Mysterious Revival - Chapter 322

Chapter 322: Chapter 321 Infinite Loop Trading Rules

“What does this mean?” Yang Jian furrowed his brows as he looked at the note.

He had exchanged a bowl of dog blood for a bowl of egg fried rice. Based on his previous deductions, he had seemingly completed the deal with the ghost, but unexpectedly, in the blink of an eye, the Ghost Cabinet presented him with a new demand.

Move the Ghost Cabinet out?

Move it out… Does that mean out of this secret room, or out of this ancient house?

Staring at the note in his hand, another idea surfaced in Yang Jian’s mind, “Why should I do as the Ghost Cabinet asks? What if moving it triggers uncontrollable danger and I end up harming myself? What would happen if I ignore its demand?”

He felt he should make such an attempt.

Perhaps nothing would happen if Yang Jian took the Ghost Cabinet out, but then he would lose an opportunity to unravel its mysteries.

He must reduce his interactions with ghosts; too frequent contact would inevitably bring misfortune upon himself.

With that thought, Yang Jian decided to do nothing and observe how the Ghost Cabinet would react.

So now he was refusing to take the Ghost Cabinet out of the secret room.

While keeping an eye on changes to the Ghost Cabinet, he also inspected the egg fried rice in his hand.

He sniffed it… it smelled delicious~!

But of course, Yang Jian dared not eat it. There was no need to risk his life for a bowl of egg fried rice. It was merely the result of an experiment, to be disposed of later.

Ten minutes had passed since he refused to move the Ghost Cabinet out of the secret room.

All was quiet; nothing had happened. Rejecting the Ghost Cabinet’s request didn’t seem to bring any danger. Nevertheless, Yang Jian decided to stay a bit longer out of caution. It wouldn’t be good for something to go wrong behind his back immediately after he left.

However, another five minutes passed.

In total, that should be a quarter of an hour, fifteen minutes.

At that moment, Yang Jian’s gaze sharpened, fixed on the crevice of the cabinet door.

A stream of scarlet fresh blood gradually began seeping out from inside, spilling more and more onto the exterior, a pungent smell of blood wafting through the secret room.

Was the Ghost Cabinet seeping blood?

“Was it the dog blood I put in earlier that got knocked over?” Yang Jian thought of the dog blood from before, but he immediately dismissed the thought.

The color of the blood was different from the dog blood; it was thick, dull, and dark, as if it had been decaying for days, and the volume of the spill far exceeded that of a bowl of dog blood.

As the blood flowed down, it gradually stained the wooden cabinet and spread on the floor, pooling into one place, and expanding outward.

Moreover, more and more blood was seeping from the door’s crevices. Initially, it was just the lower gap, but now several gaps along the top were bleeding. No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t the cabinet that was bleeding; it was the old wood that was exuding droplets of blood.

In less than three minutes, the once faded and outdated cabinet had turned into a dim, crimson wooden cabinet.

It was as if the blood had painted it with a new coat of varnish.

“This thing is evil. The original owner’s wariness was not without reason.” Yang Jian’s expression darkened slightly as he pondered whether the strange phenomena would cease if he moved the Ghost Cabinet out of the secret room and complied with its demands.

What if he continued to refuse?

He continued to observe.

He could tell that although the fresh blood looked terrifying, it actually posed no harm to him. He felt nothing eerie about it; this wasn’t like the Ghost Blood that Yan Li had, which could suppress other ghosts. Thus, he had the nerve to let the Ghost Cabinet continue to change.

Others who control ghosts would never dare to let strange objects revive in this manner,

Yang Jian, however, was both skilled and brave.

Or perhaps it was because he was carrying a Ghost Candle and was confident he could handle any situation.

Time continued to tick by as Yang Jian kept an eye on the Ghost Cabinet.

Another quarter of an hour passed.

The blood had already filled the floor, and the amount of blood pooling was several centimeters high. If it continued unchecked, the blood seeping from the Ghost Cabinet seemed capable of filling the entire secret room.

Is this why the room was sealed, to prevent the overflowing blood from escaping?

But then, a second change occurred.

As the blood gradually submerged the cabinet’s four legs, the lower door issued an old creaking sound and slowly began to open.

A swollen and eerie hand emerged from the open space of the lower door, trying to pry it open further, as if the owner of this bloated hand intended to come out from inside.

Under Yang Jian’s laissez-faire attitude, the door was now open by a small fraction.

Strands of black hair dangled from within, wet and dripping, as if they had just been pulled up from water.

Peering through that partially open door, Yang Jian could see it wasn’t empty inside, but was packed tight, leaving no space. He could vaguely make out what seemed to be a water-soaked, swollen corpse, specifically that of a female. Ghost!

A ghost had inexplicably manifested beneath the cabinet.

Yang Jian’s face darkened in an instant.

He knew there had to be more complexity to the situation. If he didn’t attend to the Ghost Cabinet’s needs, uncontrollable events would start to happen.

