"Tianqiong, what are you doing?"
Jiang Yu looked at Xia Tianqiong in panic, her eyes filled with incomprehension.
"What am I doing? I'm here to strangle you!" Xia Tianqiong snorted coldly, gripping Jiang Yu's neck tightly.
Jiang Yu's face turned red, gradually purple. Tears welled up in her eyes, making her look pitiful and heart-wrenching.
"Why? Don't you like me?" she asked.
"Sorry, I don't like women."
"That's impossible!" Jiang Yu exclaimed, then fell silent.
Suddenly, the entire space blurred, and Xia Tianqiong felt drowsiness overwhelm him once again.
He closed his eyes, then opened them again.
He found himself lying in bed, with no naked Jiang Yu beside him, as if it had all been a dream.
"Splish splash splash!"
The sound of water came from the bathroom.
Xia Tianqiong hurried over and saw a tall, handsome man showering. The man turned to him, revealing a sunny smile.
"Master, I'll be done soon."
"Damn it, you really dare to turn into a man!" Xia Tianqiong felt nauseous, rushing forward to kick him down.
As he kicked, he cursed, "Are you trying to disgust me to death?"
The man fell to the ground, his face contorted. "Damn human, you've seen through me early on and still dare to play with me?"
Since Xia Tianqiong began to feel drowsy, he realized he was in a bizarre situation, otherwise he wouldn't have told the two strange things in his body to wake him up.
Because this time he encountered a dream.
This kind of strangeness can trap people in various dreams, triggering death rules in dreams and killing people.
Some dream ghosts are good at creating nightmares, making people feel fearful. This is called a nightmare ghost.
Some are good at weaving fantasy stories, letting people play roles in them, which is called a script ghost.
Some like to transform into handsome men and beautiful women, seducing people to produce desires, which is what Xia Tianqiong encountered, called a spring dream ghost.
There are many kinds of dream ghosts, no matter which kind, in the early days of strangeness, they have caused a large number of human deaths.
Until the official release of information about dream ghosts, as well as the method of cracking, people realized that dream ghosts are actually very easy to deal with strangeness.
For example, this spring dream ghost tempts Xia Tianqiong to produce desires. As long as he has sex with it in his dreams, he will trigger the death rule.
Cracking this death rule is very simple. As long as you restrain yourself, most people will not be hit.
You can even counter-kill it.
Xia Tianqiong exerted all his strength and kicked the spring dream ghost fiercely.
Although it was a dream, it felt exactly the same as reality.
Suddenly, he felt drowsiness overwhelm him again, his vision gradually blurring.
If he closed his eyes at this time, the spring dream ghost would escape from the dream or weave another dream.
Naturally, Xia Tianqiong couldn't let it go. "Sword!"
With a loud shout, he focused his attention, resisting drowsiness while imagining a sharp sword with his mind.
Although the dream was woven by the spring dream ghost, fundamentally, it was a dream based on Xia Tianqiong's memory, so he was the master of the dream.
As long as his will was firm enough and his imagination rich enough, he could imagine anything here.
This was also a skill he learned from other ghost hunters.
With Xia Tianqiong's shout, his vision gradually cleared, and a long sword condensed out of thin air.
The spring dream ghost looked confused. "How can you also control the dream?"
Apart from weaving dreams and transforming into various people, it had no other attack capabilities.
Most importantly, it could be killed in dreams.
Watching Xia Tianqiong holding a long sword, slashing towards himself, he quickly begged for mercy: "Brother, I was wrong, I shouldn't have disturbed you, spare me this time, okay?"
"You want my life, but you want me to spare you, is that possible?" Xia Tianqiong threatened, but didn't expect this spring dream ghost to be exceptionally stubborn.
No matter what, it refused to submit, preferring death rather than signing a contract as a human master.
After thinking about it, Xia Tianqiong realized that the strange arts mastered by the spring dream ghost could only deal with humans, and were ineffective against other strangeness. Keeping it would not be of much use.
Moreover, he urgently needed ghost coins, so let's kill it!
So he wildly slashed, and the spring dream ghost gradually became transparent, finally bursting like a balloon, dissolving into nothingness.
At the same time, Xia Tianqiong instantly woke up from the dream, completely awake.
It was now the hot summer, but the room suddenly turned cold like a cellar, the air thick and viscous.
This was the large amount of ghostly power dissipated after the spring dream ghost died, and it would completely disappear in a few minutes.
Xia Tianqiong quickly grabbed dozens of gold ingots from the bedside and scattered them around the room, absorbing ghostly power and transforming it into ghost coins.
Three to four minutes later, most of the ghostly power had been absorbed, with a small part dissipating.
Xia Tianqiong counted them. There were a total of 48 gold ingots, all transformed into ghost coins, although they varied in size.
