“Aaaah! I’m done for!!!”
Lu Zheng was resting at home when he received Lin Wan’s call. When she arrived, she dove onto the bed, burying her face in the blankets.
“What’s wrong?” Lu Zheng sat on the bed’s edge, asking with amusement.
“I got questioned by my boss!”
“What did you say?”
Lu Zheng had seen the video from last night early that morning.
The most viral clip was titled “Shock! Superwoman Tears Car Door Apart with Bare Hands!”
The video was edited, likely filmed by someone facing the car door, capturing the tense, thrilling atmosphere. It included a man struggling to open the door, contrasting with Lin Wan’s explosive door-tearing moment, set to a fiery soundtrack.
Even though Lu Zheng was at the scene, he watched the video ten times, contributing to its popularity.
Now, the video had hit the top 10 on Haicheng’s local trending list and was still climbing.
Though Lin Wan’s face wasn’t fully shown, her profile was visible, easily recognizable to those who knew her.
So, her performance naturally led to questioning.
“What could I say? I went with your excuse!”
“Practicing martial arts, super strong?”
“Yep!”
“What was your boss’s reaction?”
Lin Wan’s body shook with laughter.
*Slap!* A ripple of flesh.
“Sharing is caring. Spill it,” Lu Zheng urged.
Lin Wan sat up, her cheeks still flushed.
“I said I train in martial arts and fitness, so I’m naturally strong. Plus, the door wasn’t that stuck, and the car was poor quality, so I could pull it open.”
“And then?”
Lin Wan pouted. “Then they made me hit a strength tester, and that was it.”
“No, you’re holding something back.” Lu Zheng noticed her evasive eyes, tinged with shyness and embarrassment.
*Ring ring—*
“Hello? Xiumin!”
“Hey, Lin Dali, why’d you bolt after work? Weren’t we supposed to eat together?”
“Pfft—”
Lin Wan jumped up. “I forgot, tomorrow, okay? Bye!”
Hanging up, she pounced on Lu Zheng. “Quick! Forget that call!”
“Forget what, Officer Lin Dali?”
“Aaaah—”
“Hahaha—”
…
After some exertion, Lin Wan was exhausted, sprawled on the bed, far from last night’s superwoman.
Lu Zheng lay beside her, both scrolling their phones, watching the “Superwoman Tears Car Door” video.
“Look at you,” Lu Zheng teased, pointing. “Just tearing a car door, and you used all your strength, even sweating. Embarrassing.”
Lin Wan rolled her eyes. “If I had martial blood qi, in that situation, I’d rip the door off with a light tug.”
“That’d be even more dramatic. You’d never explain it away.”
Lin Wan knew the “Mountain-Bearing Eighteen Forms” wasn’t something anyone could master, and Lu Zheng’s lingzhi wine couldn’t be mass-produced.
So, unless Lu Zheng said otherwise, she wouldn’t breathe a word.
The safest option was to resign, but being a police officer was her childhood dream. She wasn’t ready to give it up.
For now, she’d keep it under wraps and muddle through.
Thinking this, she looked at Lu Zheng with love and conflict.
This man trusted her, healed her, and shared such rare, secret things. How could she let him down?
Then…
“Where’s your hand going!”
“You’re not recovered?”
“But we haven’t had dinner yet.”
“Forget dinner, we’ll have a midnight snack later!”
…
Netherworld, Chaos Corpse Pool.
After days of heightened tension, the Chaos Corpse Pool returned to its usual calm.
This time, Lu Zheng didn’t enter through the City God Temple’s Yin-Yang Road.
With his strength, within five miles of the temple, he could sense spatial fluctuations between the mortal world and the Netherworld at night.
By channeling mana to stir these fluctuations, he could cross the realms.
If Yan Jie could do it before, Lu Zheng certainly could now.
Suppressing his aura, he sped through the Netherworld. The closer he got to the Chaos Corpse Pool, the heavier the corpse qi in the air.
The Chaos Corpse Pool was a sunken lake amidst the Netherworld’s sprawling mountains. Its leaders, all corpse-born, and their ghost-corpse followers soaked in the pool’s waters daily, nurturing their bodies with nether water, hence the name.
Before coming, Lu Zheng consulted Xin Zhanting about the pool’s details. Besides the deceased Bai Yuqing…
Giant Corpse Du He focused on body refinement, his corpse tougher than refined iron, akin to a lesser version of a Netherstone Ghost Corpse.
Water Corpse Mo Xuanyi merged with the pool’s waters, never leaving, shrouded in mystery.
From his fight with Bai Yuqing, Lu Zheng figured he could defeat either corpse one-on-one, but facing both? He’d flee.
Pondering this, Lu Zheng neared the pool, shrank into the ground, and burrowed into the Netherworld’s soil.
Using his spell, he traveled underground. The closer to the pool, the denser the corpse and water qi in the earth.
Sometimes, he stumbled into hollow pits filled with groundwater.
Luckily, he knew the Water-Repelling Technique!
…
Reaching the pool’s bottom, Lu Zheng cautiously surfaced, hiding behind a large rock, poking his head out.
Scanning around, he pinpointed his location.
He was halfway up a small mountain, at the base of which lay a dozens-acre pool. The water shimmered with hundreds of floating corpses, bobbing eerily, both creepy and nauseating.
Ghosts wandered the pool’s edges aimlessly, either patrolling or strolling.
“So… where’s the lair?”
Lu Zheng assumed the leaders’ lairs would be like Leng Jian the wolf demon’s, carved into cliffs. But after searching, he found no caves until he saw a ghost float to the pool’s edge and vanish.
“No way!”
He realized thousands of graves surrounded the pool!
“You’re all dead! What’s the point of graves in the Netherworld? Lighting incense for yourselves?” Lu Zheng muttered. “Or do dead folks just prefer living underground?”
“Still, gotta say, great hobby! Keep it up!”
Circling the pool, Lu Zheng spotted three larger graves at the center of the thousand mounds, likely the homes of the Giant Corpse, Water Corpse, and Glamorous Corpse.
He shrank into the ground, deciding to check Bai Yuqing’s place first.
Maybe the other two hadn’t claimed her belongings yet?
