CHAPTER 37: CHAPTER 37 LICKING SPIRIT

Stimulating Yang energy, channeling Yang energy, infusing Yang energy—these really aren’t rare abilities.

Most people who practice martial arts, or those Taoists who walk the path of pure Yang, as long as they have a bit of skill, can do all of this.

But the problem is, if they inject such a massive amount of Yang energy into a hopping corpse, there would only be one outcome.

They would directly destroy the hopping corpse.

Only Scorching Sun can add a blessing to a hopping corpse. Precisely because of this, what looks like a basic use of Yang energy has a specific name—a very special name.

Wen Yan had no idea about any of this. A lot of things Old Zhang thought were common sense, Wen Yan just didn’t know. He probably knew less than a random senior field agent from the Scorching Sun Department.

Right now, his head was full of how to muddle through today’s funeral, to make everyone believe the hopping corpse had been processed normally and was already cremated.

He first went to the old ice warehouse and pushed the body from freezer number 51 to the Cremation Department.

Then, using the half-baked makeup skills he’d picked up, he carefully tidied up the hopping corpse’s appearance, changed his clothes, placed him in the coffin, covered him with a blanket to hide the coffin nails in his body, and wheeled him to the solemn farewell hall.

Around eight o’clock, some relatives and friends who had received the notice started to arrive, paying their last respects as the ceremony required.

The hopping corpse lying in the coffin had both eyes tightly shut, and after makeup, his face looked just like a living person asleep—maybe even a bit too healthy.

Relatives and friends viewed the body. Some whispered in private, praising the mortician’s handiwork, saying he actually looked better than he did when alive.

Wen Yan kept a watchful eye from the side. After an hour, when the procedures were done, the old man’s other two children finally arrived in a hurry.

But when they came in, both had dark faces and said nothing—not even a polite greeting to any other relatives or friends.

When the ceremony was over and the body was being wheeled away, the daughter stepped forward, tears streaming down her face, reaching into the coffin to grab the hopping corpse’s hand.

The blanket on the hopping corpse was lifted a little, and Wen Yan’s heart skipped—he’d already seen a trace of the coffin nail. He hurried forward.

But someone beat him to it—the eldest son rushed up first, grabbed his sister’s hand, and gritted out:

"What are you doing? Do you want Dad to leave with regrets?"

Wen Yan walked to the coffin, gently lifted the blanket, pulling it up a bit more to cover the hopping corpse’s face, then quietly reminded:

"The scheduled lucky hour has arrived."

The siblings exchanged a glance, faces long, and let go. Wen Yan pushed the coffin towards the Cremation Department.

Inside the Cremation Department, he brought out the hopping corpse, then put number 51 inside instead, closed the lid, and handed the coffin over to the colleague in charge of the furnace today.

Wen Yan watched as the coffin entered the luxury furnace, watched as the flames were lit, watched everything burn to ashes before finally turning to leave.

Then, together with Old Zhang, he took the hopping corpse behind the Cremation Department to the old office building. Old Zhang waited at the door; Wen Yan led the hopping corpse inside, found an empty office at random, and let the hopping corpse stay there for the time being.

Everything went much more smoothly than expected, mostly because there were more people helping behind the scenes without directly getting involved.

Wen Yan also realized that when you’ve got a mole on your side, everything becomes a hell of a lot easier.

And the hopping corpse stayed still the whole time, eyes closed, quiet as a real corpse, cooperatively enduring all the fuss.

This time, there wasn’t even someone from the Scorching Sun Department following to supervise the whole process—after all, Wen Yan himself was officially a Scorching Sun Department field agent, qualified to sign off himself.

When he came out, he saw Feng Yao waiting on a bench under the shade of a tree.

Seeing Wen Yan and Old Zhang approach, Feng Yao started talking to himself:

"I told those two siblings that their younger brother had actually died a few months ago. Some scammer who looked like their brother took his identity and pretended to be him.

Their father started showing early signs of dementia these last few months and let himself get tricked. He ended up leaving the inheritance to the ’brother’—who was really the scammer.

Now that it’s confirmed their brother has been dead all along, the inheritance goes to the two of them."

"Hmm? They really don’t know what’s been happening with their old man?" Wen Yan was surprised. They’d really believe that?

Feng Yao gave a cynical smile.

