Chapter 22: The Endless Staircase

It was a darkness deep enough to seep into one's very marrow.

In the gloom, there was no light, no substance—only a flight of mottled stone steps leading into the unknown. The stairs were covered in moss, and a faint, musty odor clung to the air. More terrifying, however, was the scarlet blood-light radiating from around the steps; it carried the stench of bloodlust and was heavy with ill omens.

"Move!"

Shen Lin gritted his teeth and spoke. They had no choice; suppressed by the ghost domain, their only option was to proceed, step by step, through trial and error.

"No! I won't!"

Before anyone could take a step, a man let out a sharp cry. He scrambled backward, and in his panic, as if struck by a sudden thought, he lunged toward the balcony glass.

*Bang!*

The glass shattered upon impact. The man seemed to have caught a glimpse of the light; lying on the balcony, he burst into hysterical laughter. Beyond the balcony appeared to be the normal world they had been longing for.

On one side was the door, and on the other, an unfathomable abyss of darkness. How does one choose? Even a fool would know.

Their feet began to move, scrambling over one another in a rush. Even Li Yihui felt a surge of temptation, but just as he was about to take a step, a hand blocked his path.

"Don't move."

Shen Lin spoke coldly. If someone wanted to die, he wouldn't stop them, but Li Yihui was, after all, Li Meng’s father and had treated him well; he could not stand by and watch him seek his own end.

"Come over here! What are you hesitating for? Do you really believe that brat?"

The man from before shouted, casting a look of contempt at Dai Heming and the others when he saw they hadn't moved.

"A bunch of idiots," he sneered.

In the next second, he leaped off the edge of the balcony. With that jump, he believed he could finally escape this horrific nightmare.

Suddenly!

The entire world seemed to have its light source extinguished. It plummeted from brightness into total darkness—a darkness so thick one could not see one's own hand.

In the void, Shen Lin’s eyes emitted an eerie, ghostly glow; he saw what no ordinary person could. It was a pair of hands—withered, gnarled limbs resembling the roots of an ancient tree, looking as if they might crumble into ash at any moment from decay. They reached out from the darkness and grabbed the man who had just leaped, right there in mid-air.

*Snap!*

It was a sound of unbearable crispness. The man’s eyes bulged as if they were about to pop from their sockets, and his neck, no longer supported by bone, hung helplessly to the side.

Then, the darkness seemed to ripple. The hand, along with the man it had seized, dissolved into the shadows and vanished without a trace.

*Whoosh.*

An inexplicable wind blew through. Everyone around instinctively closed their eyes. When they opened them again, the broken balcony was back to its original state, and the villa’s lights were back on, as if nothing had ever happened.

Li Yihui’s eyes were wide with shock. He scanned the people around him in disbelief; fully half of them were gone. He clutched his chest in lingering fear—had it not been for Shen Lin holding him back, he would likely have met a grim fate as well.

*Is this the power of a ghost domain?* Shen Lin mused.

Different ghosts meant different ghost domain abilities. In the original records, Yang’s ghost eyes functioned primarily by inducing hallucinations in both humans and ghosts, a trick he had used to win many unexpected victories. The Ghost Mother’s domain emphasized invisibility and spatial distortion; Shen Lin had yet to test whether this was effective against ghosts. Having suffered greatly from being spied upon and attacked within the thick fog, Shen Lin understood the lethality of this domain all too well.

He glanced at the ghost candle in his hand. It was burning much slower than he had anticipated; they could hold out for quite a while at this rate.

"Move. Keep an eye on your surroundings. We are safe for the moment," Shen Lin commanded. They had no choice; they had to keep moving forward.

The darkness-shrouded, mottled stairs were not as wide as one might imagine; two people could barely walk side-by-side. Shen Lin tentatively probed the space around them, only to find it empty. The staircase seemed to hang suspended in a void. They tossed some spare items off the edge, but heard no sound as they fell.

They didn't know how long they had been walking; the road seemed to have no end.

"Let's rest for a moment," Shen Lin said. He wasn't tired, but he had to account for the physical limits of the others.

The ghost candle had burned down by a third, and everything remained as it was. Shen Lin was deep in thought. He considered extinguishing the candle—it was an irreplaceable resource, and Wang Xiaoming could barely produce a few a month; it couldn't be wasted like this.

After a short rest, they continued. Shen Lin never once ceased his observation of their surroundings—up, down, left, and right—but all he saw was a void of darkness. He perceived nothing, and even his eyes, granted by the Ghost Phase, were blinded by this darkness.

"Lin, something's not right," Li Meng muttered. He had been silent since entering the dark, and his voice was rare.

"What did you find?" Shen Lin asked.

