I changed the world.

"Uncle, are you a bad person?" Just as Xin Hao's emotions were in turmoil, a childish voice suddenly rang in his ears.

Xin Hao looked closely and saw a girl who looked about 4 or 5 years old, wearing a dress. She had a chubby face and two pigtails. However, her unusually pale skin and black lips made her originally cute face look terrifying to Xin Hao.

"Uncle, are you a bad person?" Seeing that Xin Hao didn't answer, the girl spoke again, but her face gradually showed impatience.

"No...no...of course not, I'm a good person, yes...a good person." Xin Hao finally realized what was going on and stammered, deciding to answer whatever came of this strange girl.

"Mom said that anyone who sneaks in is a bad person..." As the girl spoke, her emotions seemed to become unstable, and she stared intently at Xin Hao: "You're a bad person, you're a bad person..."

"You're a bad person, you're a bad person... a bad person..." she kept repeating this sentence. As she spoke, her jaw split wider and wider until her mouth split all the way to her cheek. Then, her entire head flipped backward, revealing a gaping maw full of sharp teeth.

"You...you...you..." Xin Hao was utterly disoriented and could barely speak. He wanted to run away, but his legs were too weak, and he collapsed to his knees, unable to get up.

But then the "girl" let out a sharp scream and disappeared from the spot with an unusual speed, almost instantly pouncing on Xin Hao.

The next moment, something unexpected happened. A hand suddenly appeared in front of Xin Hao, grabbing the wrists of the lunging "girl" with her outstretched claws just a hand's length away from his face. With a forceful flick, the "girl" was sent flying.

Xin Hao felt a gust of wind rush across his face, and his bangs were blown back. Only then did he see clearly that there was a figure wearing a trench coat and hood blocking his way.

From his angle, he couldn't see the person's face, yet at that moment, he subconsciously felt that the figure was as majestic as an ancient pine tree.

Looking ahead past that figure, one could see the strange "girl" lying prone on the ground like a beast, with ten sharp, knife-like fingernails extending from the tips of her ten fingers, resembling animal claws.

She twisted her head at an odd angle, staring intently at the mysterious figure blocking Xin Hao's path. Another scream escaped her gaping mouth, and she vanished from the spot...

Given Xin Hao's reaction, he couldn't even find out where she had gone for a moment!

The next moment, the mysterious figure beside him flickered and also vanished without a trace...

After a few swift movements, the "girl" and the mysterious man stopped back to back. Xin Hao noticed that the mysterious man had somehow acquired a cyan longsword.

A moment later, with a loud bang, the "girl" turned into a cloud of gray mist.

"Stay here and don't wander off."

The mysterious man turned and walked up to Xin Hao, gave him some instructions, and then walked towards the house...

........................

***

In the quiet of the night, a police car with flashing lights pulled up at the entrance of a narrow alley. Three uniformed police officers stepped out. The one in the lead was a middle-aged officer wearing the rank of First-Class Police Superintendent, Ye Jianye, the captain of the Criminal Investigation Team of the Nanmen District Police Bureau in Kuaizhou City. The other two young officers were his subordinates, detectives Sun Dong and Wang Haiyun.

“No. 356, Mijiafang… Team Leader Ye, this should be the place.” Sun Dong checked the electronic map.

"Let's go." Ye Jianye nodded without saying anything more. He reached out and adjusted the round cap with the police badge on his head, and led the way towards the residential buildings surrounded by walls not far away.

Three policemen walked to the tightly closed iron gate. Ye Jianye looked the gate up and down. The two iron gates were locked together by a thick chain lock that had been wrapped around them several times.

"There's a burnt smell, can you smell it?" Ye Jianye frowned, looking around.

“I smell it. Is someone burning something?” Sun Dong asked.

"It seems to be coming from inside..." Wang Haiyun hesitated for a moment, then pointed uncertainly towards the inside of the iron gate.

"No way, the fire happened so long ago..."

"Perhaps it came from somewhere else..."

"Ignore him for now, let's get down to business." Ye Jianye stopped his two subordinates from talking.

"The door is locked. According to the complainant's description, her husband must have climbed over the iron gate to get in." Ye Jianye took out a pair of white gloves from his pocket, put them on, turned on his flashlight, and carefully checked the chain lock. Behind him, Sun Dong took out his phone and started taking pictures of the gate from multiple angles.

"There are shoe prints here." Ye Jianye pointed to a spot on the edge of the fence: "Be careful not to touch them later."

Sun Dong nodded and stepped forward to take a careful photo. However, since it wasn't a crime scene, there was no need for any technical reconstruction work.

After Sun Dong finished filming, Ye Jianye waved his hand and said, "Break down the door and let's go in and take a look."

