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Chapter 145: Chapter 63: Ghost vs. Ghost

In a flash, the spot where Ai Ning had been standing vanished, replaced by the severed, blood-soaked hand of a mannequin. Meanwhile, Ai Ning herself had been moved dozens of meters away, to the safety of a lamplit area.

Just as she was attacked by the hostile ghost’s rules, the Ghost Infant had swapped places with her, taking the brunt of any killing mechanism.

Ghosts are immortal, anyway. The Ghost Infant didn’t care.

Back at Jin Hai Mansion, when Gao Tian had activated the cinerary urn to try and contain the Ghost Cave, the Ghost Infant had used this same trick, substituting itself for the Ghost Cave to act as a scapegoat.

In the darkness, the severed mannequin hand lying on the ground slowly and imperceptibly "grew" into a complete form. A mannequin covered in dark, bloody marks rose from the ground in a stiff, contorted posture. The woman’s face on its back opened a pair of blood-red eyes and scanned the darkened stretch of road where the streetlights had gone out.

"Let’s see what kind of ghost you are."

Usually, it was the Jialan Society’s ghosts who were out scaring people. It was a rare occasion for a ghost to have the nerve to frighten her. ’This experience is certainly a novelty,’ she thought. ’I must savor it. I hope this one can give me a good time.’

When the Ghost Infant saw the scene before it, the already rigid mannequin froze completely.

’What... is that?’

At the same time, Gao Tian, standing in the distance, saw the Ghost Infant in the darkness. It had clearly seen something, as its movements stiffened. It was as if it had crashed, frozen in place. It remained motionless for a long time.

"Hey, what did you see in the dark? Get moving!"

Gao Tian didn’t know what had it pinned down.

He didn’t dare rush into the darkness himself. The Wind Attendant Buddha had to stay near Ai Ning to protect the female Ghost Hunter and make sure she wasn’t picked off by some other passing spirit.

After a long moment, the Ghost Infant turned its head with a CREAK and spoke toward Gao Tian in a human voice:

"A fishhook."

"A fishhook, descending from the sky."

’A fishhook?’

For a moment, Gao Tian didn’t understand what it was talking about.

On the dark road, the Ghost Infant tilted its head back as if trying to see where the fishing line attached to the hook, which was descending from the shadowy sky, led.

The next moment, a small, glinting object moved. It shifted to the Ghost Infant’s chin and hooked it in an instant, before the ghost could react. Having caught its target, the fishing line connected to the sky yanked upward, pulling the Ghost Infant into the air like a fish!

Just who was this "fisherman" sitting in the heavens? The Ghost Infant was one of the Jialan Society’s top fighters, and a ghost itself, yet it couldn’t even last a single move against this foe.

Watching the Ghost Infant disappear into the dark sky, now the fisherman’s catch, Gao Tian was already considering grabbing Ai Ning and running.

The people from the Jialan Society were either gone or dead. There was no need to continue this mission. Gao Tian even considered taking Ai Ning back to the Living Human Apartment to hide out until the great battle in Shanghai was over.

’Even if we have to do green-text missions later, it’s better than dying tonight.’

"Idiot. Did you think I was dead?"

Before two seconds had passed in his thoughts, the Ghost Infant’s furious cry echoed from afar. Something had changed. The mannequin, which had been hooked and pulled into the sky, suddenly broke free from the hook’s control and fell stiffly to the ground like a kite with a snapped string.

Looking closely, the mannequin was missing its head. The fishhook had snagged the Ghost Infant’s skull, so it had simply abandoned its own head to make a temporary escape.

That was a trick only a ghost could pull. A living person would have been dead long ago.

The moment it hit the ground, the Ghost Infant realized the shadows were the strange sky-hook’s home turf. Standing there just meant being a sitting duck. In its headless mannequin body, it scrambled and crawled, trying to get out of the shaded section of road and run toward the light where Gao Tian stood.

Gao Tian stood his ground, watching with his arms crossed. Just as the Ghost Infant had been observing his deductive skills earlier, he now wanted to see just how many trump cards the Ghost Infant had left to play.

’A dignified psychic from the Jialan Society couldn’t possibly get taken out by some random passing ghost in some back alley, not before even encountering the Rainy Woman or the Spirit Disaster Bureau, right?’

’No way.’

As the Ghost Infant tried to escape the shadows, the unseen fisherman naturally wouldn’t let it get away so easily. Four or five more gleaming fishhooks appeared in the darkness, surrounding the Ghost Infant. They hooked its left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg, and torso. No matter how many parts the mannequin abandoned, this time they were determined to reel it in.

These hooks were insidious. Once caught, it was impossible to break free. The victim was like a fish out of water, completely helpless, able only to be pulled upward to be slaughtered.

With all five parts of its body hooked, there was no escape for the Ghost Infant this time. Abandoning any one part would be useless.

"Looks like you’re really dead this time," Gao Tian said, a hint of mockery in his voice.

