Forgotten Photo Studio

Chapter 63 The return of the soul
As a photographer, Xu Yan's skill lies in finding the focus amidst chaos and capturing decisive moments in disorder.

He no longer tried to identify the facial features or shapes of each ghostly figure. Instead, he held his breath and focused intently, like waiting for film to develop in a darkroom, relying on his intuition to judge the "density" and "flow" of the ghostly miasma energy.

In front of the camera, ghostly figures appeared in layers.

Some were lurking in the corners of the walls, their limbs clinging like spiders; others were pressed against the car windows, their faces almost dissolved, leaving only a dead white membrane pressing tightly against the glass; still others were hanging upside down in mid-air, their hair hanging down in bunches, as if swaying in water.

Their eyes were empty, yet they all turned toward him, surging with a gnawing hunger.

Xu Yan's heart tightened suddenly, but her fingertips became even more steady.

He tightened the lens ring, locked onto the densest vortex of ghostly energy, and quickly composed the shot.

The choices we make are like capturing a fleeting moment on the street.

While the Soul-Sealing Camera can subdue such low-level ghosts, capturing them one by one is too time-consuming.

He gritted his teeth, switched to a dark gold wide-angle lens, and widened the coverage area.

With a "click," the latch locked, and he abruptly rolled down the car window.

He aimed at the area where the ghostly figures gathered and shouted, "Disperse!"

"Crack!"

The shutter clicked.

The wide-angle lens suddenly lit up, and a burst of white light exploded.

Wherever the light reached, the little devils that were rushing towards them screamed in unison.

Some limbs twitched, like puppets stretched out in an instant; some faces shattered into a cloud of black mist; some desperately reached out, their knuckles sharp, yet they were still dragged into the depths of the frame by an invisible force.

The printer nozzle trembled, and a photograph slowly emerged, its edges radiating a chilling aura.

In the video, more than a dozen ghostly figures are twisted and frozen in time, as if they are struggling silently on the paper.

However, the surrounding shadows only receded for a moment before new ghosts surged in.

They surged forth like a tide from the corners of walls, sewer openings, and even cracks in the brickwork, their mouths wide open with black teeth, screeching and rubbing together as if paving the way for each other to devour.

Xu Yan gritted his teeth and raised his hand to slap the camera repeatedly.

"Crack! Crack! Crack!"

The shutter flashed, and the piercing white light tore through the ghostly figures time and time again. The photos were spat out one after another, piling up at my feet into a pile of cold, ghostly fragments.

With each press of the shutter, his temples throbbed with a needle-like pain, and his memories were being drained away like water leaking through his fingers, leaving an ever-widening void.

"If this continues, not only will the film run out, but I will also be completely drained..." Xu Yan's heart sank, but he managed to stay calm.

At that moment, the sound of the wind suddenly became distorted.

Zhou Wenbin's voice shifted from left to right, like a whisper in one's ear, or a distant shout, chilling to the bone:
"You can't kill them all, just wait to be drained dry! That old bastard Chen Dingkun... he can actually cultivate possession techniques. Heh, good stuff, I've got my eye on him."

Xu Yan's lips tightened, and he retorted in a low voice, "You want it? You'll have to trade your life for it first!"

Zhou Wenbin sneered, his voice growing increasingly sinister: "What I've set my sights on is mine."

The world suddenly fell silent.

The air seemed frozen, breaths condensed into white mist, and an absolute, deathly chill enveloped the carriage.

The next instant, a layer of writhing, grayish light seeped silently from all around, as viscous as putrid oil.

It didn't envelop, but rather "swallowed," clinging tightly to the car window and slowly squeezing in.

The glass groaned under its own weight, and faintly appeared dissolving ghost faces with twitching lips, as if they wanted to crawl directly into the car.

This is no longer miasma, but rather the corruption of the underworld.

