Chapter 190 - 176: Harvest

Consciousness snapping back into place, Yin Zhen’s eyes flew open.

Under the dim, amber light, she was back in Grandma Bai Shan Yin’s cramped little shop — the same cluttered space packed wall to wall with Papermen, paper horses, funeral wreaths, and every kind of burial supply imaginable.

The air carried that distinctive smell she’d come to know well: aged paper, paste, and incense candles all mingled together.

She was still sitting on a low stool, a half-finished Paperman torso in her hands.

Then, without any warning, the bells strung along the ceiling on red ropes suddenly erupted into a frantic, clattering din — a rapid, relentless jangling, like an alarm screaming out a warning.

Ghost!

In the rocking chair nearby, Grandma Bai had been dozing. The bells jolted her awake, and her eyes snapped open, fixing straight on Yin Zhen.

"What did you do now?"

Yin Zhen checked her system and found that upon returning, it had automatically equipped Qiao Yun’s Character Card.

Ever since Qiao Yun had replaced Chunhua’s hands, she’d been something of an anomaly — those hands were steeped in ghostly aura, so it was hardly a surprise they’d set off the bells in Grandma Bai’s shop.

Yin Zhen unequipped Qiao Yun’s Character Card, and sure enough, the bells fell silent. The shop settled back into its usual quiet.

Grandma Bai studied Yin Zhen for a long moment, scanning her up and down with a probing look. Then she let out a sigh, pushed herself out of the rocking chair, and walked over to the pillar beside her. She untied the red rope and removed one of the bells.

"Won’t go off anymore."

"Got it."

"Come with me to the graves tomorrow." With that, Grandma Bai waved her palm fan and shuffled off to her room to rest.

Yin Zhen set down the half-assembled Paperman and first let Ying out of confinement.

The pitch-black shadow, the moment it realized it was back in Ancient Abyss, threw both arms up in a cheer. Then, wasting not a single second, it dug through Yin Zhen’s bag, unearthed its beloved handheld console, planted a couple of enthusiastic kisses on it, and started playing.

Yin Zhen took out the Pet Machine and glanced at it. Zoe was watching TV and crying so hard that crumpled paper tissues were strewn across the floor — clearly she hadn’t been sitting idle, except when she was asleep.

Yin Zhen shook her head, stood up, and stretched out the stiffness in her limbs. She locked up the shop for Grandma Bai, then made her way to the room Grandma Bai had prepared for her and lay down to rest.

Yin Zhen pulled up the forum and saw that the Player count had dropped to just 1,133.

Completely expected. A thousand of those Players had been the last batch recruited by Chi Hai — they’d come in with no abilities whatsoever and had been dumped straight into the D-level Autumn Tomb World.

The opening event in Autumn Tomb World was a Spirit Exploration that was essentially a death sentence. When she and Bai Qiang had logged in early, even they’d barely made it out alive, and that was with Inheritance and her save-file ability. Ordinary Players wouldn’t have stood a chance.

The pinned thread on the forum was the survival value ranking for the Spirit Exploration event. Yin Zhen was still in first place.

No surprise there — from the moment she’d entered Autumn Tomb, she’d been neck-deep in the paranormal. First the escape, then the old theater in Sanmen Town. She’d racked up more ghost encounters than just about anyone.

"Uncle Ying Is Me" and another Player going by "Hehehe" were tied in survival value, sitting at eighth and ninth respectively. Bai Qiang was tenth, and Guan Lan and "Star" were eleventh and twelfth.

What was interesting was that second through seventh place all had "Kunpeng" at the front of their usernames, just with different names tacked on after. It was obvious these were new Players Kunpeng had personally invited after collecting invitation letters from other Players — professionals, without a doubt.

The second-place player, "Kunpeng: Sugar Orange," had a survival value less than a hundred points below hers, which meant this person had also been involved in at least two high-danger paranormal events.

The forum was buzzing, threads flying and refreshing in a constant stream as everyone swapped stories about their experiences.

And then there were the truly unhinged Players, posting threads with titles that read like web novel synopses.