The next second, he caught something out of the corner of his eye. The Wind Attendant Buddha, which had been standing in the light, vanished in the blink of an eye. In its place, a severed mannequin hand with a fishhook in it appeared under the streetlight.

Meanwhile, the Wind Attendant Buddha had been teleported into the darkness, where it was already being hoisted into the sky by the surrounding fishhooks.

Halfway up, the Wind Attendant Buddha couldn’t withstand the strain and simply dissipated into a gust of wind.

"This trick again?"

Watching the Ghost Infant, now just a severed hand, "grow" back its entire body from that single piece, Gao Tian knew it had activated its "position swap" rule again.

Only this time, the swap was for self-preservation. It had sacrificed the Wind Attendant Buddha to save itself.

Regardless, though it was a pathetic sight, it had managed to survive by the skin of its teeth.

Otherwise, even for an immortal ghost, it would be hard to come back down once you were pulled up there.

The master of the fishhooks had come up empty several times now, but it showed no signs of letting them go. Up and down the street, the few remaining lampposts went out one by one. Darkness was closing in on them from both directions.

They were about to be surrounded.

Gao Tian looked up at the sky, trying to find where such long fishing lines could possibly be descending from.

If he could find the hooks’ source, he could deal with it using the Terror Blade or the cinerary urn.

The strange thing was, the gleaming fishing lines in the darkness seemed to stretch on infinitely, extending past the clouds to the very edge of sight. From this angle, it was impossible to see their origin.

"When you were being attacked, did you notice anything about this ghost?"

As the crisis mounted, Gao Tian remained fundamentally calm, quickly questioning the Ghost Infant beside him, trying to figure out a path to survival in this supernatural event.

"I can’t find the ghost’s main body. I just felt my body being constantly pulled upward."

"The moment the hook snags you, you lose all your strength. If you’re pulled all the way up, you’re probably just like a fish on a cutting board."

The Ghost Infant pointed toward the sky, in the general direction where the lines descended, and activated its killing rule.

A moment later, it dejectedly lowered its hand.

"It’s no use."

"I can’t find the fishing ghost’s main body. I can’t create a Ghost Infant."

As the darkness closed in, a single, cold, gleaming point of light floated toward the two of them.

Gao Tian watched it, his mind racing.

"Could it be... that the fishhook *is* the ghost’s body?"

The Ghost Infant replied:

"If that’s the case, then we’re dead for sure."

"You saw it yourself. There’s no limit to the number of hooks. It can send down five at once, and it could send down even more."

As the fishhook flew before it, ready to snag the Ghost Infant again, it was fully prepared this time. It pulled a bloodstained notebook out of thin air.

With lightning speed, it wrote in the notebook:

"The approaching fishhook did not hook me."

"Instead, it hooked a corpse on the side of the road."

Gao Tian had seen this Supernatural Artifact, which looked like a notebook, before.

During their game with the cinerary urn, it had used the notebook to warp reality to a certain extent.

Of course, the notebook itself was under strict limitations. The altered reality still had to conform to logic; it couldn’t be completely outlandish.

As the Supernatural Artifact activated, the corpse of a woman in her fifties wearing a red sweater appeared on the hook. It was the very same unidentified body Gao Tian had passed lying on the street earlier.

The hook felt the weight, and the line above began to retract rapidly. It seemed the entity thought it had caught its target this time and was reeling it in.

Watching the corpse get pulled up quickly, the Ghost Infant raised its hand again, aimed at the corpse’s abdomen, and activated its killing rule.

The poor woman in the red sweater couldn’t even find peace in death. Her abdomen quickly swelled, and a Ghost Infant ripped its way out. It clung tightly to the corpse’s thigh, being pulled into the night sky along with its "mother" by the high-flying hook.

"I’m sending a Ghost Infant up to see what the hell is going on up there," the Ghost Infant muttered, explaining to itself as much as to Gao Tian.

’That’s one way to do it.’

The hooks were annoying, but if they could follow the line to the ghost’s main body, they might be able to finish it off.

Even if that didn’t work, they could at least figure out what kind of thing was sitting in the heavens, fishing.

This fishing ghost’s killing rule was a tough one. No wonder all the wandering spirits in this area had disappeared.

They had probably all been taken out by it.

An ordinary hostile ghost, lacking intelligence, would just blindly follow its own killing rule. It wouldn’t even think to search for the fishing ghost’s main body, and the end result would be getting toyed with until it was dead, without any ability to fight back.

Even an experienced entity like the Ghost Infant had suffered a major loss on its first encounter with the fishing ghost, nearly getting sent to the heavens itself due to a moment of carelessness.

He watched the corpse carrying the Ghost Infant shrink into a small black dot, rising higher and higher into the sky until it vanished completely.

"Did you find it?"

After waiting for about five minutes, Gao Tian couldn’t help but ask.

The Ghost Infant turned its head to look at him, the expression on its plastic face twisted.

"Son of a bitch."

It was as if it had sensed something, letting out a rare curse.