Chapter 23: The Ghost Was Devoured by My Hand

Fu Yang was terrified. He wiped himself as quickly as possible and pulled up his pants, but he had no idea what to do next.

“Am I supposed to wait here in the bathroom to die? No way. I’ll break down the door and charge out!”

With a determined heart, he stopped caring about anything else and flung the door open.

But the sight before him left him utterly stupefied.

The bathroom had vanished, along with the exit. In front of him spread a gloomy graveyard. Earthen mounds dotted the landscape—some damaged, exposing coffins within; others adorned with tattered flags fluttering eerily in the wind. Crows beat their wings and flew overhead.

“What the hell? How did opening a bathroom stall door land me in a cemetery?”

Fu Yang instinctively stepped back two paces, inadvertently treading on the eyeballs that had rolled in earlier.

Squish.

The bloodied eyeballs burst under his foot with a dull, sickening sound. Sticky fluid coated his shoes. It was revolting.

“This is an illusion! It has to be! Maybe I should go back into the bathroom and calm down.”

He turned to look, but the stalls had disappeared. He was now completely stranded in a desolate graveyard.

What now?

He knew this was an illusion, but he couldn't break free from it.

He pinched his face hard—it hurt. The illusion felt painfully real.

“Maybe I should try biting my finger? Back when I first met Her Majesty at Xishan Cemetery, I did that... Though it didn’t do any good, at least I managed to escape.”

Fu Yang placed his finger in his mouth and bit down hard.

It felt like biting rubber—soft, painful, but no blood.

He didn't realize that this illusion, crafted by a vengeful spirit, existed only in his consciousness. Everything was fake, so of course there was no blood.

Still, since pain is regulated by the brain’s nerves, he could feel it.

Fu Yang was out of ideas.

As his anxiety peaked, strange sounds began emanating from all around the grave mounds.

The mound closest to him, half-collapsed and revealing part of a black wooden coffin, emitted a piercing, screeching noise, like fingernails scraping a blackboard. The sound was excruciating.

“Does it have to be this intense? Are they planning a parade of a hundred ghosts?”

Fu Yang’s heart raced. He couldn’t run, and felt utterly trapped.

The coffin lid was pried open with a crack. A corpse, rotting all over, sat up abruptly. Its eye sockets glowed with a sinister red light, and a chilling smile curled at its lips as it lunged toward Fu Yang.

“Damn! Do you think I’m some ghost-virgin who’s never seen this before? Bring it on!”

Fearful yet unflinching, Fu Yang raised a stone the size of a human head and hurled it at the decaying zombie.

Bang.

The zombie staggered.

“Screw you!”

Having practiced sanda, Fu Yang took a running start and landed a flying kick squarely on the zombie’s chest, sending it careening back into the coffin like a broken kite.

“Hahaha! You think you can mess with me? Even if this is an illusion, I can still beat you down!”

Hands on his hips, Fu Yang laughed triumphantly—until the laughter caught in his throat. Every grave mound around him split open, and countless corpses, rotten and grotesque, poured out.

“Now it’s a mob fight? That’s just cowardly!” Fu Yang spat on the ground, nerves taut. All he could think of was how to wake from this nightmare conjured by the vengeful spirit.

A wild graveyard, ghosts dancing in chaos.

He kept telling himself this was just an illusion, but the scene before him was as real as life. Worst of all, if those zombies attacked him, he’d feel pain, as though it were real, despite no blood.

An endless torment—worse than death.

Fu Yang could only run, but he never managed to escape the graveyard, only circling mound after mound, coffin after coffin.

He ran and ran.

Ouch.

Suddenly, he twisted his ankle on a treacherous skull and couldn’t run anymore.

Rotting zombies, reeking of decay, closed in like starving refugees scrambling for food, clawing and scratching at him. Fu Yang howled in agony.

He summoned all his strength to shove the zombies away. As he flailed, his right hand opened wide, and the gaping, fanged mouth in his palm faced the nearest zombie...

In that instant, everything changed!

With a thunderous roar, the beast’s mouth in his palm unleashed a powerful suction. The hideous, rotting zombie was sucked in and vanished.

Fu Yang froze in disbelief.

“What’s happening? The beast’s mouth in my palm...”

A flash of insight struck him, and he realized at once what was happening. Joy surged through him.

“This is the spell Her Majesty taught me! Yes, it’s the spell!”

His courage soared. He laughed loudly and swept his right hand in a wide arc. Every zombie touched by the beast’s mouth was swallowed up...

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

At last, the mouth became like a black hole, swallowing not only the zombies assailing Fu Yang, but also the surrounding grass, trees, and stones.

Squish.

A soft sound. It felt as if a curtain had been torn away before his eyes, everything sucked into the beast’s mouth in his palm. The scene warped and twisted, finally returning to the dimly lit bathroom of the campus hospital...

He was back!

Sure enough, everything before had been a hallucination.

But... there really was a ghost.

Right in front of Fu Yang hovered a faceless woman—her face a blank canvas, hair wild, fingernails black and gleaming like daggers.

Clearly, this vengeful spirit had used illusions and hallucinations to terrorize him.

Ordinarily, such a terrifying ghost would attack even if its illusions were broken. But this one seemed odd—almost frightened, neither attacking nor fleeing.

“So... the spell isn’t an illusion after all!”

Fu Yang’s heart leapt with joy. Shouting “Die!” he aimed the beast’s mouth in his palm at the faceless ghost.

A whirlwind rose in the bathroom, accompanied by a low, guttural roar. The beast’s mouth opened wide and sucked the vengeful spirit inside.

At the same time, Fu Yang felt a powerful, violent energy surge through his right hand and settle in his heart.

He looked down and saw the beast’s mouth in his palm move, as if chewing and savoring a delicious meal. It was deeply unsettling.