Wang Haiyun responded with a "yes," went back to the police car's trunk, retrieved a hydraulic shears, and with a few quick snips, cut the chain lock. He then deftly removed the chain lock from the door, placed it beside the door, and together with Sun Dong, opened the iron gate.

As the iron gate slowly opened with a creaking sound, a faint chill seeped out from within. For some reason, facing the slowly opening gate, Ye Jianye felt an instinctive unease, as if he were facing not an open door, but the gaping maw of a ferocious beast…

Before we knew it, fog began to rise around us, and the fog quickly thickened, as if veiling the surrounding space with layers of thin gauze.

Ye Jianye frowned and did not go in immediately. Instead, he carefully shone his flashlight on the yard in front of him. Under the strong light of the flashlight, the overgrown yard did not show anything special. Everything seemed normal.

Ye Jianye shook his head almost imperceptibly, feeling a strange unease in his heart that seemed somewhat ridiculous. He then walked towards the gate, and behind him, Sun Dong and Wang Haiyun followed after their superior as he entered the courtyard.

The moment Ye Jianye stepped into the courtyard, a sudden change occurred. He felt the surrounding fog instantly thicken, and he could no longer see his hand in front of his face.

Ye Jianye had never encountered such a situation in his more than 20 years of police service. His first thought was whether someone was attacking him with a smoke bomb, but since there was no pungent smell in the smoke, it didn't seem like it.

"Zhong'an (Sun Dong's courtesy name) and Ziping (Wang Haiyun's courtesy name), how are you two?"

He subconsciously lowered his body, took a few quick steps, and called out to his subordinates in a low voice. Unexpectedly, those few steps cleared his vision, and the fog seemed to vanish.

However, what stunned him was that in front of him was a well-maintained courtyard, with lights on in the three-story building in front of him, and bursts of rock music coming from the background.

"Captain Ye, I'm fine, but... what happened?!"

"I'm fine... this..."

Ye Jianye turned around and saw his two subordinates standing behind him, both staring blankly ahead with incredulous expressions.

Behind the three, the iron gate and surrounding walls were no longer visible; instead, there was a thick, endless black fog, making the entire mansion seem like an isolated space enveloped in mist.

"Damn it... What's going on?" Even with Ye Jianye's calm and collected demeanor honed through years of handling cases, he couldn't help but curse under his breath when faced with this supernatural situation.

"Sir! Sir!" Just then, an excited and surprised voice rang out from the side, like a shipwrecked person on a deserted island who had spotted a boat. The three policemen turned around and saw a young man wearing a silver crown, outdoor camouflage uniform, and a shoulder bag slung over his shoulder, waving his hands and running towards them from one side of the yard.

"Stop! Don't move!" In this bizarre situation, Ye Jianye drew his sidearm from its holster, pointed it at the approaching man with both hands, and shouted to stop him. His two subordinates quickly did the same.

"I won't move, I won't move..." The newcomer was Xin Hao. Now, with a gun pointed at him, he snapped out of his initial shock, stopped in his tracks, raised his hands, and shouted, "I'm an adventure enthusiast. I came here to explore this haunted house, but I encountered something strange. Sir, there are ghosts here!!! Help!!!"

"Ziping." Ye Jianye ignored his words and waved to Wang Haiyun, who then walked up to Xin Hao with his gun and ordered him to turn around.

Xin Hao knew perfectly well that disobeying the police in this situation would mean they would really shoot, so he obediently raised his hands and turned around. Wang Haiyun carefully searched him, even taking off his backpack to check, but found nothing dangerous. Then he turned back and nodded to Ye Jianye.

"You said there's a ghost here?" Ye Jianye walked up to Xin Hao, looking at the pale-faced young man with sweat beading on his forehead, and asked with a frown.

“Of course, sir, you just came in, right? Look at this black fog. Let me tell you, you can't get out of this fog…” Xin Hao said quickly, pointing to the surrounding black fog. Then, he pointed to a three-story building not far away: “And this house, I clearly saw this house as an abandoned house from the outside, but it completely changed as soon as I entered the courtyard… By the way, I really saw a ghost just now! I was almost eaten, but luckily a master saved me…”

Ye Jianye looked at the young man who seemed eager to talk, and reached out to stop his endless chatter: "By the way, you said you saw a ghost?"

“Yes…” Xin Hao nodded vigorously, but before he could finish speaking, a window on the second floor suddenly shattered, and then, shards of glass carrying two figures rushed out of the window.

"Bang!!!"

With a dull thud, a humanoid object slammed heavily onto the granite paving stones in the center of the courtyard. It was a ferocious monster with claw-like limbs, struggling to get up from the ground.

