The car stopped at the village entrance.
The weeds here were as tall as half a person, and eerie green will-o'-the-wisps occasionally flickered among the crumbling walls and ruins.
The air was filled with a nauseating stench, a mixture of stagnant water and rotting vegetation.
"Whoa! The air quality here is awful. The PM2.5 level is definitely way over the limit!"
The moment Leon got out of the car, he dramatically covered his nose. Yet with his other hand, he tightly hugged the lily named "Lily," which had just been crushed underfoot and had now miraculously revived.
He looked around and suddenly spotted an abandoned old well at the village entrance. Beside it was a rusty faucet, still dripping murky water.
"Wait! As a professional ghost-catching expert, I need to conduct a water quality test first and see just how high this place's evil energy index is."
To everyone's horrified stares, Leon actually walked over, caught a drop of the filthy water on his fingertip, and put it into his mouth without hesitation.
"Slurp—"
"Are you insane? That's corpse water!" Jin Maiji nearly jumped in fright.
Leon closed his eyes and savored it as though he were tasting red wine. A few seconds later, he suddenly opened his eyes, and his sunglasses with only one lens slid down to the tip of his nose.
"Mm... smooth on the tongue, with a long finish. The opening notes are a little bitter—that's the flavor of two-hundred-year-old rust. The middle notes are a little salty—that's undecomposed organic matter. As for the finish..."
Leon's expression abruptly changed, becoming exceptionally serious. "It's a rich scent of rouge! This is old rouge powder! After drinking that water, my throat feels itchy, and I really want to... sing opera?"
"Ahem... yi ya..." Leon actually raised his fingers