Mysterious Revival

Ghost Mirror.

Yang Jian didn't even know if this thing could be defined as a ghost, but it was, like the human skin parchment, seemingly harmless on the surface yet concealing a massive terror in the dark.

The mirror reflected his body but did not show Yang Jian's shadow.

The surface of the mirror was blank.

However, all this had been taken into account; the Ghost Mirror needed a bit of time to capture a person's shadow.

During this time, Yang Jian had to complete the remaining tasks.

He first controlled the Ghost Shadow to enter his body, while simultaneously unraveling the gold foil wrapped around the Ghost Rope.

Both tasks were completed at the same time to ensure he wasn't controlled by the Ghost Shadow after which, unable to untie the Ghost Rope, he'd die a haphazard and confused death.

For this moment, Yang Jian hadn't slept last night, pondering over today's actions, so he was extremely cautious, ensuring no detail went awry, even going so far as to borrow a black suit from Zhang Xiangu to prevent any reflections and repositioning his phone camera to avoid contact between the lens and the mirror.

This moment.

The only person aware of what was happening here was Wang Xiaoming in the safe house.

Right now, the phone screen in his hand showed that after Yang Jian unveiled the black cloth covering the Ghost Mirror, he stood in the center of the room, unraveling the gold foil on the rope around his neck, with a tall Headless Ghost Shadow slowly standing up behind him.

The shadow stood eerily still behind Yang Jian, motionless.

"The Headless Ghost Shadow is a ghost controlled by Yang Jian, is it his control or has it already lost control now? Does Yang Jian want to untie that rope now? This is simply suicide, that rope is definitely a ghost—once its restraints are undone, it will kill Yang Jian first; in his current state, he's unable to resist the ghost's attack."

"He's now either going to die to the ghost's resurrection or from that rope of grass."

Wang Xiaoming's gaze was uncertain, as his research had made it clear that Yang Jian had now entered a situation of certain death, soon to meet the conditions for an inevitable demise.

He couldn't understand what Yang Jian could possibly rely on to turn this situation around.

The less than twenty percent chance of survival mentioned by Yang Jian was nonexistent—looking at the situation, the chance of survival was literally zero.

Unless Jesus descends, Buddha incarnates, Bodhisattva manifests... of course, all these are impossible.

"Now...n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

the only thing that can reverse this deadly situation is that mirror itself, he chose to hang himself in front of the mirror for a reason, but he didn't want to show me the mirror completely, no, wrong, if he really wanted to do that, he could have just switched to an angle where it couldn't be captured, there was no need to let me know of the mirror's existence." Wang Xiaoming furrowed his brows deeply.

"The only possibility is that he's apprehensive, he dares not point the camera at the mirror."

Watching every detail in the video closely, not missing any unsettling elements—rope, Headless Ghost Shadow, mirror... the person hanging in front of the mirror.

These pieces of information seemed unrelated, but Wang Xiaoming vaguely felt they were forming a strict line.

Only, this line, lacking the right supporting information, was incomprehensible.

"I'm looking forward to you more and more, Yang Jian." Wang Xiaoming felt an unprecedented sense of anticipation in his heart.

Yang Jian didn't stop his movements.

The Headless Ghost Shadow behind him was still barely controllable, but he had already started to feel the restlessness of the ghost's resurrection within his body.

It seemed the ghost was eager to resurrect at any moment.

"It doesn't matter." Yang Jian didn't care about this restlessness; he felt that before the ghost inside him resurrected, he would definitely have finished the task at hand.

Afterward, he would leave it to fate.

"Here it comes~!"

```

Suddenly.

Just at this moment, a new scene appeared abruptly inside the bright Ghost Mirror in front of Yang Jian.

A vague figure was slowly walking towards him from the depths of the mirror.

The terror of the Ghost Mirror began to unveil itself.

Initially, the figure in the mirror was as small as a thumb, positioned in the middle of the mirror, but as it continued to walk forward, the figure grew larger and clearer.

At first, Yang Jian could only make out a blurry black outline in the mirror, but by the time the person reached halfway, he was able to discern the features and stature.

As the figure in the mirror covered about two-thirds of the surface, even the style of the clothes became distinctly visible.

This was a person dressed in a black suit, with dark skin and a rigid body, whose facial features were identical to Yang Jian's.

The person in the mirror walked towards Yang Jian as if they would step out of it at any moment.

Yang Jian's face was solemn. He knew the figure in the mirror was actually a ghost, and if he looked at the mirror for too long, he would be replaced by the ghost inside it. He would enter the Ghost Mirror, while the ghost would escape to this world.

"Start."

No more hesitation.

At that moment, the Headless Ghost Shadow behind him slowly merged into his body like a dense fog.

Cold, numb, stiff.

As the Headless Ghost Shadow invaded, Yang Jian felt an enormous area of his back go completely numb.

It was as if... he was already dead.

As the invasion of the Headless Ghost Shadow continued, Yang Jian felt his blood stop flowing, his limbs lose vitality, and eventually, even his heartbeat disappeared.

Apart from his head, every other part of him was now dead, a mere corpse.

As his arms lost control and fell from mid-air.

The last piece of gold leaf wrapped around the Ghost Rope was torn off by him.

At this moment.

The Ghost Rope began to recover.

In an instant, Yang Jian felt the rough noose around his neck tighten violently, as if invisible large hands were desperately constricting the rope, almost snapping his neck. Concurrently, as his body suffered the invasion of the Headless Ghost Shadow, the cessation of blood flow and the stopping of his heart, an intense feeling of suffocation surged into his mind.

Dizzy and nearly blacking out.

"Gack, gack gack~!"

Although Yang Jian had prepared himself to be hanged, when the moment actually came, the instinct to survive urged him to struggle and escape desperately.

But his body no longer belonged to him; it belonged to the Headless Ghost Shadow.

He could only utter painful, gurgling noises, his body resembling a hung corpse, limbs dangling weakly and swaying slightly in the air.

Meanwhile, the person in the Ghost Mirror had completely filled the reflective surface, their shape and attire now identical to Yang Jian's.

As Yang Jian was hanged, the figure in the mirror also slowly rose, neck lifted, limbs hanging down.

It was imitating Yang Jian at the moment of his hanging.

Yang Jian was not dead yet. His face showed an expression of utmost pain—the feeling of being hung alive and dying from suffocation was something he fully realized at this moment.

His consciousness was now in turmoil.

