I Am Your Natural Enemy

Luckily, these days he had the nerve to shamelessly stick around Wen Yan and become his neighbor. As long as he was home, he'd come over to bask in Scorching Sun every day. His martial arts skills still weren't that great, but with the extra buff, his cultivation speed had definitely picked up.

These days, even if he didn't make leaps and bounds like Wen Yan, at least he was steadily moving forward step by step.

If not, he probably wouldn't have caught up before the seventh day passed.

Once the seventh day is over, even if the physical body never appears in the living world, and never starts to rot, not even a god could save you.

The people at Scorching Sun Department started investigating the moment they got the intel.

Very quickly, they tracked it all the way to an entrance more than a dozen miles behind the little village in the mountains.

The entrance used to be an Earth Temple, directly carved out of a rocky mountain side.

Judging by the site selection, a lot of effort clearly went into building it. The soil here covers a rare, whole bedrock mountain, and the location is well-drained and well-ventilated.

No need to worry about floods, or disasters like landslides and mudslides—chances of those are pretty low. The entrance to the Earth Temple is just over a meter wide, like a cave mouth, with dense vegetation and some trees providing cover outside.

If you look from a distance, it's really hard to notice this place.

Inside the Earth Temple, you can no longer see any deity statues or identifying decorations.

It wasn't until they asked the local elders that they found out this used to be a Mountain God Temple. As for which god was worshipped, after asking several old people, nobody knew, just that a mountain god was a mountain god.

Decades ago, the villages here relocated once, and ever since then, the Mountain God Temple has been far away—no one's gone there since.

The elders who still remembered the Earth Temple were just kids back then, only vaguely heard about it, and that was it.

Zhang Laoxi was the one who first went into that Mountain God Temple. He followed a hidden passageway inside, zigzagging downward, and eventually found the entrance to the Nether Soul Realm.

By the time Scorching Sun Department arrived, the cave entrance had already collapsed. Even with all kinds of instruments, all they could tell was that there may have been some natural tunnels in the mountain, but now they're all caved in and sealed off.

It's a pity. Like I said before, a lot of Nether Souls' understanding of modern technology is really shallow. Even some Nether Souls who died only a few years ago aren't much better.

They completely ignore what Scorching Sun Department actually does, or what resources they can mobilize.

Right after the inspection that day, Cai Qidong didn't bother being polite.

A geological survey company was brought in to check the terrain and geology. Excavators and transport trucks soon followed.

Collapsing the passage was pointless—as if we won't just move the entire mountain out of your way.

Turns out the stone from this mountain was useful anyway. Later on, it was used nearby to build river embankments and pave roads. In the end, it brought some benefit to all the villages in the area.

The Nether Soul Realm wasn't totally intolerable. In a way, the Rakshasa Ghost Market was also part of the Nether Soul Realm.

The real problem was that after the Nether Soul Realm appeared, there were ghosts inside who attacked the living on sight.

And that business of trafficking living people—that's the bottom fucking line.

Selling corpses isn't really allowed either, but dead bodies and living people are two very different things.

Some corpses were actually sold by the people themselves before they died.

Some people, poor and bedridden, knowing they didn't have long left, would hear rumors, then reach out proactively.

In the end, they'd agree in advance when they were still alive: after they died, both their body and identity belonged to the buyer, fetching a good price to leave behind for their surviving family.

The buyers of these corpses were usually desperate ghosts—Nether Souls—with unfinished business or unresolved wishes who died in a foreign place.

These ghosts would, during the seven days before the original soul left, buy a corpse, possess it, and return to their hometown. After tying up loose ends, they'd have the body buried by their family.

Scorching Sun Department caught this a few times. Technically it's a violation, but after thorough investigation, nobody was harmed—it was just settling instructions before leaving, and then the soul passed away satisfied.

There was one single father who died in an accident while collecting debts out of town. His obsession was too strong. He bought a corpse to possess, went back to continue collecting, scared the debtor shitless, but finally got the money.

After returning home, he left the money for his child, sold off his small company, and arranged everything for his kid for the next ten years.

Scorching Sun Department caught this. What were they supposed to do, just erase the soul altogether?

Wouldn't that just intensify the conflict and make similar incidents even more extreme in the future?

You can't block this sort of thing completely. All you can do is guide and regulate it.

So, about the Righteous Store in the Rakshasa Ghost Market—Scorching Sun Department has always known, but chose to turn a blind eye.

Every ghost who buys a body at the Rakshasa Ghost Market is recorded. As long as it isn't too outrageous, it's tolerated.

This time, though, it was beyond tolerance.

Scorching Sun Department was still moving the mountain and investigating.

But after just one day, Lord Zhu had already gotten a lot of confessions.

In a sunken room, Lord Zhu was sipping tea, reading through the confessions. Several ghosts were hanging from the opposite wall, and there were two especially cooperative ones who had earned merit and been let down.

There was also a ghost wearing modern clothes who'd just been caught, still shouting nonsense about vigilante justice and human rights.

After a while, Lord Zhu got annoyed listening to the noise. Figured the moron didn't know anything. He flicked his teacup lid, hitting the ghost square on the forehead.

An eerie green flame flared up and instantly engulfed the ghost.

The fire seared away at the ghost bit by bit, burning it gradually transparent, until finally there was no more sound and it completely vanished.

"People these days really have too much to eat—so many morons. He's not even human, so where'd he get human rights from?"

Looking at the statements, an underling next to Lord Zhu compiled a list of names. Lord Zhu nodded in satisfaction, took out his phone, and snapped a picture of the list.

Then he sent it to Wen Yan, and afterwards called Wen Yan on video.

"Xiao Wen, I just sent you a list. Take a look when you get the chance."