Li Laidi

The corners of Li Daochang’s mouth twitched.

“I don’t think so.”

Those words startled Zhu Yan.

“You’re not pretending. You simply have no way to trust me… no way to trust the right path.”

Damn.

That scared him half to death. Pot Lid had nearly thought his disguise was blown.

“In any case, you got part of what you wanted.” Zhu Yan smiled.

From Zhu Zeyu’s perspective, Pot Lid’s entire body was trembling like a sieve.

“C-Captain…!”

He cried out miserably, but Jin Rongxu remained unmoved.

That Level-Two [Walking Corpse] merely smiled at them before twisting open the front door and stiffly waving a hand.

“This is the benefit of choosing me.”

It ground its teeth as it spoke.

“Although I can’t trade with you directly, I can ask Li Daochang for a trade slip.”

“For old times’ sake, he was willing to give me one. If you go there directly, you might die.”

The door shut.

The military doctor looked at Pot Lid, who was kneeling on the ground and sobbing miserably, then at Jin Rongxu. His brows drew even tighter.

“Captain, what did you read? Don’t you think there’s something wrong?”

“When we came here, you said this old man wanted to eat us.”

“How could it possibly offer to trade out of the goodness of its heart now?”

Zhu Yan was curious, too, about what false information Jin Rongxu had read.

He controlled the puppet and watched Jin Rongxu inquisitively, but Jin Rongxu’s answer left him speechless.

“It really wasn’t acting out of kindness,” Jin Rongxu said slowly. “It was forced to do so by some kind of dungeon rule.”

“When I read its thoughts just now, it seemed to be acting against its will. There was a sort of program constantly forcing it to go to Li Daochang’s house to get something.”

Zhu Yan was utterly speechless.

What was this supposed to be?

Some kind of damned program?

He suspected that because this thing had forcibly separated them earlier, it now couldn’t smooth over the inconsistencies. So it had no choice but to use some lousy “program” as an excuse to patch up its lies.

Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

Zhu Yan turned his head and continued studying Li Daochang with interest.

Li Daochang stood up to open the door. Upstairs, a strand of light, wispy [Mist] descended from the ceiling, inching closer to the mad woman on the bed.

The emaciated woman was still breathing. She murmured something so softly that Zhu Yan had no desire to move closer and listen carefully.

Beneath her hair, her eyes were filled with blood vessels, as if she were immersed in some agonizing memory from the past.

A thick iron chain was wrapped around the woman’s ankle. One end of it had actually been nailed into the wall, as though the woman were not a woman at all, but some wild beast liable to escape or go berserk at any moment.

All right, Zhu Yan muttered inwardly.

The [Human Alliance]’s information was still useful.

At the very least, he now knew the composition of Li Daochang’s family by heart.

Other than Zhang Xiaohong, who had already died, the only female member of the household was Li Daochang’s daughter, Li Laidi.

Judging by her age, the woman on the bed looked about the same age as Li Laidi.

It was possible that she was Li Laidi—but why was she here?

This had to be another important clue worth investigating, right?

Zhu Yan decided to take a good look around the filthy, foul-smelling room.

The floor was far too dirty. He really didn’t want to take human form and step on it, and [Mist] wouldn’t do either.

After confirming that Li Daochang was still rummaging through boxes downstairs, Zhu Yan, in his [Mist] form, began darting around the tabletop and through the drawers. He quickly found a clue.

This room didn’t belong to a girl. It seemed to have been intended as Li Panlong’s bedroom.

One of the drawers was even stuffed with homework books Li Panlong had used as a child. His name was clearly written on them.

Most of the clothes in the wardrobe were also men’s clothing.

Zhu Yan made a quick circuit of the room and finally found what he had been looking for in one of the drawers.

An identification card.

There was a photograph on it, along with the name Li Laidi.

Zhu Yan carefully compared it with the facial features of the woman on the bed.

Aside from the woman now looking extraordinarily haggard and weak, her facial features and the shape of her ears matched.

It was Li Laidi!

…

Downstairs.

Li Daochang pulled a small roll of yellow paper from the innermost drawer. It was sturdy and well made, but no matter how he looked at it, it resembled the paper people burned to honor their ancestors during the Qingming Festival.

It tore off one sheet from the roll and handed the rest to the Level-Two [Walking Corpse].

Then Li Daochang gripped the sheet in his hand and slowly walked back to the table.

“I can tell you one honest thing,” he said in a thick local accent.

“What?” Zhu Yan asked.

He had no expectations for Li Daochang’s so-called “honest thing.”

Whether this horrifying creature was clever or not, it was certainly very good at hiding things.

Zhu Yan was inwardly speechless. While listening to Li Daochang’s bluster, he also controlled that strand of [Mist] and slowly moved it toward Li Laidi’s mouth.

Li Laidi smelled far too awful. That was also why Zhu Yan had been unwilling to approach her earlier.

Still, listening to Li Laidi mutter to herself had to be better than listening to Li Daochang spout nonsense down here.

…

Upstairs.

Zhu Yan slipped into the greasy strands of her hair and finally made out a few words spoken with a hint of a local accent.

“Mom… ghost marriage…”

Damn.

A ghost marriage?

Zhu Yan committed the phrase to memory.

The “Mom” Li Laidi mentioned was naturally Zhang Xiaohong.

So Li Daochang had sold Zhang Xiaohong’s ashes in order to arrange a ghost marriage?

In his [Mist] form, Zhu Yan felt as if he were about to freeze into frost.

Putting everything else aside, this did line up with the situation in the Huang household.

The inscription on the Huang family’s ancestral tablet had identified the jar of ashes as “Huang Qiang’s ghost bride”!

Zhu Yan felt as if he had just bitten into some exceptionally niche piece of sensational gossip.

What did it mean to mix and match your deceased wife’s ashes and sell them to someone else for a ghost marriage?

Downstairs, Zhu Yan’s main body couldn’t help swallowing.

Upstairs, his [Mist] form moved forward a little farther, gossiping eagerly. As expected, he heard more information.

“Mom… she was clearly a victim…”

“They arrange a ghost marriage, not deal with a man, so why do they have to torment me, their daughter?”

“The money… it all belongs to my little brother…”

Zhu Yan admitted that he didn’t quite understand.

He understood the first two statements.

But what did the last one mean?

What did she mean by “it all belongs to my little brother”?

Her little brother was Li Panlong. Did she mean the money had been deposited into Li Panlong’s account after their mother’s ashes were sold?

If Jin Rongxu had come, he probably would have been able to hear Li Laidi’s thoughts directly.

Unfortunately, Zhu Yan was the one who had come.

Zhu Yan was more straightforward. He only knew how to ask Li Daochang directly.

“There’s something I’m actually curious about.”

Zhu Yan’s mind was working rapidly. He cut off Li Daochang before the man could even begin to lie.

“You want me to trade with you for no other reason than that you want money.”

“You can’t leave the village, and you have no way to contact anyone. I don’t know how I’m supposed to give you this money, and you probably wouldn’t be able to use it anyway.”

“Is it for your son?”

This whole matter was incredibly complicated.

If the information Zhu Yan had was correct, Li Panlong should have gone missing as well, shouldn’t he?