Charles Gray nodded.

“Sorry, I know about your family, my condolences,” Carter Shaw apologized without any sincerity, “But I have to ask you this—are you really your parents’ biological child? How can you prove you are?”

Carter Shaw wasn’t very tactful; he actually knew how to speak properly, but sometimes he just thought he was too cool to bother.

If it had been Logan Sullivan being asked this, he would have gotten angry on the spot, maybe even slapped him—no surprise there. But Charles Gray was just a softie. Hearing this, he only felt a bit uncomfortable inside, but didn’t show any sign of anxiety or anger. He even thought about it carefully and answered seriously, “I looked a lot like my uncle and grandpa when they were young. My grandpa had a bit of high blood pressure, passed it to my dad, and now I’m showing early signs of it too… I think I must be their biological child.”

“Any cultivators in your ancestry?” Carter Shaw asked.

“Ancestry?” Charles Gray was taken aback. “I don’t know what my ancestors did. I can only trace back three generations, at most to the time of the War of Resistance Against Japan. No one knows anything before that.”

Carter Shaw didn’t press the issue—after all, even if Charles Gray’s ancestors had some special bloodline, if the last three generations were all ordinary people, it must have thinned out a lot by now, so it wasn’t a decisive factor… The last possibility was that he was someone’s reincarnation.

But it was just an ordinary human soul, and with Corpse King’s sharp eyes, he couldn’t see anything unusual.

Just then, the headlights of a bus swept over from the opposite side. Charles Gray grabbed Carter Shaw’s arm: “Brother Carter, the bus! The bus!”

Carter Shaw paused, temporarily setting aside his questions. “Alright, go ahead.”

Charles Gray, as if granted amnesty, scrambled down in a hurry. By some coincidence, a bus from the same province as the girl had just passed, and now here was another one. Charles Gray waved it down, showed his credentials to the driver, and then recited his prepared lines requesting to check the passengers, using the same tone as the national news broadcast.

Sometimes there were random checks during holidays, so the driver was unfazed. He turned around and shouted to the full bus in a booming voice, “Wake up! Wake up! Please cooperate, everyone, and have your IDs ready for inspection!”

Carter Shaw had been sitting far away in the car, but for some reason, he suddenly felt a hunch—many cultivators get this kind of feeling. He got out and walked over, just in time to see a thin, small girl of about fifteen or sixteen following behind Charles Gray as she got off the bus, dressed in a worn-out tracksuit, her head almost drooping to her chest.

Carter Shaw: “Is it her?”

Charles Gray nodded and added, “The person who took her is still on the bus…”

Before he could finish, there was a “bang” as someone jumped off the bus and ran. Actually, there was no real evidence that he was abducting the girl—after all, she was sitting there willingly, following him of her own accord. But maybe he had a guilty conscience, because as soon as he heard the word “police,” he panicked and bolted.

But after only a couple of steps, he suddenly tripped over something and fell flat on his face. He got up and tried to run again, but after two more steps, he fell flat again, inexplicably. After three falls, he was finally caught by the leisurely “policeman” Carter Shaw, who grabbed him by the collar and cuffed something cold around his wrist.

…Of course, due to the special nature of his work, Corpse King had never used handcuffs before, and being unfamiliar with the process, he almost couldn’t get them on.

Carter Shaw turned around and saw Charles Gray gently talking to the little girl, telling her she shouldn’t have run away from home. For a moment, he forgot that the girl’s mother was already dead, and called the number from before: “Hello, Auntie, don’t worry, we’ve found your daughter. Tomorrow I’ll find someone to help send her back.”

After he finished, he naturally handed the phone to the girl. “Your mom was worried sick about you, called me in the middle of the night begging me to find you. Say a few words to her.”

The girl was in her rebellious phase. Although she recognized Charles Gray, to her, he was just the young teacher who volunteered at her school for a month during summer break—a big playmate, really. She was indifferent, acting like she didn’t care and wouldn’t listen. Charles Gray rambled on for a while, and she probably ignored it all—until she heard this sentence, and suddenly froze.

The girl jerked her head up to look at Charles Gray, as if she wanted to shout, “You’re lying!” But when the words reached her lips, she couldn’t say a thing. As if compelled by some unseen force, her hands trembling, she took the phone. “…Hello?”

