Looking at the prompt on his phone, Feng Xue felt a huge headache come on. Although it was a job, he still planned to hide the fact that he was a Corpse Collector.
After all, it hadn't even been a week since he'd arrived in this world, and obtaining a profession so quickly was an unusual event in itself. Not to mention that the gangs, as Managers, had a tendency to Lockdown the channels for advancement. If they thought he'd acquired some special skill for Transferring professions, that could be problematic.
Of course, he was quite curious about what the ominous corpse could be Refining into. This was another reason he didn't immediately leave. If the gang members started looking for someone to collect the Corpse, he could pretend to be an ordinary, cash-strapped citizen and take on the job.
However, having stared down the alley for several minutes, it seemed that the gang members had no intention of calling for Corpse Collection. Instead, they tossed items such as small knives, Short Swords, and leather and cloth armors into the pile of minced flesh.
"What's going on here?" Feng Xue couldn't help but find the scene baffling, feeling as though he was witnessing the strange rituals of a sinister cult.
The process lasted for about ten minutes until a familiar figure appeared and the electric scooter Knight—though his steed was no more—finally ordered his subordinates to pick up the items they had thrown into the chunks of flesh.
Seeing how Old Li interacted with the Manager, Feng Xue couldn't help but grin. He could clearly tell that the Manager was in a bad mood, which made him very curious about what was going on.
As he watched Old Li, with the help of his fellow gang members, toss chunks of flesh onto a cart, Feng Xue immediately turned to leave. There was nothing to gain by staying, so he chose to wait at Old Li's house for his return.
...
About half an hour later, with a whistle on his lips, Old Li returned to the doorstep, only to find Feng Xue, who had been waiting for a while, and asked in surprise,
"Why didn't you just call 'phone'?"
"Who knows if there are any taboos when it comes to collecting ominous corpses?" Feng Xue spread his hands with an air of 'better safe than sorry.' Old Li understood what had happened, pulled out his work tag, swiped it at the door, and then turned his head, saying,
"Anyway, come in and we'll talk."
Inside the room, as opulent as always, Old Li casually made tea and asked,
"You saw the ominous corpse earlier? What do you want to ask?"
"Um... what exactly is that omen? Why was the scene so gruesome?"
Feng Xue asked hesitantly, pretending he had only rushed to the scene after receiving the notification. Old Li didn't suspect anything and casually explained,
"Ominous corpses usually have a certain degree of Undying nature, and different omens require different methods to be killed. For instance, a zombie-type omen can be killed by blowing up its head, while a mummy-type omen must be burned with fire. The most troublesome ghost-type omens are even immune to physical attacks.
"Today's was a Suture monster. Although it's easier to deal with than a ghost type, there's no particular method tailored to it. To kill it, you either use a Phantom Object with an Undying-restraining property, or you have to shred it to a fine enough degree."
"Speaking of which, the method of fragmenting the corpse enough applies to most omens from corpse transformations. After all, as long as the density of 'Identity' within the omen is reduced to the point where it can no longer form tags, they can be destroyed. Hmm, this knowledge is included in the Corpse Collector tag, didn't you read it?"
"There's so much knowledge, how can one finish it in half a day?" Feng Xue rolled her eyes but caught the keyword she was interested in, and she skipped over this subject, counterquestioning:
"Phantasms? What are those?"
Hearing Feng Xue ask this term, Lao Li paused for a moment while pouring tea, then shook his head and said:
"Phantasms are just phantasms. Just like us living creatures can become 'Kaidan' after accumulating enough tags, inanimate objects can become the so-called phantasms when they gather enough tags. Even the lowest of phantasms possess durability that common Pseudo Artifacts don't have, rarely worn down by anything other than phantasms or Kaidan themselves."
Upon hearing Lao Li's words, Feng Xue immediately thought of Suture's exaggerated Defense when facing ordinary gang members and frowned, saying, "According to you, Kaidan also can't be harmed by anything other than Kaidan or phantasms, right?"
"That's not necessarily the case." Lao Li shook his head, divided the tea into a cup for Feng Xue, and after sipping his own, he explained:
"All solidity is relative. The durability of phantasms is more akin to 'a game Tool without a durability setting'. It doesn't have a setup for destruction, so it's hard to Destroy.
"The difference between Kaidan and phantasms is also here. Phantasms are phantasms, and their very element determines everything about them, but Kaidan, in addition to tags, also have the part of being 'living beings'. Even without destroying their 'element,' just killing this living being can cause a Kaidan to fall apart on its own.
"This is why omens from corpse transformation are troublesome because they're already dead, you must 'kill the corpse,' which is much harder than killing a person or an animal.
"Of course, phantasms are not indestructible. After all, at the end of the day, they are just the product of accumulated elements, so as long as you possess the corresponding element, you can have an effect on them."
"Got it, settings trump all, special attacks defeat immortals." Feng Xue nodded, summarizing, and Lao Li's eyes lit up, finding the phrase very clever, and immediately wrote it down in his Newbie Guide.
Watching Lao Li solemnly taking notes, Feng Xue couldn't help but laugh without sound, lifting the tea cup and taking a sip, reveling in the richness of saliva it brought out. How to put it? Although she no longer needed to eat or drink after transmigrating, it was precisely for this reason that, after many days, a cup of tea gave her a strong sense of happiness.
After emptying the tea in the cup, she looked up at Lao Li again and asked the question she had wanted to ask all along but feared would arouse suspicion:
"How exactly are phantasms created? People can gain tags through role-playing, but as inanimate objects, it's unlikely that phantasms can also use the Playing Method, right? Is there a Blacksmith that can craft phantasms?"
"This, well..." Lao Li paused briefly, as if organizing his language, and after a moment, he began:
"There are mainly three ways phantasms come into being. The first is as you said, artificial Manufacturing, but this purely relies on luck. The composition of tags for phantasms is a probability event; no one can guarantee the items they craft will surely have the corresponding tags. In fact, most people with Blacksmith occupations might only produce two or three phantasms over decades.
"The second way involves Companion Phantom Objects, simply put, these are highly bound items from the legends of Kaidan themselves, like the mummy Kaidan's linen wraps, Kuchisake-onna's scissors, and masks, and so forth. These items manifest simultaneously when the Kaidan form, but their functionality and types are very limited.
"The third method is element richness. In an environment with a higher free element concentration, some Items can absorb a small amount of elements. If luck is on their side, these elements will settle and accumulate, transitioning from Pseudo Artifacts into phantasms, much like how a Corpse becomes an omen.
"In fact, many believe omens resemble animated phantasms more than Kaidan. Hmm, you must have seen those gang members throwing things into Corpses before, right? That's actually them gambling on luck to see if they can produce one or two phantasms."