Chapter 50: Indeed, there's a ghost!
The reason Yang Haoran was wearing sunglasses late at night was very simple: it was to prevent others from discovering him when he activated his Ghost Eye. Otherwise, he wouldn't have done such a thing.
With his Ghost Eye now active, he first noticed a faint layer of Yin Qi shrouding Wang Qing.
This Yin Qi wasn't strong; it was just a very faint layer. While it wouldn't affect the human body in the short term, prolonged exposure would definitely have an impact, causing one to become sickly and frail.
Yang Haoran merely glanced at Wang Qing before shifting his gaze to her side. What he saw next startled him profoundly, causing the hand holding his water cup to tremble slightly as he gasped in a sharp breath.
Right beside Wang Qing sat another person—or, to be precise, not a person, but a ghost.
This ghost was drenched in fresh blood, its entire head a bloody mess, with glimmers of stark white bone and chunks of flesh still dripping blood visible through the gore.
Witnessing this sudden scene indeed gave Yang Haoran a huge fright, but he was a Night Watcher now, a man of true ability. As the saying goes, "the greater the skill, the bolder the heart," and with his growing capabilities, his courage had similarly swelled.
After taking a deep breath, the fear in his heart gradually dissipated, and he regained his composure.
In truth, even before activating his Ghost Eye, Yang Haoran had suspected there was a ghost accompanying Wang Qing. There was nothing visible beside Wang Qing, yet a strong Yin Qi emanated from that empty space. In his opinion, it was highly probable that a ghost was following her; otherwise, the presence of such strong Yin Qi would be unexplainable.
The ghost's face was a pulpy mess, making it impossible to discern his features, but judging by the clothes he wore before death, he appeared to be male.
Under normal circumstances, once a person dies, they usually retain the clothing and appearance from the moment of their death, including any gruesome injuries. Of course, if they wished, they could also appear in their normal, living state. The two forms could be freely interchanged; whether they chose to appear as they did in death or in life was entirely up to them.
The ghost before him had not chosen to appear in his normal living form, opting instead for his gruesome death-state, which made him appear so terrifying.
What was this ghost's relationship with Wang Qing?
Why was he following Wang Qing?
Yang Haoran was quite puzzled. However, the ghost's appearance provided an answer to the source of the Yin Qi on Wang Qing; it must have clung to her from this ghost.
But why was Wang Qing's Yin Qi much weaker now than it had been that day?
And what about Guan Hai's Yin Qi?
To unravel these mysteries and understand the entire chain of events, Yang Haoran decided to focus on the ghost before him as his breakthrough point.
The Ghost Eye could perceive things invisible to the naked eye and also view the past of the deceased. To thoroughly resolve this matter, he needed to understand its complete backstory so that no detail would be overlooked. This was also why Yang Haoran didn't immediately retrieve his Soul-Gathering Bead to capture the ghost at that moment.
As his Ghost Eye intensified, the scene before Yang Haoran began to change. The deceased's past started to unfold before his eyes, and he felt as if he were experiencing it firsthand.
This ghost was named High Liang, and he was one of Wang Qing's many admirers.
High Liang came from a poor family; both his parents were honest, simple farmers with no particular skills, yet they doted on their son, High Liang, immensely, spoiling him greatly.
It's said that children from poor families mature early, but this wasn't the case for High Liang. Due to his parents' indulgence, High Liang had faced almost no setbacks from childhood into adulthood; his parents shielded him from every storm.
High Liang's grades were terrible. Logically, a child from such a poor family, even with good grades, might have dropped out early. But he didn't drop out. Not only did he not drop out, he even went to university—the very university Wang Qing currently attended.
In truth, the university High Liang and Wang Qing attended wasn't a prestigious one. It had virtually no admission requirements; as long as you had money, you could enroll. So, despite his poor grades, High Liang successfully walked through the university gates, at the cost of all his parents' life savings.
To ensure High Liang's successful admission, his parents not only exhausted all their family savings but also borrowed a considerable sum from relatives and friends, plunging their already impoverished family deep into debt, making them even poorer.
However, High Liang's parents were genuinely happy and proud of their son, because he was attending university. In their eyes, university was an incredible place, and their son would become an amazing university student, with a bright future ahead, bringing glory to their ancestors being just around the corner.
So, even though their family was financially ruined, High Liang's parents, while feeling immense pressure, were genuinely overjoyed. They would tell everyone they met how their son had been admitted to university and how extraordinary he would become in the future.
The day before he left, High Liang's parents gritted their teeth and prepared several tables laden with good food, inviting relatives and friends. This was partly to celebrate their beloved son becoming a university student and partly to give him a grand send-off.
