He Qingyuan’s words contained a wealth of information, but now that he was in a coma, it was impossible to know the full details.
Jiang Yan didn’t linger on it for long and quickly focused on He Qingyuan’s first question.
—“First, asked for a way out of Cangnan Funeral Home.”
Jiang Yan asked Pingping, “Did the latest team to Cangnan get wiped out again?”
Pingping replied, “The bodies were found not long ago, just as you were entering your own field.”
“This time, the team leader was the abbot of an ancient Daoist temple—an old lady, called by many the Penglai Immortal. She’s extremely skilled—heard she even invited you to visit Penglai before she left?”
Jiang Yan nodded.
She remembered that old woman.
That woman had said Jiang Yan resembled an old friend and went out of her way to speak with her. From her words and bearing, she seemed genuinely fond of her. Forty years ago, He Qingfu died while handling the energy field at Penglai Island, so this “old friend” must have been He Qingfu.
Pingping introduced the old lady: “Her innate ability is creating barriers—she can block all supernatural harm and completely ignore spiritual attacks. Meaning, even if she triggered a death condition, the energy field’s guardian spirit couldn’t hurt her. Her survival rate was practically one hundred percent.”
“Since she led the team, everyone at the bureau was so sure of success. Even when all livestream equipment failed the moment they went in, after days with no news, the bureau was still confident and kept waiting for their safe return. But just the night before last, at Cangnan Funeral Home…”
She paused here, her little face solemn.
Leaning her chin on her hand, she continued, “The psychics keeping watch nearby found all the team members’ bodies. Each one died differently—some were strangled, some drowned, some even shot.”
“And what’s scariest, the bodies appeared extremely fresh, as if only recently dead. But going by the time of death of their spirits, they’d been dead much longer.”
Jiang Yan frowned. “‘Time of death of their spirits?’”
Pingping replied, “Yeah, it’s this new talisman the bureau just developed—pretty handy. It can’t give to-the-minute accuracy, but it can tell you the number of days. According to the rune’s results, all the psychics died on the first day they entered the energy field.”
“Not a single one made it to day two.”
Jiang Yan understood: “The guardian spirit in Cangnan Funeral Home’s field kept all their corpses, preserving them inside, and only threw them outside after several weeks.”
“It was sowing confusion.”
“Exactly.” Pingping pouted. “Before, this place was a 3S-level mission—deadly, but still attracted stubborn hotshots. Now, it’s been ‘upgraded’ to something nobody dares touch. A place that can wipe out a whole team in a day—no one wants to go in.”
“No idea what they’ll do about it, honestly.”
Jiang Yan glanced at Pingping and suddenly smiled.
Pingping was puzzled. “Why are you smiling—that’s so creepy, can you not? Seriously, stop smiling like you want to sell me off or something.”
Jiang Yan checked her phone’s camera for her mouth’s corners. “It is a little.”
Pingping: “Glad you know!”
Jiang Yan put down her phone and straightened her lips.
“I think what you’ve considered, the bureau has too.”
Pingping was confused: “Huh?”
Jiang Yan: “With so many missing roles, stuffing them all into our team at once would be a nightmare for cohesion—the bureau will have made other plans.”
Pingping: “Huh.”
Jiang Yan: “Cangnan Funeral Home is the hardest energy field in Hua Country. I’m not even ranked in the bureau; Yu Renwan only just broke into the top hundred; the twins are still in the three or four hundreds. If the bureau throws us in recklessly, they’ll have to give the rest of the psychics a good explanation.”
Pingping: “Aren’t you ranked first as a team?”
Jiang Yan shook her head, answering calmly, “There are hundreds of teams, and four or five others also cleared two fields in a row. We’re first because psychics like us, because they want us to get rewards. If the bureau really compared us, we’d be done for.”
“So, to make it plausible for us to enter Cangnan, they’ll assign a powerful new teammate—ideally someone we’re familiar with, no need for personality adjustment.”
Pingping mulled this over, then nodded. “Makes sense.”
After she spoke, Pingping waited for Jiang Yan to say more, but the silence stretched.
Half a minute later, she looked at Jiang Yan, puzzled. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
Jiang Yan propped her chin on her hand, casual. “I hear our dear friend Pingping is ranked ninth on the charts now?”
Pingping: “?”
“And you cleared a field in three hours?”
It hit her then—Pingping’s expression grew agitated. “What are you saying, what do you want?”
