Chapter 58: The Seal Broken, the Corpse Emerges

Liu Zhongjun stood dumbfounded, his scheme fully seen through by his opponent.

By this moment, he had to admit that the person before him possessed extraordinary strength and intelligence.

A nameless sense of helplessness rose in his heart.

Yet, being proud as he had always been, he refused to concede defeat.

"Even if I cannot kill you with my own hands, I can trap you here until you perish. You will never get out."

Watching Xia Tianqiong grab the hemp rope, swing across the air, and lunge toward him, Liu Zhongjun dropped those words and once again chose to detonate himself.

He could not afford to be captured by his opponent; otherwise, things would become extremely troublesome.

"He dies quite decisively!"

Xia Tianqiong sighed helplessly, grabbing the soaring rope and slowly descending.

After Liu Zhongjun died, his body turned into a wisp of green smoke and vanished. Under normal circumstances, his shadow should have disappeared along with him.

However, at this moment, the shadow on the ground suddenly stood up on its end and began to walk on its own.

"A shadow phantom!"

Xia Tianqiong was quite surprised, not expecting such an eerie entity to exist here.

The shadow phantom could manipulate shadows, hiding within the shadow of any object, and could even indirectly inflict harm on a person by attacking their shadow.

This was an elusive and formidable entity.

If Xia Tianqiong had teleported directly onto this shadow just now, he would undoubtedly have been ambushed.

This had been Liu Zhongjun's plot.

"That was close!"

Xia Tianqiong thought it fortunate that he had remained sufficiently vigilant and cautious, otherwise, he would have been ambushed and killed by the opponent.

With Liu Zhongjun dead, both the shadow phantom and the hanged-man phantom lost control, wandering about unconsciously.

Xia Tianqiong paid them no mind, instead pondering Liu Zhongjun's words from earlier.

He had said he would trap him here until he died!

Indeed, such a possibility existed. If he could never find a way out, Xia Tianqiong might very well starve to death here.

The mirrored space had not been prepared with food and water. The original plan was to wait until Jiang Yu finished purchasing supplies and then store everything inside the mirrored space.

Before that could be implemented, however, he had been dragged into this place.

Right now, the only edible items in the mirrored space were the complimentary gifts brought back from the Underworld Bank, most of which were specialty fruits, herbs, and elixirs of the underworld.

Wait, perhaps he could teleport into the bank!

Upon becoming a VIP of the Underworld Bank, one could teleport directly to the VIP reception hall—this was one of the functions of the golden ticket.

Filled with anticipation, Xia Tianqiong took out the golden ticket and tried it, but there was no response whatsoever; the teleportation function could not be activated.

Manager Hu had mentioned that it could not be used under triggered rules.

This meant that he was currently subjected to a certain rule.

But what rule was it?

He had no clue at all!

"Manager Hu, can you hear me?"

Xia Tianqiong used the golden ticket to send a voice message to Manager Hu, uncertain whether the communication function had also been blocked.

Within a few seconds, Manager Hu's enthusiastic voice came through the golden ticket.

"Hello, Mr. Xia, please state your request if you have any."

"I am trapped in some special space akin to a phantom domain. Can you send a phantom to help me crack this space or take me out?"

"I am sorry, Mr. Xia. My end indicates that you are currently bound by a certain rule, and our bank cannot forcefully intervene. I hope you understand."

"Fine then, that's that!"

Xia Tianqiong helplessly ended the communication; it seemed he still had to rely on himself.

Standing in place to ponder for a moment, he left with thousands of zombie phantoms, preparing to thoroughly explore this space.

Here, there seemed to be a multitude of terrains and landforms, sealing away all sorts of bizarre entities.

Walking around and observing everywhere might just unearth some useful clues.

Little did he know that shortly after he departed, the zombie phantom sealed within the coffin suddenly opened its eyes.

"I never expected to see the light of day again!"

The zombie phantom's voice was harsh and raspy, sounding somewhat like Donald Duck.

Suddenly lifting its arms with a loud, explosive bang, the red-lacquered coffin sealing it shattered instantly, splitting into countless pieces.

Immediately after, it leaped up from the spot, soaring straight into the sky like a rocket.

Like a rocket launch, it shot vertically high into the sky, and then... there was no then.

Its figure vanished into the air and never fell back down.

The real world had already reached dusk.

The warehouse lights were on, casting a dim, yellowish glow that was far from bright.

In the aisle, a palm-sized chessboard floated mid-air.

Liu Zhongjun massaged both temples with his hands, pacing back and forth while muttering curses, "I refuse to believe I can't kill him!"

A man in black asked deferentially, "Young Master Liu, what is wrong?"

Liu Zhongjun snapped impatiently, "Having four streams of consciousness destroyed in succession has nearly split my brain apart."

In truth, he had never actually entered the space inside the chessboard; every time he went in, it was merely a wisp of consciousness that manifested in his likeness.

That was why Xia Tianqiong's calico cat could never find him.

With four consecutive streams of consciousness destroyed, his soul had suffered considerable damage.

What was most infuriating was that he had burned through more than two million underworld notes, yet he could do nothing at all to that person and was completely unable to kill him.

Now, he could only resort to the most rudimentary method: trap him inside and starve him to death!

"I am heading back first. You few remain at the warehouse company. Times are turbulent lately, and the supplies in the warehouse are vital resources; someone might come to loot them, so keep a close watch. Whoever dares to loot, kill them outright."

The early signs of a chaotic era were already emerging, and survival supplies would inevitably become targets for contention.

