After getting out of the car, the man pulled a phone from his pocket, switched to camera mode, pointed the lens at his own face with the hospital in the background, and took a flat, expressionless selfie in the pitch-black darkness, reciting his lines as follows: “September 1st, 20XX, 9:23 PM, carrying out a special mission at Longcheng Second Hospital, Baota East Road, Dongcheng District. Executor: Julian West. Done.”

A black SUV screeched to a halt behind him. Logan Sullivan yanked off his seatbelt roughly and leapt out of the car: “Get your head together and come with me, now!”

Still taking selfies when the situation is this urgent—Logan Sullivan fumed, thinking, What the hell is this mess? I’m in charge of just a handful of people, and they’re either non-human or brainless.

The entire hospital was shrouded in a layer of black mist, and there wasn’t a soul around, yet all the pedestrians hurrying past on Baota East Road seemed completely oblivious.

Logan Sullivan tried calling both Charles Gray and William Sherman twice, but both times the calls didn’t go through. He cursed under his breath and kicked the hospital’s main doors open with a rough shove.

A mass of black fog lunged at the uninvited guest, but Logan Sullivan barely broke stride. He ducked nimbly, drew a palm-sized dagger from his pant leg, tapped his toe on the ground, sidestepped swiftly, and with a single, clean motion, sliced the shadow in two.

More shadows surged out from inside the hospital. Following behind Logan Sullivan, Julian West drew a gun, chanting mantras like a spinning wheel as he fired, each shot taking down a shadow without fail.

“Is that new useless kid cursed or something?” Logan Sullivan looked at the shadows clogging the entire corridor, feeling like he’d entered a sewer stuffed with hair. “He attracts vengeful spirits at school, little ghosts at the hospital—stick him in Investiture of the Gods and he’d be a walking soul banner.”

Julian West: “…Form is emptiness—I'll do a ritual for him later…”

Logan Sullivan was blunt with his old subordinate: “Cut the crap. Either speak human language or shut up!”

Julian West calmly finished the phrase: “…Emptiness is form.”

Logan Sullivan: “Screw you and your uncle!”

Julian West was silent for a moment, then earnestly advised, “Boss, don’t give in to anger or lust.”

It must be because of people like this that he’s developed such a deep aversion to work!

Logan Sullivan took a deep breath, clenched the dagger between his teeth, pulled a yellow talisman from his pocket, raised it, and lit it with a lighter. The talisman paper instantly caught fire like dry tinder, blazing uncontrollably. A shadow didn’t have time to retreat and was engulfed by the flames. The fire that devoured the dead shot up three feet high, licking up countless little ghosts who couldn’t escape in time. It was as if a fire dragon had burst through the corridor, burning everything in its path with the force of a gas explosion, roaring as it swept away all obstacles.

Julian West: “Amitabha, Buddha is merciful…”

Logan Sullivan looked sick: “Enough already.”

Half a minute later, only a bean-sized flame remained at the end of the corridor, as if the earlier inferno had been nothing but a fleeting firework.

Logan Sullivan strode over, bent down to light a cigarette from the tiny flame, clamped it between his lips, waved at Julian West, and was the first to push open the door at the end of the corridor, continuing inside.

Meanwhile, the three people hiding in the storage room had no idea that their rescue was so close. The scratching at the door from that ghostly thing outside was growing sharper and more frantic. Charles Gray’s breathing grew more rapid, his nerves stretched taut, teetering on the edge of collapse.

William Sherman had no choice but to ignore him and, swallowing his pride, lowered his head to ask the cat, “What should we do now?”

Darrin Grant, clearly a cat who’d seen it all, replied calmly, “Relax, just hold on a bit longer. When you made that call earlier, Director Zhao probably figured it out. He’ll come save us.”

William Sherman: “What? He’s coming alone? Is that safe? How will he get in?”

Darrin Grant was exasperated by his concerns, lazily flicking his tail: “Don’t worry, he’s tough as nails. A couple of little ghosts can’t kill him.”

William Sherman frowned, leaning against the wall in thought: “Is there no way we can save ourselves?”

