The system says there are no ghosts.

Chapter 12 The Shadow of the Rogue Cultivator

The notification that the task had been assigned rang three times.

Chen Yi opened his eyes. The spiritual terminal was floating in mid-air, and the blue system interface made his eyes sting.

"【Rank D Mission】Clean up the spiritual energy in the abandoned spiritual field in the west of the city. Estimated reward: 2 spirit stones. Danger level: Low. Please complete before 18:00 today."

Grade D. He frowned.

He usually only takes on F-level and E-level missions, which offer lower pay but are safer. D-level missions, while more rewarding, often involve more complex scenarios and more troublesome situations.

"Why are they suddenly assigning this kind of work?" he muttered.

Ah Qi emerged from the shadows; the edge of the gray fog had stabilized somewhat compared to yesterday.

"I checked the task notes, and it says we're short-staffed," Ah Qi said. "The cleaning staff who was originally scheduled for today's urgent task took leave."

"A request for leave? A request for leave when the inspector is coming?"

"Who knows?" Ah Qi shrugged. "Anyway, the system has already reassigned the order. If you don't accept it, it'll just sit there and wait for the next round."

Chen Yi was silent for two seconds.

Two spirit stones. Enough for him to take supplements for more than half a month.

"Alright."

The abandoned area in the west of the city was farther away than he had imagined.

It took the flying sword almost half an hour to travel from the cleanup center. This area was already outside the main urban area of ​​Lin Yuan City, and as far as the eye could see, there were only broken walls and rampant weeds.

The abandoned spirit fields were once one of the main sources of spiritual energy in Lin Yuan City. Later, the spiritual veins dried up, and the system classified it as a "low-value area," leaving it completely abandoned. Now, apart from the occasional wild spirit beast passing by, not a single living person can be seen here.

Chen Yi landed near the mission location, and as soon as he stood still, he heard someone shouting.

"Hey! You over there! Are you the new guy?"

Chen Yi looked in the direction of the sound and saw a round-faced fat man waving at him. The fat man was not tall, but round and chubby. He was wearing a faded gray cloth jacket, and his face was all smiles, with his small eyes narrowed into slits.

"My name is Zhou Dazhuang," the fat man introduced himself, panting. "I'm also a cleaner. Old Li had a stomachache and couldn't go, so I filled in."

Chen nodded.

Zhou Dazhuang rubbed his hands together and looked him up and down: "You must be Chen Yidui, right? I heard you took on several urgent orders recently, and you're quite efficient at your work."

"Um."

"Let me tell you, this job isn't actually difficult, it's just that the place is big, so it takes two people to work together." Zhou Dazhuang lowered his voice, speaking mysteriously. "This place used to be a stronghold for independent cultivators, but it was taken down by the system, leaving behind a bunch of messy spiritual energy remnants."

Chen Yi paused for a moment.

"A stronghold for rogue cultivators?"

"Yes, that happened decades ago." Zhou Dazhuang leaned closer. "Let me tell you, this area is actually quite complicated. Look at that house over there, half of it collapsed—"

He pointed to a dilapidated building in the distance, with charred marks still remaining on the walls.

"That place used to be a hideout for independent cultivators. I heard they practiced traditional techniques in secret and even formed some kind of independent cultivator alliance, connecting with the black market for spirit stones. Later, when the system came to arrest them, some of them ran away, some scattered, and one was killed on the spot."

Zhou Dazhuang spoke with great enthusiasm, gesturing wildly.

"Let me tell you, don't tell anyone about this. The system is very strict about monitoring independent cultivators. Anyone who dares to discuss it in private will have their spirit stones deducted at best, and at worst, they will be directly identified as 'abnormal data'."

Chen Yi walked forward in silence, without saying a word.

Zhou Dazhuang caught up and continued rambling, "But this place is really a bit eerie. I've been here a few times before, and it always feels sinister. Do you think all those rogue cultivators are really dead? What if some escaped..."

"What's there to be afraid of?" Chen Yi said calmly. "If they're all dead, they're all dead."

