His gaze traveled down from her face, all the way to her hands. Her arms hung straight down, mostly hidden inside her sleeves, with only a small portion of her fingers exposed. The fingers of her right hand were snow-white and slender—exactly the hands of a pampered woman unaccustomed to labor.

However, the fingers of her left hand were slightly longer and thicker than those of her right. The knuckles were bent, full of strength.

How could these possibly be a woman’s hands—these were clearly a man’s hand!

Ryan Clark shouted, “Hold her down!”

Several young men had already seized Mrs. Moore. With a quick “Forgive me,” Ryan Clark flipped a talisman in his hand, about to slap it down, but Mrs. Moore’s left hand twisted at an impossible angle and lunged for his throat.

For a living person’s arm to twist like that, the bones would have to be broken. Yet she moved with astonishing speed, and was about to grab his neck. At that moment, Brian Clark let out a loud “Aiyo!” and threw himself in front of Ryan Clark, blocking the attack for him.

A flash of fire was seen—the moment that hand grabbed Brian Clark’s shoulder, green flames burst out along the arm, forcing it to release its grip immediately. Ryan Clark had narrowly escaped disaster and was about to thank Brian Clark for risking himself, when he saw that half of the latter’s school uniform had already been burned to ashes. Looking utterly disheveled, Brian Clark angrily tore off the remaining half while turning back to curse, “Why did you kick me, you lunatic? Are you trying to get me killed?!”

Ethan Sullivan scurried away, clutching his head: “It wasn’t me who kicked you!”

But it was him. The inside of the Lan clan’s school uniform was densely embroidered with protective incantations in matching thread, offering miraculous protection. However, against something this powerful, the uniform could only be used once before being rendered useless. In a moment of desperation, he had no choice but to kick Brian Clark, making him use his body to shield Ryan Clark’s neck. Brian Clark wanted to curse more, but Mrs. Moore collapsed to the ground, the flesh on her face sucked away until only a thin layer of skin clung to a skull. The man’s arm that didn’t belong to her fell off her left shoulder, its five fingers still flexing and stretching as if warming up, the pulsing veins and blood vessels clearly visible.

This thing was the evil object summoned by the Yin-summoning flag.

Dismemberment was a standard tragic death—just a bit more dignified than Ethan Sullivan’s own demise, but not by much. Unlike being ground to dust, dismembered body parts would absorb some of the deceased’s resentment, longing to return to the rest of the body, yearning to die whole. Thus, they would do everything possible to find the other parts. If they succeeded, perhaps they would finally rest in peace; if not, they might cause even greater trouble. And if they couldn’t find the rest, the body part would have to settle for something else.

How to settle? By making do with a living person’s body.

Just like this left hand: it would devour a living person’s left hand and take its place, drain the host’s vital energy and flesh, then abandon the body and continue searching for the next vessel, until it had found all the other parts of its original body.

Once this arm possessed someone, the host would die instantly, but before all their flesh and blood was consumed, the body could still move as usual under its control, as if still alive. After being summoned, its first host was Edward Moore. The second host was Edward Moore’s father. When Mrs. Moore told her husband to get out, he uncharacteristically pushed her back. Ethan Sullivan had originally thought it was because he was grieving his son’s death and tired of his wife’s overbearing ways. But thinking back now, that wasn’t how a father who had just lost his son should behave. That wasn’t numbness from despair, but the silence of death—the stillness of the dead.

The third host was Tommy. The fourth was Mrs. Moore. Taking advantage of the chaos when the lights went out, the ghost hand transferred to her. And at the moment of Mrs. Moore’s death, the last wound on Ethan Sullivan’s wrist also disappeared.

Seeing that talismans were useless but the uniforms worked, the Lan clan youths all took off their outer robes and threw them over the left hand, layer upon layer, wrapping it up like a thick white cocoon. Moments later, the bundle of white robes suddenly burst into flames, green fire shooting up eerily. Though this worked for the moment, once the uniforms burned away, the hand would break free again. Taking advantage of the distraction, Ethan Sullivan headed straight for the west courtyard.

The walking corpses captured by the youths stood silently in the courtyard, more than ten in total. Incantations sealing them were drawn on the ground. Ethan Sullivan kicked one of the characters, breaking the entire formation, and clapped his hands twice. The corpses shuddered, their eyes rolling back as if startled awake by a thunderclap.

Ethan Sullivan said, “Get up. Time to work!”

He never needed complicated spells or incantations to control corpse puppets—just the simplest, most direct commands would do. The corpse at the front trembled and struggled to take a few steps, but as soon as it got close to Ethan Sullivan, it seemed so frightened its legs gave out, and it collapsed to the ground like a living person.

Ethan Sullivan couldn’t help but laugh and cry. He clapped his hands again, this time much more gently. But these corpses, having lived and died in Mo Village and never seen much of the world, instinctively wanted to obey the summoner’s orders, yet were inexplicably terrified of the one giving them. They whimpered on the ground, not daring to get up.