Some were as small as peanuts, while others were as large as apples.
During the dissipation of ghostly power, the concentration varied throughout the room. The more ghostly power absorbed by the gold ingots, the heavier they became, and vice versa.
"It looks like I need to buy an electronic scale, otherwise I won't know how much these gold pieces weigh."
Xia Tianqiong held a gold ingot in each hand, trying to estimate their weight without much success, as he lacked experience in this area.
"Master, I have experience. I can tell their weight just by touching them."
The big brain of the delivery ghost suddenly floated out of his chest, smiling slyly with a look of flattery.
Xia Tianqiong thought it made sense. After all, ghosts had a very accurate perception of ghost coins, so he let it come out of his body and weigh the gold ingots one by one.
Five minutes later.
"Master, the smallest one weighs 2 taels, and the largest one weighs 56 taels, totaling 485 taels."
"So many!" Though Xia Tianqiong was mentally prepared, he still felt quite surprised.
485 taels of gold equated to 4850 taels of silver, which, at a conversion rate of 1:1000 to paper ghost notes, amounted to 4.85 million yuan.
This was a huge sum of money!
Who would have thought that killing a wild-level Spring Dream Ghost could convert so much ghost coin?
It seemed he would have to hunt more strange beings in the future.
On the bed lay a pile of gold ingots of varying sizes, casting a golden glow over the entire room.
The delivery ghost crouched beside the bed like a puppy, saliva unconsciously dripping from its mouth.
It looked up at Xia Tianqiong and grinned, "Master, you haven't forgotten what you promised me earlier, have you?"
"Of course not. How much ghost coin do you need to restore your previous state?"
Xia Tianqiong was in a good mood and replied readily.
"Well... 50 taels of gold would be enough to restore me to my full power. If you give me all these, I could even advance to a fierce ghost."
"Advancing to a fierce ghost? How much would your strange arts improve then? Could you create new death rules?"
Strange beings could advance in rank by absorbing ghost coin or devouring it.
With each rank advancement, their mastered strange arts would strengthen, and there was also a possibility of creating new death rules each time they leveled up.
The delivery ghost hesitated for a moment, surprised that Xia Tianqiong understood them so well.
"My door-opening skill could be faster, and I could create more and varied food as a delivery ghost. However, as for new death rules, it's difficult for us delivery ghosts."
Xia Tianqiong felt somewhat disappointed.
Wild-level strange beings were indeed of low rank and not very valuable to cultivate. Rather than wasting so much ghost coin on it, it would be better to use it for something else.
"You can have the largest one. I'll let you upgrade when I have more ghost coin in the future."
He casually picked up a gold ingot about the size of an apple and tossed it to the delivery ghost.
The delivery ghost looked a bit crestfallen but didn't say anything.
"Yiya yiya!"
The ghost infant suddenly ran out, pointing at the delivery ghost and then at the braised pork ribs in the corner.
Xia Tianqiong chuckled, "Alright, you can eat your fill."
The ghost infant could also absorb ghost coin, but it preferred food condensed from ghostly power.
Xia Tianqiong threw dozens of taels of gold to the delivery ghost, allowing it to absorb them and generate various foods for the ghost infant to eat every day.
"Master, you're biased!"
The delivery ghost grumbled but could only obey.
Next, Xia Tianqiong continued to stack ingots by the bedside, waiting for strange beings to come knocking.
But he waited until the afternoon and no one came.
"Perhaps when the Spring Dream Ghost died, the released ghostly power made other strange beings wary, knowing that killing wild-level strange beings here is possible, so they dare not come."
Xia Tianqiong made such a conjecture.
"Since you won't come to me, then I'll go find you!"
There must be other strange beings nearby, hidden somewhere or causing harm to others.
Xia Tianqiong activated the strange art "Shadow Blink," making shadows from every corner of the rooms upstairs, downstairs, left, and right appear within his perception range.
Not to teleport over, but to observe others' shadows and judge if anyone had any anomalies.
For instance, at this moment, he sensed a person downstairs lying motionless on the bathroom floor.
The bathroom was so dirty that normal people wouldn't lie there.
Either it was a sudden illness causing fainting, or they were killed by strange beings.
With a thought, Xia Tianqiong instantly appeared behind the bathroom door downstairs.
Peeking out from behind the door, he saw an old man with white hair and a withered body lying on the ground, his eyes empty and lifeless.
"He has had all his life force sucked away by strange beings!"
Xia Tianqiong made a quick judgment; indeed, there were other strange beings in this building.
Sensing the shadows around him again, he suddenly noticed something unusual in the next room.
A woman was also in the bathroom, her upper body shadow frantically moving, but her lower body shadow remained still.
Normal people wouldn't make such movements, indicating she was likely controlled by a strange being.