Zhou Dazhuang paused for a moment, then burst into laughter: "That's right, that's right! What's there to be afraid of? We have the system protecting us! If the system says there are no ghosts, then there definitely aren't!"

Chen Yi did not answer.

After the mission began, Chen Yi discovered that the complexity of this area far exceeded his expectations.

The abandoned spiritual field was much larger than he had imagined. The weeds were taller than a person, and the ground was littered with broken stone slabs and collapsed shed skeletons. The remaining spiritual energy was scattered, some on the surface of the ruins and some deep underground, requiring him to clear it bit by bit.

Zhou Dazhuang was in charge of the perimeter, while Chen Yi was in charge of the core area.

"Let me tell you, after we finish this job, we can go to Old Liu's for a meal," Zhou Dazhuang's voice came from afar. "Old Liu's braised dishes are cheap; you can buy a big bag for just one spirit stone."

Chen Yi ignored him and bent down to clean a stone slab covered with runes.

This type of rune is common; it's a standard spiritual energy cleansing marker provided by the system. He followed the standard procedure, injecting spiritual energy into the rune and waiting for the system to automatically absorb the residue.

As he was cleaning the third stone slab, his fingers touched something unusual.

It was a piece of metal embedded in the soil, irregularly shaped, with densely packed small characters engraved on its surface. Chen Yi dug it out, wiped it clean, and discovered that it was no ordinary piece of metal.

That was a token.

The token had an ancient-looking character "令" (command) engraved on the front, while the back was covered with runes he couldn't understand. The token was made of a special material; it had a warm, smooth feel to the touch, like some kind of spiritual material.

"What's that?" Zhou Dazhuang suddenly came over and craned his neck to look.

"I don't know." Chen stuffed the token into his pocket. "It might be some old junk."

"Oh, oh, oh." Zhou Dazhuang nodded without asking any further questions.

But Chen Yi did not let his guard down.

While Zhou Dazhuang turned around, he quietly activated his psychic eye.

In an instant, the world changed.

Things invisible to ordinary people appeared before his eyes: traces of residual spiritual energy, like faint wisps of light, drifted in the air. And in a distant abandoned building, he saw a cluster of spiritual energy traces that were even more intense than those around it.

That's not ordinary residue.

Those are traces of "memory".

The exterior wall of the abandoned building has collapsed by half, and there is a large hole in the roof.

Chen Yi stood at the doorway, pretending to check the distribution of spiritual energy around him.

"I'll go take a look over there," he said to Zhou Dazhuang. "You wait here."

"Alright, alright, go ahead," Zhou Dazhuang mumbled, munching on a piece of dry rations.

Chen Yi walked into the building.

The interior was more dilapidated than he had imagined. Broken pottery jars and moldy cloth were scattered on the floor, and rotten pages of books were piled in the corners. A musty smell permeated the air, mixed with some indescribable fishy odor.

He searched through the ruins and soon found a wooden box buried under rubble.

The wooden crate was mostly rotten, but the contents inside were relatively well preserved.

Chen dragged out the wooden box and opened it.

There were several items in the box: a yellowed cultivation notebook, a rubbing of a stone with complex runes, and several fragments of spirit stones that had lost their spiritual power.

He first picked up his cultivation notes and flipped through a few pages.

The handwriting in the notes was messy, but the content caught his eye.

"...Traditional cultivation methods emphasize the flow of spiritual energy through the original meridians, which is completely different from the 'data meridians' of system-based cultivation methods. The advantage of system-based cultivation methods is stability and speed, but the disadvantage is that the circuits are fixed, leaving the user helpless once the system's assistance is removed. Traditional cultivation methods are the opposite; they are slower to start and riskier, but the spiritual energy circuits are self-built and can be adjusted in real time during combat..."

"...The key to breaking through to the initial stage of Cloud Refinement Qi lies not in the total amount of spiritual power, but in the smoothness of the spiritual power circulation. Rather than desperately accumulating spiritual power, it's better to spend time refining the smoothness of the circulation. The smoother the circulation, the more efficient the spiritual power circulation, and the more at ease you will be in battle..."

