Strange Rules: It doesn't matter, the system will take care of it.

The night was dark and the wind was high, with thick fog covering the ground.

Since they deduced that the killing rules for this mission were likely related to food, after elbowing the female ghost, the four altar cleansers—elbow-wielding ghost, doctor, Taoist priest, and man in suit—squatted on the grave and frantically stole other people's offerings.

"This pastry is really good."

"Pah! This apple is a bit mushy; it's been sitting out for too long."

Competing with the dead for food—if this were an ordinary person, they would have been scared out of their wits. But these four guys ate and drank heartily without any restraint, and even commented on the taste of the offerings.

You guys are out exploring restaurants... you've come to explore graves.

Seeing the doctor stuff the uneaten apple into his pocket, Chen Feng frowned and said, "Brother, that's a bit uncouth of you. Why are you eating and taking things at the same time?"

At least leave something for the mother and her two children. Do you really think you can treat their grave like an airdrop?

The doctor scratched his head and said, "Sorry, I forgot to turn off the auto-pickup function."

After their hunger levels were maxed out, the group set off for Good People Village.

According to the tall, blind old man in the village, the whole area is a basin, laid out like stars surrounding the moon, with the largest village, Good People Village, at the center and smaller villages dotting the surrounding landscape.

Chen Feng thought it made sense: "It's a basin, no wonder it floods after every rain."

The Taoist priest analyzed on the way: "Actually, the old man who just gave us some pointers also gave us some hints. I just observed that the blind old man only had one eye closed. His eyes were bad and he was so tall. He must have been a master who gave us guidance. One person, one point, one person, that's exactly one food."

Holy crap, it's so thin?

Just as Chen Feng was about to speak, he suddenly felt the surrounding trees sway slightly, as if there was a figure in the shadows.

"Who?"

Chen Feng looked closely and saw that the figure suddenly turned its head 360 degrees and let out a chilling laugh.

"Hehehehe."

However, it has an extra "1" on its head.

The joking man said casually, "This is a warning."

The ghost was stunned. It had been a ghost for so many years, and every human who encountered it was scared out of their wits and fled in panic. But these few people in front of it, who seemed to be of unknown origin, were not afraid at all.

Was the sound too soft and you didn't hear it?

The skeptical ghost laughed again.

"Hehehehe."

This time, the laughter was even more eerie, echoing from all directions. The laughter at the end was especially clear, as if it were right next to one's ear, making one feel as if a vengeful ghost was right behind them.

Don't look back!

The Taoist priest reminded everyone: "Living people have three life lamps, namely essence, energy, and spirit, located on the right shoulder, left shoulder, and top of the head. With these three lamps protecting us, even if we walk at night, ordinary little ghosts cannot harm us. However, if we suddenly turn around and blow out the lamps, our yang energy will weaken, giving evil spirits an opportunity to take advantage. This is the reason why we should not turn around when walking at night."

Chen Feng gave a thumbs up: "Fuck, that's professional."

At this moment, the ghostly figure tried to lure the group back with its laughter, but it laughed itself to death.

"Warning three times."

This is a joke, and anyone who fails the challenge will be severely punished!

The road to Good People Village was indeed dangerous. The group had just passed the ghostly figure when they encountered a new evil spirit.

Suddenly, a zombie jumped out from beside a dilapidated Dragon King Temple.

The Taoist priest was taken aback:

"There are five types of corpses. The corpses that have recently turned into corpses are called 'hidden corpses'. Next are the wandering corpses that are invulnerable to swords and spears. Then there are the flying zombies that are only afraid of heavenly thunder, the drought demons that cause droughts, and the Hou that breathes smoke and fire."

"This zombie moves swiftly, leaping like the wind; it's at least a flying zombie that has cultivated for ten thousand years!"

The Taoist priest had barely finished speaking.

Chen Feng glanced at the Ghost-Catching System and saw that the name field was exactly as the Taoist priest had described: 【Ten Thousand Year Flying Zombie King】.

Holy crap, are all the monsters on the roadside that strong?

This truly lives up to its reputation as the pinnacle of the paranormal competition.

Chen Feng glanced at the Dragon King Temple, and in just a second, he already had a plan in mind.

According to the Taoist priest, the Wandering Corpse level already has a body of copper and iron, impervious to swords and spears, while the Flying Zombie is only afraid of heavenly lightning.

