Forgotten Photo Studio

Chapter 45 Give Him Back to Me

Xu Yan watched helplessly as his father was dragged away, a deep chord snapping within him. His chest contracted violently, and he felt as if his blood was about to flow backward.

"Give him back to me!" he roared, his throat ripping, his eyes bloodshot, the lines on his right arm, the ghostly hand, surging wildly.

As soon as he finished speaking, he suddenly raised the Soul-Sealing Camera.

Click——!
A burst of white light pierced the air, causing the wandering spirits to scream in alarm, and the street fell silent for a moment.

The stream of light tore through the shadows, enveloping the soul that had been dragged away by the chains.

The father's figure was forcibly frozen in time, his struggling silhouette instantly pulled into the camera's view.

The next second, with a "sizzle," the photographic paper slowly emerged, revealing the father's face, blurry yet vivid.

But at the same time, everything went black before Xu Yan's eyes. His mother's image blurred and collapsed once again; he couldn't even remember whether her eyes were black or brown.

Blood gushed from his nose, and his chest tightened as if a piece of his memory had been ripped out.

"Brother Yan!" A-Zhe panicked, frantically pressing buttons on the device, trying to divert the camera's overloaded data, his voice trembling, "Stop! It's eating away at your memories..."

Chen Zhiwei shook the copper bell violently. The bell rang urgently and clearly, and ripples spread out, barely maintaining a clear barrier for Xu Yan's consciousness. Her voice was shrill: "Hold on! Don't get swallowed!"

The night watchman slightly raised his hood, turned the pages of his book, and spoke in a hoarse voice like an iron pen carving a monument:
"There are no memorial tablets in the mortal world, no sacrifices in the underworld. The soul has no name in the register of souls, and shall return to the River Styx."

"Your offspring still exist, but are already dead. Your memories will also be forgotten."

Xu Yan's heart pounded, his bloodshot eyes fixed on them as if he wanted to burn himself out: "You won't be able to take him away!"

But more wandering spirits stirred under the watchful eyes of the night patrolmen, howling as they rushed toward them.

The cries of agony surged like waves, and the streets seemed to be plunged into a vortex of nightmares.

Xu Yan abruptly switched to dark gold wide-angle lenses, his voice hoarse: "Get out of the way!"

Click!

The shutter rang out, and a white light swept through like a whirlwind.

Countless wandering souls were sucked in and torn apart, turning into painful and ferocious faces, which were frantically imprinted on the photographic paper that was continuously spat out.

But there was no pure joy at this moment.

Every shutter click is a real cut to the flesh.

Xu Yan's memories were peeling away at a visible speed: he forgot the candles he blew out on his first birthday; he forgot the image of his father carrying him home on a rainy day when he was ten; he even forgot whether his mother would gently pat his shoulder at the end of the lullaby.

Tears and blood mingled, blurring his vision.

Chen Zhiwei bit her tongue, using her blood to seduce the bell and calm him down, but when she caught sight of the photograph, her pupils suddenly contracted...

That wasn't salvation at all; it was like forcibly pulling her father's soul from its resting place. Her lips were devoid of color, and her heart was ice-cold.

Ah Zhe frantically connected the equipment, cold sweat pouring down his forehead: "No! The camera's energy is out of control! If we do it again, you'll be sucked in completely!"

The wandering spirits scattered and screamed, terrified of this unfamiliar power.

Shadows rolled across the streets, and ripples spread across the surface of the River Styx, as if the whole world was watching this "illegal act that should not exist."

Just as the night watchman's figure slowly faded into the shadows, Xu Yan suddenly felt a sharp, unusual pain in his right arm.

The feeling didn't originate from the internal turmoil of the curse, but rather from the outside. It was as if an invisible, icy needle had emerged from the depths of the boiling River Styx, precisely piercing the very center of his ghostly hand brand, leaving behind an eternal, chilling "mark."

At the same time, a faint yet incredibly clear "call" came from the direction of the River Styx, not a sound, but a pure, icy pull, like a fishing line tied to his soul, from which he could no longer break free.

But the River Styx suddenly began to boil!
A torrent of fragmented memories bubbled up, and a deep, chilling roar came from the riverbed, as if some immense consciousness had been awakened by this act of defying the heavens and cast a cold glance at it.

Chen Zhiwei's face turned deathly pale: "Senior brother, stop immediately...!"

The wind whipped up the photographic paper on the ground, sending it flying everywhere, like countless fragments of broken memories turning into dazzling white snow under the blood moon.

Xu Yan's hands trembled as she gripped the photo of her father tightly.

In the photo, the father's face appears peaceful, even carrying a trace of the gentleness that Xu Yan had long missed, belonging to the past.

For a moment, Xu Yan almost had a hallucination, as if his father was smiling, as if responding to the "I'm here" he had longed for since childhood.

But when he stared at it for a while, an extreme terror, hard to dispel, solidified in those gentle eyes, as if it were about to burst through the paper and drag him into the abyss of despair.

The ghost hand brand on his right arm was throbbing slightly at an unprecedented frequency. A sucking pleasure emanated from the cold "mark," as if the vast memories and emotions it had just devoured were the sweet rain it had been craving for a long time.

A deeper, more ancient, and colder will is slowly spreading upwards along the arm bone.

He raised his head, his eyes vacant, as if the most important part of him had been ripped out. Yet, deep within that emptiness, it seemed as if black fire from the depths of the River Styx was burning silently, gradually synchronizing with the throbbing of his right arm.

The night watchman's voice pressed down between heaven and earth, like the cold metallic clang seeping from a crack in a stone tablet:

"The living soul has usurped the ghost register. Order has been broken."

“We will punish them on behalf of the Styx.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the chains and the book simultaneously emitted a ghostly blue light.

The wandering spirits throughout the block seemed to be under an invisible command, shrieking in unison and transforming into twisted gray shadows that swept over Xu Yan and his companions.

The blood moon dimmed for a moment, as if the heavens themselves were shaken by this judgment.

The stone bricks of the street cracked, and the filthy tributaries of the River Styx below seeped up, transforming into countless viscous, icy, shadowy tentacles that coiled around their ankles, attempting to drag them into eternal oblivion.

A Zhe's temples bulged with veins, and the screen of the nearly broken instrument in his hand flickered wildly. Ignoring everything else, he directed all the energy to the analysis module and roared hoarsely:

"No! The energy structure is collapsing! Brother Yan! The camera core is overloaded! If we forcibly extract memories as fuel any further, your sea of ​​consciousness will collapse before the camera! You will become an empty shell!"

The copper bell in Chen Zhiwei's hand vibrated rapidly, its clear sound transforming into tangible ripples that desperately tried to repel the approaching wandering souls. However, her face was as pale as paper, and the backlash of coldness had already caused blood to spill from the corner of her lips.

She suddenly grabbed Xu Yan's other arm, her voice trembling as if she were about to cry, yet unusually clear: "Senior brother! Look at me! Your father risked his life to save you, not to let you become the next monster to be devoured!"

But Xu Yan wouldn't listen at all.

The lingering warmth of his father's photo in his palm was like a final torch, igniting a deeper darkness within him.

The calming film on my chest silently turned to dust, and my memories faded away madly.

The cursed ghost hand on his right arm writhed wildly with unprecedented force. The bluish-black lines no longer covered the skin, but instead spread menacingly upwards along his arm like living thorns.

Wherever it passed, the skin lost its color, revealing a cold, inhuman keratinous sheen!

(End of this chapter)