Charles Gray mumbled quietly at the back, not saying a word. Carter Shaw had already reached the door, and seeing that he hadn’t caught up, finally turned back impatiently and said, “What are you dawdling for? Weren’t you the one who wanted to find someone? Get over here already!”

Charles Gray instantly transformed from a frostbitten eggplant into a freshly watered sunflower, scampering after him eagerly.

The two of them drove Charles Gray’s car to wait near the highway exit. Whenever they saw a car with a license plate from the province where the missing girl was from, they would stop it and search inside.

They waited like this for an entire night.

Although the New Year had passed, Longcheng hadn’t officially entered spring in terms of temperature. The mornings and evenings still felt like the depths of winter, and standing outside for a while was enough to freeze a person stiff.

Charles Gray would get drowsy after sitting in the warm car for a bit. Carter Shaw watched as his head sometimes drooped all the way to his chest, then he’d suddenly jolt awake, hurriedly wipe his face, get out of the car, and look around on both sides to make sure no long-distance buses had passed by. Only then would he breathe a sigh of relief, wrap his coat tighter, and pace back and forth in the night wind to try to stay awake. He’d do this until he was numb from the cold, then get back in the car to warm up for a while.

He kept getting in and out, but Carter Shaw didn’t say anything, just watched Charles Gray thoughtfully from the side.

Corpse King rarely focused his attention on Charles Gray, but at this moment, he suddenly found it odd—how old was Charles Gray anyway? The merit on him was so thick it was impossible to see through, like PM2.5. Even an old monk who’d spent his whole life releasing animals might not have accumulated so much merit. Even if, as Darrin Grant said, he did everything quietly without anyone knowing, and his merit doubled because he sought nothing in return, still… even so, Charles Gray would have to help old ladies cross the street three times a day, every day, to reach this level.

Just then, another long-distance bus arrived. When he got close enough to see the license plate, Charles Gray immediately jumped out of the car as if he’d been injected with chicken blood, grabbed his credentials, and stood in the middle of the road, jumping and waving to flag down the bus.

“Tsk, idiot,” Carter Shaw muttered, then glanced at Charles Gray’s back and dialed Darrin Grant’s number. “Hey, night owl, you’re not asleep, are you? If you’re up, I have something to ask you.”

Darrin Grant was dreaming, floating on the ocean, happily gnawing on a giant whale, thinking this would be enough to feed him for a year and a half. But just as he took a couple of bites, the whale suddenly thrashed and splashed him with a faceful of icy water.

Darrin Grant woke with a start. Looking up, he saw Zane Shaw holding a cold receiver to his cat face, smiling sweetly and saying, “Cat jieba, phone call.”

Apparently, Zane Shaw already knew that “jieba” wasn’t a nice word and had long since stopped using it as a catchphrase—so now it was reserved exclusively for Darrin Grant, and he pronounced it almost like “jiba” (dick).

“Cat jieba” looked annoyed, lifted his head, pressed his ear to the phone receiver, and heard Carter Shaw’s voice coming through. He snapped, “Get lost, old ghost, are you looking for trouble?”

Carter Shaw wasn’t about to indulge his foul mouth: “Eat and sleep all day—be careful your weight hits a new record by the end of the year. At that point, forget female cats, even dogs won’t want you—aren’t you worried about high blood pressure and all that?”

Zane Shaw calmly watched as cat jieba’s sharp claws scratched a row of marks into the desk, then floated away hugging his book.

“If you have a memorial, submit it; if not, leave the court—cut the crap, Carter Shaw, what do you want in the middle of the night?”

Carter Shaw asked, “I wanted to ask, have you ever seen orange-colored merit?”

“Yeah, I have,” Darrin Grant replied grumpily. “I’ve seen red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet—collect all seven and you can summon Shenron to do acrobatics in the sky for you.”

“I’m not joking with you,” Carter Shaw lowered his voice, glancing at the long-distance bus parked outside the window. “It’s not all orange, usually it’s white, but sometimes it flashes like fire, a bit like a spark…”

Darrin Grant was silent for a moment. “Where did you see that?”

“On Charles Gray.”

“That’s impossible,” Darrin Grant said firmly. “I know what you’re talking about. That’s not minor merit, that’s great merit. Do you know what great merit is?”

Carter Shaw raised an eyebrow. “Hmm?”

