Three days had passed since Yang Jian had hung himself in his room.
His body had remained in that position for those three days, suspended in front of the Ghost Mirror, stuck to it.
Countless terrifying hands within had tried to pull him into the mirror, but all had failed.
The Ghost Hand could not emerge from the mirror, and Yang Jian's body had not been pulled in either.
The standoff appeared to be dragging on for quite some time.
But the strange changes continued; the black liquid that had dripped from Yang Jian's body previously enveloped the entire room, threatening to devour this eerie mirror, but now...
The black liquid was diminishing.
It entered Yang Jian's body, seemingly retreating.
The revival of the Ghost Shadow had reached its terrifying limit; it now appeared to have exhausted its power, yet the Ghost Mirror remained smooth and bright, clearly visible even in the dark surroundings, like an entrance to hell stretching forth, fostering countless Evil Ghosts, emitting its own strange and terrifying aura.
On the fourth day, all the Ghost Shadows in the room had retreated into the icy cadaver.
But Yang Jian had not yet revived.
On the fifth day, Yang Jian's body began to stir.
His body gradually sank into the Ghost Mirror.
Yet this sinking process was very slow, very slow.
The Ghost Shadow was still controlling the body, not wanting Yang Jian to revive within the Ghost Mirror.
Once Yang Jian revived, it would signify the Ghost Shadow's failure.
It wasn't human, lacking the instinct to seek good fortune and avoid disaster, nor did it know to retreat and find another body in Dachang City.
It was just a ghost, a Headless Ghost Shadow.
It existed in this city in a specific and terrifying way.
By the sixth day, half of Yang Jian's body had sunk into the Ghost Mirror.
Countless ghastly hands within the mirror clutched at Yang Jian's corpse, trying to pull it deeper into the abyss, while the reflection of Yang Jian inside the mirror started to replace him, gradually merging together.
Suddenly, many fierce gashes appeared on Yang Jian's body as if an evil spirit with sinister blades had slashed through his flesh.
Eyes of crimson red burrowed out from the flesh, casting a queer red glow, more conspicuous than before, intense as if blood was about to drip down, as if the entire world were about to dissolve in this blood.
Such a red light shone into the Ghost Mirror.
The ghastly palms seemed to have been scalded all at once, quickly retracting; even the ghost that had transformed into Yang Jian's likeness now vanished from in front of the Ghost Mirror.
These ghostly eyes were not under Yang Jian's control.
They were controlled by the Ghost Shadow possessing his body.
The Ghost Shadow had taken over his body and with it, the ghosts within him.
This terrifying Ghost Shadow had constantly swapped bodies, attempting to piece together a powerful ghostly form, and now it had succeeded in acquiring the ghostly eyes within Yang Jian's corpse.
An Evil Ghost commandeering other Evil Ghosts, the resulting horror was beyond imagination.
If Yang Jian was controlling the ghostly eyes, he simply couldn't have achieved this — he would have succumbed to the revival of the Evil Ghost much sooner.
Even though the eerie red light had shone into the Ghost Mirror, dispelling all the ghosts, the Ghost Mirror was still adhering to his body, aiming to swallow it.
It seemed the Ghost Mirror was even more terrifying than imagined; not because of the countless evil spirits it imprisoned, but the very nature of the Ghost Mirror itself.
All these things no one saw, no one knew, not even Yang Jian, who was in the midst of it, because he was dead now.
His body had begun to emit a faint odor of decay.
If not for the Ghost Shadow enveloping his body, Yang Jian's corpse would have already rotted away.
However, a miraculous thing occurred.
As half of Yang Jian's body sank into the Ghost Mirror, his corpse underwent a bizarre transformation; the stench of evil dissipated, the rotting reversed, and even the dense mottling of livor mortis was receding.
It was as if the Ghost Mirror was reversing time, pulling Yang Jian's body back to six days prior.
Six days prior was the day he had hung himself.
His body would resurrect to the state of that day, memories included, just like Zhang Wei, who had been murdered.
Only, after Zhang Wei's resurrection within the Ghost Mirror, an uncontrollable supernatural event occurred—the countless ghostly hands inside had not wanted Zhang Wei to escape from within the mirror; it was Yang Jian who had given him a hand, pulling him out.
But now, if Yang Jian truly resurrects, who will be there to lend him a hand?
There had been too many changes, making the success rate very low.
But Yang Jian's body had ultimately sunk in only halfway; just half wasn't enough for revival.
The body's physiological functions meant such a half-submerged figure could not come back to life.
And so, another day passed.
It was the seventh day since Yang Jian's death.
Folklore says that people return to their souls on the seventh day after their death, a night known as the Night of the Returning Spirit or "Head Seven."