Jiang Yan: “Healer spot: Pingping.”
“Defender: Pingping.”
“Striker: Pingping.”
“Controller: Pingping.”
Jiang Yan stood leisurely, every bit of her smile radiating malice. “It’s perfect, really.”
Pingping: “………”
Pingping: “???”
Jiang Yan patted her head, every curve of her smile announcing danger: “That’s how the bureau will do it. Cangnan can’t be left unsolved. It’s too much of a morale hit—even if you’re a millennia-old yao or a future director, if you’re fit for the mission, in you go.”
Pingping’s voice was aggrieved. “I’m not even ten years old yet.”
Jiang Yan teased her, “This is your first step to becoming ruler of the world, saving all mankind.”
Pingping rolled her eyes. “Only if I survive. I promised Le Yi and Le Yao I’d make it to a hundred, not a day less.”
Jiang Yan chuckled.
It was late, so she made to leave, and Pingping zipped her backpack, ready to go visit He Qingyuan at the hospital.
“Be sure to ask what’s really on his mind,” Pingping reminded her. “If I’ve wronged him, I’ll apologize.”
Jiang Yan agreed.
The two, one big and one small, headed for the door. Mu Wang, who’d been sitting as if in meditation, patted the dust from his pants and followed. Pingping, noticing Mu Wang, glanced back.
“Why are you following us?”
Mu Wang quickly lowered his lashes and answered, “I’m not following you.”
Jiang Yan: “He’s following me.”
Pingping went “oooh,” gave Mu Wang a once-over, and tried to catch his eye, but he was a master at evasive maneuvers—she never managed it.
“Is he shy or what?” Pingping asked Jiang Yan.
“He gets nervous easily,” Jiang Yan replied.
Pingping went “ohhh” again.
She said, “So it must be hard for him on missions. Does he never meet teammates’ eyes? Don’t they shut him out?”
Jiang Yan: “Well, they *tried* to.”
Pingping: “Ohhhh.”
She turned and asked Mu Wang, “Why don’t you speak up? Do you talk to Jiang Yan? Why does she know you so well?”
Mu Wang’s ears started to flush. Jiang Yan turned Pingping’s gossiping head back around. “Because we live together.”
Pingping drew a sharp breath.
From then until they left the bureau, she couldn’t help glancing back at Mu Wang every three steps, rubbing her eyes all the way out the door, finally sighing with relief.
“The more you look, the prettier he is. Thought he looked forgettable at first.”
“Not bad, I guess.”
She waved goodbye to Jiang Yan, pink backpack bouncing as she left. But Jiang Yan didn’t hurry away; instead, she looked toward the red-brick building where the Yao Management Department was housed.
Beneath its eaves stood two old men. One was the lodge keeper for the bureau, He Qingguang; the other was a refined-looking stranger.
Yet somehow, this stranger felt hauntingly familiar, his presence tinged with a trembling déjà vu. Jiang Yan started toward the Yao Management Department. As she drew near, the man turned and met her eyes.
Jiang Yan didn’t react, but the old man suddenly broke into a kindly smile.
“You’ve grown up so much.”
Jiang Yan still couldn’t place him, but studied him closely. The old man offered the answer himself:
“I met you once in secret, back when I toured the Jiang Kingdom.”
Jiang Yan’s eyes widened.
The elder’s smile deepened at the memory. “You were so cute when you were little—shame you had to stay sealed in the underground palace. My wife was fond of you and wanted to raise you herself, but Jiang Chixi said no and even chased us out with a big broom.”
“A thousand years, just like that…”
“Ah, I feel my end is near, so I came to say goodbye.”
After giving Jiang Yan a long look, he turned to Mu Wang.
“Back then Jiang Chixi wanted me to help you, too,” he told Mu Wang, smiling. “She heard my theory about turning dead wood into a corpse—never thought it could actually work. How did you manage it?”
Mu Wang and Jiang Yan exchanged glances, but neither had any memory of the old man.
“I poured corpse oil for three hundred years,” Jiang Yan answered after a pause.
The old man let out a laughing sigh and asked no more, hoisting his cloth sack and walking away into the night.
Watching him go, He Qingguang murmured, “That was Bai Ze.”
“The physical body displayed in the Yao Management Department belonged to it. Ten thousand years of cultivation, yet as a human lived only a few decades.”
“A soul too strong, but the human body too weak. He’ll pass away tomorrow evening.”