Adam looked at the young girl before him and took a deep breath.
He had witnessed with his own eyes how she raised her crucifix necklace, chanted verses from the Bible, and banished the specter. The nun standing before him now was a far cry from the gentle, naive figure she had been during the day. She radiated the sharp alertness of a warrior. From that alone, he could tell this was hardly her first time performing an exorcism.
“Just now… cough …what the hell was that thing?!”
Davis could barely speak after his near-death experience, but his urgency pushed the words out.
“That was a ghost. You’ve just encountered what most people call a paranormal phenomenon.”
Theresa’s answer was simple and direct, but Davis still found it hard to believe. He turned to look at Adam.
Adam gave a heavy nod.
“I saw it too. I pressed my gun right against that thing’s forehead and fired. The bullet passed clean through its head, but it didn’t do a thing—no blood, no bone fragments…”
“The one that attacked you was definitely a ghost.”
He might have doubted Theresa’s words, but if his own partner and fellow agent confirmed it, there was no denying the truth.
“Why would a ghost show up here?”
Adam asked what he considered the most critical question.
“This road has never had any major traffic accidents since it was built. There’s no reason for such a vicious ghost to appear.”
“Su Fan said there’s a cemetery nearby. These are all souls resting in that graveyard… Most of them were normal deaths with no lingering grudges, but under the influence of some force, they’ve become highly aggressive.”
As she spoke, Theresa handed a bag to Adam.
He gave it a light heft and, judging by the feel, identified the contents as fine granules, like sand.
“What’s this?”
“White salt. Salt can inflict some damage on ghosts and serve to drive them away. This bag is for you—to protect yourselves. Of course, it’s most effective against weaker spirits. Against a malevolent ghost that’s accustomed to harming people, its effect is much less.”
As she spoke, Theresa scanned their surroundings.
“Our cars have both broken down. Is that the ghosts’ doing?”
Adam opened the bag, ready to scatter salt if needed, but while staying alert, he made sure to ask Theresa.
“No. It’s the evil entity that awakened them.”
“The same one you’re here to exorcise, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Davis, can you still move? If you’re not dead, go get the equipment from the car!”
While the two had been talking, Davis had recovered considerably. At Adam’s command, he hurried to the vehicle and retrieved the recording equipment they had set up earlier, starting to film.
Just then, faint glimmers of light appeared in the woods on both sides. With each flicker, one or two more silhouettes materialized within the thick white fog. They stood there, neither approaching nor retreating, as if they could see right through the mist and watch the three people on guard by the roadside.
“Adam! The camera isn’t picking them up!”
Davis’s voice came from behind, tinged with panic and frustration.
“What’s going on?”
“The camera equipment’s malfunctioning too!”
“Dammit!”
Even Adam couldn’t help but curse.
“Didn’t we check everything thoroughly before we left?”
“I don’t know what’s happening.”
“The spirits’ power can interfere with the normal operation of all sorts of instruments and equipment, including communication devices. You probably can’t reach the outside world right now.”
Hearing that, both Adam and Davis’s faces changed. They immediately tried to contact headquarters, but their earpieces were filled with nothing but static.
But static alone wasn’t the worst part. Davis suddenly heard a bone-chilling, soft laugh in his earpiece.
“I like what you’re holding. Can you give it to me?”
A woman’s voice came through the earpiece, carrying a piercing cold that shot straight through Davis’s brain. It was like a cold, sticky slime sliding down his spine along his back. The physical revulsion and sheer terror made every hair on his body stand on end. He tore the earpiece off and flung it to the ground!
At the same time, the lights were drawing nearer.
When they were only about ten meters away, Adam and Davis could finally make out what those floating, glowing things were.
They were clusters of pale flame, burning silently!
Around the flames, countless ragged, lifeless figures congealed out of the mist. These beings looked exactly like humans, but the chilling, deathly aura they exuded silently told the three that these were forbidden things no living person should ever touch!
“Are they trying to kill us?!”
As an FBI agent, Adam was supposed to keep his cool, but now even his voice carried a slight tremor. He had a good reason—he had never seen anything like this. Adam swore he would rather face down a terrorist clutching a bomb at close range than tangle with these seemingly unarmed phantoms.
The ghostly figures kept closing in, every flicker of the ghostly flames bringing them one step closer. Under such pressure, even Adam and Davis couldn’t help their hearts racing.
“I’m afraid so.”
Theresa paused, then suddenly wore a faint, enigmatic smile.
“Now, there’s good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?”
Adam was taken aback. He didn’t understand how Theresa could be in the mood for jokes at a time like this.
