Like a nimble little cat, he crept silently up to the window of the pavilion's upper floor and peeked inside.
Inside, Xuan Ming was performing the final spirit awakening on a newly refined Netherworld Ghost General.
The ghost general had a blue face and jutting fangs, and baleful energy seethed around it. Success was just within reach.
Lin Chen held his breath and quietly crushed a pellet of colorless, odorless Dream Illusion Pollen in his little hand.
It was a trinket he had "borrowed" from Grandma's private stash.
The pollen drifted inside on the breeze. Completely absorbed in his work, Xuan Ming suddenly felt his nose itch and instinctively turned his head to let out a very faint sneeze.
"Achoo!"
That fleeting instant of distraction was all it took!
The soul flames in the eye sockets of the nearly completed ghost general shuddered violently.
Then, with a soft "pfft," they went out like a candle doused with water.
The ghostly body swayed, then actually dissolved into a thin cloud of yin energy. Most of it dispersed, leaving only a hollow shell.
Xuan Ming: "..."
He slowly turned his head and looked toward the window, his face expressionless.
A little head was swiftly ducking out of sight there, but the fleeting glimpse of a moon-white hem and the faint, familiar fluctuations of spiritual power lingering in the air had already betrayed the "culprit."
"Lin! Chen!" Neither anger nor pleasure could be heard in Xuan Ming's voice, but the temperature around the pavilion seemed to plunge several degrees.
A bright laugh rang out from beyond the window, brimming with the delight of a successful prank, followed by footsteps swiftly retreating into the distance.
Looking at the failed ghost general's shell, Xuan Ming's lips twitched almost imperceptibly. In the end, however, he merely