Having entered the Spirit Walking state that granted access to the unseen, Ding Songyan watched Feng Zhengning's trembling ghost, feeling as though he might fall apart at any moment and vanish like smoke.
For the moment, he ignored Zheng Zhuxi's puzzled, astonished gaze and began questioning Feng Zhengning:
"Where are you from?"
"Jinyang Prefecture, Du Province." Even Feng Zhengning's ghostly voice was trembling, almost devoid of its eerie quality.
He really did come from Jinyang Prefecture in Du Province... Ding Songyan muttered, then asked:
"What brought you to Flat Lake Town?"
Feng Zhengning's ghost looked at Ding Songyan in fear and terror.
"I came to investigate what happened in Dingjiang Prefecture's capital a month ago, to find out exactly what the Sage-Slaying Path did.
"I learned that you, who once posed as Ji Hanyi's elder brother, had joined the Xiaoming Sect. I came to Flat Lake Town specifically to wait for you to come down the mountain and get to the bottom of it."
Perhaps he had spent too long posing as a traveling cloth merchant-even this fiend of the Heterodox Path spoke in a bookish manner.
"You?" Ding Songyan asked in amusement.
At the same time, he sighed inwardly:
The ripples from the Zhen Estate affair still haven't settled... I was right to conceal my strength earlier. Otherwise, who knows how many titans of the Heterodox Path I would have drawn here...
Feng Zhengning's ghost dared not voice his anger. He merely said in bewilderment:
"No outward abnormalities have manifested in me. I'm ideally suited to conducting inquiries in a city."
"True enough." Ding Songyan considered briefly. "You deliberately left Flat Lake Town and circled back just to ambush me here?"
Feng Zhengning's ghost shook his head blankly.
"I came to kill Zheng Zhuxi. She's also a 'Strange Being,'