Li Meng scratched his head, struggling to find the words. "I don't know. I just feel like something is wrong. We've been on this damned road for so long, with no village in front and no store behind. I just feel like there's a problem."

Shen Lin agreed deeply and told Li Meng to try to stay calm.

After an unknown amount of time, when the ghost candle had burned past the halfway mark, Shen Lin’s expression finally turned grim. He had managed to confirm one thing: this road had no end.

It was a staircase suspended in the void, much like a path to the heavens. As high as the sky was, so long was the path; a mortal could never walk to the end of it. This ghost was wearing down their time, finding ways to consume the ghost candle.

They could wait no longer. If they kept walking like this, they would find no solution even in ten thousand years. Shen Lin planned to extinguish the candle to lure the thing out.

To seek life within death!

After a long moment of silence, he swept his gaze across the group.

"To be frank, our situation is dire. The ghost's abilities are unpredictable, and the situation is fluid. I have yet to lock onto its patterns, so we have to rely on trial and error."

"As long as this candle is lit, it won't come near."

"I am going to extinguish the candle to lure it out. Otherwise, we will likely be trapped here until we die."

The endless darkness seemed to isolate everything, but the group felt a cold wind blow through, followed by terror and helplessness.

Dai Heming tried to speak up. "Mr. Shen, we... we could wait a little longer. There will be a rescue, there must be!"

They were all people of high status; they had been missing for so long that people outside surely must have noticed something was wrong. Dai Heming clung to the belief that a rescue would come.

"First, this is an announcement, not a negotiation."

"Second, you still don't understand what this place is. If that ghost can make the surveillance footage look normal, it can make that villa look normal to everyone else. There will be no rescue. You would do well to discard those little fantasies."

Cold sweat beaded on Dai Heming's forehead; he grasped the point once more. Shen Lin was absolutely right. If the ghost could influence the surveillance, why couldn't it influence the villa? Perhaps no one even realized they were missing.

A sense of despair spread among those waiting for rescue. Shen Lin gave Li Meng a look, and Li Meng understood, pulling his father closer to Shen Lin’s side.

The next moment, the ghost candle was extinguished. As the emerald flame vanished, the only things left in the space were the endless darkness and the mottled stone steps glowing with a scarlet hue.

*Whoosh!*

A wind blew! Everyone felt it. It was a cold wind, chilling enough to freeze the heart, yet it made sweat pour down their backs. They felt the threat of death.

In the dark, Shen Lin pushed his Ghost Phase to its limit. His glowing eyes peered into the gloom.

One second, two seconds, half a minute, two minutes.

It was a tug-of-war of time and anticipation. The space was terrifyingly silent.

It was here!

It was an indescribable feeling. Shen Lin spotted the withered, gnarled hands in the very first instant. They emerged from the darkness like a seasoned predator in the jungle, nimbly grabbing the neck of someone in the group and vanishing again.

The stairs were suspended, the group was crowded, and Shen Lin hadn't even had time to react. Everything happened so fast—too fast to react.

"Damn it!"

Li Meng shouted. He had thought that after the Ghost Mother incident he was fearless, but he was terrified. What was this? A game of a wolf among sheep? Was it going to kill them all, one by one?

The crowd panicked, fearing they would be next. Someone even spotted the path they had come from and scrambled downward in a panic, but after disappearing into the darkness for only a moment, they were gone from sight, never to be seen again.

"Don't panic! Stop moving!"

Shen Lin’s low, unquestionable voice cut through the air. At this moment, he had to steady their hearts. The crowd calmed slightly, but they were like duckweed in the sea, ready to capsize at any moment.

Shen Lin watched the surroundings with a gloomy face. A hand could appear at any moment to claim the next life. Should they keep moving? Or stay put? The ghost’s speed was too fast, and the stairs too narrow. If it attacked, he could hardly guarantee the safety of the majority.

"Mr. Shen, Mr. Shen, I beg you, find a way. I don't want to die, I don't want to die!"

Someone wailed, and like a chain reaction, the people around him began to moan and plead with Shen Lin. To survive, they abandoned all dignity, even beginning to kowtow on the narrow stone steps.

"Shut up!"

Shen Lin roared. He was straining every nerve to watch for danger; he could not be distracted.

But the ghost had stopped moving. They waited for a long time, but there was not a sound. Even Shen Lin began to feel restless; such a dark environment always nurtured negative emotions.

Walk? Or stay?

Just waste away like this? Or try to brave the potentially infinite stairs? Staying here was no different from waiting for death, but climbing the stairs was merely letting the ghost exhaust their strength for nothing.

Shen Lin’s expression grew fierce. As the leader of this group, he had to make a choice.

Move!

The very second Shen Lin made his decision, from the darkness behind them, a pair of gnarled, withered hands—like the bark of an ancient tree—appeared!