The supervisor hung up the phone, leaned back in his chair, and rubbed his eyes. He then stood up, took a ring of keys from his drawer, and walked out of the office.
At the end of the corridor was a downward elevator. The elevator doors were silver-white, with no floor buttons—only a fingerprint scanner and a small camera.
The supervisor pressed his thumb against the scanner and looked up at the camera.
Identification passed.
The elevator doors opened, and he stepped inside as they closed behind him.
As the elevator descended, a red light overhead flashed once for every segment of the descent.
After about half a minute, the elevator stopped. The doors opened to reveal a narrower corridor lined with heavy metal doors on both sides. The doors were marked with numbers: LK-001, LK-002, LK-003...
The supervisor walked to the door marked LK-003, picked out the corresponding key from his ring, inserted it into the lock, and turned it.
With a click, the door opened.
It seemed strange for such a high-end containment facility to use such an archaic locking method, but the locks and keys themselves were containment objects.
The room was unlit, but a thick stench of rotting corpses wafted out from within.
Standing at the entrance, the supervisor checked to ensure there were no abnormalities with the containment object. Only then did he speak to the camera at the end of the corridor. "There's a mission. Prepare LK-003 for field duty. Notify the transport group."
With that, he turned and left, his footsteps echoing through the empty corridor before fading away.
Behind him, a trace of frigid, eerie aura seeped from the crack in the door of LK-003, like a winter wind whistling through a window gap.
The Knocking Ghost, designated LK-003, was one of the few "controllable" containment objects under the Zhongzhou Supernatural Management Bureau.
Calling it "controllable" was actually inaccurate, as no one could truly control it.
It did not eat or drink, it did not follow orders, it did not respond to threats, and it acknowledged no master.
It only ever followed its own killing laws. All the Bureau did was map out those laws and exploit them, using the entity as a tool.
The origin of the Knocking Ghost was not a secret within the Bureau.
Thirty years ago, it had been a man named Yu Duanhong. He was once an investigator for the Bureau who had been possessed by a ghost through a series of unfortunate events.
This ghost was not a spirit in the traditional sense, but a fierce specter with a very specific ability: it could kill anyone just by knocking on a door.
At first, Yu Duanhong could barely manage to keep it in check. But as the ghost grew stronger, his health deteriorated until he eventually suffered a sudden, violent death.
The man died, but the ghost lived on, reviving within Yu Duanhong's corpse.
The Bureau had exerted a tremendous amount of effort to finally contain it.
They discovered that while the ghost was powerful, its behavioral patterns were extremely rigid—it only knew how to knock.
Now, the Bureau needed to use the Knocking Ghost in Liushu Town to deal with the memory-devouring anomaly.
The supervisor didn't know how they planned to use it; that wasn't his concern. His responsibility was to ensure the Knocking Ghost was safely sent out and safely brought back.
The transport group arrived quickly. Four people in black protective suits pushed a golden metal box forward.
The box wasn't large—just big enough for a single person to curl up inside. Its surface was covered in dense runes that shimmered with an eerie green light under the facility lamps.
This was a specialized containment box designed to isolate the Knocking Ghost's supernatural aura and prevent it from being accidentally awakened during transit.
The supervisor stood by the door of LK-003 and waited for the transport group to arrive. He then opened the door and stepped into the darkness.
A moment later, the Knocking Ghost was loaded into the containment box, and the chilling aura noticeably dissipated.
"Close it," the supervisor ordered.
The transport group members shut the lid and tightened the bolts.
The runes flared briefly before dimming.
Inside the box, the Knocking Ghost remained unresponsive.
"Destination: Liushu Town, Pingcheng," the supervisor said, sliding a document into a slot on the side of the box.
"Once you arrive, a specialist will take over. Remember, do not do anything unnecessary during transport."
The transport group nodded and pushed the box onto a railcar.
The wheels rumbled heavily against the tracks as the car rolled away into the distance.
The supervisor stood in the corridor, watching the railcar disappear around a corner in the tunnel.
He wondered if the Knocking Ghost could truly cure the anomaly in Liushu Town. If even the Knocking Ghost failed, the hazard level of the incident would likely escalate.
...
A remote city in Zhongzhou.
The city was small; one could see the vegetable market on the west side just by standing on the abandoned water tower on the east side.
The streets were narrow, lined with dilapidated buildings.
There were very few pedestrians. Occasionally, a hunched old man would shuffle by with a blank stare.
Near this city was a low-level danger zone. It contained contamination that couldn't be fully eradicated, but it wasn't particularly dangerous. Occasionally, a few wandering mutant creatures would stray out, but they never posed a significant threat.
The Bureau had established a small observation station on the outskirts of the city. Two or three investigators were permanently stationed there to monitor the danger zone and report any changes.
It was a dead-end post with no perks and no hope for promotion.
The only benefit was that it was safe and stable, allowing one to slack off in peace until retirement.
Jiang Kun was one of the investigators permanently stationed here.
It had been thirty years.
He stood by the window of the observation station, gazing at the murky grey sky. He held up his hand; the skin was still taut, and his joints were flexible. Beneath the bionic skin of his fingertips was the latest model of mechanical prosthetics.
His appearance had barely changed at all—that was the advantage of being a semi-cyborg. Most of his body had undergone mechanical modification, and over the years, he had received various rewards from his system. Although his internal organs had aged, his exterior showed no signs of it, and he still looked quite young.
But thirty years had indeed passed.
Jiang Kun turned around and looked at the old monitor on his desk.
A few sets of data flickered on the screen; everything was normal.
Everything had been normal since he was transferred here.
It was so normal that in all the years he had held this position, he hadn't encountered a single decent supernatural incident.
Occasionally, a few weak monsters would sneak out of the danger zone, but ordinary people could handle them with cold weapons. He didn't even bother writing reports for those.
But this was the life he wanted—low-key, marginalized, and inconspicuous.
Shortly after the Forging City disaster, he had used the help of the Heaven-Defying Fate-Changing System to quickly make a name for himself within the Bureau.
Completing missions, earning rewards, increasing his strength, and rising through the ranks—everything had gone smoothly. It went so smoothly that he once thought he could become a high-ranking official, a man of immense power and prestige.
But later, many of his actions caught the attention of the higher-ups.
On one hand, his rate of growth was too fast. He had started as an ordinary mechanical cyborg, yet as he approached middle age, he suddenly displayed potential that far exceeded the norm in a very short time. This was highly suspicious.
Truly talented individuals usually stood out in their youth; they didn't wait that long.
On the other hand, the missions issued by the system had become increasingly harmful, bringing ruin to the country and its people, and acting in total defiance of morality.
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