Is This What You Get to Read for Free?

Boom!

Explosive flames burst against his wife's body, but they went out instantly, as though they had met cold water. His wife remained completely unharmed.

"What?!" Shen Lingxue's eyes widened in disbelief. "Not even a scratch? Run!"

She had realized that the Ghost before her was far beyond anything she could handle. She turned to flee, but just then-

His wife gently swept her pale little hand through the air.

Something seemed to stir the air. As Shen Lingxue and Li Wenhao tried to flee, their heads slid straight off their necks, leaving cuts as smooth as mirrors.

Whoosh!

Without the slightest hesitation, Fang Xiu lunged toward their bodies and began rapidly searching them.

"Darling, what are you looking for?"

His wife's gentle voice sounded beside Fang Xiu's ear.

Fang Xiu ignored her and continued searching for any useful information.

The next moment, searing pain struck. His vision went black, and his consciousness gradually faded.

Stars dotted the night sky.

Fang Xiu stood outside his front door. He had returned to the moment when he had just escaped from Green Mountain Psychiatric Hospital and arrived home.

"Oh? The Death Rollback checkpoint hasn't changed? It seems escaping from Green Mountain Psychiatric Hospital counted as one event checkpoint. Coming home, testing my wife with the Scalpel, and getting killed marked my entry into the next checkpoint. Until another supernatural incident occurs, the checkpoint probably won't change.

"So the Investigation Bureau will come knocking tomorrow morning at eight forty. It's time to show the world my ability to foresee the future."

Fang Xiu decided to put his plan into motion. Now that he knew the Investigation Bureau existed, there was no reason not to make use of it.

After all, making every Ghost in the world feel pain was virtually impossible on his own. He had to enlist outside help.

Bang!

He opened the door and went inside. Ignoring his wife, he walked into the bedroom, turned on his computer, and began browsing the Global Supernatural Forum.

Shen Lingxue and Li Wenhao had given him the address last time. Although neither had appeared yet this time around, Fang Xiu had already memorized it.

When he opened the website, a skull filled almost the entire screen. It slowly faded away, revealing a dark red interface.

The forum had numerous sections: Europe and America, Asia, Japan and Korea, China...

Each section had further categories: Ghosts, Spirit Tamers, Ghost Artifacts, bounties...

Fang Xiu quickly scanned the post titles, his interest growing. These posts might well contain the truth about this world and about Ghosts.

The information might not be complete, but it would at least be much faster than investigating everything himself.

However, when he clicked on a random post about the origins of Ghosts, a notification popped up: insufficient balance, please top up.

Fang Xiu's gaze moved to the bottom of the post, where a long string of zeros greeted him.

By his rough calculation, reading this post would cost about a million.

With only a few hundred in his bank account, he fell briefly silent.

He checked some other posts. Without exception, even the cheap ones cost ten or twenty thousand. Anything involving confidential information easily cost over a million, and some even cost over ten million.

"So this is the world of Spirit Tamers-the rich," Fang Xiu murmured.

Having felt the sting of his poverty, Fang Xiu became even more determined to pretend he could foresee the future. He needed to extract the greatest possible benefit from this ability. Otherwise, he could not even afford to browse a forum.

Left with no choice, Fang Xiu opened the basics category in the China section. Most of the posts contained common knowledge worth very little, along with plenty of rumors of uncertain authenticity. Some people even posted just to brag.

He checked the top trending post. Its title was "I Awakened the Ability to Control Time."

"Control time?" Fang Xiu's heart sank slightly when he saw the post. If people with time-related abilities had already appeared, the value of his ability to foresee the future would drop considerably.

He clicked on it and read, "It was a dark, windy night. Suddenly, lightning flashed and thunder roared. Fierce winds howled, and a blood moon rose in the east..."

After a thousand words of descriptive fluff, the post finally concluded, "And that was how I awakened the ability to control time. Unlike stopping or reversing time in movies and TV shows, I named my ability-wasting time!

"For example, I've successfully wasted five minutes of your time by making you read this post."

Countless comments filled the space below.

"Fuck ****"

"You fucking..."

"I can't be the only one who gets tricked. Keep bumping this post!"

Click!

Fang Xiu silently closed the post.

He checked the poster's name: Cosmic Invincible Magical Girl Warrior.

Right. He quietly committed that name to memory.

"Is this what you get to read for free?"

After taking a moment to compose himself, he continued browsing. An hour later, he finally found several posts officially published by the Investigation Bureau. Since they were verified official posts, most of their information was genuinely useful.

Some offered brief analyses of the origins of Ghosts, others covered basic knowledge about Spirit Tamers, and still others introduced Ghost Artifacts.

Fang Xiu clicked on one at random and immersed himself in it.

He spent the entire night reading.

He gained a preliminary understanding of some basic facts about Ghosts and Spirit Tamers.

It was not that there was so much basic information to learn. Rather, there were too many junk posts, along with clickbait of dubious authenticity, and they wasted a great deal of Fang Xiu's time.

After the night had passed, he shut down the computer. A basic framework had already taken shape in his mind.

Ghosts were ranked according to the threat they posed. From highest to lowest, the five ranks were S, A, B, C, and D.

Some Ghosts were not particularly powerful as individuals, but posed enormous threats, which raised their rankings accordingly.

For example, a Ghost overseas with the code name Plague was very weak. As long as someone found his true body and took proper precautions against poison, even a first-tier Spirit Tamer could kill him. Yet this Ghost could spread plague over a vast area and cause millions of deaths, so he was classified as A-rank.

Left unchecked, an A-rank Ghost could wipe out the population of a major city in a short time.

S-rank Ghosts were nation-destroying threats, capable of destroying an entire country in a short time.

Generally speaking, the greater the threat a Ghost posed, the stronger it was. Ghosts like Plague were rare exceptions.

The origins of Ghosts could not be verified. Vague legends about them seemed to have existed since ancient times, and some people argued that the extraordinary figures of antiquity had most likely been Spirit Tamers.

Later, for unknown reasons, those extraordinary figures and the legends of Ghosts vanished for a time. The legends only resurfaced in the modern era, leaving a gap of nearly a century that no one could explain.

At least, the free sections offered no answers.

Almost all Ghosts appeared out of thin air, without warning or any discernible pattern.

At first, very few Ghosts appeared across the world, but as time passed, their appearances grew increasingly frequent.