The so-called antidote will surely be found within three steps. The purpose of the strange dishes is to instill fear, not to torture and kill. Therefore, the key to breaking this monster lies in the Dragon King Temple.

As long as a rain-praying ritual is performed and heavenly lightning is summoned, this ten-thousand-year-old zombie king can be suppressed and killed!

Thinking of this.

Chen Feng reminded him, "Dragon King Temple!"

"Need not!"

"ah!"

The Taoist priest raised his hands to the sky, and then, in front of everyone, he actually conjured a bolt of lightning!

"Lightning Thunder Fist!"

With a loud bang.

The eternal flying zombie king, a monster that could be the final boss in any horror movie, was actually blasted away by the Taoist priest.

"Awesome!"

The so-called layman looks at the excitement and the insider looks at the doorway.

As a cultivator, Chen Feng knew that in the Dharma-ending Age where spiritual energy was declining, even the most powerful beings could only crawl on the ground. Moreover, this was a supernatural universe with no spiritual power at all. Here, a Golden Core cultivator like him was no different from an ordinary person.

This Taoist priest could actually conjure heavenly lightning with his bare hands without using spiritual power. If this were in the cultivation world where spiritual energy was abundant, he would at least be the founding patriarch of a sect.

"Palm Thunder!"

Another bolt of lightning struck, and the zombie king, who had just gotten up, fell to the ground again.

Elbow Strike Ghost asked curiously, "Why didn't you use lightning magic when the female ghost appeared?"

The Taoist priest sighed, "This thunder magic cannot be used recklessly."

Chen Feng understood: "So there are still limitations after all?"

The Taoist priest continued, "Thunder magic is very dangerous. Every three minutes of use will reduce your lifespan by 180 seconds."

Oh my god, why didn't you say so earlier?

Chen Feng could tell that the Taoist priest was also somewhat mentally unstable, but given that he was born in a supernatural universe and dealt with ghosts all day, it was normal for him to be a little crazy.

When the Zombie King was struck by lightning and turned into a twelve-year-old version.

The man in the suit carved a tree branch-shaped symbol around it, sealing the Zombie King.

The Taoist priest asked, "Will this work? Or should I set up a Primordial Eight Trigrams Formation?"

The man in the suit said no problem: "Don't worry, this is an old seal, a reward from an SSS-level horror side quest, from the goddess Nash Kampoll. It'll definitely work."

Upon hearing this, the Taoist priest's expression changed instantly, and he fell to the ground. Immediately afterward, the doctor also trembled all over, and his pants were soaked.

Even the strange jokes and elbow strikes seemed a little dazed.

Only Xiangsi Gui and Chen Feng remained relatively calm.

[Smack!]

A multiverse dwelling in the abyss has been watching you.

[Due to pollution, your sanity has dropped by 0 points!!!]

[A madness test is in progress. Since your sanity is at full, you have not fallen into madness.]

Seeing the notification from the save/load system, Chen Feng was startled: "Just knowing someone's name will trigger a mental attack? No wonder so many people who know about the Abyss have gone mad."

"Sorry! I forgot I shouldn't say the goddess's name."

"To make it up to everyone, I'll perform a psychic ritual."

The man in the suit lit a candle and summoned a transparent soul to his side.

"Which road is the least dangerous to take to Good Samaritan Village?"

However, when confronted with the man in the suit's question, Tonglai's soul chattered incoherently, seemingly saying something unintelligible.

The transparent guy doesn't speak the same language.

Seeing that the man in the suit couldn't get an answer, the Taoist priest made a hand seal to calm himself down, then bent down and said, "The saying goes, 'Speak human language to human beings, and ghost language to ghosts.' You can't talk like this."

As he spoke, the Taoist priest grabbed a handful of soil from the ground and stuffed it into his mouth: "Humans eat grains, ghosts eat soil. Only by stuffing your mouth with soil can you understand ghost language. By the way, why is this soil so wet? Did it rain while I was unconscious?"

The doctor said embarrassedly, "Oh, I just peed."

"Pah! Pah!"

After some questioning, the group finally found a safe path.

On the road.

Chen Feng reminded him, "Daoist, your clothes look torn. Were you captured by the Zombie King?"

"You're wrong. In our line of work, there's a saying: 'Ragged clothes' and 'stomping on the ground.' Ragged clothes means not wearing proper clothes." The Taoist priest walked ahead, encouraging everyone, "Friends, hang in there! We'll reach our destination after we pass that next village."