On the other end, there was a moment of silence. Then, through the phone, the familiar accent of her hometown reached the ears of a loved one separated by life and death. She really heard her deceased mother’s familiar voice: “Cui’er.”

The girl’s tears streamed down instantly. “Mom!”

Her mother said on the phone, “Don’t cry, Cui’er, don’t cry. Listen to Mr. Gregory, come home tomorrow. You’ve gone so far, I can’t keep up, I can’t see you, and it makes me anxious…”

The girl, still in her old school uniform, finally stood at the entrance to Blackstone on the national highway, and in the confused darkness of night, she broke down in heart-wrenching sobs.

Carter Shaw wasn’t good at handling this kind of situation. He wanted to just take the suspect away, but happened to glance at Charles Gray again, and once more saw that flickering “firelight” in the thick aura of merit around him.

The “firelight” seemed even brighter. For a moment, Carter Shaw thought something on Charles Gray was burning. He rubbed his eyes hard, but when he looked again, it was gone.

Firelight…

Even though Darrin Grant had mentioned it before—that it was the great merit bestowed by heaven when Nuwa created humans—Carter Shaw couldn’t help but feel a sense of foreboding. He finally couldn’t resist taking out his phone and dialing Logan Sullivan’s number again—he’d already tried several times while waiting in the car with Charles Gray, but it had always been “out of service area.” This time, it was “powered off.”

Did this mean Logan Sullivan was back?

Carter Shaw couldn’t help lighting a cigarette, feeling like he’d gotten timid. But thinking of this, he suddenly felt a bit more grounded.

That night, they kept watch at the highway entrance until four thirty in the morning, almost pulling an all-nighter. William Sherman and Logan Sullivan, meanwhile, wandered all night in William Sherman’s memories.

On top of Mount Aetheris, after asking his question, William Sherman didn’t wait for Logan Sullivan to answer before quickly saying, “I won’t let you think about it. You have to answer me right now.”

Logan Sullivan paused, looked up into William Sherman’s eyes for a long moment, then reached out and held William Sherman’s wrist. “How much longer can Great Seal last? Will the time left be enough for a little mortal like me to live half a lifetime, to take care of my parents in their old age and see them off?”

For a moment, William Sherman almost didn’t understand what he meant. His face was pale as snow, his lips just as white, all the color seeming to gather in the bloodshot veins of his eyes. His mind was blank, except for the two answers he’d given himself, echoing back and forth.

So much so that when Logan Sullivan didn’t immediately say either of those two sentences, it was almost beyond William Sherman’s comprehension. He didn’t react to what Logan Sullivan had said.

Who knows how long passed before William Sherman snapped out of it, grabbing Logan Sullivan’s shoulders and half-squatting down. “What… You, explain yourself… What do you mean?”

Logan Sullivan touched his hair, reaching out to gently stroke it. “Such a heavy heart, and so calculating… Sigh, you’re really hard to take care of. Come on, let’s go home.”

William Sherman stared at him wide-eyed for a moment, then suddenly lunged forward, wrapping him tightly in his arms. Then the world spun, and Logan Sullivan felt the familiar sensation under his feet. There was a crisp sound by his ear, as if someone had landed awkwardly and accidentally knocked a small teacup off the table by the bed, spilling the last bit of water all over the floor.

But no one paid it any mind.

William Sherman pressed Logan Sullivan down on the bed, almost roughly tearing open his clothes.

“Hey, wait!” Logan Sullivan grabbed William Sherman’s hand. “I’m not drinking your blood.”

“To me, it’s just like being bitten by a mosquito.”

“That’s not how it is for me.” Logan Sullivan pushed him away, then reached for the bedside lamp, but his arms were quickly pinned down.

William Sherman licked his Adam’s apple, and Logan Sullivan let out a low, uneasy gasp. “Alright, stop messing around.”

“Even if I took out my whole heart, I wouldn’t die right away. At least I’d live longer than Great Seal,” William Sherman said in a low voice, his hot breath falling on Logan Sullivan’s collarbone. “Actually, I thought about it back then—if I gave you my heart, maybe it would work even better. I was just afraid of scaring you, so I only showed you the bloodletting part.”

Logan Sullivan was silent for a moment, then said dryly, “Well, thanks for remembering I’m a coward.”