Chapter 15: The Ghost Came Back to Life

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Shui Sheng’s reason for refusing Lu Xingzhou was simple: only two words—wealth and freedom.

Those were the two things he had longed for most in life, yet neither existed in the study, work, and daily life of the “Celestial Court” organization Lu Xingzhou had praised to the skies.

So he could not allow himself to fall into a trap like that.

The official vehicle drove Shui Sheng straight to the entrance of Looking-Australia Fishing Village. It had originally intended to take him all the way to his “home,” but the young man had refused.

Your car has a police light mounted on the roof. These days, it was better not to draw attention if he could help it. Spending nine days in a detention cell was hardly something to be proud of.

Clutching the box containing his personal belongings, he used his supernatural ability to leap onto the roof of a house. From there, he sprang to another rooftop in the distance, quickly bounding toward his home. A minute later, he landed in his own courtyard. This way, he could ensure that as few villagers as possible saw him.

The courtyard was almost unchanged from nine days ago, except that everything had acquired an additional layer of dust.

Had that “ghost” left or not?

Shui Sheng set down the box, cautiously approached the shed, and used his key to open the makeshift lock he had secured when he left. He gently pushed the door open a crack, then carefully turned his gaze toward the bed.

“Gasp!”

He sucked in a breath and nearly dropped onto his backside in fright.

The “ghost” was still on the bed, but it was different from the day he had left. Its eyes were open, staring fixedly at the roof of the shed.

Had this damned “ghost” come back to life?

Shui Sheng considered himself fairly well-read, but he had never heard of anything like this. His mind seemed to have crashed.

It took him a long while to recover. He drew a deep breath to steady himself, and his thoughts began racing.

It had been more than ten days since he had brought the man back from the bottom of the sea, and for five or six of those days he had lived separated from him by nothing more than a door. If the man had wanted to kill him, he would have done it long ago. There was no need to wait until now.

Some people said that ghosts possessed thoughts and reason as well. Perhaps if he appealed to reason and emotion, he could persuade it to leave.

There were so many wicked people in this world. How could it bear to keep tormenting a miserable orphan like him?

This was his home, the place where he made his living and sheltered himself. Apart from this shed and this patch of ground, he had nowhere else to go. Therefore, whether this thing was a ghost or a corpse, it had to be settled once and for all.

At that thought, his courage suddenly swelled. He pushed open the door, walked to the bedside, and looked straight at the other man.

Since their first encounter, this was the first time he had faced the fellow with such immense daring.

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The man lay spread-eagled on Shui Sheng’s straw bed, eyes open, body utterly motionless.

The strange thing was that although his eyes were open, he seemed to possess no awareness at all. His pupils did not move even once; they simply stared straight ahead, making one’s skin crawl. They were a pale, murky blue-black, and his complexion, once grayish and deathly pale, had become that of a living person, yellow with a hint of rosy warmth.

Shui Sheng heard the regular sound of breathing from the man’s nostrils. He could also sense his heartbeat and the faint rise and fall of his chest.

This was neither a corpse nor a ghost. He was a person—a person who was still alive!

It was utterly incomprehensible.

“Good day, sir. May I ask whether you’re a man or a ghost?” Shui Sheng tried speaking to him.

But no matter what he said, the other man showed no reaction. His eyes did not move in the slightest.

Could he be mentally impaired?

As the thought crossed Shui Sheng’s mind, a foul, musty odor reached his nose. He immediately realized that the fellow had not changed his clothes once in all the days since coming out of the sea. If he really was a person, it was only natural for his clothes to stink.

Shui Sheng, who had always been particular about cleanliness, could not tolerate the situation—especially with it occurring on his own straw bed.

He found a set of old clothes and changed the man into them. During the process, he noticed even more clearly that not only had the fellow’s skin returned to a normal human color, but his body temperature was also no different from an ordinary person’s.

The man’s original clothing was extremely strange. He wore three layers. The outer garment was a gray robe; beneath it was a suit of gray scale armor; underneath that was a close-fitting white tunic. His trousers likewise had inner and outer layers.

The boots he had worn each concealed a short, sheathed spike in the shaft. On one finger was a silver ring set with a deep blue gemstone.

Shui Sheng had not examined his clothing and equipment closely before. Now that he had, he immediately suspected that the man might be a supernatural ability user. Of course, dressed in such bizarre clothes, he might also have come from the Immortal-Seeking Continent in another world. After all, incidents of that sort had become commonplace these days.

By now, Shui Sheng’s mind had settled.

The half-dead middle-aged man’s only virtue was that he brought no further trouble. He seemed not to need food or water; he could simply lie there and remain alive.

He also appeared not to need to defecate or urinate. Thus, the thing Shui Sheng had worried about never happened, and his straw bed remained perfectly clean.

The man lay there with his eyes open, as though he existed and yet did not.

Shui Sheng had tried feeding him water and fish soup, but he could not pry the man’s mouth open, and he could hardly force anything down his throat. After another two or three days passed without any change, he gave up.

If the man had survived until now, he must have had his own way of staying alive. Shui Sheng decided to leave him to it.

The matter of this half-dead, mentally impaired man attracted no attention in the fishing village. After all, even Shui Sheng himself was little more than a transparent figure in the eyes of the adults there. An outsider mattered even less—especially one who seemed to carry some kind of magic that kept him invisible to others.

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Even when Shui Sheng behaved strangely at home—sometimes talking to empty air, sometimes sleeping in the small outer shelter instead of on the bed inside the shed—no one paid much attention.

The times were difficult, and everyone’s life was hard. Every household was frantic and rushed from dawn to dusk, barely able to look after itself. Who had the time to meddle in other people’s affairs?

Besides, the boy was an orphan who had been different from everyone else since childhood and was not particularly well-liked in the village. Why bother with him?

One day, Shui Sheng carried a bowl of freshly cooked fish soup to the straw bed.

“Uncle, are you hungry? I made some fish soup outside. It smells wonderful. It’s golden-legged bream.”

“Have you ever heard a food connoisseur say that the most delicious fish in the whole world is this kind of golden-legged bream? It’s also called yellow-foot bream.”

“Wild golden-legged bream from the sea costs seventy Donghua coins per pound! I was going to take it to town and sell it, but now I’m giving it all to you.”

“Uncle, at least move a little. Say something.”

The middle-aged man still showed no reaction. His eyes remained open, yet there was not the slightest spark of life in them.

Shui Sheng felt somewhat discouraged.

Or perhaps dying would have been better for this man.

In a state like this, if he still possessed any awareness, how much pain and suffering must he be enduring?

Just then, something unusual seemed to be happening in the village. From one end to the other, people began shouting and making a commotion. Many were answering or making phone calls, speaking loudly about something. People rushed back and forth without pause. Some rode motorcycles or drove cars hurriedly along the roads. In the distance, the engines of the village fishing boats began roaring one after another.

Shui Sheng stepped outside and saw that the village looked almost like it was fleeing a disaster. Large numbers of people were pouring out of their homes, shouting as they ran toward the outskirts.

“Uncle, what happened?” He grabbed a villager who was hurrying past on the main road outside.

“Shui Sheng, you haven’t heard?” the villager said anxiously. “The boundary point on Phoenix Gate Island—the boundary point on Phoenix Gate Island has opened! People from all over are swarming onto the island like bees. Our chance to make a fortune has arrived!”

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