Miao Xin

The chain-reaction crash that caused the natural gas truck to explode had been caused by Galio's wormhole crossing in the first place. It would have been a miracle if everything at the scene had looked normal. When investigators found phenomena beyond their understanding, they would naturally suspect someone had caused them deliberately.

And, as it happened, Su Ming had mysteriously gotten out of the vehicle before the crash, avoiding the explosion.

Great. So they were looking for him over the explosion too. No wonder he was getting such high-level treatment! Having figured that out, Su Ming switched off his phone without hesitation and rode off.

He had used that phone to buy a model ship online. The cyber police could monitor its activity and use the Wi-Fi he was connected to to pinpoint the restaurant.

As for how quickly they had done it, Su Ming had no desire to question the investigators' devotion to their KPIs. In this country, a case of this kind was at least SR+.

A professional team backed by the machinery of the state-machinery in every sense of the word, with its vast bureaucracy, law enforcement and military, surveillance network, supercomputers, and all sorts of things people did and didn't know about.

Su Ming had no idea how to fight a power like that.

Five days ago, Su Ming had still been a good, law-abiding citizen. Asking him to disguise himself and cover his tracks had already used up ninety percent of his potential.

Cornered, Su Ming thought of clearing himself of suspicion by investigating the explosion site and finding Miao Xin's real killer. The fastest way, of course, was to ask the people involved.

That was right. He would ask the drivers and Miao Xin herself what had happened!

Based on what Su Ming now knew, Miao Xin's remnant soul was most likely still there. People like her, who died young and violently, often had strong lingering obsessions. The other drivers had died more recently, so more of their souls would remain.

Su Ming pushed the motorcycle above sixty kilometers per hour and headed straight for the site of the original crash, focused on nothing else.

As he approached the highway, Su Ming abandoned the motorcycle and entered the woods a few hundred meters away.

The dismemberment site had been cordoned off with warning tape. No one was there, and no one was hiding nearby to watch it. But his psychic vision picked up several tiny heat sources-there were cameras here!

Fortunately, the bushes provided cover. Su Ming followed the surveillance blind spots until he was a little over ten meters from the dismemberment site. Looking through the bushes, he saw that the ground had been cleaned up, a canopy had been put up, and numerous small markers had been planted.

Several of the surrounding trees were dead and withered on one side, as though they had suffered some kind of damage.

Inspiration!

Su Ming synchronized his senses with Little Spiky Head's. Seven remnant souls drifted around the explosion site, all seemingly drivers.

Su Ming couldn't cast Speak with the Dead across worlds, but White Bone had told him that Little Spiky Head had a soul core of Dawn rank. Such an advanced soul core could read memories directly, and rune programming could even give Little Spiky Head more functions.

Su Ming had been surprised at the time. A skeleton, the lowest-grade consumable, had been lavishly equipped with a soul core. It was like installing an L3 autonomous driving system on an electric scooter.

It was a good piece of equipment, but Su Ming didn't know how to use it. That wasn't his fault. If someone from another world came to Earth and you gave them a high-end drone and told them to write AI in LISP, they'd be just as clueless!

But the basic functions were no problem. Su Ming activated Little Spiky Head's soul core, drew the drifting remnant souls over, and read what they had seen in the final moments of their lives.

Su Ming's work was crude, but he got the general picture. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The chain-reaction crash caused by the wormhole hadn't killed or injured anyone. Then the unlucky natural gas truck arrived, leaking a huge amount of gas in the collision. Once it had mixed with enough air, the gas exploded like a thermobaric bomb, taking everyone at the scene with it and claiming the MVP!

I can't clear myself on that front, Su Ming mused. He walked around the edge of the explosion site and suddenly detected another Psionic Power fluctuation.

Unlike the drivers' remnant souls, this fluctuation was much more substantial, and it carried a familiar frequency. So this was-

"An undead creature?"

The fluctuation kept circling in the same place. Su Ming went closer and soon saw what it was. A ghost?

The ghost was extremely weak, almost on the verge of dissipating, and it carried an aura from the same source as Little Spiky Head's. Su Ming suddenly understood. This was Miao Xin!

He could guess what had happened. When Galio summoned Little Spiky Head, he had also summoned Miao Xin's soul as a ghost. But Su Ming had been too much of a newbie at the time to inherit the mid-tier Ghost Mark.

Sensing Little Spiky Head approach, Miao Xin's ghost followed her instincts and lunged at her own bones. But she couldn't touch them, so she continued circling back and forth in a daze.

Su Ming had improved rapidly over the past few days, and his magic power had risen substantially. After all, he had undergone the highest-grade spirit awakening known in the other world. After a rough assessment, he reckoned he should be able to capture a mid-tier undead.

He had Little Spiky Head resonate with the ghost to obtain her Psionic Power signature. Then he constructed a capture imprint in his mind and aimed it at her.

Su Ming's mental power drained rapidly, and after a short wait, the new imprint captured its target.

The ghost's condition stabilized, and her soul fire became a little clearer. Su Ming connected with her and discovered that she was a command-type undead creature with simple intelligence. She couldn't handle complicated tasks, but she could carry out ordinary orders.

Then he read Miao Xin's remaining memories, hoping to find out who the killer was. But to his surprise, the girl herself didn't even know how she had died!

Miao Xin had been an ordinary worker. One day two months ago, she had gotten off work relatively early and taken a detour, hoping to pick some wild chestnut roses in the woods beside the highway. She wanted to take them home and boil them in water for her younger brother, whose stomach had been bothering him lately.

She had just reached a tree when she saw a streak of blue light flash past, and the world went black.

Su Ming sighed in dismay. What am I supposed to do now? I can't clear myself of this blame either. If I went to the police and told them this, would they believe me?

But Miao Xin's memories weren't entirely useless. Su Ming went to another patch of bushes a few hundred meters from the scene and soon found a waterproof canvas backpack in the grass. Inside were a phone, a wallet, and a set of keys. The phone was out of power, but there was a power bank in the backpack Little Spiky Head carried, so Su Ming plugged it in.

There were also more than a dozen chestnut roses in the bag, long since blackened and shriveled. According to Miao Xin's memories, she had thought the backpack was too heavy to carry, so she had hidden it in the grass and gone elsewhere to look for more fruit.

Rest in peace! Su Ming had Little Spiky Head press his palms together and silently spoke the words in his heart.

Poor girl, I can only come back and investigate the cause of your death when I get the chance.

Afterward, Su Ming rode quickly away from the scene, a ghost floating along behind him.

As he passed an intersection beneath an elevated railway, several police cars approached and drove past him. They stopped at the intersection and set up a checkpoint, inspecting passing motorcycles and pedestrians.

Su Ming hurriedly stopped, found a building, and climbed up its outer wall, hiding on the rooftop terrace.