Chapter 1 The Vanishing

At the museum, Zhang Hao was pouring out his woes to Wei Yuan.

They had learned about this strange hanging coffin restaurant on the edge of Quanshi from that old scoundrel, and they immediately took it seriously. That very night, they followed the direction Wang Honghe had described and tried to find it. However, after searching all night, a dozen or so people simply couldn't find the so-called restaurant.

This went on for several days.

Finally, after much deliberation, they could only conclude that the Special Operations Team members might be carrying a trace of the divine punishment aura of Shenzhou.

Those ghosts knew how powerful it was and hid themselves well, refusing to come out.

To slay demons and eliminate evil, one must first find the target. It was rare to encounter such elusive demons and ghosts.

Without even finding the restaurant, there was no way to find the evil Taoist priest who was spreading the evil arts.

Even those with Taoist skills could only stare blankly.

Zhang Hao thought about it and couldn't find a solution, so he had to seek out Wei Yuan.

Several major events had occurred in Quanshi recently, and the female Taoist priest from the Celestial Master's Mansion, who had been granted the Five Thunders Talisman, had to stay here to suppress any other anomalies. Being neither an official nor within the system, yet possessing sufficient strength, only Wei Yuan remained in the vast city of Quanshi.

"There's really no other way. We can only rely on Curator Wei."

"Our people are in the village. We will naturally handle things after Curator Wei finds the target."

Zhang Hao's words were sincere.

And Wei Yuan also needed to solve these demons, ghosts, monsters, and spirits to enhance his strength and deal with Mountain Lord.

After a moment's thought, he agreed.

………………

The village where Wang Honghe lived was not close to the city center at all.

Therefore, it was quite poor at first. Most of the young people couldn't stand it and went out to work, leaving only some old people in the village. Later, a big boss saw that it was far away from the city's hustle and bustle, and had mountains and water, so he developed it into a not-so-small rural sanatorium, hiring people from the village to work.

As long as the villagers were not lazy, they gradually became wealthy.

Wei Yuan sat in the large tour bus, like an ordinary person, quietly watching the scenery outside. Among the people traveling with him were a couple and a silent man in his thirties who seemed successful in his career.

There was also a thin girl with large-rimmed glasses.

She exuded a homebody aura, tapping away at her keyboard the whole way.

However, Wei Yuan's perception had surpassed that of ordinary people, and he could feel that this seemingly harmless and geeky girl was frequently looking in his direction.

The driver had long been replaced. Although he wasn't a member of the Special Operations Team, he had some skills and knew about the existence of the team. Therefore, Wei Yuan easily boarded the bus with a golf practice bag containing weapons, and the hidden firearms were not searched.

………………

Wei Yuan closed his eyes and meditated all the way. He was also a little unsure about coming here.

If the Special Operations Team was abnormal because it was the police, and its aura could be detected by ghosts,

he also had the Crouching Tiger waist tag on him, which might be even easier to discover.

Now the farm in the village had stopped operating, and 70% of the tourists in the village were members of the Special Operations Team. After this bus arrived, the tourists' actions would be protected and restricted, and they would be sent back another day.

Since the ghosts already knew that the Special Operations Team members had arrived, they simply wouldn't hide it.

At that time, Wei Yuan would be a tourist with restricted movement.

When he secretly went out, he would 'accidentally' 'stumble' into the ghost's lair.

Ordinary ghosts cannot avoid the investigation of Taoist cultivators, but it is different when ghosts are in a ghost domain. In ancient and modern tales of the strange, there are many ghost domains hidden in unexpected places, maybe an ancient painting, maybe a speck of dust, isolated from the mortal world. Even Taoists with cultivation are often aware of the abnormality only after being tricked. Everyone suspected that the restaurant Wang Honghe mentioned was also a ghost domain.

This time, Wei Yuan was still on the inside, and the Special Operations Team's firepower was on the outside.

They would break this ghost domain with internal and external cooperation.

The couple in front were playfully bickering. Wei Yuan rubbed his brow and closed his eyes to concentrate.

