The Creatures that We Are

For the next half an hour, Gao Yang made use of every trick at his disposal to embellish and dramatize the story of the Gu Family’s Village, making terrible sound effects with his mouth every now and then to mimic the strange noises he had heard in person.

The story was full of twists and turns, scares and shocks, involving twisted human nature and depravity.

And Xia Li, whether due to her scaredy nature or her overly active imagination, had been crushing the pillow in her arms, her face pale. And she broke into screams and trembled every once in a while.

A scaredy cat obsessed with horrors. Name a more iconic combo.

Finally, Gao Yang got to the climax of the story.

The five people venturing into the old village found out they were perfect matches to the family of five, sharing the same composition of genders and ages.

“Ahhh!”

Xia Li screamed again, almost breaking Gao Yang’s eardrums.

He continued with the story. Soon, it was revealed that the villagers were nothing but monsters trapped by Heavenly Way.

And immediately, Xia Li’s fear evaporated. She cast aside the pillow, her expression cold. “Alright. You can stop here. I have an idea about how things end.”

Gao Yang paused. Wait, there’s an intense fight coming up, and I’m just getting into it. Why did you call it stop?

Xia Li got off the bed and put on her high heels. “I remember. The setting of the story is quite familiar. Is it the Rune Cave that you visited with your former organization?”

“You caught me.” Gao Yang smiled. “Yes, it is the Gu Family’s Village.”

Xia Li rose to turn on the light and threw Gao Yang an approving look. “You’ve got a talent for telling ghost stories, Seven Shadow. You adapted the event well.”

“There’s not much adaptation involved,” Gao Yang said humbly. “It’s more or less what happened.”

“For real?” That won him even more brownie points from Xia Li, and her tone became more friendly. “You went through all that?”

“Seventy percent of it.”

“Whoa, that…” Xia Li’s eyes widened. She looked envious. “Must be so much fun!”

Gao Yang was speechless. She sure had a strange hobby.

“If only I could be there. Wouldn’t it be ten thousand times more exciting than a haunted house?”

You’re so scared of ghosts but want the thrills of it so badly. Wouldn’t you wet your pants if you were there?

Of course, Gao Yang didn’t put the insult into words.

With a smile, he came up with an idea. “Elder Vermilion Bird.”

“What?” Xia Li grew wary. The boy wouldn’t call her Elder for nothing. He must be looking for more information.

“I would like to ask you a few more questions.” Gao Yang didn’t hide his intention. “In exchange, I’ll tell you another ghost story, and I guarantee you it’ll be even more exciting.”

“Really?” Xia Li’s interest was piqued.

“Really.” He would go through a few horror novels and make up a story.

“Alright, go on. I make no promise to answer you though.” Xia Li sat back down on her bed and lifted her now drenched bang.

Gao Yang’s gaze grew serious. “I’d like to ask about Three Air.”

“I knew it.” Xia Li smiled like she had anticipated his question. It wasn’t difficult to figure out. It made sense that Seven Shadow would be curious about his predecessor.

“How did Three Air die?”

“He had already died for more than 24 hours when his body arrived here. I couldn’t question him.”

Xia Li shrugged. “However, I can detect the energy lingering on his body. While he was burned to charcoal, the real cause of death was Detonation.”

Gao Yang’s heart sank.

Detonation!

Mad Red’s Talent!

Mad Red, Three Air’s murderer, along with Yellow Butterfly and Officer Liu, had turned into abominations with the strange medicine they administered themselves with. They were all from the Godbearer Cult!

“Are you sure?” Gao Yang asked.

“I am.” Xia Li smiled confidently. “Once an organism was hurt , no matter if the injury has healed or if the traces have been destroyed or covered, it won’t escape my eyes.”

“It’s like a hard disk. Even if you delete the files or even format the whole disk, I can still find traces of data left.”

Gao Yang nodded.

Vermilion Bird’s Talent must be Life-type, and it was likely the strongest Talent among the type.

“How about Blue Dolphin?”

“On the surface, he suffered a sudden cardiac death due to overtaxing himself, but the actual cause of death was a curse.”

“A curse?”

“Yes, a curse I’ve never encountered before. It may be a Spectre’s doing.”

The Godbearer Cult attracted quite the variety of members.

There were awakeners, freeriders and overtakers, and now Spectres were also involved.

It would be so much more difficult for him to avenge Wan Sisi and eliminate the group completely than he had expected.

Thinking back to his near death at Mad Red’s hand, Gao Yang said with a sigh, “Detonation is a terrifying Talent.”

Xia Li nodded. “Detonation as well as some curse-like Talents activated through simple physical contact. It’s easy to fall for it when you don’t know about them, which makes them perfect for assassination.”

Xia Li pursed her lips. “But it doesn’t work on everyone.”

Gao Yang’s eyes glinted. “Really?”

“Yeah. For example, curse-like Talents don’t work as well on awakeners with Miracle-type Talents, and failures are common.”

Xia Li blinked. “And Detonation won’t do much to those with Life-type or Guard-type Talents.”

True, Gao Yang mused. For example, Lovely Lamb and Dead Pig can take a great amount of damage in a short time, which would render Mad Red’s ambush useless.

“Such ambushes also fail often when facing an awakener with a higher-ranking Talent.”

She then smirked at Gao Yang, acting like the intelligent woman she was again. “When you shook my hand, Seven Shadow, weren’t you doing something sneaky?”

Gao Yang felt like he was on pins and needles. As expected, he shouldn’t pull tricks with any Elders and awakeners at or above their level.

He admitted, “I have Replicate. I was trying to check out your Talent.”

“Haha, but you can’t, can you?” Xia Li’s tone was without heat.

“Yeah.” Gao Yang smiled. “I’m wondering though, why do Talents fail when facing someone with a higher-ranking Talent?”

“The actual mechanism of it is still not clear, but there are two main schools of thoughts.” Xia Li extended her index finger. “One is that higher-ranking Talents have an inherent suppressive effect on lower-ranking Talents. However, the theory doesn’t make much sense since it isn't rare for someone with lower-ranking Talents to kill someone with higher-ranking Talents.”

She then extended her middle finger. “The other theory is that outside of the energy used for Talents, there is some sort of mental power inside an awakener’s body, and someone with higher-ranking Talents usually has greater mental power, which in turn makes their mental defense higher.”

Gao Yang put two and two together. It’s impressive that they have gotten this far even without a system.

To summarize, he should raise his Willpower in order to defend against insidious ambushes and curses from now on.

“Why do you ask? Are you investigating something?”

Gao Yang didn’t say anything.

Xia Li pushed, “Is it another mission from Guildmaster?”

Gao Yang gave her a non-committal smile to let her come to a conclusion on her own. Guildmaster Qilin made a perfect cover.

“Alright. I’m not too interested.”

Xia Li brushed a hand through her hair. “Still, if you ever run into a problem during your investigation, for example, if whoever you’re investigating gets killed, send the body to me ASAP, and I’ll question the body for you. Remember, it’s best to do it within 24 hours, and no later than 48 hours. Otherwise there’s nothing I can do.”

“Thank you.” Gao Yang smiled.

“It’s not for free.” Xia Li’s eyes glinted with excitement. “Remember! You promise me more ghost stories!”

“You have my word.”

Houseau3's Thoughts

Another victim of Mad Red. Detonation truly is a great Talent for assassination.

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