Chapter 402 - 72_2

Words : 1097 Updated : Oct 13th, 2025

Chapter 402: Chapter 72_2This is not an illusion. Because mother and son both lost their human touch. Li Lan must have been hungry; after sitting down at the dining table, she took a few small bags from the box underneath, and then slid one of them over to the boy sitting opposite. Li Zhiyuan picked up the bag, opened it, and found compressed biscuits. He had come here after finishing his tests in the afternoon and was indeed hungry now, but he didn’t want to eat them; he wanted to save room in his stomach for eating Peking duck at Quanjude with Principal Wu tonight. He didn’t actually like the greasy duck that much, but now he was looking forward to it more than anything. The boy didn’t ask Li Lan how she knew "that seabed" had something to do with him, because that would be easy to look up. He was Zheng Haiyang’s classmate, had accompanied Tan Yunlong on a visit to Zheng Haiyang’s mother at the mental hospital, and bought tickets to Mountain City with Tan Wenbin. For quite a while at the dining table, only the sound of the woman chewing could be heard. Li Zhiyuan turned his head to look at the thermal flask set there, covered with a layer of dust and empty of hot water. He then looked over to the sink, where the edges still bore red-black stains; the tap that had not been used for a long time would have rust inside and needed to run for a while to clear it out. Li Lan had also just returned home. Li Zhiyuan placed his hands on the table and began to play with his fingers, bringing up memories of several games he had lost to Alii to reflect on. Li Lan got up from the table and went into the study on the first floor, which had been closed, then came back out, holding a briefcase from which she pulled a file folder and threw it to the boy. Then, she picked up a cup, filled it with tap water, and began drinking. Li Zhiyuan untied the file folder, which contained an investigation report titled "Investigation Report on the 841 Freighter Incident." That was the ship where Zheng Haiyang’s parents worked. S~eaʀᴄh the nôvel_Fire.ηet website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality. Li Zhiyuan started looking through it page by page; some places were obscured, presumably containing information not even Li Lan could access. The report detailed the ship’s past history, its crew, as well as its smuggling history and the subsequent collective mental breakdown of the remaining crew. For quite a while at the dining table, only the sound of the boy flipping through pages could be heard. After finishing, Li Zhiyuan tied up the file folder and pushed it towards Li Lan. This report was very important to Li Zhiyuan, yet also useless, because it contained nothing about the matters beneath the sea. Li Lan was not in a hurry to retrieve the documents; instead, she took out another one from her briefcase, placing it in the middle of the dining table, along with a small stack of blank report paper and a pen. Li Zhiyuan stood up, pulled the second file folder towards himself, untied it, and glanced at the title: "Fengdu Bizarre Phenomena Investigation Report." The document had been thinned out, not very thick, and showed color variation, presumably a collection from different eras. Li Zhiyuan didn’t turn to the second page; instead, he set that document aside and stood up again, dragging the stack of report paper in front of him. He picked up a pen and began to write down the undersea experiences Zheng Haiyang’s mother had described to him. Zheng Haiyang’s mother had been interviewed by Li Lan’s secretary, Aunt Xu, before her, but she had left before producing any results. Therefore, he was the only one who knew this part. Clearly, Li Lan was not the kind of fool like Aunt Xu. After finishing writing, Li Zhiyuan tore off two sheets of report paper and pushed them across the table. Then, at the dining table, the woman with the report paper and the boy with the documents read quickly together. Li Lan finished reading first; she put down the report paper, closed her eyes, and tapped her fingertips lightly on the tabletop. Li Zhiyuan also finished reading; it turned out that so many strange events had happened in Fengdu’s history, which only existed sporadically in the local gossip and the blurred memories of the elderly. Time is the best tool to erase traces; even if one were to investigate again now, it would be impossible to obtain such a solid and detailed report. There’s a saying that fits well: there are no wrong nicknames, only wrong given names. Ghost City, to be called such, indeed has its reasons. The supernatural phenomena surrounding it also seem to follow a certain unique law. Yin Fuhai’s funeral was presided over by Li Zhiyuan in a fasting ceremony, and he had witnessed the scene of "four ghosts carrying the coffin" with his own eyes. Whether Yin Changsheng, recorded in "Baopuzi," and those "fellow Taoists" he spoke of are still around, Li Zhiyuan could not be sure. What he could be sure of now, was that Ghost City still retained a unique... It could be called a ritual, a rule, or, in colder terms, an operational logic invisible to the living. His memory was very good; if he went to explore the core of Fengdu Ghost City as an adult, the information recorded in this report would save him a lot of time. Brother Liangliang had said that Ghost City’s remaining time wasn’t much. Li Lan took out another document from her briefcase and threw it to the boy again. Li Zhiyuan opened the document folder with the title on the first page: "Investigation Report on Ji’an No. 572 Air-raid Shelter Project." The boy gripped the document tightly, his calm demeanor finally breaking down. He began to feel fear and confusion. Near Ji’an, the severely waterlogged air-raid shelters, the Koguryo ghost shadows encountered during the investigation. These were stories told by Mr. Luo at the night snack stalls in Wanzhou city at night. Why would Li Lan specifically throw this report to him? Both "841 Freighter" and "Fengdu Bizarre" reports contained concrete clues that could point to him, either through his direct contact or places he had visited, all of which could be looked up.

Chapter 402 - 72_2

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