Darrin Grant glanced up at him, then pointed out each living being present: “Our combat lineup is as follows: a mortal, a useless one, someone in a vegetative state, and me—the mascot. Save ourselves? What do you think, if the four of us climbed into a steamer, would we even be enough to fill the gap in a hungry ghost’s teeth?”

William Sherman: “Didn’t I just smash it into pieces with a chair?”

Darrin Grant: “That’s because it was starving and desperate to eat, not watching its back. You two young guys have strong yang energy, which made it a bit weak, so you got lucky with a sneak attack. But now the hospital is full of yin energy, and it’s been chasing us all the way—might as well have downed a few boxes of Brain Platinum. It might even be on fire right now… Oh, damn, why is there another one?”

Darrin Grant was cut off mid-sentence by a sudden burst of shrill, childish laughter from the corner. William Sherman looked down and saw a pale little girl, about five or six years old, squatting on the floor, giggling eerily as she reached for the black cat’s tail. Before he could see if the little ghost girl had fangs or a blue face, he suddenly felt a weight on him—Charles Gray had latched onto him like a koala.

“Help!” The young policeman who’d just promised through teary eyes to protect him was now clinging to William Sherman, sobbing and trembling, finally shouting out the truth he’d been holding in all day and night: “There’s a ghost, a ghost!”

The little ghost girl had died young, her mind perhaps not all there, and seemed to get excited around people. Finding a new source of amusement, she immediately abandoned the black cat and floated over to Charles Gray’s feet, tilting her face up to watch this bumbling uncle. As Charles Gray squinted and cautiously looked down, she suddenly stuck out her tongue, rolled her eyes back, kept her face up, and spun her head 360 degrees on her neck, finally dangling half-on, half-off in midair.

Charles Gray rolled his eyes three times, then back again, gasping for half a minute but never quite managing to faint. He clung to William Sherman like a tree, hugging his leg tightly and even trying to climb up, then took a deep breath and bellowed from his core: “Ghoooost!”

William Sherman stood there ramrod straight, silent as if at attention, one hand gripping his waistband to keep Charles Gray from pulling his pants down, while somehow finding a bizarre sense of comedy in the scene of a hungry ghost scratching at the door behind him and a little ghost girl spinning her head in front.

After only a dozen meters, Logan Sullivan’s watch, “Soul Mirror,” looked as if it had been soaked in blood, glowing a ghastly red. The hands spun wildly like a compass, completely detached from the time markers, but after all that spinning, it still couldn’t point the way—there was just too much unclean stuff here, interfering with Soul Mirror’s normal function.

Logan Sullivan shouted at Julian West: “Hey, fake monk, my damn watch is acting up again. Hurry up and do something—people are waiting to be rescued!”

At his words, Julian West plopped down cross-legged on the floor, closed his eyes, started counting prayer beads, and began chanting like an old monk entering meditation. Logan Sullivan was used to this routine—though he looked impatient, he said nothing, folding his arms and waiting.

After a moment, Julian West suddenly opened his eyes and shouted, “Now!”

The sandalwood prayer beads in his hand rattled, and then Julian West, looking like some kind of immortal, stood up expressionlessly, pointed in a direction with a mystical air, and said with certainty, “This way.”

Logan Sullivan followed his finger and started walking, asking casually, “Why so fast this time?”

Julian West, in his usual slow, measured tone, replied, “They’re both men, young, with plenty of yang energy. Even with Darrin Grant, a black cat, in all this yin energy, they stand out.”

Logan Sullivan was taken aback: “Two men? Wasn’t there supposed to be a little girl too?”

Julian West: “The girl isn’t with them.”

Logan Sullivan frowned. He didn’t know exactly what Charles Gray was like, but at least there was Darrin Grant—that cat might be lazy and gluttonous, but had some professional ethics. And then there was Professor Sherman.

He blurted out, “That’s impossible. William Sherman would never abandon his student.”

He hadn’t spoken much with William Sherman, but Logan Sullivan just had that feeling—William Sherman was definitely not that kind of person.

Julian West turned his head and asked, “Who’s William Sherman? I heard the new kid’s surname is Guo?”

Logan Sullivan couldn’t be bothered to explain. “You don’t know him.”