"Do I have some kind of jinx?"

Starry Lin was almost dumbfounded.

"...No, it has nothing to do with you."

Sunny Xu shook his head.

"He must have planned it in advance. Even Teacher Yang, who was possessed by the monster, was just a bait. His goal... might be the two of us."

At present, the old man in the haunted house has the ability to manipulate monsters.

At first glance, these monsters look like long worms resembling centipedes, but in reality, they are a fusion of several types of insects, extremely hideous and ugly.

In essence, they belong to the same kind of existence as the old man in the haunted house and Little An. They cannot be seen by ordinary people but have the ability to interfere with reality. However, their strength cannot be compared to that of the old man in the haunted house or Little An.

But they have a special way of survival: they can enter a person's body and merge with the human body. This is called "possession".

The physical qualities of the possessed person are generally enhanced, almost like a superhero. And when this condition becomes more severe, the muscles, bones, and even internal organs of the possessed person will undergo deformations, and their physiological structure becomes different from that of ordinary people. They are more like "monsters" who have obtained a physical body.

From Teacher Yang's example, it is possible for the possessed person to be aware or unaware of their abnormality.

Shi Hui belongs to the type that is aware, perhaps because of his own bad character, he can become a qualified villain without guidance, which meets the old man in the haunted house's expectations of him. Or maybe it's because the monster inside him is not that powerful.

Teacher Yang, on the other hand, belongs to the type that is unaware. According to the results obtained from the spiritual communication, after he is possessed and becomes a monster, his body will be controlled by the monster lurking inside him, and his true consciousness will be dragged into a certain place in the spiritual world...

"Crack... crack."

When the old man in the haunted house appeared at the end of the alley, the motionless monster on the ground suddenly started twitching again.

Sunny Xu stared at him vigilantly.

The monster didn't get up, but a dim substance of unknown origin was extracted from Teacher Yang's body and flowed towards the ghost.

After a few breaths, the distortion phenomenon around the old man in the haunted house seemed to worsen. Within a few dozen meters around him, even the sunlight that illuminated everything seemed to disappear. The walls, roads, windows... all became filled with a gloomy, decayed, and dim atmosphere, just like that haunted house.

Sunny Xu suddenly had a feeling of realization.

No wonder the monster suddenly wasn't afraid of light anymore. It turns out that the power of the old man in the haunted house hidden in his body helped him!

Starry Lin tugged at his sleeve and spoke in a low and urgent voice.

"Look over there!"

Sunny Xu quickly noticed that after the dim light was extracted, Teacher Yang's body twitching did not stop, but instead became more intense.

His limbs, which were tied together, spread apart and fell down softly. The pale skin on his body dissipated bit by bit, like an animal shedding its skin, and he gradually transformed from a monster into a normal person.

After the protrusion of his eyeballs was restored, his eyelids drooped, and only his mouth remained wide open.

—A thin and long limb emerged from his mouth.

The monster lurking inside Teacher Yang's body was slowly "crawling" out.

Just like the scene Sunny Xu had seen before, the sight of the monster detaching was equally nauseating—or rather, even more disgusting.

The structure of the thin and long limb looked somewhat similar to that of a human; but when the monster crawled out of Teacher Yang's body completely, it no longer resembled a human at all:

The dark green and black, zombie-like thin and long limbs supported the ground; the abdomen was extremely large and hung heavily, making it look like a spider with its size magnified tens of times and only four legs; and in the position similar to a head, there was a twisted and howling human face.

...Indeed, it's not the same kind of monster as the one possessing Shi Hui, Sunny Xu thought.

After the large human-faced spider-like creature detached from Teacher Yang's body, it left behind an unidentified body and quickly crossed the open space, jumping onto the nearby residential building.

"Uh, it seems like it's trying to escape..."

Before Starry Lin finished speaking, the old man in the haunted house, who had been standing still at the entrance of the alley, finally approached them.

With the flickering of an old-fashioned camera, as they looked at the approaching ghost, cold sweat dripped from their foreheads. They knew that now was not the time to think about other things.

If it were ten minutes ago, they wouldn't have been so panicked. Because Starry Lin had already had a direct confrontation with the old man, and although Little An didn't kill or eat the ghost, it successfully dispersed it.

The old man in the haunted house chose to retreat in front of Starry Lin, which means that it also fears Little An, or at least has some concerns.

But now—

"...Starry?"

"I... I'm trying..."

Starry Lin lowered her head, gritted her teeth. She supported the ground with her hands spread apart. Her pitch-black long hair hung down, her delicate eyebrows tightly furrowed, and her expression was somewhat painful. Faint veins appeared on her beautiful face.

...She has already summoned once, and now is the weakest moment for her.

Sunny Xu sighed softly, pressed his knees, and unsteadily stood up, standing in front of her.

"What... what do you want to do?"A panicked voice came from behind.

"You continue to try, I also have something I want to try."

Sunny Xu replied, trying hard to keep his voice from trembling.

*

Seigetsu Zhu leaned against the wall next to her, feeling a bit dazed, but she finally came to her senses.

She took a breath of the cold, fresh air, calming herself down; then she touched her forehead and felt a bit hot, as if she had a fever.

The girl shook her heavy head, trying to recall everything that had happened just now.

