Back at school, it was still fairly early, and the imposing Big G immediately drew plenty of attention.
"Who's that? What a badass!"
"A Big G! My dream car!"
Quite a few students drove, but luxury cars like the Big G were still rare. Passersby couldn't help discussing it.
Lin Chen drove to the parking lot near the dorms, locked the car, and was about to leave when a dark shadow suddenly darted out in front of him.
"That guy again!"
Lin Chen's face darkened as he watched the Orange Cat dart away. The stray had startled him last night, and now it was trying to scare him again?
"I'm definitely teaching you a lesson this time!"
Lin Chen pushed off and chased after the Orange Cat. Before long, he spotted it in the woods, but before he could get close, it darted deeper into the trees.
"If I let you get away today, you can call me whatever you want!"
After seeing the Orange Cat escape right in front of him several times, Lin Chen was getting angry. Even Fourth Order cultivators couldn't escape him. There was no way he'd let a cat get away!
Lin Chen burst into a full sprint, chasing after the Orange Cat. Yet it kept a steady distance ahead of him, and for a moment, he couldn't catch up.
"Something's not right!"
Lin Chen's expression turned serious. Animals could certainly move fast, but only in short bursts. After running such a long distance, the Orange Cat shouldn't have been able to keep up that pace.
Besides, Lin Chen wasn't an ordinary person. His speed was far beyond that of an ordinary person, yet the Orange Cat was even faster than him. That was clearly abnormal.
"A mutated beast?"
A glint flashed in Lin Chen's eyes. He hadn't forgotten that the appearance of the Time Slot was what had awakened his system—and that other creatures had mutated as well.
According to Xu Fei, all the Mutated Creatures at Qingzhou University had been killed. But after seeing the Orange Cat, Lin Chen had his doubts. Perhaps some had slipped through the net!
"Little Orange, you came right to me. Don't blame me for what happens next!"
At that moment, the Orange Cat was a source of origin energy in Lin Chen's eyes. He immediately sped up.
He chased it to the end of the woods, but the Orange Cat had vanished. He had no choice but to search around.
"Little Orange, come out! Big Brother's brought you something tasty." Lin Chen spoke softly as he carefully scanned his surroundings, trying to find where the Orange Cat was hiding.
After searching for a while, he found no clues. Just as Lin Chen was about to give up, a cat meowed nearby. He moved in a flash to where the sound had come from, but the Orange Cat was nowhere to be seen.
"What's this..."
Lin Chen's expression suddenly changed as he looked ahead. An entrance to a sewer, about as tall as a person and sealed behind an iron mesh, came into view.
It wasn't that he suspected the Orange Cat had run into the sewer. Rather, Lin Chen sensed a familiar aura coming from inside: "Ghostly energy!"
"Why is there ghostly energy here?" Lin Chen's expression grew serious. The presence of ghostly energy meant there could very well be a ghost inside. After all, ghostly energy couldn't exist on its own.
Crack!
Lin Chen exerted force with his hand and snapped the heavy padlock. Then he went inside.
A pungent stench hit him. Lin Chen quickly covered his nose and mouth, turned on his phone's flashlight, and headed deeper into the sewer. After a while, he reached a broad pool of foul water.
Several pipes of roughly the same size opened around the pool. Clearly, this was where the sewer's flow converged and branched out, and the source of the ghostly energy was the pool before him.
"Damn... You're not telling me I have to go down there!"
Lin Chen's expression turned grim. This was clearly where all the wastewater from the entire school collected, and he had no idea how deep it was. If he went in, he probably wouldn't be clean even after three or five days of scrubbing.
There was no way he was going down there. Not if they killed him!
Without the slightest hesitation, Lin Chen summoned his Blood Qi True Flame. In an instant, a terrifying blaze of blood qi surged toward the pool. If he couldn't go down, he'd force whatever was inside to come out!
Fortunately, the Blood Qi True Flame wasn't actual fire. Otherwise, an attack like this would have caused an explosion.
As the Blood Qi True Flame descended, the ghostly energy was instantly cleared away. A shrill scream came from the bottom of the pool, and a figure immediately burst out of the water.
Huh?
Lin Chen stared at the ghost above the pool and froze for a moment. The ghost had delicate features and gave off the feeling of a girl next door.
More importantly, he had a vague sense that he'd seen her somewhere before.
"Tang Jiajia!"
Lin Chen murmured her name. He finally remembered where he'd seen her.
A missing-person notice. That had been in his third year. Tang Jiajia, a classmate in his year, had gone missing. The school and her class had both put up notices, but she'd never been found. He hadn't expected her to have died here.
"Tang Jiajia?" The ghost echoed the name in confusion. Then her face twisted, ghostly energy erupted from her body, and she lunged straight at Lin Chen.
Lin Chen met the charging ghost with a punch, but he didn't strike to kill.
After all, she'd been his classmate in life, and she didn't seem to understand what had happened to her after death. Her body was still soaking in the sewer, too. If possible, he wanted to ask her about her disappearance and return her remains to her parents.
The memory of Tang Jiajia's parents coming to school to look for their daughter was still vivid. Those two poor old people still didn't know she was dead.
Lin Chen stopped Tang Jiajia. Just as he was about to question her, a tremendous force suddenly struck his abdomen, knocking him backward.
"What's this..."
Lin Chen stared in disbelief at the child emerging from Tang Jiajia's abdomen. Had she been pregnant when she died?
He'd never heard that Tang Jiajia had a boyfriend. And pregnancy wasn't some terrible misfortune—it wasn't as if she needed to take her own life over it!
"This really is a pain!"
Lin Chen hadn't expected this situation. Fortunately, the little ghost wasn't very strong, and he hadn't been hurt. Blood Qi True Flame surged in his hand and fell upon Tang Jiajia.
"Ah!"
Tang Jiajia let out a scream, and the little ghost in her belly began to wail as well. Seeing that most of the ghostly energy around Tang Jiajia had dissipated, Lin Chen hurriedly withdrew his Blood Qi True Flame.
"Tang Jiajia, wake up!" Lin Chen bellowed.
At Lin Chen's shout, the dazed Tang Jiajia finally regained a sliver of clarity.
"Zheng Peng, I'm going to kill you!" Killing intent surged from Tang Jiajia.
Lin Chen looked at her and asked calmly, "Zheng Peng—your boyfriend?"
"That's right. That scumbag! I was blind to agree to go out with him." Tang Jiajia's face was full of regret.
Lin Chen looked at Tang Jiajia and shook his head slightly. "Even if he deceived you, you shouldn't have killed yourself. I saw your parents looking for you back then. I still remember how desperate they were."
"I didn't kill myself. Zheng Peng killed me! He didn't just kill me—he killed our child, too. Then he imprisoned me here and refined me into this!" Tang Jiajia roared in grief and anger.
What?
Hearing Tang Jiajia's words, Lin Chen was completely stunned. He'd killed his own girlfriend and child, then refined them into ghosts? What kind of twisted thing was that?
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