Maybe there was some deeper meaning to it?
Holding onto that thought, Adam spoke up.
“The bad news.”
“The bad news is that while I do know how to exorcise spirits, I can’t take on this many all by myself.”
“And the good news? Don’t tell me it’s that we’re doomed?”
Davis couldn’t help but chime in, his tone tinged with resignation.
“You’re really annoying. If you want to live, maybe you should just shut your mouth.”
Theresa didn’t mince words in showing her disdain for Davis, leaving him momentarily speechless.
“So what’s the good news?”
Adam was desperate to know if there was any hope in this situation.
“The good news is that the one who can wipe them out is already making his move.”
As she spoke, the sound of a car door opening and closing came from not far away.
Someone had gotten out of the vehicle.
The thought had barely crossed Adam’s mind when he felt a gust of wind rush past his face!
What was that?!
Adam squinted and turned his head—only to catch a glimpse of a figure raising a fist and punching a ghost into oblivion.
Davis turned too, and his jaw dropped.
In the black-haired young man’s hands, faint arcs of electricity flickered, their purple glow illuminating his face.
Who else could it be but Su Fan?
Adam looked at the car ahead with its fog lights still on, then at Su Fan’s current position.
Nearly thirty meters away—crossed in the blink of an eye.
Adam rubbed his eyes, but Su Fan’s figure still stood there, unmoved.
“This…”
He had already been certain in his mind that the other man was a supernatural being, but seeing Su Fan do something beyond human capability with his own eyes was something else entirely.
At that speed, if Su Fan had wanted them dead, they wouldn’t even have had time to react!
Did there really need to be any further explanation about his abilities and identity? That single move said everything!
Up ahead, Su Fan had no idea what was going through Adam’s mind at the moment.
He was waiting for the system notification in his head.
[You have eliminated a weak evil spirit. It cost you little to no effort.]
[The number of evil spirits eliminated is too few. You need to kill more equally weak spirits.]
No accelerated healing effect?
Su Fan frowned slightly, thinking to himself that he had expected as much.
The spirit he had just punched into oblivion was even weaker than Mary Shaw, the very first evil spirit he had dealt with in his exorcism career.
But thankfully, the next prompt gave him a sliver of comfort.
Little by little adds up. If one isn’t enough, just kill a few more!
Even a mosquito’s leg is still meat.
Before making his move, Su Fan lightly tapped the brass knuckles on his hands. A faint wisp of spiritual energy flowed into them, and when they clinked together, they let out a low rumble like thunder. The sound rippled outward from Su Fan, spreading across the area in an instant.
The three people nearby, including Theresa, all felt their hearts give an involuntary thump.
As for the gathered spirits, many of them, upon hearing the thunder, prostrated themselves before Su Fan in gratitude, bowed in reverence, then promptly turned and retreated back to the cemetery. These were spirits that had been deceived—they carried little malice of their own. Awakened by the sound of Su Fan’s thunderstruck-walnut-brass-knuckles clashing, they realized they had nearly caused a great disaster. The exorcist hadn’t directly killed them; instead, he used this method to wake them from their control and let them retreat of their own accord. They owed him their thanks.
As for the ones that remained lingering around—Su Fan showed them no mercy.
In a single stride, he crossed dozens of meters and threw a punch.
His figure flickered a few times, and within moments, he had slaughtered every last evil spirit!
In just a few seconds, the bone-chilling yin energy that had shrouded them all had completely dissipated.
The three watched as Su Fan blazed through with sparks and lightning, each punch taking down a spirit. One spirit tried to hide inside a tree trunk—Su Fan punched straight through both the tree and the spirit. Another tried to hide in a rock—he smashed that too.
The occasional deafening blast and the tremor in the ground left Adam utterly numb.
On the other side, Davis stayed silent, his expression grim.
Before dealing with the hidden spirits, Su Fan had even taken the time to put away his brass knuckles. This made Davis—who had been guessing that the knuckles were enhancing his power—break out in a cold sweat. He had to admit that the black-haired young man was no ordinary figure. But remembering how he himself had tried to threaten this humanoid beast earlier, Davis turned pale as ash.
Thank God his partner had been sharp enough to ease the tension before it escalated.
Otherwise, with that kind of strength and speed, no number of heads would be enough for this Grim Reaper to twist off.
The moment the last evil spirit was destroyed, the thick fog that had surrounded them also dissipated.
The streetlights came on, and everything around them looked no different from any other country road. It was as if the ghostly realm they had witnessed was nothing but a hallucination.
