Back at the gravesite...
Several minutes after the victim's corpse got reanimated and walked away, Duncan finally revealed his head out from behind the mound of soil he had created while digging the grave.
This was where he had hidden after realizing that something was wrong.
Peeking out carefully, Duncan confirmed that everything was okay before finally coming out from behind the dirt mound.
As far as hiding places go, the dirt mound was definitely not the best place Duncan could've thought of; but it was his only option at the time, and in hindsight, Duncan's decision proved to have been right.
Sigh!
"I guess this time I really was lucky that everything turned out okay for me and I wasn't discovered," Duncan said to himself, exhaling a breath of relief at the same time.
Regarding what had just happened, Duncan was both surprised and happy at the same time.
Witnessing what had happened, one of Duncan's doubts regarding why people were disappearing into this ghost realm in the first place had been inadvertently answered.
He could now safely reach a conclusive speculation...
"I don't know why, but as large as this ghost realm is, the ghosts that inhabit it appear to be especially weak. As such, they cannot manifest a visible form and can only blend together, forming this vile fog that is ever pervasive in the wilderness."
Duncan's words revealed a very disturbing detail—the fog that was all around the wilderness existed as a result of multiple ghosts merging together.
This was something Duncan had speculated about long ago after he'd been attacked in the beginning of his journey, and as absurd as that sounded, it was actually a correct assumption to make.
Ghosts are non-corporeal entities, meaning that they do not have a fixed form or shape that they could assume.
They could appear as anything, yet they mostly took the form of what was most physically prominent in the area they existed in.
That is why you can have ghosts in the form of people and also others in the form of buildings or vehicles in the main world.
It is because these were the most prominent existences in the immediate proximity of the ghost, thus prompting them to adopt its shape or characteristics.
You could say that ghosts were imitators of form without possessing any of the real substance of what they were imitating.
But not all ghosts could appear visible to people, as that required a lot of supernatural energy to influence the world, and most ghosts did not.
For such ghosts, it usually required special abilities or equipment to reveal their forms, allowing them to become visible to others.
The ghosts in this ghost realm were like this; individually, they were weak and couldn't make themselves visible, but by banding together, they were able to exist visibly as a mass of fog.
The foul smell, therefore, was simply due to Duncan as a living being clashing against the thick ghostly energy that surrounded him and being rejected by it.
But this could only mean that there were a large number of ghosts present in this ghost realm, and they were all around the realm, possibly right beside Duncan at this very moment!
It was a horrifying thought to consider, but fortunately, this wasn't the case.
Despite the ghost realm being filled with an unimaginable amount of ghosts, they didn't occupy every single space within it because the fog covered everywhere.
What it simply meant was that their powers extended wherever the fog was present, and they could move freely within it, leaving only the trace of loud howling whenever they moved.
...
Back to the matter with the reanimated corpse...
"The missing people are vessels for the ghosts," Duncan declared.
"Because these ghosts are weak and cannot appear visibly, they require a vessel in order to interact with the world; so they drag unsuspecting people from the real world, bury them in the ground, and prevent them from digging themselves out, all just to prepare a body they can perfectly inhabit."
Ghosts could not just possess a living person simply because they wanted to.
Living beings and ghosts were complete opposites—like water and oil, they could not mix at all—the result would usually end up with the ghost draining a living being of all their vitality should they ever come in contact, just like what had happened with Duncan at the very beginning.
At the same time, even if it was a corpse, it was still impossible for a ghost to possess it without meeting the right conditions.
Duncan recalled what he knew about ghostly possessions and muttered, "For a ghost to possess a corpse, it must first generate ghostly supernatural energy within the corpse to make it compatible. It usually takes countless years for a corpse to naturally do this, but there is a much faster way to achieve it."
"The first step is by exposing a corpse to an area rich with a lot of ghostly energy. Second, before death, the corpse had to have undergone a severe traumatic experience like torture, rape, or abuse, creating a lot of negative emotions within it."
"Emotions like fear, rage, despair, resentment... these can perfectly resonate with ghostly energy, making those who died while experiencing these emotions more compatible for possession as they can more easily generate ghostly energy."
"Ghostly energy also amplifies negative emotions, so as long as the two requirements are met, then it is possible to create the perfect vessel for a ghost to possess."
Thinking of this, a single word came to Duncan's mind in that moment: "Zombie."
This is the name of a creature that is the result of a living being or corpse being possessed by a ghost.
Duncan knew all this because in the main world, there were heretics who specialized in creating such creatures using such rituals and controlling them for their own purpose.
Looking down at the pit that once housed the body of a young man that had died after being buried alive, there was no need for Duncan to say more, for it was already clear why everything had happened.
Duncan fell silent for a long time. Saddened and distraught, he muttered a few silent words of prayer for the soul of the young man.
While not a religious man or a believer, Duncan still felt like it was the appropriate thing to do at the moment.
A minute later, Duncan finally sighed and pulled himself together before looking away from the pit.
Duncan said to himself, "Now that most of the clues are already in place, there's no need to investigate anymore, so it's time for me to get out of here before I run into any misfortune in this place."
Saying so, Duncan retrieved his locket, which had fallen silent, and opened it to reveal the compass. Then, looking at it, he prepared to continue his journey to find the exit out of this ghost realm.
Only, as soon as Duncan saw the direction the compass was pointing in, the expression on his face changed drastically as he reluctantly let out an exasperated groan and cursed out loud.
"Fuck me!"