At the banquet, High Liang's parents were in high spirits, their old faces beaming with joy. Amidst the congratulations from their relatives and friends, they couldn't stop smiling.
The next morning, High Liang boarded the car, and his parents tearfully waved goodbye. Under their gazes, filled with hope, High Liang left his hometown and arrived in Lecheng, beginning his university life.
High Liang knew his family was poor, but he had no intention of easing his parents' burden. He demanded the full amount for his monthly living expenses, never once considering if he could try to be more frugal.
As for how his parents were faring back home, or where they would find his monthly living expenses, he never thought about these things at all.
He only cared about receiving the money. How to find that money, in his view, was his parents' business, and had nothing to do with him.
He rarely contacted his parents proactively, only remembering them when he ran short of money. Even during holidays, he seldom made the effort to call them.
University life was colorful. Few students at High Liang's university were truly there to learn skills; the vast majority were squandering their parents' hard-earned money.
Gradually, he learned to play games, to play mahjong, to compare himself to others, to fall in love, and to go on casual hookups. He hadn't learned any of the things he should have learned in university, but he had learned everything he shouldn't have.
It wasn't just High Liang; most students at their university were like this. In their eyes, learning to eat, drink, and be merry was what university life should be like. Students who diligently studied were, to them, oddities.
Eating, drinking, and merrymaking required capital, and High Liang had none of his own. But he still had his parents, his incredibly doting parents, so they became his sole means of acquiring capital.
At a gathering, High Liang met Wang Qing, a student from the same university. Wang Qing's beauty deeply captivated High Liang, and he believed, given his own decent looks, that winning her over would be no problem. So, he began to pursue Wang Qing fiercely.
However, what High Liang didn't expect was that Wang Qing was completely uninterested in a poor boy like him. This infuriated High Liang, but he didn't give up. Instead, he swore he would definitely win Wang Qing over.
Since his looks couldn't attract Wang Qing, High Liang resorted to a financial offensive. He began buying Wang Qing all sorts of gifts: clothes, handbags, jewelry, and so on.
Although none of these gifts were luxury brands, each cost hundreds, or even thousands, of New Beginning Coins. In just one month, High Liang had lavished tens of thousands of New Beginning Coins on Wang Qing.
For a wealthy family, tens of thousands of New Beginning Coins were nothing, but for High Liang's already debt-ridden family, it was an astronomical sum.
However, to support their beloved son's education, High Liang's parents pooled resources, tried every possible method, and even knelt before relatives and friends, managing to scrape together this sum of money for High Liang.
The cost of doing so was that whenever relatives and friends saw High Liang's parents, they would avoid them as if they were seeing a plague, not daring to have any contact. These relatives and friends understood clearly that High Liang's parents were surely coming to borrow money.
It was no wonder these relatives and friends acted this way. They too had their own families and needed money for expenses. High Liang's parents would constantly ask them for loans; once or twice might be fine, but this borrowing was endless, so it was normal for them to avoid the couple.
High Liang's financial offensive on Wang Qing did have some effect. Wang Qing accepted all the gifts without hesitation, turning them into capital for showing off to her classmates and satisfying her vanity.
However, she still had no good feelings for High Liang; she merely wanted to extract more gifts from him.
After a month, having spent tens of thousands of New Beginning Coins, High Liang hadn't even held Wang Qing's hand, let alone taken her to a hotel. Yet, High Liang was still unwilling to give up; he had sworn he would get Wang Qing.
By the second month, High Liang planned to spend even more money on Wang Qing. He refused to believe he couldn't win her over, but he hadn't considered his family's financial situation at all.
In the second month, High Liang didn't receive any money from his parents. Not only did he not get the money he planned to lavish on Wang Qing, he didn't even receive a single cent for his own living expenses.
He had no idea that since he entered university, his parents hadn't tasted meat or fish, subsisting solely on porridge and pickles every day. All their money had been spent on him. Now, their family couldn't even produce a single cent, and couldn't borrow any either. All he knew was that his parents hadn't given him money this month.
High Liang was furious. He ignored his parents' weeping on the other end of the phone, threw a violent tantrum, cursing his parents as useless and incompetent, making him unable to hold his head high among his classmates.
In the eyes of High Liang's parents, university was a place where talented people gathered. There, their son would surely learn skills and become their pride. But they never dreamed that ever since he entered university, their beloved son had lost even the most basic understanding of how to be a person.
How did it come to this?
How could their precious son become like this?
Their hearts utterly shattered with disappointment in High Liang, coupled with the immense debt the family owed, High Liang's parents broke down. Unable to think clearly, they eventually drank pesticide together, tearfully leaving this world.
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