5 Ghost Claw

Before long, all the streetlights along the road lit up.

These lamps were fueled by "Brown Oil," a lighting fuel produced by a perennial tree—the Stone Fruit Tree.

Once this tree reached twelve years of age, it bore Stone Fruits. Their skins were as hard as rock, while inside was a viscous, high-calorific oil called "Stone Fruit Resin."

This substance could be refined into Brown Oil; the residue left after refining could be mixed with sawdust and pressed into Honeycomb Fuel; Brown Oil could also be mixed with resin to make candles.

In short, it had countless uses.

Cheng Han felt that Stone Fruit Resin was rather like petroleum from his previous life.

The difference was that petroleum was pumped out of the ground, while Stone Fruit Resin grew on trees.

Ten minutes later.

Cheng Han rode his Bicycle to the main entrance of Shanyi Neighborhood.

Shanyi Neighborhood was an officially built Welfare Residential Complex. Its residents were all low-income families, more than a hundred and sixty households in total. Orphans like him were not particularly common.

Cheng Han jumped off his Bicycle and pushed it toward the gate.

Woof! Woof!

Resounding barks came from the entrance.

Two imposing large guard dogs, each as tall as an adult man's waist, trotted over from either side.

They were Spirit Mastiffs, intelligent enough to rival fifteen-year-old Youths and capable of understanding human speech.

Spirit Mastiffs were officially employed working dogs under the Patrol Department. The latter assigned several Spirit Mastiffs to every residential complex to serve as security guards.

Cheng Han immediately called out, "Tao Zi, Li Zi, it's me!"

The two Spirit Mastiffs wagged their tails a few times in a friendly manner.

The Spirit Mastiff named Tao Zi circled Cheng Han once, then pressed its nose close to his backpack and sniffed it carefully several times.

This was a routine inspection.

There were many hazardous items related to Alien Gods in this world. One of the Spirit Mastiffs' duties was to identify such things and prevent them from being brought into residential complexes.

Woof!

Tao Zi barked, swinging its head toward the gate as though saying: Go on in.

It was practically sentient.

Cheng Han waved at them and passed through the complex gate.

Woof! Woof!

The two Spirit Mastiffs each barked in response, watching him enter the complex.

*

The small apartment where Cheng Han lived had one bedroom, one living room, one kitchen, and one bathroom, with a total area of over thirty square meters.

Until he turned sixteen, he did not need to pay a single Copper Coin in rent. Every month, he could also receive twenty jin of rice, ten jin of flour, and four hundred and fifty Copper Coins.

In his previous life, by contrast, his shabby single room had been only ten square meters, yet the rent had been as high as fifteen hundred yuan, devouring a third of his salary. After food, transportation, clothing, and other expenses, there had been almost nothing left each month.

Although this world lacked all kinds of household appliances and was far less convenient to live in, the pressures of life were much lower than in his previous life.

Cheng Han set down his backpack and began making dinner.

First, he poured a little Brown Oil into the stove and lit it, then placed a piece of Honeycomb Fuel inside. Before long, blazing flames rose up.

He rinsed some rice and set it on the stove. Then he washed a handful of White Umbrella Mushrooms twice, stir-fried them in an iron wok with several pieces of salted meat, and dinner was ready.

Cheng Han tasted a White Umbrella Mushroom and nodded slightly. "It tastes pretty good!"

White Umbrella Mushrooms contained many kinds of amino acids, and the oil had fully brought out their savory flavor. Their deliciousness was in no way inferior to the truffles of his previous life.

He deeply felt that humanity in this world had developed and utilized plants far more extensively than humanity in that other time and space.

The Stone Fruit Tree was a typical example, and fungi were another.

Since transmigrating here, Cheng Han had seen no fewer than five hundred varieties of mushrooms at the market.

After dinner, he entered the bedroom and lay down on the bed. His breathing soon became long and steady.

Meditation Class at school had taught a technique called the Volcano Breathing Method. According to Qiu Yuan, if one mastered this breathing method, one could enter deep sleep in three minutes.

This method demanded exceptionally high aptitude. In the entire class, only one person had barely gotten started; out of ten attempts, they could enter deep sleep quickly only once or twice.