“I haven’t seen it myself, but I’ve heard that after the ancient goddess Nüwa created humans, she was engulfed in flames, which represented the descent of great merit from the heavens. Nowadays, all living beings’ merits and demerits are recorded in the Book of Life and Death. At most, the merit is left by the pen on the ancient tree of merit, but it can’t reach that level. Are you messing with me? Impossible.”

Carter Shaw was stunned for a moment. At this point, Charles Gray had already gotten off the bus, and from a distance, he looked dejected—most likely he hadn’t found anything.

Carter Shaw lowered his voice and quickly said to Darrin Grant, “Is Xiao Guo really human?”

“Yeah, he’s human,” Darrin Grant said. “Zach Warren even has his ID registered.”

“I want to check his birth certificate—the kind from the hospital that says ‘male live birth on X year X month X day,’” Carter Shaw said.

Darrin Grant: “Huh? Damn, humans are really into weird stuff, you even want that!”

“No more nonsense, I’m busy here, I’m hanging up. Remember to check for me.” Carter Shaw hung up before Charles Gray got back in the car.

Chapter 94 Soulbound Lamp …

Charles Gray looked a bit wilted, like a miserable homeless man who’d spent the night in a train station waiting hall. When he climbed into the driver’s seat, the only word that came to Carter Shaw’s mind was “a puddle.”

“No luck?” Carter Shaw asked, already knowing the answer.

Charles Gray nodded silently.

Carter Shaw was quiet for a moment, then tentatively said, “But maybe I was wrong. Maybe they took the train, or stayed in the city for a while. Why don’t we head back for now?”

Charles Gray was silent for a while. Staying up all night made his already slow mind even duller. Then he rubbed his face hard and said softly, “Sorry, Brother Carter. Maybe… maybe you should drive back first. Once I find them, I’ll take a cab back myself.”

“A cab? You’ve been out here all night—are you planning to freeze to death?” Carter Shaw thought for a moment, then added, “Don’t worry, even if you made a deal with a ghost, it’s fine. It’s just a low-level earthbound spirit—I can handle it.”

Charles Gray still shook his head firmly. He was just about to open the door and get out when, in the instant he turned his back to Carter Shaw, Carter Shaw suddenly pulled his hand from his pocket and slapped a talisman onto the back of Charles Gray’s neck.

“What are you? Why are you possessing a human?” Carter Shaw asked coldly.

Charles Gray immediately felt as if his limbs had been filled with lead. He wanted to turn around and ask Carter Shaw what was going on, but his neck was stiff and he just couldn’t turn.

It was as if his consciousness had floated out of his body, and he was looking at his own ridiculous posture and Carter Shaw’s grave expression from a strange third-person perspective.

Carter Shaw frowned, looking up at Charles Gray’s soul floating in midair—it was indeed a human soul, and it matched the body perfectly, without the slightest discrepancy.

In other words, the soul forced out by his talisman really was Charles Gray himself.

“So you really are Charles Gray?”

Charles Gray floated in the air, wanting to say, “Brother Carter, what are you doing?”

But when he opened his mouth, it was as if he’d been muted… no, it was like he’d entered a vacuum where sound couldn’t travel. He made a sound, but only his own body could hear it. The words left his mouth, but couldn’t be heard outside at all.

At that moment, Carter Shaw reached out and peeled the talisman off Charles Gray’s body. Then Charles Gray felt a tremendous pressure, as a withered hand pressed directly onto his soul. The sensation was so strange that Charles Gray couldn’t help but shiver. Then, the floating feeling vanished, and his body felt so heavy he was almost unaccustomed to it.

Charles Gray turned his head, trembling, and met Carter Shaw’s scrutinizing gaze.

Charles Gray might be slow to react, but even he realized he’d just had an out-of-body experience. In his mind, “out-of-body” was no different from “dead”—in other words, Carter Shaw had almost killed him with a talisman.

Charles Gray shrank back, pressing his back tightly against the other car door in fear, his heart pounding in his throat. He asked weakly, “Chu—Chu ge… wh-what does this mean…”

“Are you human?” Carter Shaw asked.

Charles Gray stared at him, dumbfounded, not knowing what kind of question this was. His first instinct was that he must have done something terrible, something so bad he was being called “not human.” But after thinking hard for a moment, he realized he hadn’t done anything like that. It’s not like he could commit a crime in his sleep, right?

“Let me put it this way—do you remember your parents?”