Nothing occurred in the first fifteen minutes, but once they passed, blood began to seep out from it.

The blood was harmless, yet eerily peculiar.

It seemed to serve as a warning.

In the second fifteen-minute window, once the warning ended and Yang Jian still hadn’t moved the Ghost Cabinet out, a ghost appeared in the cabinet door below, attempting to open it and emerge.

The predictable outcome if the swollen, waterlogged corpse were to come out was either to settle accounts with Yang Jian, killing him, or the Ghost Cabinet’s balance would be broken, leading to a situation similar to a vengeful ghost’s revival.

Either scenario wouldn’t bode well.

And it was just half an hour’s delay that caused a ghost to manifest—what if it was delayed for a day, ten days, a hundred days?

Could the Ghost Cabinet then brew even greater harm?

The aim of the experiment had been achieved.

Yang Jian felt it was time to call a halt. There was no need for him to face a ghost head-on just for the sake of an experiment as there was no advantage in it.

“What would happen if I move the Ghost Cabinet out now?”

He wanted to see what would result from fulfilling the requirement.

Immediately, Yang Jian ignored the slowly opening cabinet door and the corpse struggling to emerge. Instead, he used Ghost Domain to transport himself with the Ghost Cabinet directly out of the ancient house to the rooftop of a high-rise building in the neighborhood.

The sun blazed outside, its heat intense, a stark contrast to the dark, terrifying atmosphere of the ancient house.

Yang Jian stood on the rooftop next to him was a bowl of egg fried rice, but facing him was a blood-covered wooden cabinet.

Bizarrely, no more than three seconds after he brought the Ghost Cabinet out, the oozing of fresh blood from it ceased.

And the slowly opening cabinet door below creaked as if a gust of wind had closed it on its own.

Even the damp hair of the corpse that had dangled from the crevice had vanished without a trace.

All strangeness was appeased in an instant.

“I did as the Ghost Cabinet requested, and so it has returned to a state of calm,” Yang Jian pondered for a moment, certain that nothing peculiar would happen again. He then attempted to open the lower cabinet door.

To see if the swollen, soaked corpse was really there.

He cautiously opened it to look inside.

The interior was empty, as if the previous events had been an illusion and never existed—the cabinet door still enclosed by three wooden sides without a trace of any corpse.

But Yang Jian knew it wasn’t an illusion because there were remnants of a few black hairs and some damp traces inside the cabinet.

All signs indicated that indeed a corpse had been there just moments before but had now disappeared for reasons unknown.

Although the bleeding from the cabinet ceased, the remaining blood dried under the scorching sun and formed a layer of dark red paint on the surface of the aged cabinet.

The Ghost Cabinet looked as if it had been renewed.

As if it heralded the reemergence of something that had been sealed for a hundred years back into the world.

Seated on a sun-warmed concrete bollard, Yang Jian stared at the rejuvenated Ghost Cabinet and fell into deep thought, “Previously, I wrote down a request for a bowl of egg fried rice, and the Ghost Cabinet countered with a demand for a bowl of fresh blood. I complied, the egg fried rice appeared, and the trade was completed. Then, the Ghost Cabinet required that I move it out of the ancient house, a condition that came with the egg fried rice. However, I refused, and the Ghost Cabinet became unpredictable… a quarter-hour of warning, and in half an hour, a ghost appeared. Yet, when I complied, the Ghost Cabinet returned to normal.”

“If I tally it up, that’s two conditions met for one request, which is an incredibly bad deal. Wait, thinking it over, can I not counter-propose conditions to the Ghost Cabinet when it makes its demands?”

In his contemplation, Yang Jian abruptly identified a crucial issue.

This point was worth exploring; perhaps it might truly be possible to transfer it.

“No, that’s not right. If I fulfill the Ghost Cabinet’s demands and then the Ghost Cabinet succeeds, it should in turn pose conditions to me. This would ensure that the trade continues indefinitely, never ceasing, and as the process unfolds, the ‘value’ of the trade would escalate. Now I might only want a bowl of egg fried rice, but perhaps after a few dozen trades, the Ghost Cabinet might demand I kill everyone in the world…”

Suddenly,

Yang Jian shuddered, recalling the original owner’s ominous message: You will have everything and also lose everything, be very cautious.

This was an unequal trade-off because a ghost can endure everything, but humans cannot.

So by not making a request and doing work for the Ghost Cabinet for free, Yang Jian meant interrupting the infinite cycle of trade. If he were greedy and kept making requests, the trades would continue until one party could no longer bear it.

And clearly, humans would be the disadvantaged party.

The rules may seem fair, but the disparity between humans and ghosts ensures the unfairness of this trade.

“Two conditions in exchange for one request, that’s the true function of the Ghost Cabinet. The greater the value of the desired object, the higher the price to be paid,” Yang Jian concluded after a lengthy deliberation.