CHAPTER 65: CHAPTER 59: THE BIG GUN, NEW GHOST_3

Besides, he also needed martial training.

According to Zhang Laoxi, after he consumed a few pieces of inferior Warm Jade, a day of hard training was equivalent to at least a month, or even two, of an ordinary person practicing Scorching Sun Fist.

Even though ordinary people already got poor results from practicing Scorching Sun Fist, making a lot of effort for half the results, compared with other boxing techniques, Wen Yan’s progress still far outstripped the average martial trainee.

With that kind of positive feedback, Wen Yan became even more enthusiastic.

He decided to focus on martial training for now, and by the way, keep Lady Lie hanging.

Since he’d already put on the tiger skin, pretending there was some huge force backing him, then the bigger the matter, the less he could make decisions lightly.

In the room on the second floor, a whimpering sound came from the box where the little zombie slept. Sparrow Cat, still hopelessly addicted to cartoons, glanced over and twitched its ears.

"Stop calling out, I’m just a little kitty, I don’t know a thing."

The little zombie kept on whimpering, "Ying ying ying."

Sparrow Cat drooped its ears, a flash of horror passing through its eyes.

"Talk it out nicely, why would you eat me? I’m Wen Yan’s pet sparrow. If you eat me, Wen Yan will be upset..."

"What? Something appeared behind?"

"Just making it clear—I only let you out because I was afraid there’d be something ghostly hurting Wen Yan!"

Sparrow Cat, reluctant, flew to the wooden box, cocked its body, reached out a paw and peeled off the Yellow Talisman sealed on the box.

The next second, the box sprang open, and the little zombie inside giggled and bounced out, skipping away.

Sparrow Cat followed behind and flew out. As soon as it was out, it saw the little clingy thing burrow straight into Wen Yan’s arms, refusing to come out, whimpering non-stop.

Sparrow Cat sighed feebly.

"She says something is coming out from behind, worried you’ll get eaten, so she asked me to let her out..."

On the side, Zhang Laoxi held a teacup and shot a sidelong glance at the little zombie. Ever since Wen Yan had given him a Scorching Sun Blessing during the day, he’d stopped caring about the little zombie.

This little zombie hadn’t come down the mountain for him in the first place—it was for Wen Yan.

He’d known that from the start.

Scorching Sun could bless him, and Wen Yan was willing to bless him—Zhang Laoxi was already more than satisfied.

Seeing the little zombie like this now, instead of being awkward and making everyone unhappy, he might as well do a good deed till the end and max out his impression score with the little zombie.

"Do you want to stay with him?" Zhang Laoxi asked the little zombie.

The little zombie’s eyes lit up and she nodded repeatedly.

"All right then, from now on you’ll follow him."

The little zombie beamed from ear to ear. This time she didn’t pretend not to understand, but waved her hands and feet, whimpering something unintelligible, then flashed a little fang at Sparrow Cat.

Sparrow Cat, wearing a long face, helpfully translated the zombie-whimper speech.

"She says, you’re such a nice person, and she’ll definitely help you find a really strong companion to follow you in the future..."

The little zombie flashed her fang again when Sparrow Cat stopped talking, and Sparrow Cat meekly explained,

"She says since you have great taste and are such a good person, you’ll definitely be way better than all those other little idiots from Fuyu Mountain..."

After finishing, Sparrow Cat immediately flew to the third floor rooftop, wishing it could slap itself—a little more pretending not to understand zombie speech at the start and none of this would’ve happened.

Zhang Laoxi nodded cheerfully. He’d personally seen, back then, eight above-average Haired Zombies escort this little zombie out, and if she said someone was strong, that was at least Haired Zombie-level, right?

As they were chatting, the doors of the villa behind them opened, and three ghosts in what looked like modern clothes stepped out.

Old Zhao stuck his head out the door, peeking out stealthily. Upon seeing Wen Yan and the others drinking tea on the upstairs balcony, Old Zhao quickly withdrew, thought for a moment—realized it seemed a bit rude—and walked out with an awkward chuckle, bowing to Wen Yan and the others.

"Good evening, everyone."

Wen Yan stood up and politely returned the greeting. He walked down from the upper floor and out of the backyard to see the three ghosts.

"Are these new?"

Old Zhao hurried over.

"They just appeared today. They still have some awareness, but none of them can remember who they are anymore, and they’re basically impossible to communicate with. They want to leave, and I can’t stop them."

Hearing that, Wen Yan didn’t intend to ask anything further.

These three ghosts, in his eyes, were already semi-transparent—about to dissipate, with consciousness almost gone.

He took out the phone given by the Scorching Sun Department, took a photo of each ghost, and saved it to the archive.

The three of them wouldn’t last till sunrise—their photos would soon be all that’s left.

Within seconds, the three ghosts’ photos were archived, face recognition had run and retrieval completed, returning three profiles.

This meant all three ghosts were People of Divine Land, and their information was at a low confidentiality level—just ordinary people.

If not, with his current clearance, there’s no way the data would come up this quickly.

According to the data, half a month ago these three had gone hiking together, and while resting on a rock cliff platform, the cliff collapsed and they fell with it.

The cause of death wasn’t in question—their recording gear had caught the whole thing on video.

The cliff was also inspected already—long weathering and rain had hollowed it out inside; collapse was inevitable, just a matter of time.

A tiny bit of outside force would have made it give way—violent rain, strong wind, that sort of thing might have done it.

The official determination: a pure accident.

Wen Yan frowned slightly as he read their profiles.

Their records also showed that a month ago, they took another hiking trip.

The timing was exactly the day Water Ghost Wang Xueqi disappeared—and their routes overlapped for part of the journey.

Diving deeper, Wen Yan really did find a connection.

He made a snap decision and chased after the ghosts.

Maybe they’d know something—like, why wasn’t Wang Xueqi lost within the Water Ghost Domain, but after death crossed dozens of miles to appear there, turning into a Water Ghost?

The ghosts, seeing Wen Yan blocking the road, instinctively felt a bit of fear from his Yang energy and tried to skirt around, heading exactly in the direction of Duanzhou.

Wen Yan reached out a finger, channeled a bit of Yang energy, and tapped one ghost right between the brows.

He wanted to see if he could jog the memory of a ghost who’d nearly lost all consciousness.

With Wen Yan using Scorching Sun to bless each of the three ghosts with some Yang energy, their translucent bodies condensed just a little.

He didn’t dare bless them too much—while doing so, he could feel these ghosts were too weak, so weak they couldn’t withstand too much, like a deficiency that couldn’t accept tonics.

The three ghosts’ awareness was nudged awake. They looked at themselves in surprise, then at Wen Yan, the sensation of Wen Yan being a walking furnace making them all somewhat dazed.

"So... supernatural powers are actually real..." one of them marveled.

"Time’s running out. Tell me, how did you die?" Wen Yan cut off their wonder, prompting them to get to the point.

"We fell off a cliff. I died from the fall right away, the other two were buried by the collapsing dirt and rock and died too. But we realized something was off at the time—the environment around us seemed to be warping. Then the whole place collapsed."

"Do you know Wang Xueqi?"

"Yes. We went up there trying to find Wang Xueqi. While hiking together, she fell from there—we searched below for ages but never found a trace of her."