The man in the suit breathed a sigh of relief: "On the way, we only encountered one SSS-level Great Black Buddha Mother, a Buddha with a thousand hands and eyes gouged out, entangled in black karma and bound by evil deeds, on a lotus platform in the defiled earth. It was really safe."

Where is it safe?

Chen Feng thought to himself, "Is this a genius from the supernatural universe? His mental state seems a bit too perfect."

"No! There's something wrong with the village ahead."

The Taoist priest suddenly looked up and told everyone to stop.

Amidst the puzzled looks of the crowd, the Taoist priest pulled out a compass from his robes. The needle on it spun wildly, like a stopwatch: "Look, the compass is spinning so fast, it proves there must be a ghost nearby."

You're only realizing this now?

Chen Feng glanced at the Elbow Strike Ghost, the Joke Ghost, and the Lovesick Ghost, and thought to himself, "Let me tell you something that no one knows."

The road to Good People Village had to pass through the village ahead, so despite the danger, the group had no choice but to move forward.

Upon entering the village, everyone discovered that villagers were lying on the ground.

"Be careful!"

"Wait a minute, that's not a living person."

Chen Feng looked closely and saw that the villagers on the ground were painted with bright colors. It turned out that they were mannequins made of reeds, bamboo and wood as frames, bound with wire and cotton thread, and painted with paintbrush.

"It's a paper offering."

"Don't be afraid, everyone."

The Taoist priest explained the Tao to everyone.

In ancient times, slave owners often killed large numbers of living people to be buried with the dead, but this method was too cruel, so they replaced it with terracotta figurines, straw figures, and clay figures. Later, with the popularization of papermaking, it became paper effigies.

strangeness.

Chen Feng asked in confusion, "Today is only April 3rd, not yet Qingming Festival, why are you burning paper figures?"

The man in the suit felt uneasy: "Have you noticed that something is following us?"

The Taoist priest glanced at the lifelike paper figures on the ground and quickly realized that there was something wrong with them.

As the saying goes, "A paper figure doesn't have eyes painted on it."

"Any paper craftsman knows that paper figures must never have eyes drawn on them. At most, you can only poke a small hole for the eyes. Otherwise, drawing the eyes on a dragon will attract ghosts."

The paper figures here all have eyes drawn on them, making them almost identical to real people.

That defies common sense.

However, the truly terrifying things were yet to come.

Among the paper figures scattered on the ground, the group found one that looked exactly like themselves.

"When was this made?"

"Damn? When did I get hit?"

Upon discovering a paper figure in the pile that looked exactly like himself, Chen Feng quickly activated the ghost-catching system to scan the surroundings, hoping to find out the other party's origin.

However, the result from the system sent a chill down his spine:

【you】

【look】

【you】

【mom】

【Woolen cloth】

Electrical interference? Could it possibly break a 5.0 system? Is this some kind of level-two trick from the second textbook?

Chen Feng now knows where his unease comes from.

"So I felt something was wrong when the kitchen was open."

"It turns out that it wasn't the Starving Ghost who closed the door, but rather that someone actually targeted the Starving Ghost and broke the door open."

Time stop!

Chen Feng paused the world for a second and then began repairing the system.

The system has been fixed.

[The Substitute]

[The murder rule: through paper dolls... Who are you?]

The moment the time stop ended, the ghost-catching system was shut down again.

But Chen Feng already knew the other party's name: "Substitute Death Ghost. Judging from the name, its ability is related to transferring death?"

the other side.

The scapegoat hiding in the pile of paper figures was also a bit confused.

"Are you kidding me!"

"Can a destroyed system be repaired?"

In the eyes of the scapegoat, everything that had just happened was too bizarre, as if he had punched the enemy's phone to pieces, but the other party had tidied up the parts and fixed the phone in the next second.

You blast fish, I blast fish, and the fish pond instantly transforms into a peak match.

Chen Feng reminded the group of ghosts, "It seems we don't need to act anymore; the real thing has infiltrated."

Elbow Strike Ghost's face darkened: "The Devourer?"

Upon hearing that the boy was in danger.

The Love-Sickness Ghost disappeared immediately, apparently using its spatial abilities to save the boy.

Then, all the paper figures in the village stood up as if they were alive and rushed towards the crowd.

"I'll do it!"

Elbow Strike Ghost took the lead, his figure as elusive as a ghost, striking three times in a second, shattering the paper figure in front of him.