Xu Yan abruptly zoomed in, his fingertips stiffening from the cold, yet he still pressed the shutter. A sharp white light burst forth from the depths of the lens!
Unlike the absorption of the past, this time, the white light condensed like a sharp blade, carrying a piercing sharpness, and forcefully cut the surging black mist in half.

The ghost tide suddenly let out a piercing, chorus of screams, then turned into countless fragments that scattered in the air.

Zhou Wenbin's expression finally turned cold, and a surge of sinister energy suddenly appeared in his eyes.

He suddenly raised his hand, his ten fingers not forming a hand seal, but rather in a twisted, reversed joint posture, like a soul-snatching iron hook, deeply plunging into the thick shadow beside him, as if he had grasped something invisible.

Immediately afterwards, a distorted, off-key humming that mimicked funeral music squeezed out of Zhou Wenbin's throat.

The tune was not a melody, but it carried a chilling coldness that seeped into one's bones, making the listener involuntarily think of rotting coffins and damp grave soil.

Amidst the humming, a sudden change occurred.

The ghosts that had been frantically pounding on the car windows with their hideous faces suddenly froze, as if a pause button had been pressed.

The madness and pain on their faces froze instantly, then began to melt and drip like heated wax figures.

Facial features slid and recombine on the blurred face, and after a few teeth-grinding sounds of flesh twitching, they all turned into the same face—Zhou Wenbin's eerie face with a half-smile and a mouth that split to the roots of his ears!
Hundreds and thousands of "Zhou Wenbin" figures were pasted on the car windows, staring intently at Xu Yan inside the car with identical empty and lifeless eyes.

They opened their mouths at the same time and whispered in perfectly synchronized, subtly echoing tones:
"Look, these are all Lao Tzu... Lao Tzu is everywhere."

This sight is enough to drive anyone insane.

However, this is just the beginning.

A cruel satisfaction flashed across Zhou Wenbin's face as he suddenly pulled his ten fingers, which were stuck in the shadows, backward!
"The soul is back!"

More ghosts gathered.

The faces of "Zhou Wenbin" on those car windows simultaneously revealed expressions of extreme pain, emitting silent screams.

Xu Yan forced herself to calm down, trying to find focus amidst the chaos.

But the world outside the car window is refusing to be "framed".

That viscous gray light was no longer light, but countless tiny, wriggling worms gnawing at the boundaries of reality.

He raised his camera, but felt a wave of dizziness.

With a determined heart, he gambled away his remaining mental energy, no longer focusing the camera on the scattered soldiers, but instead locking onto the direction of Zhou Wenbin's main body.

"Crack! Crack! Crack!"

He kept snapping photos, no longer to disperse, but to plunder.

The camera was frantically drawing in the surrounding soul energy with unprecedented power, and photographic paper was being ejected like snowflakes.

The cost also skyrocketed!
Xu Yan felt that the memories in his mind were no longer being lost in fragments, but rather collapsing and disappearing in large swaths!
A wrinkle on the father's face was erased, and then his entire face collapsed as if pixelated.

Chen Zhiwei's voice first became distorted, and then stopped abruptly like a cassette tape malfunctioning.

Just as his consciousness was about to collapse, a cold, hungry throbbing suddenly came from deep within the seal on his right arm.

Most of the pure memories forcibly refined by the camera were not consumed, but were intercepted and devoured by the sleeping "abyss" like a whale sucking water.

It not only devoured the energy in the memories, but also greedily licked Xu Yan's "self".

"Ugh!" The excruciating pain of his soul being torn apart almost made him faint.

Seeing this, Zhou Wenbin was filled with shock and doubt: "Is this your limit? Then die!"

He unleashed the full power of the ghostly miasma, and countless ghostly figures coalesced into a giant ghostly claw, grabbing towards Xu Yan!
But it's too late.

The memories captured by the camera became the final straw that broke the camel's back.

The world has been stripped of its colors, leaving only black and white.

(End of this chapter)