"...While the spiritual energy projectiles from the system's techniques are powerful, they also consume a lot of energy. Traditional techniques emphasize the 'condensation' principle, compressing spiritual energy into a single point. Although their power is not as great as the system's techniques, they have the advantage of low consumption and can be continuously output..."

After reading these pages, Chen felt confident.

Although this notebook is decades old, its core content is still useful. He had only been practicing the Azure Cloud Heart Sutra for a few days and was worried about how to improve his efficiency; these words of experience were a godsend.

He picked up the rubbing again and found that it was an architectural plan with several special locations marked. Most striking was a circle in the center of the drawing, next to which were four characters:

"An underground chamber."

Chen Yi's eyes lit up.

He looked around, his gaze landing on a stone slab in the corner that looked different from the others. There was a thin crack on the surface of that slab, almost invisible unless you looked closely.

He walked over and pressed hard on the edge of the crack.

With a snap, the stone slab sprang open, revealing a dark hole.

The entrance to the cave was small, just big enough for one person to squeeze through, and inside was a stone staircase leading downwards.

Chen Yi hesitated for a second.

The deadline for the mission was still early, so Zhou Dazhuang waited outside. The inspector was coming today...

But his foot had already stepped out.

The underground chamber was larger than Chen Yi had imagined.

The stone steps descended for about two zhang (approximately 6.6 meters) to a small stone chamber. The walls of the chamber were engraved with simple runes, which, although devoid of any spiritual energy, still revealed traces of the original arrangement.

In the center of the stone chamber was a stone table with several items on it: an extinguished spirit lamp, several books riddled with holes from insects, and a short sword broken in two.

Chen Yi walked over, picked up the books, and flipped through them.

Most of the writing was illegible, with only a few pages still containing readable content. He quickly scanned them and found they were mostly cultivation insights and incomplete manuals, offering little help to him.

Just as he was about to give up, his gaze fell on a piece of paper next to the broken sword.

It was a piece of paper, but not ordinary paper. The paper was made of a special material, with a silky smooth feel to the touch, and a complex array diagram was drawn on it with cinnabar.

Next to the formation diagram were a few lines of text:

"...I received news today that the enforcement team is already watching us. The elder told me to move the Loose Cultivator Token to a safe place, but I know that this time we may not be able to escape..."

"...If I don't return, I'll entrust the Loose Cultivator Token to Old Zhang. He's the person I trust most; he'll definitely be able to continue the legacy..."

"...The system won't let us off the hook. From the moment we started practicing traditional techniques, we were marked as 'abnormal data.' The so-called 'Alliance of Loose Cultivators' was nothing more than people sticking together for warmth. But now, even that hope is gone..."

The writing abruptly ends here.

Chen Yi stared at the last few lines of text, a strange emotion welling up inside him.

He put the paper down and looked around.

Then, he activated his psychic eye.

The stone chamber was filled with traces of spiritual energy, the marks left by everything that had happened here decades ago. His gaze swept over those traces, and suddenly he saw something.

That was a "memory".

It's not that the spirits of the dead speak on their own initiative, but rather that the afterimages are passively recorded by the environment.

The image was blurry and fragmented, like a damaged video.

Chen Yi saw a blurry figure quickly rummaging through something in the stone chamber. The person's movements were hurried, as if they were in a rush.

Then, a blinding blue light shone in from outside.

"Abnormal data detected. Please cooperate with the investigation."

A voice devoid of emotion rang out.

The blurry figure suddenly looked up, clutching something tightly in its hand. Chen Yi saw its mouth move, as if it were saying something, but he couldn't make out the sound.

Then, the screen started shaking violently.

There was a battle. Blue spiritual energy clashed with a gray but sharper force. Cracks appeared in the walls of the stone chamber, and stone slabs on the floor were torn off.

The blurry figure retreated continuously during the battle, eventually reaching a corner of the stone chamber. His form began to fade, as if dissipating.

But at the last moment, he handed what he was holding tightly to another person next to him.

"...Please..."

The sound came intermittently.