Before it could even react, another figure landed on top of it. It was a figure in a trench coat with a hood, wielding a sword in one hand, and with a powerful and domineering stance, stomped down on the monster. The stomp was so heavy that radiating cracks instantly appeared like a spiderweb on the stone bricks beneath the monster. Then, using the force of the fall, the figure plunged the sword down, instantly piercing the monster's head.

A piercing scream suddenly echoed throughout the entire courtyard!

The scene that froze in front of the three policemen and Xin Hao was extremely impactful: a mysterious man holding a cold weapon, kneeling on one side, pinned a monster that looked like a demon that had escaped from a mythological mural to the ground.

This is a scene straight out of a supernatural tale or a movie!

The monster struggled a few times, and with a "bang," it turned into a cloud of gray mist.

"A master!!! No... a great man!!!" Before the three police officers could recover from their shock, Xin Hao was already waving his hands to assert his presence: "I'm here, and there are three other officers here too."

The mysterious man stood up, skillfully twirling his longsword in his right hand, wiping the blade against the inside of his left elbow sleeve to remove the dust. At the same time, he turned his head to look at Xin Hao and the three policemen standing to the side, nodding as a greeting.

However, at this moment, this action still made the two highly tense young police officers raise their pistols in defense.

Ye Jianye, on the other hand, remained relatively calm. He immediately ordered his two subordinates to drop their weapons, then cupped his hands in a respectful gesture and asked, "Greetings, sir. I am Ye Jianye, the captain of the Criminal Investigation Team of the Nanmen District Police Station in Kuaizhou City. May I ask what the situation is here...?"

He had already seen that the mysterious man was wearing a mask, presumably to prevent others from knowing his appearance. Since that was the case, he did not follow the usual custom of asking for his name first, but instead went straight to the question that everyone present wanted to ask.

He had a gut feeling that this mysterious person in front of him must know what had happened here.

Chapter Eighty-Three: Extermining Evil Spirits

However, the mysterious man did not answer his question directly. Instead, he raised his hand to stop Ye Jianye from speaking. At the same time, he turned around with a serious expression, stared in the direction of the house, narrowed his eyes, and said in a special hoarse tone, "It's not over yet. There are still two earthbound spirits."

As soon as he finished speaking, the ground began to tremble slightly, as if it were an earthquake. The four people, including the policeman, were so frightened that they bent their knees and looked around.

At the same time the ground shook, everything in the space surrounded by black mist—the ground, buildings, decorations, and so on—began to change and murmur, as if they were fading oil paintings.

The once clean and bright surface of the house began to become mottled, with large patches of blackened stains appearing. The floor tiles became dirty, and weeds grew out of the cracks between them. The windows of the house, which had been lit up, were now dark and empty, the glass long since shattered and gone...

In just a few breaths, everything in the mansion returned to its abandoned state. However, the black mist surrounding the entire mansion had not yet dissipated, and at the same time, faint, mournful sounds, like the wailing of ghosts, could be heard in the air.

A faint, dim yellow flame rose from the house, quickly engulfing the entire structure. To the people standing in the courtyard, the whole house appeared to be bathed in raging flames, crackling and popping. A strong, acrid smell filled the air.

Strangely, despite the intense flames, the people standing so close to them felt no heat at all, as if the flames were merely an illusion.

"It's so hot! It's so hot! I'm in so much pain!!!" Cries of agony echoed from the burning flames, as if the demons were trapped in the hellish hell of Buddhist mythology.

"Help!! Help me!!! I'm in so much pain!!!"

The strange phenomena and continuous wails around them made the three policemen and Xin Hao extremely tense. The policemen even raised their revolvers and looked around warily.

Just then, the mysterious man's indifferent eyes seemed to ignite instantly, golden flames bursting forth. Then, his left hand rapidly made several strange hand gestures, and he softly uttered a single word:

"ban!"

As soon as the words were spoken, the wails that everyone heard stopped abruptly, as if they had been hit with a stick. The raging flames that had enveloped the house also subsided as quickly as a heavy rain. In no time, the house returned to its abandoned state.

Two shrill cries accompanied by angry roars rang out, and then two humanoid monsters crawled out of the open window of the house, one large and one small, one like an adult and the other like a child.

The two monsters, like spiders, defied gravity and climbed the vertical walls of the house. They wore charred, burnt human clothing, their limbs were bent like insects, and their faces, which still vaguely resembled human shapes, had black eyes without pupils. Their blood-red mouths, split open to their ears, were filled with sharp teeth.

"Living people... the smell of living people... why am I dead, but you are still alive? You all deserve to die..." The huge monster stared intently at the people downstairs, muttering to itself, its voice growing louder and louder...