"Is that the manor up ahead?"
Yang Jian stood on a hill and looked into the distance. His Ghost Eye turned, ignoring the obstruction of the night and revealing a manor in the distance. The manor was bizarre. Within the Ghost Eye's vision, much of it appeared distorted, and most places had no light at all, as though the entire manor were soaked in darkness.
Various crops were planted across the vast fields around the manor—corn, grapes, tomatoes. Yet these crops had all grown strangely, as if they had been warped by supernatural influence. The corn stalks were withered and yellow, like gaunt arms planted in the soil. The grape leaves had shriveled, while the old vines resembled dried, twisted corpses. The tomatoes grew lushly, but their fruit had rotted and spoiled, and the air around them seemed to carry the stench of corpses.
Among those crops stood one terrifying scarecrow after another. They wore the clothes of living people, straw hats on their heads, tied to cross-shaped wooden frames, swaying gently in the wind.
There were many scarecrows. At least a hundred of them surrounded the manor's fields.
"I killed a Ghost Tamer before who had a scarecrow's body. His name seemed to be Liao Fan. Even earlier, when I first boarded the supernatural bus, ordinary passengers mentioned the supernatural scarecrows in the fields. There was no relevant supernatural case file in the Headquarters archives."
Yang Jian recalled past events and searched his memories for information concerning scarecrows. He actually found some clues.
"These scarecrows standing around the manor are most likely a form of supernatural protection meant to stop other Ghost Tamers from breaking in."
With that thought, he vanished from where he stood.
When he reappeared, Yang Jian was already at the entrance to the manor.
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