Resurgence of the Unknown

Chapter 41: The Return of the Stench of Decay

Yang Jian woke up very early the next day. Ever since becoming a ghost handler and having the ghost eye inside his body, he had begun to notice some changes in himself. The most noticeable change was that he found himself needing less and less sleep, yet he didn't feel tired.

"Only six hours of sleep?" Yang Jian thought as he washed his face, staring at his reflection in the mirror. He didn't look haggard; on the contrary, he exuded a cold and unapproachable aura, to the point where even he felt somewhat estranged from himself.

He glanced at the piece of red paper on the back of his hand. After a night had passed, he didn't feel the torment of the ghost eye's resurgence. Instead, he had slept quite soundly. However, a new, barely noticeable crack had appeared on the red paper.

"Does this red paper only address the symptoms but not the root cause? Or is it because it's just a fragment and not complete?" Yang Jian mused, rubbing his temples.

"It seems that finding a way to resolve this half-dead state I'm in won't be as easy as I thought."

And rightly so.

The global calamity, with supernatural events occurring all over the world, had left everyone who became a ghost handler unable to find a way to survive long-term. How could he, alone, figure it out? The fact that the red paper could suppress the ghost's resurgence was merely a stroke of luck.

"Wait, hold on." Yang Jian suddenly remembered the parchment.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the parchment he always carried with him. When he unfolded it, he saw a line of text:

"Today I woke up very early. I'm gradually realizing that my body is being increasingly influenced by the ghost eye. This influence is subtle and ongoing, as I've noticed I'm sleeping less and less each day... If this continues, I might soon be able to stay awake all the time. I've heard that ghosts don't sleep; maybe that's true."

"When I got you from Fang Jing, he said that you know how a ghost handler can survive. I don't think he was lying, so you must have a critical clue," Yang Jian said, staring at the parchment. "If you're willing to tell me, I might reassess your worth."

New text appeared on the parchment: "I really want to live. I'm beginning to feel the agony of being a ghost handler—the constant pressure of death, the fear of the ghost's resurgence, and the changes in my own body... This isn't something someone my age should have to endure. Today, I couldn't resist asking that strange piece of human skin again, but I didn't get the answer I wanted... It didn't tell me anything useful. Maybe there's a secret hidden within it, but it refuses to reveal it. What is it hiding?"

Reading the words on the parchment, Yang Jian's expression shifted.

Back at school, he had briefly thought this parchment had its own consciousness, but ever since leaving school, it had stopped guiding him. If it weren't for its guidance in the ghost domain of that old man, he wouldn't have made it out alive.

"If you won't reveal any information to me, then you're useless. I might as well burn you, so I don't have to carry around something so creepy," Yang Jian muttered.

After washing up, he tossed the parchment onto the gas stove and lit it. However, the parchment remained completely intact in the flame; the fire couldn't burn it.

"Yang Jian, what are you burning? Making noodles?" Liu Qiang asked as he came out of his room, smelling the gas.

Yang Jian looked at the still-perfect parchment, his mouth twitching slightly. "Nothing, just testing if the stove works."