[How I Became Ancient Abyss’s Richest Player by Plagiarizing Books in Autumn Tomb]

The title was so absurd that Yin Zhen couldn’t stop herself from clicking. Turns out, this Player had noticed that Autumn Tomb World’s film, TV, and literary works were different from those in Ancient Abyss — but the paper currency was identical.

So their grand plan was to dominate the entertainment industry in Autumn Tomb World, make a fortune, convert it into cash, and bring it back to Ancient Abyss to find a partner who could afford a game backpack.

The replies were flooded with praise, and people were already spinning off ideas, with some announcing plans to become cross-world black market traders.

"Is everyone’s brain wired this creatively just because it’s a novel world?"

Yin Zhen muttered the complaint, though she genuinely admired these people — they could find the fun in absolutely anything. If they ever died, they’d make some seriously cheerful ghosts.

She focused on two threads in particular: one she’d posted herself, calling for information on Ye Mingzhe, and one from Kunpeng’s official account soliciting intelligence on Autumn Tomb World.

Her own thread was mostly noise — the few replies that weren’t meaningless were things Yin Zhen already knew from Liu Hua’s memories.

Kunpeng’s official Autumn Tomb intelligence-gathering thread, on the other hand, had exploded with replies. The content was dense and scattered, but it helped Yin Zhen piece together a much more complete picture of the Autumn Tomb World.

Things like the standard equipment used by the Abnormal Investigation Bureau’s Sealing Spirit Teams, the grading system for Sealers based on emotional intensity, the internal organizational structure of the Abnormal Investigation Bureau — all information that A hadn’t been able to dig up.

One thread mentioned something called the National Pillar.

It had been erected after a victory in a modern war, functioning somewhat like a monument to fallen heroes.

The Abnormal Investigation Bureau would carve the names of meritorious Sealers into it. By drawing on the spirits of martyrs to suppress a Sealer’s own soul, it could extend a Sealer’s lifespan after sealing a Fierce Ghost, and give them a chance — when being eroded by their own Fierce Ghost — of surviving the ordeal.

But that chance was only around thirty percent. The martyrs’ spirits weren’t on call around the clock, and they couldn’t watch over everyone at every moment. The whole thing was basically down to luck.

And once your name was carved in, you were bound to the Abnormal Investigation Bureau for life — an obedient workhorse with an iron rice bowl that couldn’t be smashed no matter how hard you tried.

Players were still flooding in with new information, and "Naming is Too Troublesome" had yet to show up to sort through it all and separate the real from the fake. Yin Zhen closed the forum for now and decided to check back once Kunpeng released an official summary post.

The Spirit Exploration event and the Gold-Medal Assassin event had earned her 8,000 words, but she’d spent 30,000 to trade for Chunhua’s toolkit. As of now, her total word count sat at 41,102.

The biggest gain from this run was the taboo power puppet, bound to Qiao Yun’s Character Card. In Ancient Abyss, she’d need to equip the Character Card to access it. Since both she and Qiao Yun were human, there was no Assimilation Degree, but the side effects from using it would still hit her real body — that much was certain.

After that came Chunhua’s toolkit, the incense master’s antique dagger, three bottles of spray that let people see ghosts, three sheets of talisman paper, and a roll of specially made red rope.

The antique dagger and other less essential items she’d stashed in Autumn Tomb World and left behind — her game backpack only had three slots, so she’d kept the Pet Machine, Night Song, and the toolkit on her.

The Ghost Tool Scalpel and the face skin she’d gotten as system rewards could go straight onto the card table; she didn’t need to pack them into the game backpack.

On top of all that, the rewards from the Gold-Medal Assassin and Spirit Exploration events included 10 attribute points, three candles, and one Skill Upgrade Book.

The candles were for summoning ghosts — a reward from the Spirit Exploration event. The system was obviously encouraging her to keep doing reckless things.

Yin Zhen wasn’t in a rush to use the Skill Upgrade Book. She had a theory about the corpse-stiffening that happened to her body when she controlled ghosts, and she needed to test it first. She’d decide which Skill to upgrade once that was done.

"And finally — time to take a good hard look at the incense master’s memories."

...

At that same moment, in Guan City.

A man jolted awake inside his own home. He rushed straight to the bathroom and stared at the face looking back at him from the mirror. A sharp, breathless sound escaped him.

"This is impossible!"