Before everyone could even rejoice, the next second, Elbow Strike Ghost's eyes rolled back, and he froze in place.

My computer crashed.

Has the murder rule been triggered?

Chen Feng heard laughter coming from around him:

"I just wanted to collect a few more paper figures here, but I didn't expect a few junior students to come to me. Haha, this is so great... What's with the 'one' on his head?"

The joking man said casually, "This is a warning."

At this moment, the Taoist priest was ready for battle: "The paper figure is afraid of fire, so physical attacks won't work. We need to summon a deity to possess it!"

The Taoist priest just mentioned that their line of work involves wearing tattered clothes and stomping on the ground.

The so-called "stomping the ground" is a signal to invite the gods to possess you!

"Please invite the Holy Infant King Red Boy, the attendant of Sudhana, from the seat of Guanyin Bodhisattva, to possess me!"

A flash of light.

The Taoist priest tucked a lit incense stick behind his head, his expression instantly changed, and his lips turned red as if they had been coated with cinnabar.

"fire!"

The Taoist priest patted his nose three times, and when he opened his mouth, a raging flame shot out.

In an instant, most of the paper figures in the village were burned.

At the same time, flames also broke out on everyone's bodies.

"Put out the fire quickly!"

If it were someone else, they would probably have to think about it for a long time.

Those who come here are probably all veterans who have played nine rounds of life-or-death games.

The Taoist priest patted the fire off his clothes: "The black guy smashed the paper figure, then stopped moving. I burned the paper figure and got burned instead. Does this paper figure bounce back?"

The man in the suit added, "I'm not on fire, and the paper figure that looks exactly like me wasn't burned either. It seems we're bound to the paper figure that looks the same."

The doctor immediately offered three solutions:

"Trap and protect the paper figures that represent us, preventing them from attacking themselves, so that they will neither die nor harm us."

"Paper figures were servants used in funerary sacrifices. Is it possible to create a paper figure of higher status than oneself, and then command them not to attack?"

"If paper dolls like us can transfer damage, and we can make a couple of strokes on them with a brush to make them look different from us, would that unbind them?"

what?

Chen Feng was dumbfounded when he saw the three of them act as if they were at home, instantly activating their substitute abilities.

Do you know how to play paranormal games? That's not how you play paranormal games! You should split up and get picked off one by one. After a few of you die, I'll discover the rules of the killing and turn the tables in a critical moment.

"Now you've all come in and done all the work, making me feel like I'm clueless, haven't you?"

Chen Feng couldn't help but sigh, "Heroes of the world are as numerous as carp crossing a river."

Even among the rarest supernatural geniuses, there are countless such individuals in the multiverse, and there's a reason why these three are ranked so high.

However, even if they understood the rules of killing, they still had a problem.

The most powerful lover, who loves young boys more than his brothers, has already run away.

The most skilled elbow striker knocked himself out of the game.

The joke is that he can't fight; he's just a jerk.

The Taoist priest was burned by the fire.

Could the man in the suit and the doctor alone subdue so many paper figures? Not to mention the scapegoat is hiding inside, ready to ambush everyone at any moment.

Thinking of this.

Chen Feng took a step forward.

The joking man was overjoyed: "Brother Feng, are you going to make a move?"

"To be precise, it should be 'kick'."

Chen Feng raised his foot and stomped it hard on the ground.

The Taoist priest was taken aback, thinking to himself, "Is this my summoning spell?"

The art of summoning spirits is the most profound magic within the Taoist school. Even the Taoist priest who broke everyone's records took a year to master it. Even so, it took him a full sixty years less than the second-ranked founder who invented the art of summoning spirits.

"This guy learned it after just one glance?"

"What a joke! How could there possibly be someone more talented than me?"

However, *smack smack smack*!

With a crisp sound, all the glass windows in the village shattered due to the immense spiritual pressure.

"Such powerful spiritual pressure! Who on earth did they invite?"

"Brother, if you rashly invite an unfamiliar god, you might be punished if he doesn't come!"

The Taoist priest loudly reminded him.

"It's alright, I know this god, and he'll definitely come!" Chen Feng shouted, "I beseech the Great Emperor Guan Sheng, the Heavenly Venerable Who Subdues Demons of the Three Realms, to possess me!"

At this moment, Guan Yu, the legendary figure from the Three Kingdoms period, suddenly looked up.

"Not Yin?"