If a person dies harboring unresolved resentment, on the Head Seven they may turn into a murderous ghost, harming the living.
No one knows whether there is any truth to these folk tales or whether it is just some eerie coincidence.
On the seventh day after Yang Jian hung himself, the contest between ghosts seemed to have reached its limit.
The ghostly eyes, which had been open for an entire day and night, suddenly closed.
All the red light shining into the Ghost Mirror disappeared, and even the Ghost Shadow that had covered Yang Jian's body seemed to have quieted down, with no further activity.
As the red light vanished, the dark Mirror World began to echo with numerous muffled footsteps; the Evil Ghosts that had receded seemed poised to converge once again.
However, at this moment, a fine crack appeared in a part of the Ghost Mirror.
A chilling wind blew out from this crack, as though there was a vast passageway behind the mirror, leading to an unknown place.
But the crack was too small to have any effect.
As the Ghost Mirror and the Ghost Shadow both fell into silence, Yang Jian's body dropped from midair, kneeling on the ground, motionless.
Unbeknownst to them, Yang Jian's head had disappeared at some point.
No, it hadn't disappeared.
His head had somehow entered into the Ghost Mirror, as if devoured by the mirror, leaving behind a headless corpse emitting a faint stench of decay.
The Headless Ghost Shadow was an incomplete spirit; it had no head and, in the end, although it seized Yang Jian's body, it only took most of it. It couldn't take the head, and during the final moments, when it and the Ghost Mirror both sank into silence, the uncontrollable head was ultimately sucked into the mirror.
The head was the weakness of the Ghost Shadow.
Now, the Ghost Mirror no longer pulled Yang Jian's body inside, and the Ghost Shadow seemed to have completely lost its ability to move, unable to control the body any longer.
It was just like what the human skin paper had initially calculated.
The two spirits, in their confrontation, had both crashed.
What remained was a descent into a silent horror—not dead, not vanished, just immovable.
It was like a person hit by a car and turned into a vegetative state, still alive but having lost the ability to move.
At this moment, the Ghost Shadow was the car that collided with the Ghost Mirror, both suffering damage.
But the Ghost Mirror seemed to be not just that. Inside the mirror were countless fierce spirits trying to escape, and Yang Jian's head, having been consumed by the mirror, was now facing the horrors within.
Footsteps, dense and urgent, approached from the darkness.
But just as a charred hand reached deep into the Ghost Mirror towards Yang Jian's head,
Yang Jian's head stirred slightly, and his eyes snapped open.
Having been hanged for a full seven days, he was resurrected on the Night of the Returning Spirit.
Not a full resurrection of the body, just a head resurrected within the Ghost Mirror.
The body was left on the outside.
The situation seemed a bit different from what had been expected, but after all, resurrection had occurred.
And that charred hand had already touched Yang Jian's face.
Cold, rigid, with a charred odor as if burned by fierce fire.
Suddenly, a hand reached out from outside the mirror, seizing the charred hand.
This hand was partly warm, partly cold, emanating a strange and terrifying presence.
The charred hand was severed, as if forcibly broken.
A set of footsteps quickly retreated; the fierce spirit behind the Ghost Hand seemed unable to withstand such terror and chose to leave.
Or perhaps it realized its target was no longer human and didn't meet the requirements for an attack.
Not just that set of footsteps but also others that had gathered nearby swiftly departed, and those terrifying Ghost Hands no longer appeared.
Peace returned within the Ghost Mirror.
A moment later, Yang Jian's head was slowly pulled out from the mirror.
The horrifying thing was,
Yang Jian's body was facing the mirror, but his head was facing outward.
The head and neck seemed to have turned halfway, completely reversed.
Because the mirror reflected the opposite.
And so did the resurrected person.
If it was a complete person, being reversed wouldn't matter much—just a mole moving from the left to the right, or a left-handed person becoming right-handed, much like Zhang Wei who, after resurrection, had awakened the terrifying skill of using guns ambidextrously, mastering the Gun Trembling Technique to an extraordinary level.
Well, the Gun Trembling Technique wasn't terrifying at all.
But Yang Jian's body remained outside, with only his head resurrected, his state of resurrection was not perfect, and had some unknown defects.
Yang Jian's head, facing his back, was expressionless, as if it had lost all human emotions, cold and numb, like an Evil Ghost that had crawled out from the depths of hell.
No, he now seemed more like a ghost than a ghost.
He subconsciously lifted his hand to look.
The hand was lifted, but it made a cracking sound of dislocation, twisted in an unnatural way.
Yet he felt no pain, and didn't sense anything wrong.
He lifted it smoothly nonetheless.
Sensing the wrongness of his body, he slowly stood up.
No shadow of his appeared on the Ghost Mirror behind him any longer; he could not leave a reflection upon it.