Lin Dong shook his head, "Old Li, you don’t know, the fire at the Lin Family’s courtyard wasn’t sudden. It was the kids, having nothing better to do, playing with open flas in the abandoned kitchen. And there were still leftover unspent liquefied gas cylinders in there."
Old Li was stunned for a mont, "This I can’t quite rember."
Yan Junze said, "Does that an during the fire, that kid from house number 39 wasn’t in the Lin Family’s courtyard? Or had the child drowned before that?"
"That I don’t know." Lin Dong shook his head, "In any case, it was only after the fire that the boy’s body was found in the reservoir, said to have been in the water for days. The exact ti, I’m not too sure."
"What was the na of the drowned child?" Yan Junze asked.
"Zhu Zhanglong, we all called him... Long," Lin Dong replied.
"Long was usually well-behaved; I don’t know how he ended up going to the reservoir to play in the water alone. He was too bold." Old Li sighed, "His mother, Zhenzhen, was frequently beaten by his alcoholic father, Zhu Yansheng, because of this, and later on she committed suicide by hanging herself."
"Right," Lin Dong suddenly rembered sothing and reminded Yan Junze, "You should avoid going near number 39, there’s sothing unclean over there. But as long as you don’t go in, you’ll be fine."
"Zhu Yansheng left Rock because of guilt later on, and the building he left behind has been nearly forgotten by the locals," Old Li sighed again.
Having gathered enough information, Yan Junze had also finished the soy milk and dough sticks on the table and said to Lin Dong, "Thank you, Uncle Lin. I ca to let you know that I will stop renting after tomorrow. You can have the agency put up the rental information."
Old Li laughed, "He has already put it up."
Lin Dong also smiled, "No problem, when you leave, just pack up and go. Rember to bring the keys. If I’m not ho, just leave them under the pot with the Chinese rose at the doorway."
"Aren’t you going to inspect the room?" Yan Junze asked.
"Young people nowadays are very honest and polite; there’s nothing to see. I trust you," Lin Dong said.
After chatting with the two for a while and thanking them again for the free breakfast, Yan Junze left Lin Dong’s ho and returned to the rental house.
Ke’er had been lying on top of him all the way until they returned to the rental house, where she then got off, hanging her head and standing barefoot on one side (one of which was still broken).
In the absence of Zhang Xiaomo’s protection, it was only with Ke’er by his side that Yan Junze could feel at ease.
Thinking it over, he could only complete the "Drop the Handkerchief" task under the cover of night to avoid prying eyes, and for now, he could only wait.
The "Hanged Woman" task was still half unfinished, but now it seed that this child nad Long might have been on good terms with the few kids who died in the Lin Family courtyard fire.
If he could further determine Long’s whereabouts in the process of completing the "Drop the Handkerchief" task, that would be ideal.
But one thing Yan Junze didn’t understand was that since Long’s body had been recovered, his parents would definitely have gone to identify it. Couldn’t they recognize their own son?
Why did Ye Zhennan’s spirit still need to find her own child before she could truly rest in peace?
After pondering for a long while, Yan Junze could only assu that perhaps it was just the unconscious perception of Ye Zhennan after death.
There are so things that the person involved might subconsciously feel are wrong, even though they themselves might not understand why.
This was like the doubts that had been lingering in Yan Junze’s mind these past few days, as if a key point always eluded him, but he could never pin down where he had forgotten it.
After a while, seeing that Ke’er was also quite bored standing there, Yan Junze let the Crawler Monster out as well.
However, after letting it out, its appearance gave him a shock.
Previously, Yan Junze’s impression of the Crawler Monster was that it was hideous, emaciated, its entire body covered in wrinkles, with sunken eye sockets and a bald head.
But now, it not only looked rounder, having moved beyond the "emaciated" category, but its skin also seed shiny, with much fewer wrinkles, less sunken eye sockets, and its originally bald head had grown a fair amount of hair, even revealing a trending side part.
```
"Damn it, what’s going on?" Yan Junze was confused and turned his head to look at Ke’er.
Ke’er had also been locked in the twelfth node of the Spaceti Atlas these past few days; if the Crawler Monster had undergone these changes, she should be the clearest about it.
Of course, during the period they were locked, spirits could not communicate with each other as they existed independently.
Ke’er cocked her head, her gaze falling on Yan Junze: "Eh."
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"Fine, forget I asked," Yan Junze sighed helplessly.
At that mont, he really wished he had a spirit like Ye Zhennan, one who could relay all sorts of information to him, at least allowing unobstructed communication between the two.
Looking down at the Crawler Monster again, the creature seed sowhat restrained, as if it had gained so advantage or reaped so benefits without telling Yan Junze.
Yan Junze was even more puzzled, bent down, and looked at the creature: "Can you speak?"
The Crawler Monster shook its head.
"Alright, you’re literally mute," Yan Junze said helplessly. "You’ve been locked by all this ti; how did you get so fat?"
Hmm, wait, eat?!
Suddenly, Yan Junze thought of sothing and imdiately perford Inner Vision on his Spaceti Atlas.
At first glance, the Atlas didn’t seem to have any abnormal changes, but he soon noticed that the twelfth node, the one imprisoning the spirit, was absorbing Different Dinsion Energy from nearby branches at an extrely slow pace.
This absorption was slow and consud little energy, barely noticeable unless one observed very carefully.
"Could it be... after Locking the spirits, I can feed them with Different Dinsion Energy?" Yan Junze seed to have found the answer.
He looked down again at the Crawler Monster, shining with oily sheen. It had just extended its forked tongue, licking at its sparsely grown fur, but when it saw Yan Junze looking at it again, it imdiately put on a coy and reserved deanor, as if guilty about indulging in a bounty it feared might be punished for.
"From the looks of it, you don’t want to get rid of my Lockdown anymore because this way you can grow, huh!" Yan Junze muttered to himself.
He lifted his head to look at Ke’er.
Ke’er had been locked by him for a week, and although it wasn’t as long as the Crawler Monster had been locked, she might have undergone so changes too.
"Ke’er."
"Eh."
"Use all your strength, jump up, co over here to ."
Whoosh! Thud! Crack!
The next second, Ke’er was lying on Yan Junze’s back.
Yan Junze was stunned for two seconds before he looked back at the spot where Ke’er had been standing; it had sunk in about four to five centiters. He then looked at the ceiling.
Ke’er seed to have exerted too much force when she jumped up, hitting the ceiling directly, causing a large flake of paint to fall off and the ceiling to bulge upwards, before Ke’er ended up on his back.
Both spirits had grown stronger!
Yan Junze guessed that Ke’er’s jumping speed could now be terd as "human cannonball."
But now there was trouble, just now Lin Dong had said that young people nowadays were very honest and there was no need to check the rented house again when Yan Junze left, but fuck, what now?
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