Chapter 95: Discovery By The Dead Body
“Oh, this is too embarrassing. You’re clearly here to support my mission, yet I harvested a fierce ghost first.”
Xu Zheng declined verbally, but his hand very honestly took the bag and stuffed the rope inside.
That action was so fast, as if he feared Zhang Qian would change his mind.
Money was naturally something the more the better. After all, from the day he became a ghost controller, Xu Zheng was destined to be short-lived. After his death, all he could leave his girlfriend was money.
After the joke, Xu Zheng also analyzed the current situation.
“This rope isn’t strong, but it wasn’t destroyed under the ghost hair’s attack, so it’s undoubtedly a fierce ghost. We just came in and encountered a ghost already. It seems this garden isn’t peaceful. I’m curious how the person walking ahead of us avoided the attack. Could he be a ghost controller too?”
“Not necessarily. Maybe he was just lucky and didn’t trigger the pattern, or perhaps he used some supernatural item to dodge the attack…”
Zhang Qian walked under that tree and looked up at the bare treetops.
The twisted branches were already withered yellow, with not a single leaf on them, let alone anything else.
The grass under the tree was quite deep, denser than other places, and looked a bit off.
With a swish, the gold extendable baton extended, and Zhang Qian probed toward the grass with the stick to see if there were any clues.
After a rustling sound, a small patch of weeds under the tree was parted to the sides, revealing a patch of dark soil.
Several bones with deep red rotten flesh lay among the grass roots, though most had decayed beyond recognition, making it impossible to tell what animal they were from.
A rotten stench like decaying meat immediately wafted out, making Xu Zheng cover his nose.
“Such a strong corpse stench.”
Xu Zheng fanned it with some disgust. Even though he dealt with supernatural things often, this smell still caused physical and psychological discomfort.
After all, this pile of rotten meat was his kin not long ago.
But he still endured the nausea and stepped forward for a look, deducing from the degree of decay: “A normal corpse takes about a month to fully rot, but this location is special. This corpse was probably left here seven or eight days ago.”
“Seven or eight days? That’s strange. According to the information from headquarters, there haven’t been any missing person cases in this area recently.”
Zhang Qian muttered, continuing to flip the surrounding grass with the round bead at the top of the stick, soon finding some not fully decayed remains and a set of fairly intact clothes.
Though the corpse was unrecognizable, from the clothing, it could be seen that it was a man in life, and one who was somewhat nostalgic.
Because the clothes he wore weren’t recent styles; they looked similar to those popular in Zhang Qian’s father’s generation.
Xu Zheng glanced at the man’s remains and sighed: “Looks like just an ordinary person who wandered in by mistake. This place looks off at a glance, yet he labored hard to climb over the wall.”
Ghost controllers usually didn’t want to wander into places like this, but these ordinary people had quite some guts.
“Click—”
The extendable baton suddenly hit something hard in the grass.
Zhang Qian and Xu Zheng exchanged a glance and tacitly retreated behind the cloaked fierce ghost.
Better to leave such dangerous things to the one who couldn’t die.
Under Xu Zheng’s control, Ghost Pushes Person stepped stiffly into the grass. After groping around, it pulled out a long, rod-shaped object.
This was a black metal stick, but at its top was a bracket for holding things.
“This is… a selfie stick?” Xu Zheng said uncertainly. “This guy’s job wouldn’t be a streamer, would it? Who dares to come to a place like this for a live broadcast?”
“If there are viewers willing to watch, someone will stream. Without talent or looks, they can only take another path. Ghost stories are circulating everywhere online now, so it’s normal for someone to think of live streaming adventures in a haunted house.” Zhang Qian didn’t find it surprising at all.
People, when stuffed full, would stir up all sorts of trouble—sometimes just getting hurt, sometimes losing their lives.
“Then this guy really deserved to die.” Xu Zheng curled his lip.
“Can’t these people control themselves? They don’t even understand that curiosity killed the cat. How many supernatural event casualties are caused by so-called curiosity.”
“Is that so…”
Zhang Qian neither agreed nor disagreed.
Isn’t it precisely because supernatural news is true or false that it sparks the curiosity to investigate thoroughly?
Not to mention anything else, from the forum, quite a few ghost controllers who can control fierce ghosts did so only because of initial curiosity.
Rather, curiosity is one of the motivations for getting stronger, but the premise of getting stronger is surviving, and the premise of surviving is being prepared.
He took the selfie stick from the cloaked fierce ghost’s hand.
Zhang Qian wiped it with nearby weeds and found the soil on it seemed freshly stained. The entire selfie stick had no rust or damage.
“The selfie stick probably wasn’t left by this corpse. High probability it’s from the person ahead of us. But since that person dropped it in panic, it means he was attacked too. If he really is a streamer, that’s interesting…”
Even a fierce ghost was caught off guard and hung from the tree. What method could allow an ordinary person to escape from here?
Xu Zheng naturally understood the reasoning. With a command, Ghost Pushes Person turned into a weeding machine, its two arms swinging constantly.
Grass clippings nearly half a meter long flew about. In no time, the weeds in that spot were mostly uprooted.
The fierce ghost then stopped its actions, stiffly bending down to grab something from the ground and hand it to the two.
Zhang Qian looked closely and saw it was a muddy, tattered cloth doll.
But this cloth doll’s craftsmanship was truly unflattering—completely just a few pieces of ragged cloth sewn with clumsy stitching.
The crooked seams showed no beauty, the doll’s facial features were crudely made, but the expression somehow looked oddly cute.
However, the doll was now completely damaged, with cracks on its limbs and body exposing white cotton inside.
The biggest crack was the wound on the doll’s neck; the front half was completely severed, with only a thin layer of ragged cloth from the back of the head suspending the doll’s head on its body.
Though it looked somewhat eerie, the cloth doll just lay quietly in the fierce ghost’s hand, without any movement.
“Nothing particularly special about it. Could a broken cloth doll let someone dodge a supernatural attack?” Xu Zheng said skeptically.
This thing’s craftsmanship was too poor; even if given to him, he’d think it took up space.