Even throughout the entire school, fewer than fifteen people had managed to get started.

Naturally, the original owner of this body had not been among them.

After transmigrating, Cheng Han had once had a sudden whim and used his skill to deduce the breathing method. To his surprise, he received feedback—adjusting a certain detail would help him master it.

He gave it a try and discovered that his sleep quality improved slightly.

Delighted, Cheng Han decided to improve the breathing method completely. After half a year of deductions, he finally created an entirely new breathing method—the Cheng Clan Breathing Method.

More importantly, it was a method perfectly suited to him.

Not only did it work every time, its effects were astonishingly good.

He could enter deep sleep in two minutes, far superior to the Volcano Breathing Method.

*

An hour later.

Cheng Han woke up.

He felt refreshed and alert, without the slightest trace of dizziness in his head.

Checking his attributes, he saw that his Spirit Value had reached 7.2/13.2.

Compared to before, his Spirit Value had recovered by a full 6.6 points.

That was the benefit of deep sleep.

Cheng Han pictured the Black Cat and silently said, "Using the Black Cat I encountered earlier as a clue, deduce what it will experience over the next few days."

A cool sensation immediately spread across his scalp.

But he received no information.

The deduction had failed.

His Spirit Value decreased by 0.3 points.

Cheng Han took several deep breaths, then silently said for the second time, "Deduce."

The cool sensation appeared again.

But there was still no feedback.

Another failure.

This was actually normal.

Based on past experience, the Eye of Omniscience had a failure rate of roughly eighty-five percent. Success was the rarer outcome.

Cheng Han tried five times in a row. On the sixth deduction, he finally received feedback.

His vision blurred, and a somewhat hazy illusory scene appeared before his eyes:

The Black Cat leaped down from the top of a wall, landing lightly on the ground. It let out a sharp cry and sprinted wildly into the distance.

A second later, a shocking change erupted.

A patch of shadow, dark as ink, suddenly appeared on the ground. A pitch-black Ghost Claw flashed out from it and swiftly grabbed at the Black Cat.

The Black Cat seemed to sense something. At the critical moment, it sprang high into the air.

The Ghost Claw immediately changed direction, touching the Black Cat's body like lightning before turning into a wisp of green smoke and vanishing completely.

Something unbelievable happened.

The Black Cat's body seemed to turn into a leaking balloon, rapidly deflating.

Smack!

An intact cat skin fell from midair and landed on the ground with a soft sound.

Its flesh and blood had vanished bizarrely.

The scene froze for a moment, then disappeared.

A message flashed into his mind: "Proficiency +4. Current Proficiency: 20/1000. Spirit Value: 2.4/13.2."

Cheng Han felt his scalp tingle. "My earlier premonition was right. There really is something wrong with the Black Cat. Could that shadow and Ghost Claw be the power of an Alien God?"

He had never imagined that a chance encounter on his way home would become entangled with a terrifying Alien God.

Cheng Han steadied himself and began to analyze the situation. "In the illusory scene, a light rain was falling from the sky. That means the Ghost Claw will appear on a rainy day.

"Judging by the Black Cat's actions, it most likely encountered something terrifying inside the wall and fled in panic, only to fail to escape its misfortune."

He could no longer sit still. "There's a Textile Factory inside that wall. Something terrible may be about to happen there."

The Ghost Claw could instantly drain a Black Cat dry. Killing people would naturally be no challenge, and a factory was a densely populated place. If something truly happened, many people would surely die.

Cheng Han used the Eye of Omniscience again. "Deduce when it will rain."

The result came quickly—a light rain would fall three mornings from now.

This also meant that the disaster would occur three days later.

Cheng Han pondered for a long time before making a decision. "Although I currently have no way to stop the disaster, I can at least report it anonymously.

"I'll first find detailed evidence, then figure out a way to notify the authorities.

"The Black Cat is the victim foretold in the vision. Its fate is closely tied to the Ghost Claw, making it naturally the best linked item. It can greatly increase the success rate and let me deduce more information.

"Tomorrow, I'll take a day off, find a way to catch the Black Cat, and use the Eye of Omniscience to make further deductions."