After Shen Lingxue walked away, Zhao Hao drooped his head, his face etched with regret. "Hey, Chunky, why doesn't she believe me? I was just trying to help."
Zhao Hao had given up calling Liu Shuai "Handsome" when it didn't really suit the man, now opting for "Chunky."
"Um, maybe next time, clean your drool before talking. And stop calling me Chunky. I was in the Investigation Bureau before you. Call me 'Handsome' or 'sir.'"
"Who do you think you are, you idiot? What do you mean by clean my drool? You think you're some kind of saint?" Zhao Hao immediately flared up.
"Haha, you were eyeing her collarbone the whole time. You think we can't see? She was practically bundled up; only her neckline was a bit exposed, and you couldn't take your eyes off of it. If you guys slept in the same room, who knows what you'd do."
"That's nonsense! If you knew where I was looking, that means you were staring too!"
Fang Xiu watched them fighting with a blank expression. Right then, he fully grasped the meaning of "useless teammate."
Turning his back on them, he made his way to his room to get some rest.
"Hey, where are you going, Xiu? Aren't you staying with us? Don't we have to keep watch tonight?"
Ignoring the voice, Fang Xiu continued walking.
He wasn't so much worried about keeping watch as he was about the likelihood that Specters wouldn't show up if there was a crowd.
Plus, something else had caught his attention todaypeople's hair.
The village chief and others seemed to have incredibly healthy hair. Wang Guifang and Wang Fugui were relatively younger, but the village chief was close to eighty and had no gray hair.
Fang Xiu had wondered if they might have dyed their hair, but that seemed improbable.
In this remote mountain village, nobody cared about hair dye; everybody knew each otherparticularly someone elderly like the village chief. Moreover, obtaining hair dye here would be difficult; one would have to trek for hours to the nearest town.
What raised Fang Xiu's suspicion most was the fact that since arriving in Blackwater, he had not encountered a single Specter!
He couldn't definitively say there were no Specters in Blackwaterhe hadn't combed through the whole village, and the visibility was poor outside.
Yet, this alone was enough to make him feel uneasy.
In the city, Specters were all over the place, and even on the journey to Blackwater, though rare, they did exist.
But since reaching Blackwater, he had seen absolutely no Specters.
There was only one other time Fang Xiu had experienced thisIn the Specter Zone of Green Mountain Mental Hospital.
_'Is Blackwater also a Specter Zone?'_
That thought perplexed Fang Xiu. His phone still had a signal, which was unlike his previous experience in Green Mountain Mental Hospital, where he lost all connectivity.
This deepened his suspicions about the villagers' unusually healthy hair. He knew in his gut that something in Blackwater was amiss. Given his cautious nature, even the smallest irregularity seemed amplified.
With his mind awash in these questions, Fang Xiu drifted into sleep. He wrapped himself in two blankets; despite having psychic abilities, he was still a mortal, not some invincible superhero.
Late into the night, around three in the morning, the noise of water flowing reached Fang Xiu's ears. He sensed an increasing dampness in the air, and the temperature seemed to drop around him.
WHOOSH!
Fang Xiu's eyes shot open.
"Has it finally shown up?"
He murmured to himself before sitting up abruptly to survey his environment. He was greeted by pitch darkness; he couldn't see a thing.
Oddly enough, it felt as though the bed beneath him was shifting.
Snapping into action, he swiftly grabbed his phone and activated the flashlight.
The powerful beam cut through the enveloping darkness, revealing what was under his bed. It wasn't the firm limestone floor he remembered but waterriver water, to be exact!
His bed was actually afloat on the Blackwater River!
The sound he had heard was indeed the Blackwater River's currents. In the flashlight's beam, he saw a few dim figures. Upon closer inspection, they were Shen Lingxue, Zhao Hao, and othersall in deep slumber.
Just like Fang Xiu, their beds were also floating on the river's surface."