The middle-aged man in a suit rested his head against the seat in front.

The girl in the oversized hoodie and large-framed glasses, looking well-behaved and geeky, tapped away at her keyboard, but her eyes glanced at Wei Yuan, paused at the golf practice bag Wei Yuan placed on the side, and then withdrew her gaze.

The bus slowly drove out of the city and then out of the suburbs.

A tarmac road stretched out solitarily, with large swathes of open fields on both sides. The almost unchanging scenery was boring. The couple who had been bickering just now had also quieted down, and only the sound of the car's engine could be heard.

Suddenly.

A thunderous sound exploded in the sky.

Scaring everyone and making their scalps tingle.

The girl in the couple screamed and shrank into her boyfriend's arms.

Then rain poured down with a whoosh. In an instant, the smell of mud mixed with water vapor rushed to their noses. Looking into the distance, the excessively heavy rain almost turned into fog, obscuring their vision. The driver now was not the original experienced bus driver. He had only driven on this road and could not be said to be familiar with it, so it was difficult to drive in the rain.

Fortunately, they passed a bus stop in the middle of the road, and several local villagers waved to stop the bus.

This bus was a size larger than the average minivan, and everyone squeezed in, so the villagers who stopped the bus got on. After asking where they wanted to go, the villagers happily led the way. The rain showed no sign of stopping. Only someone familiar with the road could find the way and avoid going astray.

They didn't know how far they had traveled in the rain, but they finally vaguely saw the outline of the village.

There was a stone archway in front of the village with the name of the village written on it.

The heavy rain that had fallen from the sky finally showed signs of slowing down.

The village as a whole had the architectural style of a very remote and ancient village, but it was interspersed with modern buildings, restaurants, accommodations, and specialty shops, like a pedestrian street with a modern flair built in an ancient village. The simplicity and prosperity were cleverly combined, giving it a charm that other places did not have.

It was roughly the same as in the photos, but it was better than expected by more than one level.

"I didn't expect there to be such a good place around Quanshi. I didn't even know about it before."

"I should have come here to check in earlier."

The girl in the couple looked at the village shrouded in drizzle, her eyes lit up, and she picked up her phone and snapped photos. She pulled her boyfriend to take a few selfies together. Wei Yuan got off the bus with his weapon bag and looked at the village, scanning it.

He didn't find any familiar Special Operations Team members.

Wei Yuan turned on his phone.

No signal.

……………………

Zhao Yi leaned against the wooden archway at the entrance of the village, frowning as he looked at the dusty road ahead.

They hadn't arrived yet.

Zhang Xiaoyu had just gone up the mountain. Xuan Yi was worried and had been injured before, so he was recuperating on Weiming Sect Mountain. He was responsible for meeting Wei Yuan, who was scheduled to arrive at the village at four o'clock this afternoon, and another person. But now it had been half an hour, and he still hadn't seen anyone.

He called his colleague who was responsible for driving, but he couldn't get through.

Feeling uneasy, Zhao Yi, compared to the calm Xuan Yi, was much more direct. He simply drove along the road towards Quanshi, his foot hardly releasing the accelerator the whole way. On that straight road, he suddenly noticed something was wrong and slammed on the brakes.

Screech—

The car came to a steady stop.

Zhao Yi got out of the car and looked at the road ahead.

There hadn't been a single rain in Quanshi recently.

The road was covered with dust, and cars would leave tire tracks when they drove over it. But now, on the asphalt road, there was a tire track that suddenly broke off. There were only tracks coming, and none going back.

It was as if the car had simply disappeared.

Zhao Yi dialed the encrypted phone in Wei Yuan's hand again.

This thing was used for internal communication within the Special Operations Team. The people in the technology team said that as long as they were still on Blue Star, they could connect to it no matter how remote the place was.

"Hello, the number you have dialed is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later."

ps: Thank you to Divine Elegy for the ten thousand reward, thank you~

Starting a new story, writer's block is killing me.