"She murdered people!" To his question, the other ghost replied. "All from that scary and hateful spirit hunting sect!"That answer… This was his second time hearing it yet the impact did not lessen. He couldn"t respond for a while as he was still stunned, badly at that.
Amongst the female villains that he met before, which one had truly killed somebody?
Jiang Li went through his foggy memory and immediately came with an answer. None. At least before he came to this world.
He began to shake his head.
"b.u.t.terfly effect?"
It was something he was very familiar with since he had already been on this journey for a thousand years. He was open to the possibility that anything could happen as a result of any change in the original story.
But while he had already witnessed many ups and downs in his and the others" lives, it didn"t mean there was nothing else that could shake his mind.
"What the h.e.l.l…" Before he knew it, the words just escaped from his lips. He was that surprised. "This is not supposed to happen."
Jiang Li knew he had no qualification to judge because every time he went to tricky worlds filled with wars and chaos, he also never hesitated to claim lives when needed.
It was just hard not to be caught unprepared because this did not happen in the original and Gu Mochou did not really show any signs of aggression to cultivators. Well, he could not see her all the time so something might have happened. Still, she was the first villainess amongst the ones he encountered who had killed people. The impact was doubled upon recalling this was a fairly peaceful world and that the victims were Daoists from one of the righteous sects.
What the h.e.l.l was going on? Why did she do that? Did they happen to do something disruptive to the villainess" plan so they were silenced?
"Leader." A voice rang out to interrupt his thoughts. At that time, Jiang Li was torn between going to confirm the situation and staying to a.s.sist Zhan Rong.
It would not be hard to picture how annoyed he was from being distracted. Actually he did not bother hiding his displeasure from the one who called him and he even raised a palm.
Unfortunately, the other did not see his cue.
"Leader. I-I can"t stay long because I"m weak so, and s-scary cultivators from one of the sacred mountains have descended. So I"ll say this quick. I-I really don"t know how the scary human girl did it. It just happened, and she made it appear like the deaths of those young disciples were the works of ghosts! She"s scary! You won"t believe what she did to kill them!"
"What did she do?" Jiang Li asked. This was really what he wanted to know right now.
"I-It"s hard to describe. So I"m worried all the spirits would be hunted down!"
This ghost was called Xiao Gui, another powerful poltergeist. It was pretty obvious from how he could speak with such fluency and be away from the capital where his obsession was. Xiao Gui used to be the boss ghost of a big school that was near Gu Mochou"s place at City B. Jiang Li beat him up and put him into an illusion where he took his most dreaded college exams thousands of times to convince him to become one of his followers.
If there was one thing Jiang Li hated about this fellow, it was that his brain circuit worked differently from others, proven by how he managed to connect two dots that were just miles away.
"How about the details on how she finished them off?"
"I don"t remember! I"m speaking the truth. Those monstrous spirit hunters went down the mountains. We will be hunted down! We have to hide!" The boy repeated.
That response was as good as not responding at all. Jiang Li naturally felt annoyed.
"They"re not idiots who won"t conduct an investigation and directly cut down all suspects," he thought. Jiang Li then told him grumpily, "Anything more useful thing to say?"
The younger ghost shook his head.
"Then shut up."
Xiao Gui"s face still showed worry and fear, a reaction far-fetched for a ghost. However, he did shut his mouth up for it would not be a good thing to anger a half-king.
Jiang Li didn"t have a fleshly body but he could feel his forehead throbbing as he exited the hospital.
"Stop following me. You"re done with my job here."
"Then what should I do next?"
"Go away."
"O-okay. Please stay safe. Don"t worry, Leader. I won"t forget to warn everyone I came across."
Not in the condition to float around and chat with another spirit, he instructed the boy to go back to City B and hide.
Once back to the hotel, he gave the surveillance cameras around a quick glance and did the same to Zhan Rong"s phone and laptop. After piecing out her plan through the various search logs and memos, he became relieved that she was not planning to confront those low-lives of the syndicate head-on.
In order to help speed up her operations and lower the risk, he began to insert some key information gotten by himself, for example, the habits and contacts of the suspected members.
A thought flashed across his mind while modifying some pages in the files sent by the private investigators.
"What are the odds that those geezers from Maoshan would be able to pinpoint the villainess as the murderer?" His almost illusory fingers paused in the air.
He had no experience dealing with cultivation sects, but if his guess was correct, the current generation should not be as scary as those from thousands of years ago. Pollution and other factors had thinned out the "spiritual energies" in the world needed to cultivate. Yet there was still no telling whether the mystics of today had no magic that could show what happened in the past.