"They haven’t come home for over six months. The last phone call was three months back.

I just mentioned the inheritance and they instantly rushed home to tear the place apart, looking for the property deeds and bankbooks, arguing all over the house.

No wonder the old man felt guilty toward his youngest son. When they were kids, all the good stuff went to the eldest brother and elder sister. Even when the youngest was just two points short in his college entrance exam, they didn’t bother paying to help him get in.

And later, those two leeches never looked after anything at home but still worried that their dad would leave the house to the youngest—hell, they even pushed him to live in a rented place rather than at home.

As he got older and his wife passed away, the old man’s sense of guilt about the youngest just grew deeper.

Last New Year, when those two showed up—guess why they bothered?

Because the old man was planning to transfer the house to the youngest. The two leeches panicked.

So instead of a reunion, they had a huge fight that the whole neighborhood knows about.

Now that they know the youngest is dead and their dad got conned, you think they give two shits about a corpse? If it hadn’t been for the already scheduled memorial, they probably wouldn’t have shown up at all."

As they talked, Feng Yao’s laptop suddenly made a sound.

He glanced at the screen.

"Someone just tapped into the surveillance in the farewell hall."

Feng Yao started typing rapidly, then less than three minutes later sighed.

"That bastard took me on a trip around the globe. Damn close, missed him by a hair."

"Is he any good?"

"Amateur. Couldn’t keep up the act, disconnected himself."

Feng Yao pulled up the security footage: the shot of the eldest daughter holding her father’s hand. From this angle, you could just make out a bit of a black nail poking out among the hopping corpse’s clothes.

Feng Yao pulled out the prepared paperwork, scrawled his signature, then handed them to Wen Yan.

"Sign these—by regulation, we need two signatures to finish the process."

Wen Yan took a look—two files, one for number 51, the Wooden Armor Mask—which was really just number 51’s face—

The other, about the hopping corpse.

Both documents were confirmations of cremation completed.

He signed and handed them to Feng Yao, who then took out a lease contract and two keys for Wen Yan.

"The place you’ve been renting isn’t safe anymore. We found traces, nearly invisible, on the shop sign by your complex, and even up on the streetlight. All left by some critter called the Licking Spirit—a supernatural spirit. Its tongue erases the old marks, but weirdly, the marks it leaves don’t fade easily.

You were being tailed a few days ago. Our guess is two different parties crossed paths and fought there."

"The streetlight..."

"Yeah, the streetlight had the most residue. Looks like someone washed the whole top end clean. The timeline fits that streetlight incident two days ago—it’s got to be connected.

Also, on the shop’s sign, there was an ad with a character on it. There were traces there too. My guess? It’s the same person as the one you saw on the bus-stop billboard.

But that’s just a hunch. We don’t have absolutely solid comparison evidence for it."

Wen Yan kept silent. Suddenly, all the scattered questions in his mind seemed to fall into place.

He had never figured out why Fake Mo Zhicheng would come meet him face-to-face. Surely, with that, he knew Wen Yan was one of the people who could access the old ice warehouse.

But Fake Mo Zhicheng never tried to brainwash him, never tried to use him for the job—wouldn’t that have been easier?

He’d been in Mo Zhicheng’s car and nothing had happened.

He thought about the timeline again. The night of the streetlight incident was when he’d just been discharged and gone home. The previous days, since he saw the person in the bus-stop ad, he’d been in the hospital.

The morning he went home, he met Honest Man, Pei Tugou. That same night, the Great Killer Star Pei Tugou appeared in Virtue City—hanged Wen Yan’s boss from a streetlight.

So now it’s pretty clear—Pei Tugou fought with someone tailing Wen Yan at the gate to his apartment complex.

And since the most traces were on the streetlight, Pei Tugou must have won and strung the guy up there.

After that, Fake Mo Zhicheng probably got spooked—or maybe just didn’t want to risk anything unexpected—so he gave up trying to use Wen Yan, and switched to the plan he’d made from the start.

That’s the only way it makes sense. After all, Fake Mo Zhicheng’s a cold and ruthless bastard—he’d want it all, if he could.

Wen Yan felt a little dazed. He never dreamed that the key turning point was simply helping Honest Man, Pei Tugou—and then, that same night, the blood-soaked Great Killer Star Pei Tugou saved his life.