```

His vision was becoming increasingly blurry.

Thinking had become a laborious task for his brain.

He was about to die...

Ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds, one minute, two minutes...

The painful passage of time felt excruciatingly slow, yet as time slowly went on, Yang Jian no longer felt so much pain and was rapidly losing consciousness.

After approximately four minutes, Yang Jian closed his eyes without a sound, and his shoes dropped to the ground with a clatter.

Yet according to scientific calculations, he should only have passed out due to brain hypoxia, not truly dead.

However, the hanging by the Ghost Rope continued.

There was no way someone would let him down at this time, so his death was a foregone conclusion.

"Dead?"

Wang Xiaoming, watching everything through the phone, was now filled with uncertainty.

He thought there would be some variation or twist in the situation midway.

But there wasn't.

Yang Jian died from hanging just like a normal outcome.

Through the phone, Wang Xiaoming could affirm with certainty that Yang Jian had lost all vital signs of life. His heartbeat had stopped, his fingers no longer moved, and rigidity had begun to set in throughout his body.

Death came somewhat quickly.

But that didn't affect anything.

"Why did he choose to die like this? Is there some change I'm unaware of, or has Yang Jian already failed?" Wang Xiaoming's gaze was fixed intently on the screen.

It had been ten minutes since the hanging.

Yang Jian still made no movement.

Twenty minutes passed, still no movement.

An hour went by.

It was now completely certain that Yang Jian was dead—completely and utterly dead. A ten-minute hanging might have been survivable, but after hanging for so long, Yang Jian had become a corpse.

Wang Xiaoming stared at the phone screen for over an hour, and could not help but start to believe that the anticipated change would not occur. Yang Jian seemed to be truly dead; he had failed.

After all, he had previously said the survival probability was less than twenty percent.

Meaning, the likelihood of death was considerably high.

"Lost the gamble?"

Wang Xiaoming rubbed his sore eyes, letting out a weary sigh in his heart.

Yet he did not put down the phone; he was still watching.

He wouldn't put the phone down until the battery on the phone near Yang Jian's corpse ran out.

He would watch until the end before drawing a conclusion.

So many days had passed; a few more hours wouldn't matter.

However, after an hour and a half, there was no movement from Yang Jian in the video. His limbs dangled helplessly, and his face had a peaceful expression as he hung in midair.

Two hours passed, and it was the same.

The body did not move at all, and the entire room seemed to be frozen in time. To the unknowing eye, one might think they were looking at a screensaver on the phone.

But in the place Wang Xiaoming's phone could not see,

inside the Ghost Mirror,

the person reflected in the mirror also hung in the air like a hanged man, limbs dangling, face serene.

The appearance, the posture, had already coincided with Yang Jian.

According to the rules of the Ghost Mirror, Yang Jian, who had died, should have resurrected within it, just as Zhang Wei did, appearing in the mirror after his death.

But there was nothing.

The shadow in the mirror made no movements, and the corpse of Yang Jian outside the mirror remained still.

The Ghost Shadow that had controlled Yang Jian's body was motionless, and even the revived Ghost Rope was still.

This apparent silence was merely a surface phenomenon.

In reality, in the unseen darkness, the struggle between ghosts had already begun.

The Ghost Shadow, seeking to seize Yang Jian's body, would first have to overcome the Ghost Rope.

The Ghost Rope, suspending Yang Jian's corpse, was out of the Ghost Shadow's control, and that underlying struggle had commenced.

So the revived Ghost Rope seemed to have lost its power, only a single strand was released, whereas normally the ropes would densely fill the sky.

Though it appeared unchanging, indeed, change had already occurred.

The Ghost Rope was being suppressed.

Within Yang Jian's corpse, the Ghost Shadow had gained the upper hand.

To suppress the reviving Ghost Rope, the limited strength of the Headless Ghost Shadow wasn't enough.

Dark shadows started to mysteriously emerge on Yang Jian's corpse and grew increasingly intense as if they were about to merge into one dark mass.

The Headless Ghost Shadow began to revive.

"Drip~!"

Three hours after Yang Jian had hung dead, a drop of ink-like black substance fell from the tip of his foot.

The video did not capture this because the angle was insufficient to film all sides.

This drop of ink seemed like part of the Headless Ghost Shadow's body, forcibly separated by some force.

The Ghost Mirror had joined in.

At this point, Yang Jian was dead, and according to the current situation, he should have begun to resurrect.

However, the presence of the Ghost Shadow prevented all this. To maintain normal operations, expelling the Ghost Shadow from Yang Jian's corpse was a priority.

"Did the body just get moved a bit?"

At this moment, Wang Xiaoming wasn't sure if it was an illusion, but he felt that Yang Jian's body hanging in midair had shifted slightly from its original position.

It was not a significant shift, but he had a vague sense of it, having watched for so long.