Chapter 173: Bluffing and Spouting Nonsense in Public (5k)

"You know this guy?" Wen Yan was startled. "Is he really a ghost formed after death?"

"Not sure if it’s him, but that face of his, and the clothes he’s showing up in—it’s definitely this person."

Feng Yao turned the notebook toward Wen Yan, letting Wen Yan see the photo on it.

"His name is He Changfeng, used to be a fairly well-known rich businessman in Nanwu County.

But later, he encountered something supernatural and lost his life to it.

Even his corpse had some issues after death, there was a lingering resentment, like he was about to become a revenant.

His body was cremated at Virtue City Funeral House, in the luxury furnace."

"If the luxury furnace sterilized it, how come there are still these problems?" Wen Yan was puzzled.

"Ahem, as you know, the luxury furnace wasn’t there from the beginning, and the current procedures weren’t always this well-established either.

A lot of today’s standard protocols were added and improved only after issues arose and things happened.

When He Changfeng died, the current standards weren’t in place yet.

Back then, the standard procedure was just to thoroughly cremate in the luxury furnace until all was ash, and that was it.

Everything pretty much followed the usual cremation process.

After the burning, the ashes were handed over to the relatives for them to handle on their own."

"And then?" Wen Yan didn’t even have to ask—something clearly went wrong.

Feng Yao sighed.

"Then things got messy. He was pretty wealthy when he was alive, did foreign trade, and later invested in real estate.

The year he died, Changfeng Company had just gotten in on the ground floor of a major boom.

That later meteoric rise into Changfeng Group—all the major strategies were decided by him back then.

This guy, when he got married, was dead broke, felt he was shortchanging his wife.

So afterward he threw himself into making money, and the couple were really loving.

At least based on what I’ve found, after he got rich, he didn’t seem to have time to mess around with other women.

After he died, his wife was heartbroken, took his ashes, and had them made into a diamond.

Then trouble started—one of us from Scorching Sun Department noticed that the wife was mentally unstable, almost had an accident.

So they took the diamond jewelry she wore every day, destroyed it, and scattered the remains into the sea.

After that incident, every corpse cremated in the luxury furnace has since followed the sea burial protocol.

His current appearance, and those clothes he’s wearing, look exactly like how he died back then.

Odds are very high it’s him."

Wen Yan glanced down at the weakened, already half-transparent He Changfeng on the ground.

"So the ashes-turned-diamond story was about him. Looks like you guys didn’t clean things up back then."

"That was ten years ago. For decades before that, spiritual qi was barely reviving, recovery speed was super slow, at most just making some objects gain a little spirituality.

Even if ghosts appeared, they were super easy to handle—the weak ones could be ignored by anyone in good health.

If there was a tougher ghost, you get a squad of burly guys whose collective yang energy would suppress it to death.

If that’s not enough, call in a platoon—their fierce energy alone, even without any special equipment, could just crush it.

Back then things weren’t half as complicated as now, and people weren’t anywhere near as powerful.

Even someone like Qin Kun—if you put him ten years ago, there’d probably be nothing he couldn’t solve; he’d handle it with a slap.

Back then, Scorching Sun Department was handling a lot of things for the first time; no one had seen this stuff before, everyone was inexperienced.

All the experience was built up little by little, even for people from the Three Mountains and Five Ridges.

Taoist priests with true lineages back then, if they ran into a real problem, often had to go home and flip through old books.

Maybe, in some ancient classics, you’d find something like this, with ways to resolve it.

That’s why the Three Mountains and Five Ridges have such high status now—the heritage their ancestors left is just that deep."

"Don’t get sidetracked. What’s going on here?"

"Don’t ask me, I don’t know either. Next, we’ll have to go to Changfeng Group and ask their lady boss about it."

Given the current situation, it’s clear some of the collected ashes weren’t all properly taken care of—there were leftovers.

Plus, this guy clearly caught the tide of accelerated Spiritual Qi Resurgence—that’s how he got this chance."

Feng Yao looked at He Changfeng lying on the ground, and couldn’t help but add a few more words.

"Tell me, is this guy lucky, or unlucky?

If you call him lucky—he just started making big money, then he died.

If you call him unlucky—while alive, he hit the boom and made Changfeng Group soar.

After he died, he caught another boom—he still isn’t all the way dead."

Even Wen Yan had to nod after hearing Feng Yao’s rant.

"This guy really does have good luck."

Changfeng Group, of course he’d heard of them, by now they’re already a big-name corporation in Nanwu County.

The head of this company is said to have amazing vision; ten years ago, when real estate was in a slump, they dared to wade in.

Back then, to outsiders, it looked like they were gambling everything, snapping up land at what wasn’t considered a cheap price.

Everyone thought that after He Changfeng died, the company guys would start making a mess of things.

But unexpectedly, the following year, house prices in Yu State began climbing steadily.

The land Changfeng Group poured money into the previous year turned out to be a big win the next, and by the third year, an absolute jackpot.

After six years in real estate, their rate of land acquisition started sharply dropping, and they shifted to investing in the internet industry.