"...It must be...passed down..."

Then, the blue light engulfed everything.

The image disappeared.

Chen Yi pulled himself out of the lingering memories, panting heavily.

Unlike the feeling of absorbing the souls of the dead before, this time he only "saw" them and did not actually absorb any power. But those images still made his heart tremble.

System enforcers.

He was all too familiar with that blue light. It was the standard procedure for the system to handle "abnormal data".

That rogue cultivator eventually died. He and his companions were classified by the system as "anomalies that need to be cleared".

Chen Yi looked down at his hands.

The rubbing of the Loose Cultivator Token in his pocket was hard and digging into his thigh.

He didn't know if the rogue cultivator had actually delivered the token. But judging from the lingering memories, the person called "Old Zhang" must have received the token. At least, a portion of the token's record had been preserved.

What he found here were merely the ruins of a rogue cultivator's stronghold. The true inheritance had long since vanished.

Perhaps there are other independent cultivators still persisting in some corner. Perhaps that "Old Zhang" is already dead, and his lineage has been completely severed.

Maybe……

"Chen Yi!" Zhou Dazhuang's voice came from upstairs, "Are you done yet? It's about time to go back!"

Chen Yi snapped out of his thoughts.

"They're here."

He climbed out of the secret room, resealed the entrance, and then casually walked back to Zhou Dazhuang's side.

"How's it going?" Zhou Dazhuang asked. "What did you find?"

"It's nothing." Chen Yi patted the dust off his hands. "It's just some ordinary spiritual energy residue, I've cleaned it all up."

"That's good, that's good." Zhou Dazhuang breathed a sigh of relief. "I feel uncomfortable staying in this place for too long. Let's go back quickly."

Chen nodded.

The two walked out of the abandoned area and stepped onto their flying swords.

The outline of the city gradually became clear in the distance, and the top of the towering spirit tower shimmered with the system's unique blue light.

"Oh, right," Zhou Dazhuang suddenly remembered something, "did you hear? The inspector is arriving this afternoon."

Chen Yi's eyelid twitched.

"Know."

"Let me tell you, this inspector is really something," Zhou Dazhuang said in a low voice, mysteriously. "He's in charge of clearing out 'abnormal data.' I heard that last time, one of the cleaners almost got flagged as an anomaly because his spirit runes leaked a little fluctuation during a mission. Luckily, he was fortunate enough to be proven wrong, otherwise he would have been..."

Zhou Dazhuang made a throat-slitting gesture.

"Have you noticed anything unusual these past few days?" he suddenly asked. "Like unstable spiritual energy, strange dreams at night, or suddenly feeling unwell?"

Chen Yi's expression remained unchanged.

"no."

"That's good, that's good." Zhou Dazhuang breathed a sigh of relief. "These days, the thing we in this line of work fear most is encountering something like this. The system is checking more and more strictly, and it's always flagging abnormal data. Let me tell you, some cleaners take on side jobs, which can earn them more, but the risks are also higher. What if they get caught..."

"Taking on side jobs?"

"That's right." Zhou Dazhuang leaned closer. "Some wealthy independent cultivators hire cleaners to help them clean up their stuff, and the pay is several times higher than what the system offers. But this is investigated very strictly. If you get caught, you'll be directly judged as 'assisting in the flow of abnormal data,' which is even more serious than hoarding cultivation techniques."

Chen Yi remained silent and did not respond.

Zhou Dazhuang seemed to realize he'd said too much and quickly changed the subject: "But those are just a minority. Let's just focus on our work. By the way, shall we go to Lao Liu's place together after this order is finished?"

"No, thank you," Chen Yi said. "I'm a little tired, I'll go back and rest first."

"Alright, alright." Zhou Dazhuang was a little disappointed, but didn't insist. "I'll go now, maybe we can get together again next time!"

The two parted ways on the edge of the city.

Chen Yi walked alone on the way back to the spirit replenishment station, his mind racing with what he had just discovered.

A group of independent cultivators. Black market spirit stone trading. Taking on private jobs. System enforcers.

And the cultivation insights in that notebook.

