"She's innocent. Oh my god." Adam and Tim came to Jason's side: "And you… are you a superhero?"
"It's actually a culti … let's talk about labels later. We need to leave now!" Jason stood up, searched through his backpack and took out all the incense sticks and Demon Suppression Sigils, "Hold these incense sticks, light them all up."
"Here." Adam did not have a lighter but Tim does, so he just took over the incense sticks and tried to light all of them up at once: "What are these? What should we do when they are lit up and burning?"
"Wait for the smoke. The smoke should help." Jason infused some Demon Suppression Sigils with his Xuanli and then dispensed them to Tim, Adam and Branston: "Keep these with you, throw it on ghosts or any monsters if they get too close."
"The smoke… the smoke! It is the smoke that led you to the body in the wall!" Branston suddenly pointed at Jason and yelled: "You lied! You clearly know what's going on! You fucking lied to me! You could've told me!"
"Dude, seriously? " Tim gave Branston a despising look.
"Let's go. " Jason paid no attention to Branston's whining, as he helped Tim lit up all of the incense sticks and waited for them to smoke.
"It hurts… it hurts..." moaning voices suddenly started coming from above.
Adam and Branston looked up after hearing the moans and immediately fell down to the ground in fear. Jason looked up as well, and he saw the reason why Adam and Branston, and now even Tim fell down on the floor: the ceiling was covered with some kind of hair-like black threads. And from these threads, dozens of small human heads just like the one removed from Tim's mouth were dangling from upside down from with cords connecting the bases of these heads to the black threads on the ceiling. As Jason observed, almost the entire third floor ceiling above them was covered with the black threads and dangling human heads, like some sort of twisted Halloween decoration.
"It hurts … it hurts..." the heads cried in differently distorted and slightly high-pitched voices and when one head got close enough to Jason, it shot from mid air against him. But the next moment, the small human head's face collided against an open Demon Suppression Sigil.
A silent shockwave was exploded from the Demon Suppression Sigil, sharp silver shards made of Xuanli were fired from the position of sigil like pellets from a shotgun, the head caught in point blank range was instantly pulverized, the other four or five heads in the range and the black threads up on the ceiling above were ripped to shreds. Faint cries and moans came from the other heads around them, and the remainder of the black threads and dangling heads swiftly moved away like the shadow with bone spikes.
"Let's go." Jason took a look at the incense sticks in Tim's hands - they were releasing a calming and mind clearing scent and a lot of smoke, yet the smoke seemed very non-irritating and even a bit comforting to all of the eyes that got caught in it. Some of the smoke started floating around the floor in certain directions, like the way the smoke flowed during Jason's visit to the Prime Royals Hotel. There was one thing strange, however - which was that the smoke seemed to be floating towards a window, not the staircase through which they were intending to leave the building.
"We should go through the window..." Adam said, frowning: "Is that what this means?"
"I think so. But let me check." Jason took two incense sticks from Tim's hand and carefully walked towards the staircase, on his way, he saw more of those black threads and dangling heads being revealed because of the smoke, the black threads moved and left a way as he approached, and when Jason finally got to the entrance of the staircase, he noticed that the sight of the staircase started slowly fading away.
And when the illusion of a staircase disappeared, Jason could finally tell what it was: it was an empty elevator shaft, extending to somewhere deep underground, he could not see the bottom of it even when he tried to use his flashlight to light up the shaft.
Just when Jason was about to leave, he saw that something shiny was reflecting the lights from his flashlight down there, so he pointed his flashlight directly at the location of the reflection. And then he saw more of those shiny things moving up from the depths of the elevator shaft. From the looks of those things - Jason deduced those might be eyes of some sort.
"Jason?" Tim called out from one of the windows towards which the smoke floated: "This is the staircase!"
"Coming." Jason turned back and ran to the windowside.
The smoke from Illusion Breaking Incense was indeed quite powerful - it not only dispersed the previously undetectable illusions around them, it also showed them the way out of the building.
"How 'bout that. The incense proved very useful." Jason looked around and found that the surrounding environment looked quite different from before, and that the staircase being revealed was actually the one through which they came to the third floor. Then, he proceeded to lead the entire group down the stairs that were revealed by the smoke, "Let's go, pay attention to your surroundings."
As the four of them walked down the stairs, a shadow followed them from a short distance away.
The smoke wound down through the stairs and revealed quite a lot of things they did not see on their way up: the cracks on the wall, the dark stains that looked like age old dry blood, and the dusty and dirty medical waste just randomly scattered around the floor.
"What happened here? These are professional grade medical supplies. How can they just be thrown around like this?" Adam took a look at some of the medical waste by the side of the stairs and said: "It's like people left in a hurry..."
"They were in quite a hurry..." Tim and Branston pointed at the wall in front of them, as they reached the second floor.
There were a couple big dark markings on the wall, looked like they were left by gushing and splashing blood, and a pair of handmarks, from the shape of them, looked like whoever left them was forcefully dragged away.
Footsteps approached, from the second floor hallway and from upstairs.