...Right, it was right here. I was about to go back when I encountered a strange old man.

The old man had no eyes, and his aura was strange. At the moment she saw him, she couldn't move at all.

The only thing she could be sure of was that he was definitely not human.

The old man was most likely the source of the haunting in the haunted house that Sunny Xu had mentioned before; a vengeful ghost who refused to leave the human world after death.

And when the ghost approached her, she felt a splitting headache, and the scenery in front of her turned into twisted whirlpools.

This condition was obviously very abnormal, and it even made her faint.

How long has it been since then...?

Seigetsu Zhu raised her hand and looked at her wristwatch.

About three or four minutes.

The girl breathed a sigh of relief.

It's a good thing I didn't faint here for a whole day and night. There were no passersby around who noticed anything strange.

So, what exactly happened just now?

Seigetsu Zhu dusted off her clothes and stood up from where she was, leaning against the wall.

She vaguely remembered that before she fainted, it was as if someone had embraced her.

The girl couldn't remember the person's face, nor did she hear anyone speaking, but she felt that it should be a woman...

But in reality, no one had come near her at all.

Should I ask Xu and the others? Maybe I had a ghostly encounter like them and awakened some extraordinary ability...

Seigetsu Zhu joked to herself in her mind, but when she looked up, she suddenly froze.

- At some point, countless threads descended from the sky, entwining the sky and the earth, as if covering the entire city.

Seigetsu Zhu blinked.

The countless threads formed a waterfall-like downpour, appearing and disappearing in her field of vision.

When the girl subconsciously ran out of the alley and onto a more open street, she tried to tiptoe and look up, wanting to get a closer look at those silver threads. But soon, bright and dazzling sunlight fell into her eyes, swallowing up all the anomalies.

...Was it just my imagination?

Seigetsu Zhu felt quite puzzled and walked back to where she was.

If it was some kind of supernatural phenomenon, it seemed a bit too large in scale - it could be described as "covering the sky and the earth," which was completely beyond her understanding.

"Clatter."

Just as she was contemplating, a flowerpot on the wall fell and spilled its soil, petals scattered.

Seigetsu Zhu looked in that direction.

She thought she would see a stray cat, but...

- What, what is this?

The girl was dumbfounded as she looked at a huge spider-like monster with only four legs, crawling over the top of the wall as if fleeing.

"..."

Seigetsu Zhu covered her mouth, but her breathing inevitably became rapid.

The giant spider-like creature heard the sound of someone behind it and turned its head towards her.

- Seigetsu Zhu could clearly see that on top of it, there was a wriggling, living human face. The mouth of the human face was stretched wide in an exaggerated manner, making a crying expression, as if there was endless pain and resentment wanting to be expressed.

If an ordinary person saw this human-faced spider, which was the size of a human, they would probably be scared out of their wits. But perhaps because she had just encountered a ghost face to face, Seigetsu Zhu was not too shocked or afraid.

And the strangest thing was that, although she had never seen the appearance of this monster before, she instinctively felt a sense of familiarity from its movements...

Right! It's the same as the strange person who invaded the school that night, their way of crawling is exactly the same!

Could it be that this monster is the "true form" of the strange person...?

Although it was just a guess, Seigetsu Zhu's brain quickly worked at high speed. From this guess, she extended more than one possibility to consider. Some were rejected by her, some were confirmed, and she continued to make new inferences in this direction, which allowed her to approach the truth in a very short period of time.

Xu had already discovered the secret before. It turned out that Teacher Yang was the strange person who attacked them. And if the spider monster in front of her was the "true form" of the strange person... in other words, this spider monster was very likely inside Teacher Yang's body!

This was not an unimaginable thing, because Sunny Xu had mentioned Shi Hui's example to her before.

Now it seemed that the strange person no longer existed, and Teacher Yang was not here, which meant that the spider monster was likely expelled from the human body. This was certainly a good thing.

But why did it still appear?

What about Sunny Xu and Starry Lin? Did they not have the ability to kill it and let it escape? Or... did something else happen?

In that instant, she thought of the situation when she encountered the ghostly old man just now, and quickly came to a conclusion:——Perhaps the ghost spared her because it had another target!

With this thought, Seigetsu Zhu's back was already soaked with cold sweat.

No, this can't go on! The two of them might be in danger!

But what could she possibly do——

The human-faced spider merely glanced at Seigetsu Zhu before it intended to leave on its own.

Wait...wait a minute!

The moment this thought surfaced in the girl's mind, Seigetsu Zhu unconsciously moved her fingers.

Apart from that, she didn't make any noise, nor did she make any obstructive movements; theoretically, she didn't even have the ability to stop it.

But the human-faced spider really did stop.

Did the monster hear her inner thoughts and mercifully stop?

...No, of course, that's impossible.

Seigetsu Zhu seemed to be stunned.

She waited for a while before slowly raising her palm.

She quietly stared at her fingers, and in the depths of her clear pupils, a line of transparent luster was reflected.

——A "line" that only Seigetsu Zhu could see, connecting her and the monster.

This novel is available on "pawread.com".

"...Turn around."

The girl said softly.

The next second, the human-faced spider, like a puppet on her strings, obediently turned around on the spot.