The Sandalwood Box opened with a click.
Li Ran felt he hadn't used any effort to open the box, so why couldn't Song Linjia open it?
But soon, he understood.
He could sense a mysterious power contained within the Sandalwood Box, a power very similar to the ghost power within his own body.
This explained why Song Linjia couldn't open it, while Li Ran could do so with ease.
Song Linjia had only completed the introductory mission and possessed a mere 10 points of ghost power.
Li Ran, however, currently possessed 100 points of ghost power, ten times as much as hers.
That was why he could open the Sandalwood Box so effortlessly.
(Ghost Power Perfume: A sandalwood-scented ghost power perfume sold by Lancome; it not only possesses a long-lasting fragrance but can also briefly increase ghost power.)
The description on the prompt panel made Li Ran's eyes light up.
This thing was far more than just a simple perfume; it could actually boost ghost power, effectively acting as a powerful buff.
"Good stuff!"
Unfortunately, This thing was likely meant for women.
It wasn't impossible for a man to wear perfume.
But Li Ran really didn't have the habit of wearing it.
"Forget it, I'll save it for later."
The late autumn sky grew dark earlier than usual.
By five-thirty in the afternoon, the night had already descended.
Returning to the foot of Building One, Li Ran stopped in his tracks.
The sense of oppression Wang Gan had brought him that morning still left him feeling lingering fear.
Moreover, the Demon King of Killing Wang Gan was in the same building, right on the path he had to take to reach the elevator.
Since he was being targeted by the Demon King of Killing, there was no guarantee that he wasn't waiting for him by the elevator or in the stairwell.
The moment Wang Gan appeared, he could kill him in an instant.
Li Ran considered his current situation by putting himself in the other's shoes.
Clearly, taking the elevator or walking the stairs was extremely dangerous.
It wasn't that Li Ran was being overly cautious; in this Weird World, he had to be meticulous and calculate every step.
"Home, I still have to go back, otherwise I won't be able to complete the task triggered by my ex-wife."
Failure in the [Repair Broken Family] mission meant death.
This meant that no matter how high his ghost power was, if this mission failed, he would end up dead.
Therefore, he had to go home; he had to increase Su Bingyao and Li Ziyang's trust in him as quickly as possible, become the true head of the household, and repair the cracks.
Although, in his heart, he didn't want to go home—after all, he wasn't facing humans.
But for the sake of the mission and his survival, he had to bite the bullet and return.
So the question remained: if he couldn't take the elevator and couldn't use the stairs, how could he get home?
Darkness soon swallowed the entire high-rise, with only a few scattered lights remaining on.
"Right, I almost forgot about this skill."
"Shadow-Escape!"
Li Ran decisively activated the skill attached to the [Shadow-Escape Bracers].
Immediately, his entire body vanished into the darkness, merging with the shadows on the ground.
"Whoa, how amazing."
Li Ran found himself immersed in a world of darkness, but it wasn't a state of being crushed or compressed; it felt like sinking to the bottom of a pool, with the normal world visible above him.
He reached out to touch the boundary between the shadow world and the normal world, and his hand passed through the threshold easily, without any obstruction.
He tried moving within the shadows, and his perspective from above moved along with him.
"Holy crap, this skill is insane."
If a beautiful woman in a short skirt were to walk by right now...
Ahem, in short, this skill was somewhat heaven-defying, like magic.
Not only could he breathe and walk normally within the shadows, he could even scale walls.
That's right, Li Ran had already swum onto the wall.
There was no sensation of weightlessness, and his movement was silky smooth.
He easily swam from the first floor all the way to the eighteenth.
The only issue was that moving too fast made the Shadow Escape state unstable; once the speed exceeded a certain threshold, he risked falling out of the shadows.
He could only move within the shadows at a walking pace.
He also knew that one shouldn't be too greedy; in truth, having this skill was already incredibly awesome.
Meanwhile, An elevator arrived at the lobby on the first floor.
"Ding!"
The elevator doors slowly slid open, and Wang Gan stepped out, looking fierce and menacing.
"Kid, you're dea—"
But the next second, Wang Gan froze; the lobby was completely empty, not a soul in sight.
"What the hell? Where is he?"
It was exactly as Li Ran had feared: Wang Gan had been waiting for his return.
Furthermore, the moment Li Ran entered the line of sight of Building One, Wang Gan had spotted him from upstairs.
He had immediately taken the elevator down, intending to intercept and kill Li Ran to vent the fury burning in his chest.
Wang Gan stared at the other elevator, which remained stationary on the ninth floor, scratching his head in confusion; that elevator hadn't moved at all.
Taking the stairwell was even less likely.
Because he had long since set up traps in the stairwell; if that kid dared to take the stairs, he would surely die!
"Bang!"
Wang Gan was so enraged that he punched the wall, leaving a massive dent in the surface.
"Damn it, did this kid grow wings and fly away?"
Back at his front door, Li Ran paused for a moment before entering the door code.
He had memorized the code his son entered yesterday.
If a husband couldn't even remember his own home's door code, it would be far too suspicious.
"Honey, I'm ho—"
As soon as he stepped inside, Li Ran turned around.
A pair of cold eyes radiating an eerie purple light appeared before him.
(She is hypnotizing you, attempting to extract certain secrets from your mouth.)
Before him, Su Bingyao seemed to have been prepared; the moment Li Ran entered, she had cast a hypnotic technique using her ocular arts.
Li Ran's eyes were overtaken by the eerie purple light, and immediately, his hands hung limply at his sides, his gaze turning dull and hollow as he stood rooted to the spot.
The demonic light in Su Bingyao's eyes slowly faded, and a chilling, icy intent erupted from her frosty gaze.
There were some things she had to clarify; otherwise, she could never forgive her husband.
A man's mouth is a lying devil; not a single word is true.
Her husband's changes yesterday had left her feeling unsettled—it wasn't that his transformation was bad, but if he wasn't trying to hide something, why would his temperament suddenly shift?
Furthermore, she would never forget everything her husband had done to her in the past.
She did not believe that a man with such a notorious track record would change for her.
Since she couldn't get a definitive answer from his mouth, she would confirm it herself.
Her hypnosis could dig out the secrets buried deep within a man's heart.
All lies would have nowhere to hide!
Su Bingyao turned and walked toward the floor-to-ceiling window, sitting down elegantly before issuing an unquestionable command: "Come here."
Li Ran's gaze was hollow, his body stumbling forward slowly like a puppet that had lost its soul.
Su Bingyao was quite confident in her own hypnotic technique.
The hypnotized dare not disobey!
"Stand there."
Su Bingyao stared fixedly at Li Ran, who stood obediently before her.
"I ask, you answer."
Li Ran nodded blankly.
Su Bingyao was very satisfied with Li Ran's reaction; now, she would dig the truth out of her ex-husband's mouth and resolve the knot in her heart.
Su Bingyao said: "Give me your phone."
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