Forgotten Photo Studio

Chapter 88 The Blindfolded Ghost

Xu Yan suddenly gripped the camera in front of her chest.

The coolness of the metal through his palm instantly brought his thoughts back to reality.

He raised his head, forcing himself to steady his breathing, and coldly stared at the figures floating in the storage tanks.

All the whispers in the air fell silent at the same time.

It was as if some deeper, more ancient consciousness had been disturbed, casting a glance through layers of glass and liquid.

That glance was devoid of emotion, only observation.

Meanwhile, in a room on the other side of the city, Ah Zhe had not yet hung up the phone.

He listened to the ear-piercing metallic scraping sound coming from the receiver, followed by an absolutely silent busy tone, and his face gradually turned deathly pale.

"Brother Yan... Brother Yan?! Can you hear me? Answer me!"

The only response he received was that one word—

"Click."

The sound of the shutter echoed in the deathly silence, clear and cold, like a ritualistic beginning.

This is not a capture, but a declaration, a declaration of all unclean things in this place.

The air seemed to freeze the moment the sound fell.

Immediately afterwards——

"Click."

A very faint sound, like a dry branch breaking, came from beneath his feet.

Xu Yan froze instantly and looked down.

He saw that the heel of his right shoe had landed squarely on a black metal nail that was half-embedded in the ground and almost blended into the shadows in the corner of the wall.

The surface of the talisman nail was covered with intricate, twisted patterns so fine they were almost invisible to the naked eye, and at that moment, a faint, almost imperceptible, dark light flashed across it.

"Forbidden Steps"!
His mind went blank.

When he possessed Zhou Wenbin last time to infiltrate, Zhou Wenbin accidentally triggered this thing.

I never imagined that I would be so captivated by the scene that I would repeat the same mistake.

Almost at the same instant the rune nail was triggered—

"Squeak—!"

A strange sound, a mixture of a baby's sharp cry and an old man's hoarse voice as if his throat was blocked by phlegm, suddenly burst from the nearest storage tank on his left.

The sound did not travel through the air, but echoed directly inside his brain.

"Crash!!"

The reinforced glass walls of the tank shattered instantly, as if struck by an invisible giant hammer.

A viscous, eerie green liquid, carrying numerous shards of glass, cascaded down like a waterfall.

From the liquid, a twisted black shadow darted out and landed heavily on the ground with a wet, muffled "thud".

That thing... its upper body, barely retaining a human form, was as emaciated as a corpse that had been dried out for many years, and its skin was a mixture of deathly gray and edema, a state only found in drowned people.

A filthy, pitch-black strip of cloth, seemingly soaked in blood and resentment, was not simply wrapped around the animal, but rather seemed to have grown into it, tightly binding it and even embedding itself into the flesh where its eyes were.

What's most chilling is its lower body; it has no legs, but instead dozens of pale, swollen, almost transparent, baby-arm-like tentacles with visible bluish-purple blood vessels underneath.

These tentacles wriggled, thrashed, and dragged wildly across the ground, leaving behind winding, damp, sticky trails that exuded a strong, sweet, and rotten odor.

The watchman is a blindfolded ghost.

Its "face," bound tightly with strips of cloth, precisely "locked" onto Xu Yan's location. Not because it was angry, the jade cicada on Xu Yan's chest felt slightly cold, completely isolating him from any human presence.

Rather, it was the fluctuation of the "step-forbidden talisman" that acted like a spotlight on a dark stage, clearly marking his position.

"Home...ancestral tablet...incense...paper money...descendants...offerings..."

A faint, chaotic fragment of consciousness, filled with endless obsession and sorrow, forced its way into Xu Yan's mind like radio static.

That was the blindfolded ghost's last remaining thought: it longed for someone to carry its name out, tell its family, set up a memorial tablet for it, keep the incense burning, burn paper money year after year, and offer sacrifices to its descendants. Otherwise, it would rot here forever, its soul unable to be reborn, with no way back home.

But this obsession was instantly overwhelmed, driven out, and destroyed by a stronger instinct as a "guardian spirit"!
"hiss!"

It let out a sharp inhale, and dozens of tentacles, as thick as an infant's arm, suddenly straightened up like an enraged swarm of snakes.

The next second, a shrill whistle that tore through the air and a chilling wind that could freeze blood appeared, like a huge, pale net of death, instantly sealing off all possible angles from which Xu Yan could dodge, aiming straight for his neck, waist, and limbs.

It was moving so fast that all that could be seen was a blurry, pale phantom.

My thoughts completely stopped, and my adrenaline surged to its peak in an instant.

Xu Yan could even smell the nauseating odor from the tentacles, a mixture of earthy and milky smells from a grave.

There is no way back!

He suddenly exerted force in his waist, his body falling backward at an almost breaking angle, his back slamming heavily against the cold iron door with a loud "bang," making his internal organs feel as if they had shifted.

At the same time, the instinct for survival drove his right hand, the hand holding the camera, to suddenly rise with a speed beyond thought, almost relying on muscle memory and intuition, without having time to aim carefully.

He simply pressed the shutter hard with all his might, facing the overwhelming, maliciously twisted shadows that loomed over him.

“Crack!!!!”

This shutter click was louder and more decisive than any before, carrying a sense of devastating, tearing pain.

Time and space seemed to be forcibly stripped away at this moment.

All colors faded instantly, and everything turned into monotonous black, white, and gray.

The blindfolded demon that pounced on them was frozen in mid-air by an irresistible, rule-like force. Its waving tentacles, its open, invisible mouthparts that seemed to drip venom from under the strips of cloth, and the thick malice emanating from its body were all forcibly frozen in mid-air.

It remained pouncing, like a venomous, eerie specimen suspended by invisible threads, even the shards of glass and viscous droplets flying around it seemed to freeze.

Then, an even stronger mutation occurred!

The camera lens seemed to transform into a miniature black hole, unleashing a powerful suction force targeting spirits.

The blindfolded ghost, frozen in time, had its face contorted violently beneath the cloth, emitting a series of piercing, shrill screams that exceeded the limits of human hearing yet directly affected the soul.

Its soul began to be forcibly pulled, deformed, and compressed, from a three-dimensional monster to a flattened and elongated one, eventually transforming into a violently struggling and twisting gray-black soul shadow, carrying resentment and endless obsession, and with a "whoosh," it was forcibly and thoroughly "pulled" into the unfathomable depths of the camera lens.

He suddenly remembered that his father had also held the same camera and had the same light in his eyes.

That wasn't power, but... emptiness.

The world returned to deathly silence.

Xu Yan remained in the same position, leaning against the iron gate with his hand raised to take a picture, breathing heavily, each breath accompanied by a burning pain in his lungs.

The cold air I inhaled did nothing to relieve the dryness in my throat.

The camera emitted an abnormal warmth, like the forehead of a person with a high fever, even a bit too hot to touch.

He lowered his gaze and saw a crack, thinner than a hair yet exceptionally clear, silently spreading a short distance along the metal edging of the camera lens, like an unhealable wound.

Everything has just begun.

Once a person learns to capture the soul, they can no longer be called a person.

(End of this chapter)