Giving instructions to his subordinates, Liu Zhongjun reached out, grabbed the chessboard suspended in the air, and prepared to leave.

Just then, the chessboard shook violently, and a ghostly beam of light shot out from within.

Leaving the chessboard, the ghostly beam instantly expanded into a human figure that landed on the warehouse aisle.

"A zombie phantom!"

Liu Zhongjun cried out in alarm, retreating step by step.

Suddenly, a memory struck him.

When his grandmother had passed down this ghostly artifact, she had repeatedly given him strict injunctions: never use too many underworld bills on the same sealed entity in a short period of time, especially underworld gold—it must never be used.

Otherwise, the phantom inside might break the seal.

Liu Zhongjun had almost forgotten about this, nor had he anticipated that running into a random person could yield such a vast amount of underworld gold.

Now that the zombie phantom had broken its seal, not only did he face danger, but with one phantom missing from the chessboard, its utility would also decrease.

A zombie phantom summoned using underworld bills was like a corpse—empty-eyed, utterly devoid of sentience, and controllable only by the summoner.

Yet, the body of the zombie phantom before him had intelligent, lively eyes, and as it looked upon the men present, a look of excitement crossed its face.

It licked its slender, sharp teeth and suddenly spoke: "I am so thirsty. Can anyone help me find something to drink?"

Seeing its green face, protruding fangs, and aura of death, the four men in black shrank back in terror, scrambling to hide behind Liu Zhongjun.

They were ordinary people, not phantom hunters, and possessed no courage whatsoever to deal with such entities.

"What are you doing? The Liu family has raised you all these years to protect me, not to hide behind me."

Liu Zhongjun was furious; in the real world, he feared this zombie phantom as well.

"Young Master Liu, you are a phantom hunter, but we are not!"

"That's right, this is a situation for you to resolve. If we go up there, we're just sending ourselves to our deaths."

Faced with a life-or-death crisis, the four men in black cast aside all other concerns; their own lives came first.

Liu Zhongjun's gaze suddenly turned cold. He reached out, grabbed one of the men in black, and swept a hand across his neck.

Whether he had concealed a small blade in his hand or used some other method, the man's carotid artery was severed instantly.

Blood spurted out immediately like a fountain.

Staring straight at the zombie phantom, Liu Zhongjun said, "I invite you to drink blood."

A flash of surprise crossed the zombie phantom's eyes; it had not expected this human to know its rule of death.

When it said it was thirsty, it was actually asking for blood, because zombies were creatures that subsisted on blood.

The blood of anyone would do; as long as it was allowed to drink, it would spare the others, or else it would slaughter them all.

"Very well, I haven't drank blood in a long time."

It hopped forward to stand before the man in black, tilted its neck, opened its wide mouth, and began to devour the gushing blood.

Liu Zhongjun and the remaining three men in black retreated a few more paces.

Under their watchful eyes, in the span of some five or six seconds, the zombie phantom sucked that person into a desiccated husk.

Thud! The mummified corpse collapsed to the ground. The zombie phantom glanced at the men once more, then hopped away from the warehouse to seek its next target.

Liu Zhongjun breathed a sigh of relief. "This is the rule—someone had to die. If he hadn't died, you would have."

The three remaining men in black exchanged glances, their hearts still pounding with lingering fear, while secretly rejoicing that it hadn't been them who died.

Holding the sealing chessboard in his hand, Liu Zhongjun now felt as though he were clutching a hot potato.

Discarding it was out of the question, yet keeping it was fraught with peril.

That person was still inside. As long as he remained unkilled for a single day, he might break more seals and release even more phantoms.

Should any other phantoms escape, there was no guarantee they would emerge unscathed every time.

"Damn it, why did I run into such a fellow!"

Liu Zhongjun finally felt a surge of regret.

The sealing chessboard had a rule of usage: when unsealed humans or entities existed within its internal space, it could not be activated again.

In other words, putting someone in was easy, but letting them out was difficult.

To activate it again, there was only one alternative method—kill him, the master of the chessboard.

Naturally, Liu Zhongjun had no desire to die himself, yet he remained utterly helpless against Xia Tianqiong.

The situation had become thoroughly awkward!

He could neither kill him nor release him, leaving him with no choice but to watch as Xia Tianqiong shattered seal after seal within, releasing phantom after phantom.

Liu Zhongjun paced back and forth in place for over ten minutes, utterly unable to come up with a single solution.

Suddenly, another ghostly beam of light flew out from the chessboard, signaling that yet another phantom had broken its seal and escaped.

To tell the other side of the story, let us return to over ten minutes prior.

Xia Tianqiong had departed with thousands of zombie phantoms. He had not gone far when he heard a series of bursting sounds from behind.

At the exact same time, all the summoned zombie phantom avatars around him dissolved into underworld energy and vanished completely.

This startled him somewhat.

After a brief reflection, he quickly returned to the place where the zombie phantom had been sealed, only to find the coffin boards shattered all over the floor, with the zombie phantom nowhere in sight.

"The seal was broken, and the zombie phantom escaped?"

This was Xia Tianqiong's first thought.

Immediately afterward, he wondered how the seal, which had been perfectly fine, could have suddenly broken.

Could it be related to him?

Perhaps the zombie phantom had acquired the underworld gold, taking the opportunity to elevate its level and thereby breach the seal.

It was also possible that the underworld energy contained within the underworld gold was far too dense, disrupting the stability of the seal.

In any case, Xia Tianqiong felt this matter was tied to him.

Since that was the case, he would simply find another seal and test it. If underworld gold could indeed break seals, he would break a few more; perhaps it would bring about some impact or change to this space.