Chapter Fifty-Six: The Fourth Personality

Beneath the elevator shaft, deep within the ghost-infested building.

Despite the raging storm outside howling for hours, it failed to elicit any sign of life from the corpse.

He remained dead.

His thighbone was completely pierced by a piece of reinforcing steel, and blood had long since drained into the shaft below, as if it were about to run dry.

His head was twisted at a bizarre and exaggerated angle. Even the veins on his neck had snapped, with layers of skin jammed together like a tightened screw.

He was one of the many corpses inside Bogu Mansion, yet he was the most special of them all.

He was Ji Li, and Ji Li was dead.

Yet, within his mind, a few souls seemingly beyond the control of his primary consciousness still lingered, stirring restlessly.

"He is dead, thoroughly dead. Look at this corpse, which still retains a trace of freshness. Look at it, isn't it beautiful?"

Amidst the prolonged silence, an intensely chilling, spectral voice echoed lightly within the dead body.

"Who are you..."

The Third Personality did not dissipate along with the death of Ji Li's primary consciousness. On the contrary, it had endured hours of torment in pitch darkness and silence.

It had been waiting for the primary personality, Ji Li, to awaken, to rise from the dead and carry it back up to the surface.

Yet, when another voice sounded within the mind, the Third Personality felt a trace of dread.

This was a voice it had never heard before—not the primary personality Ji Li, nor the Second Personality, but a brand-new, unfamiliar male voice!

"I am merely asking you, do you perceive the art that this corpse represents..."

"What art?"

"The beauty of bloodshed, despair, rigidity, and shivering..."

Hearing this, the Third Personality realized that this speaking voice must be the Fourth Personality!

It was the precursor to Ji Li's resurrection from the dead, the fourth special personality to manifest after itself!

And the temperament displayed by this personality filled it with an indescribable panic.

"How is it? Do you feel it? Do you want to try?"

"How... how do I try?"

"I am still too weak to usurp the vessel, but you should be able to.

As the Third Personality, you can seize the nest while the magpie is away. While Ji Li, the primary personality, has yet to awaken, you can usurp his vessel and逆袭 (rise up) to become the primary personality!

Then, I will lead you to appreciate and create even greater art!

Are you willing?"

The tone of the Fourth Personality was like that of a madman, yet entering the ears, it carried an irresistible magic.

It was as if he had planted the temptation of a demon deep within the Third Personality's heart. The Third Personality knew that his words represented endless sin and unimaginable consequences.

Yet...

It actually felt a flicker of temptation!

The Third Personality had never imagined that at the moment of Ji Li's death, its consciousness would break through the barriers, occupy the cranial cavity, and thereby seize control of the hub!

And thus, it would become Ji Li!

"Can I... do it?"

The Third Personality tentatively asked this question, but the Fourth Personality's reply carried a hint of fierce anger.

"Too late. Ji Li is awake!"

Boom...

The world returned to tranquility, and the discussion between the two personalities in the mind ceased as Ji Li's soul fully awakened!

A pair of eyes snapped open in the darkness. Amidst the dense aura of death, they rapidly reversed, generating vitality!

With a bizarre sound, Ji Li forcefully pulled his own thigh out of the upright steel reinforcement!

The pain was trivial, far inferior to the trembling of his soul.

Ji Li slowly sat up from the elevator shaft, his expression somewhat dazed—the aftereffect of returning from the dead.

This time, his pupils had changed.

Before this death, Ji Li's pupils had already exhibited a faint grey glow, but upon awakening this time...

His pupils had completely transformed into a mix of grey and black, evenly split in half!

Ji Li slowly regained consciousness. He half-lifted his head to look at the shaft above, where a faint light shone.

Yet, aside from the light, there was nothing.

"How long have I been dead..."

His voice grew even deeper, raspy from prolonged slumber.

What greeted him in response, however, was the boundless silence of his mind.

Ji Li frowned and tentatively asked again, "Number Two? Number Three?"

Only then did the Third Personality speak up, its tone carrying a hint of awkwardness.

"Uh, about two hours, or maybe three hours..."

Hearing this, Ji Li found it even more bizarre. The Third Personality felt somewhat different, though he couldn't pinpoint exactly what had changed.

"It seems Number Two has fallen into a slumber once again; his condition is worsening. Did the Fourth Personality appear?"

After a long silence, the Third Personality lied, "I did not hear the Fourth Personality appear."

Ji Li took a deep breath and moved his limbs. His right leg could not fully stretch, and the previous injury still remained.

He took off the backpack on his back and used the light from above to simply bandage the wound. In his mind, he recalled the photograph he had seen just before his death.

That photograph had shocked him immensely at the time and was also the key to unraveling the mystery.

The photo had been taken from a candid angle.

The voyeur had propped up a phone in the corner of a wall, capturing the backs of Tong Guan and Chang Nian. Ahead of them were several staff members walking out and heading downstairs.

Tong Guan was clutching his phone as if recording something, while Chang Nian was holding up the hotel phone, seemingly searching for a signal or performing a similar action.

It was precisely this action that, from the voyeur's perspective, revealed a bloody hand emerging from Chang Nian's phone screen!

It lunged straight out of the screen toward the voyeur!

This was the secret brought by that photograph, and also the mystery shared among Xiao Li, Old Brother Xu, and Old Xue.

Xiao Li's candid recording had drawn out the ghost residing within Chang Nian's phone!

Six staff members, six phones carrying ghosts, yet the ghost attached to Chang Nian had been extracted because of Xiao Li's voyeurism!

It entered Xiao Li's phone, and it was precisely for this reason that Old Xue was killed despite having no staff members by his side.

At this very moment, what Ji Li could confirm was the presence of two parts of the ghost.

One was the ghost originally residing in his own hotel phone, and the second was the ghost that had possessed and killed him after passing through Chang Nian, Xiao Li, and the others!

The situation Ji Li now faced was even more pressing than before.

However, things were not that simple. The entity that had possessed and killed him earlier was the ghost from Xiao Li's phone.

And to this day, he still had no idea where the ghost from his own hotel phone had gone...

After hesitating for a long time, the Third Personality asked a question in its mind:

"Ji Li, do we still have a way out..."

Hearing this, Ji Li snapped out of his analysis. He fumbled around in his pockets with a somewhat urgent expression.

Eventually, he fished out a cigarette pack, pulled out a bent cigarette, stuck it between his lips, and lit it.

Only after taking a fierce drag did he feel a sense of satisfaction.

As the cigarette smoke drifted upward, Ji Li narrowed his greyish-black pupils, stared into the darkness, and uttered the path of survival he had conceived the very moment before his death.

Another path of survival—a special path of survival that only Ji Li could use!