Chapter 396: Predicament

“He’s won again.”

“See, I told you to he was going to win!”

“Let’s hear it one more time for the God of Gamblers!”

Matsuo smirked as the crowd went wild. They cheered and applauded for him and lauded him as a genius. They had no clue that he was getting help from a few friends.

Ghostly figures gathered around the betting table, gliding from left to right. They were Matsuo’s spies. They made sure he knew the exact cards that were dealt to each of his opponents.

“It’s no big deal,” Matsuo shrugged.

As always, the trip to the casino was fruitful. He returned to his new home, a swanky mansion, with a literal bag of cash. He walked through the doors happily, not sparing a second glance at the dozens of spirits that darted around the place.

He was neither fearful or surprised by their presence.

Matsuo turned back when he heard a few rapid knocks on the door. He looked through the peephole and whatever he saw made him smile.

He swung the door open.

One by one, men whom he had gambled with entered his abode. They had all lost to him and owed him a sizeable amount of money.

They looked pretty much the same as they did in the casino, except they were clearly not human anymore. They looked like the spirits that roamed his house. Their faces were waxen and bloodless. Green smoke obscured the lower half of their bodies. They had no feet in sight.

After they had all entered the house, a quiet meow filled the air.

Matsuo squatted next to Mo and scratched the back of its ears. He then scooped it into his arms and headed to the kitchen.

Mo looked at up him eagerly. Matsuo looked down at the cat, a strange grin plastered on his face.

“Momo, why don’t we make a bet? Tell me, which of these three bowls has cat food?”

*

The sudden reemergence of shadow spikes made Xiao Yu skid to a stop. She grabbed Fish Ball and he immediately lit up the stairway, driving the spikes back into the darkness.

Unfortunately, this time, the shadows were not their only enemy.

Countless spirits had begun to manifest as well. They all shared the same pallid complexion, creepy grin, and a spine-chilling look of desire in their eyes. They quickly closed in on the gang.

Xiao Yu held onto the choker. She hesitated for a beat before activating it.

In an instant, the spirits dissipated and disappeared from view. Her teammates were knocked out cold once again as well.

However, the shadows that filled the room were still morphing and growing. Xiao Yu could hear her heart hammering in her ears as a new batch of spikes rose from the darkness and shot right at Fish Ball.

“Darn it.”

Xiao Yu’s worst fear had come true. The choker’s power worked on all forms of life in all states and stages. That included spirits and ghosts. However, when Ishida merged into one with the shadows, he no longer had a life form. He was part of an inanimate object and thus, remained unaffected.

Xiao Yu was in quite the predicament. If she used the choker to drive the spirits away, Fish Ball would be knocked out too. Without Fish Ball’s light, the shadow spikes could attack. For her cat to regain consciousness and illuminate the room, she would have to deactivate the choker, but then the spirits could come back and attack them.

In the end, she was left with no choice but to repeatedly turn the choker’s powers on and off. When the spirits got too close, she would activate it and knock everyone out. Then, when the shadow spikes rained on them, she would switch it off and wake Fish Ball.

It was the only solution she could think of, but it was not a good one.

The spirits were starting to regroup and gang up on them faster and faster. It was as if they knew what she was up to. They knew that she would turn it off. She would dive straight back into action the moment that happened.

Xiao Yu felt like she was in the eye of a storm. Things might be barely okay now, but she knew that the winds will pick up and it will all spin out of control very, very soon.

Black Panther yelled from across the stairway, “Guys, look at that!”

The gang followed his gaze and met the sight of Zhao Xue’s spirit hightailing towards them.

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Xiao Yu paled. “These are not normal spirits. They’re not really ghosts. What exactly is this apostle’s power?”

Outside, innumerable wisps of grey smoke were darting from all corners of the city towards the office building. As they got closer, the smoke would be molded into the shape of human figures. They looked very much like the spirits that were attacking Xiao Yu.

There were more than enough of them to engulf the gang and bury them alive.

However, only a trickle of them was sent into the building at any one time. This was not a mistake. It was done on purpose.

The spirits were not meant to destroy Xiao Yu, Zhao Xue, and Black Panther. They were supposed to exhaust them.

*

Fatty gaped at the sight of the spirits swooping about overhead.

He was one of the apostle officers who worked closely with Lin Chen and Inspector Ho. He gulped as he spotted more and more ghostly figures crowding around the building.

The nature of the spirits was similar to that of Nekomata and Xiao Yu’s. They could switch between corporeal and incorporeal states. For them to make physical contact with any object at all, they would have to take on a material form. In turn, they could be touched and hurt as well.

“Jesus. That fella had been in there for just minutes. How did he end up stirring so much s**t so quickly?”

By now, the streets that sat on the circumference of the building had all been blocked. Ten police cars were parked by the entrance. The SWAT squad hurried out of them and moved quickly to surround all entrances and exits. Each officer was wearing a ballistic vest. Some donned full riot gear. They all held a weapon in hand. Snipers were situated on the roof of surrounding high-rises. Helicopters were rattling above the scene.

The fat apostle officer was named Xiao Cong. He had been tailing Onitsuka and Sato with his colleague, Ice, when they found out the duo had attacked Meng Hao and his friends.

They had expected them to return to their hideout, but they led them to this peer-to-peer lending platform’s office instead.

Inspector Ho had instructed Xiao Cong and Ice to remain there and stake out. He believed that there might be bigger fish to catch and he was right. Unfortunately, the fish turned out to be a bit too big and slippery. A series of strange events unfurled, each more insane than the previous.

They found themselves at a loss on how to stay on top of the situation.

By the time the SWAT team and apostle officers arrived at the scene, spirits were already clinging onto more than half the building.

Regular explosions could be heard coming from inside, which undoubtedly meant that something serious was going down.

Inspector Ho studied the building, brows furrowed. “What’s happening right now?”

Lin Chen responded immediately. “The Japanese apostles are in there. I don’t think this is entirely their doing though. Every window has been shut, so we can’t see inside. Every time one of us tries to enter the building, one of those spirits would attack. All networks in the building are down as well, so we have no clue what exactly is going on.”

“Are there any hostages?”

“According to security records, at least 20 people have entered the building. Not one of them have made it out.”

*

“A traffic jam now? What?”

Zhao Yao slowed the Panamera as he approached a red light. A quick glance at the GPS showed him that every road heading to the office building was jammed.

A wisp of smoke emerged from his body and soared out of the car, heading straight to the same place he was going to.

No one in the car saw this.

Zhao Yao looked in the rearview mirror. There were cars getting closer to him. If the traffic ahead was as awful as the GPS indicated, it would be dangerous for the Panamera to remain invisible. It would be a matter of time before someone crashed into him.

“Thankfully it’s not that much further.”

He parked the car and got out with the debt collectors. He then turned invisible and swallowed the car into the extradimensional belly.

The deflective field was then turned on, binding them together in a protective bubble.

The debt collectors screamed in terror as Zhao Yao dragged them along the shortcut to the office, which involved leaping from roof to roof.

Zhao Yao skidded to a halt when he saw the officers, police cars, and helicopters that surrounded the building. His mouth fell open when he saw the spirits that circled it.

“Zhao Yao, what’s going on?” Even Roly Poly was in shock.

“Well, as the saying goes,  money can make ghosts turn millstones ¹ .”