"The smoother the circulation, the more efficient the flow of spiritual energy, allowing for greater control during battle..."

He recalled his experiences cultivating the Azure Cloud Heart Sutra over the past few days. His gray spiritual energy was indeed increasing, but there were always some areas where things weren't flowing smoothly. Now, with this experience, he could try to adjust it.

But those are things for the future.

What concerns him most right now is the news of the arrival of the inspector.

Old Yan once said that the inspectors were the eyes of the system, specifically responsible for clearing out "abnormal data." If he were to carefully scan the entire city…

Chen Yi paused for a moment.

Ah Qi.

Ah Qi followed him out today, hiding in his shadow. If the Inspector's perception is strong enough…

"Ah Qi," he whispered.

"Hmm." Ah Qi's voice came from the shadows, sounding a little nervous.

"Don't come back to the memorial service with me today."

Why?

"The inspector is coming," Chen Yi said. "Find a place to hide and wait until he leaves before you talk to him."

Ah Qi remained silent for a while.

"I know of an abandoned spirit tower. There's a lot of spiritual interference there, so I should be fine hiding there."

"Okay." Chen nodded. "Be careful."

"The same to you."

Ah Qi's shadow separated from his feet and silently drifted towards the distant ruins.

Chen Yi stood there, watching the gray mist disappear from sight.

Then he continued walking forward.

The outline of the spiritual station gradually became clear in front of us.

It was already afternoon when I got back to the stupa station.

Chen Yi lay on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.

The task was completed, and 2 spirit stones were credited to his account. But his mind was not on these things at all.

He recalled the scenes he had witnessed in the underground chamber. A rogue cultivator, hunted by law enforcement, entrusted his token to his companion before dying. Would his companion escape? Had the lineage continued?

He recalled Zhou Dazhuang's words. The system was cracking down harder and harder; for cleaners to take on private jobs was a capital offense. Was there any survivor from that rogue cultivator alliance?

He recalled the contents of that cultivation notebook: the circuit, the condensation technique, the differences between traditional and systematic cultivation methods…

My mind is a mess.

But there was one thing he was very clear about.

The inspector has arrived.

He must be more careful.

There was a knock on the door.

"Chen Yi, are you there?"

It was Old Yan's voice.

Chen Yi sat up and went to open the door.

Old Yan stood at the door, his face somewhat solemn.

"I heard the inspector is arriving tonight," he said. "Did you go out today?"

"Hmm. I did a D-rank mission in the west of the city."

"Where is the mission location?"

"Abandoned spirit fields".

Old Yan's brows furrowed even more.

"That place used to be a hideout for independent cultivators," he said. "Didn't you notice anything?"

Chen Yi was silent for a second.

"...We discovered something."

He didn't hide anything and briefly told Old Yan everything he had discovered that day. This included the notebook, the rubbing of the Loose Cultivator's Token, the underground chamber, and that fragment of memory.

After listening, Lao Yan remained silent for a long time.

"What you took..." he began slowly, "hide it well first. Don't let anyone see it."

"I know."

"And then there's Zhou Dazhuang." Old Yan glanced at him. "He's a chatterbox, he spills everything. But he's not a bad person, just a gossip. He'll probably forget what you tell him as soon as you turn around."

Chen Yi nodded, recalling Zhou Dazhuang's incessant chatter along the way.

"I see."

"Okay." Old Yan turned to leave, then stopped. "Oh, right, there's something..."

"What?"

"That inspector," Old Yan lowered his voice, "is called Zheng Xuan. Everyone in the system calls him 'Iron-Faced Judge.' He's been investigating abnormal data for decades and has never let a single one slip through his fingers."

"You mean...?"

"I mean, you'd better keep a low profile these next few days." Old Yan looked at him, his eyes holding an inscrutable expression. "Don't do anything... out of the ordinary."

After he finished speaking, he turned and left.

Chen Yi stood at the door, watching Lao Yan's figure disappear at the end of the corridor.

Night is falling.

Meanwhile, somewhere, a man named Zheng Xuan is stepping into this city.