Jiang Li grimaced. "Actually, there"s no magic for magic here. If even one of them is good at hacking surveillance and Gu Mochou carelessly let her be captured when doing the act, she would also be finished…"
Done with his work there, he headed out again and searched the city for someone he could possess.
What he needed to do right now was to travel to Haowen Town and stay there for a prolonged period of time. It would only be possible with points and a real body.
The search had been troublesome. He was reluctant to spend points to ask for help in locating a prospect. He chose to do it manually. People on the brink of death wouldn"t do. Messengers from the spiritual world, Black and White Impermanence would be coming soon for them and he didn"t want to run into them. It had to be someone with affinities to ghost, meaning a person born on yin month, day, and hour. At the thought, he somehow wanted to murder whoever made up this rule which forced ghosts to do something akin to searching a needle in a haystack.
"d.a.m.n. For a murderous villainess whose mind is filled with revenge, is it worth it?"
By the time, he found one, the sun was almost up and his energy was quite depleted. The person he found was a ghost-seeing youth who was constantly bullied at school and home and badly wanted to run away but just had no guts to go against his abusive father. For Jiang Li though, as long as he had a real body, one that was not that of an old man or a child, it would be a piece of cake to slip away. He also wouldn"t have guilt over running away since it was the wish of the original owner.
When he took over the body, it was with the consent of the youth, promising him to return the control over it once he achieved his goal, plus he would help him escape and go to another province. On why the youth easily agreed with Jiang Li"s offer without asking for a guarantee, it was not his problem.
He spent some time acclimating to the body.
When he was about to check how well she could control his regained senses, the door to the small room of the youth swung open revealing a boorish man who then spoke rudely to Jiang Li, "Hey, it"s morning already! Why are you still in bed? Stop being lazy and prepare my breakfast!"
It was the father who woke up feeling cranky due to hangover. Jiang Li looked at him curiously.
As someone who held not much love and care for his son, the man"s only impression of his son was a thin, cowardly weakling whose only usefulness was to be his nanny and punching bag.
When he saw the little guy sitting on the bed, he thought nothing of it even though the other seemed lost in thoughts and in a sitting posture that seemed more refined than usual.
"Get out already! I"m starving! Move! Or I"ll break your leg!" The man even shouted.
It was a puzzle why there were parents like this guy who only thought of his kid as a servant. But there were people like that and one of them was in front of Jiang Li.
Jiang Li frowned and felt pity for the owner of his current body. "What an att.i.tude. And he didn"t even notice anything odd about his son. Tch." Had the man looked closely, he would have noticed that the glint in his son"s eyes changed and was looking in his eyes without the usual fear and look of numbness.
However, his focus was on an entirely different matter.
The burly man held his forehead and frowned. He then raised his voice and asked, "Did you just say something?" A guess crossed his mind. "You complaining?"
At the last phrase said, the man"s face changed and became uglier. He didn"t hear his son"s words clearly so he simply a.s.sumed the thin boy was saying bad things about him.
No parents liked to be questioned, even if it only happened in his imagination, and so within a second, his belt was pulled out and raised. "Rebelling huh?"
His next actions seemingly said, "No problem! I"m more than willing to let you taste some beating for breakfast!" And to this, Jiang Li only felt speechless.
"I have no time to waste on this b.a.s.t.a.r.d."
He stood up and spat out with mild irritation, looking at the man like he was looking at a bug. "While I admire your skill in filling the blanks by yourself, I"m not in the mood to play with you, old man."
Enduring the unnerving and nauseous feeling from his spirit being rejected by the body, he hypnotized the father. Jiang Li had done it a million times in the past already so there was no need to question his proficiency. He said with a cold smile, "Breakfast, huh? How about you cook and eat that cheap belt of yours?"
In a second, the latter"s angry eyes immediately turned dull.
Even though the man had a feeling that something suddenly became weird, that he should be furious from being impolitely called an old man, he nodded and replied, "Got it. I"ll go to the kitchen now."
Watching the other walked out, Jiang Li sneered. Done with some light exercises to fine-tune his spirit with the unfamiliar vessel, he thought of something and said to the man who was about to exit the door, "By the way, before you make your meal, first give me the household register and your pa.s.sbook. I need some cash too. Do you have some?"
"Yes," replied the middle-aged man who then walked into his own room.
By the time the father returned, the possessed boy had already stuffed his bag with his few clothes and books. Jiang Li unceremoniously stuffed the booklets into his bag too. His eyes followed the huge guy who went to fetch his other belts and put them in a pot filled with water.
A minute after, Jiang Li was outside of the house, walking towards the nearest bus stop, joining the hawkers, students, and professionally dressed people already crowding the streets.
It was 5:46 am. The town, his destination, was two and a half hours away.