands.
Before the restart, and even now, he had only seen one corpse hand. This ghost... had made a lot of preparations.
Li Mo's eyes darkened.
Dealing with a ghost that followed a single rule was dangerous enough, but it was even more dangerous to deal with a ghost that had human consciousness, especially one that had completely seized a person's consciousness.
It could deceive, pretend, disguise, feign weakness, intimidate... just like a human.
Li Mo still couldn't figure out what the true rule of this spider was. It was too well hidden. Even the rule of only attacking when someone was alone, Li Mo couldn't be sure of.
Perhaps it was deliberately holding back, making Li Mo mistakenly believe that it only attacked people who were alone, in order to lure him into a bigger trap.
Li Mo thought quickly, and deeply. In his twice-dead state, he thought faster and in more detail than before the restart.
"It's fine, just wait for me to come over slowly. I'll throw you the pistol, and you use it to shoot the spiderwebs behind me." Li Mo said with great sincerity, but when he spoke, his eyes didn't meet Kanagawa Yume's. Instead, he glanced sideways behind him.
Kanagawa Yume nodded, extending her hand to catch the Bizarre pistol.
Sure enough, Li Mo noticed that the small spiders were weaving their webs faster. A normal person would probably think the human-spider was scared, afraid that Li Mo would lose his ability to attack after getting close to Kanagawa Yume, and that the two of them would work together to destroy the constantly extending webs behind them.
But Li Mo knew that the human-spider was deliberately making the small spiders weave faster to mislead him, to make him rush to throw the Bizarre pistol.
It seemed that the Bizarre pistol wasn't completely ineffective against it. It just had to reveal its true form when attacking to be hit. In the process of throwing the gun, if it revealed its true form and attacked, Li Mo and Kanagawa Yume would have no way to fight back.
"Heh..." If everything was as he had guessed, then this spider didn't need someone to be alone to attack. It was just pretending to be a ghost that could only attack people who were alone.
One corpse hand had already been suppressed by the hellfire, but the fire had already died out. So this spider would definitely think that he believed there would only be one such hand, and hadn't expected more.
Li Mo's face was expressionless. He stopped less than half a meter from Kanagawa Yume. The small spiders behind him were almost on top of his head, the webs almost completely covering the corridor entrance.
"Kanagawa, your marksmanship is excellent. I'm sure you won't hit me." Li Mo said a strange sentence. Before the restart, Kanagawa Yume's marksmanship had indeed amazed him. Every shot was a hit, and without aiming, just firing instantly.
"Of course, my dynamic vision is on par with a CS:GO pro." Kanagawa Yume felt a little strange. His expression and his words didn't seem to match. His expression was bone-chillingly cold, but his words sounded like he was flattering her.
No... there's a ghost staring at him from above. Why would he suddenly say this to me? Kanagawa Yume was confused, but she vaguely understood something. A sudden event might happen next, requiring her to make an immediate judgment and fire.
"I believe you, because..."
"You saved me."
With that, Li Mo threw the Bizarre pistol.
The moment the Bizarre pistol was in the air, the human-spider stopped hiding. A chilling aura instantly swept through the entire corridor. Li Mo's ankle was grabbed by a corpse hand that suddenly emerged from the shadow, and Kanagawa Yume's leg was also tightly gripped by a second corpse hand lurking in the darkness.
"Hiss~!"
The human-spider finally revealed its true form, leaping out of the blurry shadow, preparing to kill Kanagawa Yume.
"I won't make the same mistake twice." Li Mo immediately took out the Bizarre coin, exposing it to the eyes of the corpse hands, the human-spider, and all the other ghost derivatives. After it revealed its true form, the rules of the Bizarre coin and pistol were effective against this ghost again.
"Hiss!" The human-spider's body stiffened, its eight legs trembling frantically, trying to break free from the rule and kill Kanagawa Yume first. After all, the Bizarre pistol was about to fall into her hands.
Once Kanagawa Yume caught it, it would lose the best time to kill its prey! If it failed to kill her the first time, the prey would be on alert the second time, and the difficulty of finding such an opportunity again would be several times higher.
But how could a human consciousness defy the rules of a ghost? No matter how much its mind told it to kill Kanagawa Yume first, the ghost's rule forcibly made it pounce on Li Mo, its eight scythe-like legs frantically stabbing at his hands, trying to snatch the Bizarre coin.
Li Mo lay on the ground, coldly watching the giant spider woman on top of him, staring at him with a ferocious expression.
"You've killed a lot of people, right? You think you have everything under control?" The wisdom of a student could never have come up with such a plan. Obviously, before Li Mo arrived, this spider had eaten many people's heads and seized their wisdom.
"Screech!!" The spider woman's eight legs trembled ceaselessly, its eyeballs darting around, looking at Kanagawa Yume who had caught the Bizarre pistol behind it. It had deliberately arranged for a corpse hand to be hidden in the shadow, just in case.
It had held off on killing Li Mo and Kanagawa Yume to bait out their trump cards, to ensure that when it attacked, they would have no chance of survival...
Why? How could this guy guess my intentions and my backup plans?! It shouldn't be like this!!!
The spider woman frantically tore at Li Mo's arm, but his bizarre healing ability prevented it from getting the Bizarre coin in his hand. It could only be attracted by the coin, unable to do anything else.
"You seem very flustered. The clash between human consciousness and a ghost's rules feels pretty bad, doesn't it?"
"You and I are actually the same kind. Once we strike, we never give the enemy a chance to breathe, let alone make a comeback."
"Kanagawa, shoot."
At Li Mo's call, Kanagawa Yume's eyes narrowed. She understood why Li Mo had said her marksmanship was good and that she wouldn't hit him earlier. It was the opposite. He meant, "Your marksmanship is good, you must hit me." Pierce through him and this human-spider together!
"Got it! You listen up too. If you suck, practice more!"
"Bang!"
As the crisp gunshot echoed through the corridor, the blue-purple hellfire continuously burned the exposed human-spider. A piercing wail came from its grotesque mouth.
A ghost doesn't care about pain, nor would it cry out because of it. But it had collected too many people's consciousnesses and limbs, so it could naturally feel the agony of being burned alive.
Li Mo removed it from himself, stood up, and looked down coldly at the ferocious-faced spider woman, now twitching and convulsing on the ground. Li Mo extended his Sprout-left hand.
"Your expression is quite something. Next, I'll let you have a taste of being dismembered..."