Chapter 133: Forcing Ji and Fang’s Death

“This…”

Kondo Sei listened to Ji Li’s faint voice on the other end, absorbed in the plan he proposed, feeling a trace of hesitation.

She couldn’t quite understand his thinking, but after a brief pause, she gave a firm nod and hung up the phone.

Snowflakes bleached her hair white. With a shake of her head, her long hair swept like a waterfall. She looked toward a convenience store still open in the distance.

On the seventeenth floor of the Cube Tower, Ji Li’s wounds had nearly finished healing, and most of the restraints from the earlier confrontation had dissolved.

At this moment, his body and head were wrapped in several threads that connected him to the enormous hand above.

His life hung on a single whim of that hand, yet Ji Li felt little fear.

Instead, his thoughts drifted to Kondo Sei. That Japanese woman was surprisingly decisive; few would have the courage to return to this building at a time like this.

Their brief encounters had been enough for Ji Li to sense that she was a kind-hearted young woman.

She had agreed—so she would return.

He had no other options left; he didn’t want to die again. If he did, the second personna would certainly disappear forever.

Staring at the threads that controlled him, his face twisted with rejection and revulsion.

He understood his life had always been in the hands of others, and that only deepened his disgust for this manner of killing.

He had to capture this ghost himself—lock it away in the Seventh Branch with his own hands.

“Ji Li, is that really it?” Fang Shenyan had heard the plan, yet his face remained numb.

No joy or sorrow could be read from him, for he did not trust Kondo Sei.

He refused to believe that a woman he had met only a few times—who barely knew anything but their names—would dare to enter a place known to house a ghost just to save someone.

To Fang Shenyan, saving others was both laughable and troublesome.

Ji Li neither confirmed nor denied anything. He trusted only his intuition—or perhaps they simply had no power to choose anymore.

“My wounds are nearly healed. We’re going to die…”

A long sigh spilled from Fang Shenyan’s lips.

He spread his arms, embracing the void of wind and snow—lonely and pitiful, like a god beyond salvation.

Ji Li’s gaze still carried a spark of life. He knew another tough battle awaited them.

Before Kondo Sei arrived, they could easily die several times over. He needed a way to stall for as long as possible.

That had become the greatest challenge.

“How many dead people are here?”

For no clear reason, in the quiet gap before death’s arrival, Ji Li suddenly asked the question.

Fang Shenyan frowned slightly and activated the passive effect of his Ghost Eye. He saw the entire seventeenth floor—the corpses lying in the open rooms.

“Twenty-one bodies.”

A simple answer, yet something about it felt off to Ji Li.

He slowly rose to his feet, looking toward the rooms and inhaling the scent of death before speaking softly:

“The mission hasn’t started yet. The ghost shouldn’t be using such large-scale measures…”

Yes.

No matter how powerful a ghost was, its preparations still required concealment. It couldn’t alert the hotel too soon.

So how could it openly slaughter every living person in the building?

Fang Shenyan instantly sensed the flaw. After a moment of hesitation, he decided to use the Ghost Eye’s active effect for real this time.

Its active effect shattered all spiritual attacks from ghosts—barriers, illusions, psychic influence.

This was undoubtedly a supernatural barrier.

But since Xue Tinghai had managed to leave openly with people, this place still existed in reality. There was no need to break the barrier for escape.

Until now, Fang Shenyan had assumed the barrier merely blocked the hotel’s awareness.

But Ji Li’s question suggested it was far more complex.

A sudden cough tore from Fang Shenyan’s throat. His spine bent, and he shook his head violently as a moment of weakness washed over him.

It felt like falling ill from a sudden fever.

Then a black aura surged from the eye on his left palm, slipping into his veins and rushing upward into his eyes.

His sclera turned pitch-black in an instant, as if his eyes had become two dark gemstones—profound and unfathomable.

With that gaze, he saw—

A strand of light streaming across the seventeenth floor, coming from a direction where the building’s illumination should exist.

At first it was only a thin crack, but fueled by the artifact’s power, a gap appeared—

A breach in the supernatural barrier.

His sight pierced through the fog, stabbing open a path through what had seemed a sealed enclosure.

Ji Li’s vision brightened. He too sensed something was wrong.

At the end of that true path, the seventeenth floor’s power had been restored—or rather, perhaps it had never been cut off at all.

Each resident who had been startled by the strange noises stepped out of their rooms one by one, gathering in the hallway as they stared at the mass of black fog centered on Ji Li and Fang Shenyan.

In that instant, Ji Li suddenly understood.

This was the true purpose of the supernatural barrier.

The ghost had never taken control of the entire Cube Tower. Instead, the moment Ji Li and the others arrived, it had severed them from reality entirely.

The Cube Tower was still the same building as before.

Yet within the same place and the same timeline, Ji Li and Fang Shenyan had been pulled out of the real world.

Everything they had experienced—aside from the enormous green hand and themselves—was nothing but illusion.

As for Xue Tinghai walking out unhindered, it wasn’t because he remained in reality.

It was because he had activated the Sin Artifact, allowing him to pass without obstruction.

Ji Li could now almost confirm that Xue Tinghai had known everything at the time. He simply chose not to speak, wanting Ji Li and Fang Shenyan to die there.

The supernatural barrier had been torn open. As Fang Shenyan recognized the truth, the residents on the seventeenth floor also saw the two living people shrouded in black fog.

Fang Shenyan’s coughing worsened. The Ghost Eye was only a first-rank Sin Artifact.

Against a second-rank entity—especially one as unusual as this—he could hardly gain ground. He held on only through sheer will.

Ji Li understood that Kondo Sei no longer mattered at this point. If he could pull the seventeenth-floor residents into this space, they would be enough to awaken the hotel’s awareness, forcing it to intervene and stop this deadly crisis.

But suddenly, he felt the threads around his body tightening together. He jerked his head upward.

The giant hand that had hovered for so long finally moved—its five thick fingers beginning to tremble.

The barrier had been exposed. The ghost intended to kill both Ji and Fang before the hotel could intervene.