14. Fugitive Incarnation

"He went out?"

"How did he go out!"

"He shouldn't have gone out!"

Murmurs of fragmented whispers rose and interwove behind the counter, sounding continuously.

Invisible to the naked eye, resentful auras began to stir and rise in the area.

However, when a figure stepped in from outside, everything in this ghost charm shop returned to normal in an instant.

It was obviously a living person.

Wearing a mask that melded a tiger's face with a human's, he seemed very familiar with the place, for upon entering, he stated, "Not buying ghost charms, buying information, priced the same as the ghost charms."

Immediately, the dim light in the room brightened, and the figures standing in front of the counter became clearly visible.

They were people in black robes, their faces unseen, each wearing a thick mask devoid of features. One could only distinguish between men and women amongst them by their body shapes.

What was strange, however, was that these masked people, at that moment, were motionless, as if they were posed puppets.

The door behind the counter opened, and a shadowy figure emerged from behind it. With each step it took, its figure became clearer.

When it finally became entirely clear, a horribly shocking sight appeared before everyone.

For it was a boulder completely entwined in iron chains, and on this spherical body were faces with expressions of men and women, old and young, all varying from one to the next.

"What information do you want?" Although the faces and expressions differed, the words spoken by all of them were identical.

"In the eerie game, is it true that there have been reports of powerful ghosts disappearing recently?" asked the man with the tiger mask.

"True." Different voices merged into the same response.

Immediately, the man took out a blood-stained finger and placed it on the counter before asking, "Who did it?"

However, the boulder did not answer him; instead, all the faces on it uniformly turned their gaze towards the man.

There were faces crying, laughing, angry... For a moment, these expressions made the man's scalp tingle, fearing that the boulder ghost intended to attack him.

Fortunately, the faces spoke again at that moment, "This is the second piece of information."

"This is the severed finger of a Dryad Ghost, worth ten Yin Deeds. But the price for one ghost charm is five Yin Deeds," the man said with a sigh of relief, swiftly continuing with his statement.

But the boulder did not accept this valuation at all, "The severed finger of a Dryad Ghost is only worth that much among you people. Here, it's worth just five Yin Deeds."

The man fell silent, but quickly produced another blood-stained finger, "This is another severed finger of the Dryad Ghost."

The faces on the boulder glanced at the finger, seemingly confirming its value before speaking in unison, "Don't know, and nobody knows."

"Nobody knows?" The man was immediately shocked because in this realm where humans and ghosts coexist, once a transaction begins, one cannot deceive the other.

And this boulder, despite appearing to be a mere special ghost, was actually an Incarnation of a Yin God gone rogue.

It was said that after the Yin God had an accident and was sealed, during the time of the seal, this particular Incarnation developed self-awareness. After unsuccessful attempts to overpower its original self, this Incarnation fled to this realm of humans and ghosts, using the uniqueness of this place to evade the pursuit of its principal form.

Because it had stolen a part of the Yin God's abilities, the boulder ghost was able to hear many secrets unknown to humans.

Immediately after, the person left.

Coincidentally, just as the person stepped out of the shop, Tan Shuchang, who had been browsing the market outside for a while, returned.

The bustling yet quiet market was filled with ghosts, but Tan Shuchang felt that the ghosts running the stalls were probably not very strong, and some might even be players.

Most importantly, Tan Shuchang could not understand any of the items being sold at the stalls, and he felt he didn't need any of them.

So, rather than risking capture by going after these stall-running ghosts, it was better to go after this shopkeeper.

Being able to set up a shop in a place where humans and ghosts coexisted, even if it was just in the outermost area, meant that this shopkeeper must be a very powerful fierce ghost.

After all, there were only a few shops in this market.

And Tan Shuchang's return delighted the stone sphere ghost here because the more newcomers it hunted in this place, the more power it could gain.

"Only the true body is allowed to enter here!" The stone sphere ghost approached Tan Shuchang directly.

At that moment, Tan Shuchang saw the ghost's true body, and his heart blossomed with joy at the sight of its intense aura of gloom and doom.

He had indeed come to the right place!

Looking at the ferocity of this ghost, it was almost on par with the Yin God!

The Yin God is a powerful ghost entity beyond fierce ghosts. However, despite the divine title, its essence hasn't changed much.

Compared to fierce ghosts, the Yin God, besides being stronger, had also begun to control itself and its consciousness was no different from that of a living person.

"No problem."

Tan Shuchang agreed without hesitation, but as his true body arrived in this land where humans and ghosts coexisted, the owner of the ghost arts shop suddenly shrieked in terror, "What on earth are you?"

Being the runaway incarnation of a Yin God, the fierce ghost couldn't tell, but the stone sphere ghost could see some clues.

Tan Shuchang had no intention of wasting words with it; he was only short of one last ghost.

Right then, black light swirled between the fingers of his left hand, and the moment black runes appeared, the stone sphere ghost was immobilized.

This was the Power of Majestic Suppression.

Then, Tan Shuchang captured it into his sleeve with an extremely brutal and simple technique.

"Since I'm here, I might as well take some of these items back with me to have a closer look," Tan Shuchang had thought of leaving directly, but his gaze shifted, landing on two strange severed fingers and more than a dozen rolled-up bamboo slips on the counter, which he casually took with him.

The term "ghost arts" had been mentioned by a player during one of his previous instances, and considering the emotions that arose when he mistook for ghost arts, these items must be quite extraordinary. So, even if he couldn't use them, trading with other players for information about fierce ghosts in the future would be good.

With a thought, he summoned the attribute frame and fixed his eyes on the final mask pattern. In an instant, Tan Shuchang left this land of mixed human and ghost residence.

However, while Tan Shuchang left swiftly, this place soon descended into chaos after his departure.

The cause was those motionless figures who were entering this mixed human and ghost land for the first time, lured in by the stone sphere ghost's deceptions to bring their true bodies and then making a mistake upon being guided, allowing the stone sphere ghost to remove their "human faces."

These people were like living puppets, but unlike living puppets, when their master, the stone sphere ghost, was no more, they "awakened" immediately. However, since they no longer had faces, they could neither see nor hear, so they could only flail about blindly.

As these faceless people ran out, the news of the stone sphere ghost from the ghost arts shop mysteriously disappearing, and the shop being robbed, also spread.