Chapter 258
Chapter 258
The little girl’s words filled me with an inexplicable dread.
Children were not reliable sources, but when she said that, I believed her completely.
It felt as though the instant Seventh Master and I stepped out of the building, something terrible would happen.
Seventh Master was in charge here, so naturally I would follow his lead.
But he kept staring at the little girl too. He seemed to be wavering.
While we stood there in a daze, we looked back through the front doors and saw that the outside had turned pitch-black, a darkness so complete we could not see our hands before our faces.
This place was some distance from the city, but not so far that the city’s lights did not cast a faint glow. Normally, we could still make out nearby objects.
Now, however, it was as though the space beyond the hotel had been drenched in ink. We could not see anything even just outside the entrance.
“Seventh Master…”
“It’s an illusion.”
Seventh Master narrowed his eyes. “The ghosts here don’t want us to leave. It’s only a Ghost Wall, so don’t believe it. The more seriously you take it, the harder it will be to get out.”
Then he looked back at the little girl. “Little Ghost, is this your doing?”
She hurriedly shook her head. “Not me.”
After thinking for a moment, Seventh Master said to me, “I’ll go out first. If nothing happens, I’ll come back in and take you out with me.”
I was worried. “What if you can’t get back inside after you leave? What am I supposed to do?”
Seventh Master looked at me and said only four words: “Divine Soldiers of the Six Ding.”
“Divine Soldiers of the Six Ding, Divine Generals of the Six Jia.” He was telling me to use the Life-Saving Talisman.
He might have suspected the little girl, which was why he did not spell it out.
With that, he formed the Five-Thunder hand seal and stepped outside.
I had seen plenty of bizarre things over the past few months. Yet when something inexplicable by science unfolded right before my eyes, it still shook my entire view of the world.
The instant Seventh Master stepped outside, he vanished completely. He had barely crossed the hotel’s threshold, yet it was as though he had disappeared into thin air.
“Seventh Master!”
I shouted, praying he would answer from outside.
But the darkness was dead silent. I called out several more times and received no response.
I still had the Life-Saving Talisman, but the sheer strangeness of what had happened left me afraid.
I did not know how long I should wait before using it.
After considering it, I decided that if Seventh Master did not return for me within fifteen minutes, I would use the Talisman and run outside first.
Just then, the little girl walked over and wrapped her arms around my leg, gazing up at me longingly.
“What do you want?” I asked.
She might have been a child, but this place was too dangerous for me to indulge in indiscriminate pity.
Ghosts were masters at deceiving people.
“Could you please not leave?” she asked pitifully.
I kept my thoughts clear and did not waver, but every hair on my body stood up.
Could this Little Ghost really be behind it all because she did not want us to leave?
“I have to go.”
“Then can I go with you?”
She clung tightly to my leg. Alongside the pitiful look on her face was unmistakable fear.
For a moment, I could only stare.
From the way she looked, she desperately wanted to leave this place too.
If she were behind the Ghost Wall, that made no sense. When Seventh Master and I tried to leave, she could simply have asked us to take her along instead of trapping us here.
So she was not the one doing this.
“You don’t want to stay here?” I asked.
She quickly shook her head.
I drew a breath and told her, “We can’t even protect ourselves right now. I have no way to take you with us.”
At my answer, she froze. Tears sprang instantly to her eyes, and she dropped to her knees before me.
I suspected this place was a torment for her too.
How could I bear to have her kneel to me? I hurriedly pulled her up. “Listen. If I were capable enough, I would take you out. But I can’t even protect myself.”
“Even if we leave today, we’ll come back. When we do, I won’t abandon you.”
Simple sincerity was better than clever deception, and I had been completely honest.
The child sensed my sincerity. She nodded, placing her full trust in me.
Just then, Seventh Master’s voice suddenly reached my ears.
He called my name.
My eyes widened, and I looked back in disbelief.
Seventh Master was walking down the stairs from the second floor.
His face was ashen, his expression grave.
“S-Seventh Master! Why are you coming down from upstairs?”
Hadn’t he just walked outside?
“I couldn’t get out.”
He sighed as he descended the stairs, then stared through the front doors. “After I went outside, it was too dark to see my hand in front of my face. I couldn’t tell one direction from another, and even the Pure Heart Spirit Mantra failed.”
“I kept walking until my vision finally returned, only to find myself on the second floor.”
My unease deepened. “You can’t break this Ghost Wall?”
Seventh Master said, “A Ghost Wall erodes the mind. The stronger your will, the more easily it crumbles. But before coming here, we planted too many suggestions in our own minds. Deep down, we already believe… we can’t escape this Ghost Wall.”
I froze, then immediately understood what he meant.
Before we came, we already knew how dangerous this place was and had remained anxious the entire time. Those were the suggestions we had planted in our own minds.
And the powerful ghost here was clever. It had not attacked us, because an intense shock would make it harder for us to fall into the Ghost Wall. Instead, it had led us deeper into our own subconscious, making it easier for us to reinforce those suggestions ourselves.
That was why we had first seen the six hanging corpses. They had been the first step in drawing us deeper.
“But that doesn’t mean I have no way to break this Ghost Wall.”
Seventh Master said, “I’ll have to shatter it by force. I can use the ferocity of the Thunder Method to cow the Ghosts here. Thunder Ancestor was the one who suppressed them in the first place, after all.”
I remembered Seventh Master saying that using the Thunder Method consumed the practitioner’s vitality, energy, and spirit, and that it took days to recover. In Daoism, the Thunder Method stood above all others. Unless a practitioner encountered a problem that could not be solved any other way, it was not used lightly.
Seventh Master must truly have run out of options if he was going to use the Thunder Method to break this Ghost Wall.
He returned to the entrance, thrust both hands forward, and formed an invocation seal, preparing to recite the precious proclamation of the Celestial Worthy of the Nine Heavens, Responding to the Origin, Thunder Sound and Universal Transformation.
Suddenly, the little girl ran over, grabbed the hem of Seventh Master’s coat, and shook her head again and again.
She was trying to stop him from breaking the Ghost Wall.
Seventh Master lowered his hands and frowned. “Little Ghost, stop causing trouble. Stand farther away or you may get hurt.”
The little girl wanted to explain, but her limited ability to express herself left her struggling for words. Finally, she said, “Someone buried something here. It will hurt you. This place is dangerous. If you… do that, you’ll die, just like me.”
Seventh Master froze and looked suspiciously from her to me.
I hurried over, took hold of the little girl, and asked, “Are you saying someone buried something here to hurt us? That we’ll die if we use the Thunder Method?”