This actor is full of tricks.

Wasn't that old man just at the guesthouse? How did he end up here again?
Lin Jue reached out and touched the old man, but there was no physical sensation; his hand passed right through the old man's body.

It was indeed a vivid image of that memory.

"Help, help..."

"Help..."

The old man's lips were frozen purple, his face was dark purple, and his cries for help were barely audible. His eyes were wide open, his mouth was agape, and before he could finish his last words, he breathed his last right under Lin Jue's nose, becoming a completely stiff corpse.

This means that the old man had actually died, during a time of heavy snowfall, and what appeared here was merely a scene from his memory before his death.

"Since the memory fragments have appeared here, does that mean the person who can display those memories might be nearby?"

Lin Jue looked up and around, but there was no one in the darkness. After searching in vain, he squatted down and observed the old man.

The old man died in a strange posture; his hands were clasped in front of his chest, as if he were holding something.

Lin Jue carefully compared the gap between the old man's arms and found that it was just big enough for a person to fit inside.

"This posture..."

"Could it be that there was another person besides the old man at the time, and the old man was holding that person?"

"And the memory fragments I'm seeing now should be from that person..."

As Lin Jue was speculating, he suddenly heard a voice coming from the hillside behind him: "Mom! Mom!"

The voice was mechanically synthesized, like an AI's voice. Lin Jue hurriedly put the ghost beside him into his raincoat, then looked down the mountain.

A trembling beam of flashlight was sweeping haphazardly as the proprietress carefully made her way up the mountain with the flashlight.

When the flashlight shone on Lin Jue, the proprietress was clearly stunned, especially when she saw the old man who had died at Lin Jue's feet; her expression became even more complicated.

At this moment, Lin Jue put his acting skills to use: "Quickly call 120, someone here is frozen stiff."

"Come on, Xiao Zeng, help me carry this old man back to the guesthouse."

Lie Zeng reacted quickly, reaching out to lift the old man as Lin Jue did so. But as his hand passed through the old man's body, Lie Zeng seemed startled, collapsing to the ground and staggering back a few steps: "What...what is this..."

Lin Jue also seemed startled and jumped back: "I can't touch it, could it be a ghost?"

As he spoke, he hurriedly ran down the mountain, grabbing the landlady's wrist: "Run! There's a ghost!"

Although she couldn't hear them, the landlady could tell what Lin Jue and Lie Zeng were doing from their actions.

She pulled her hand away and started typing on her phone.

"That's not it..."

"Have you seen my mother? She's around seventy years old. She was just in the guesthouse, but when I got up to use the bathroom, I found she wasn't there."

When the AI's voice came from the phone, Lin Jue's heart stirred slightly. He roughly knew that it must be the landlady's mother who possessed the ability to materialize memories.

"Then, that old man must be the proprietress's father." Lin Jue gestured with his hands, thought for a moment, and then typed on his phone, "Why is your mother here? It's so cold up here, she shouldn't be here, right?"

"She must be nearby. Please help me find her, I beg you." The landlady typed quickly and then climbed up the mountain with a flashlight.

Lin Jue and Lie Zeng exchanged a glance. He didn't go up the mountain but searched the vicinity instead, because they had climbed the mountain very quickly before, and it was impossible for a seventy-year-old man to climb higher than them.

In other words, the proprietress's mother should be in a low-altitude area, and judging from the location where the old woman was frozen, she should be in this vicinity.

Using the size of the old gardener's ghostly abode as a reference, a few minutes later, he saw an old woman curled up behind a large rock.

The old woman was still wearing her pajamas, barefoot, huddled in the snow, shivering all over.

Lin Jue hurriedly took off his coat and wrapped it around the old woman. The old woman seemed unresponsive to everything around her, her eyes were cloudy, and she was muttering something, but it was impossible to understand what she was saying.

"Your mother is here!" Lin Jue shouted, but then realized that the landlady couldn't hear him, so he hurriedly asked Lie Zeng to bring the landlady down.

A few minutes later, the proprietress rushed downstairs, looked at Lin Jue with gratitude, and gestured with her hands.

Lin Jue roughly understood what the landlady meant. He picked up the old man and hurried towards the guesthouse at the foot of the mountain.

After running for a while, he looked back and saw that the frozen old man had disappeared. This proved Lin Jue's previous guess that the old man was a memory projection of this old woman, which meant that this old woman was the second Child of the Mist that Bi Zheng had sensed.

Are both mother and daughter children of the mist?
Lin Jue fell into deep thought; now only the last Child of the Mist remained.

Back at the guesthouse, the landlady hurriedly lit a brazier. The warm flames dispelled the gloom, and the old woman's complexion improved slightly, but she still looked very unwell. Her eyes were vacant, and her lips trembled as if she were saying something.

This time, without the sound of wind from the mountain, Lin Jue was finally able to hear clearly what the old woman was saying.

"Old man."

"I'm so cold, let's go home."

Lin Jue looked up at the proprietress, who was silently boiling water, but under the flickering light, her eyes gradually reddened.

She handed Lin Jue a cup of hot water, and Lin Jue silently mouthed thank you, holding the cup in his hands.

The only sound in the room was the crackling of firewood. Lin Jue and Lie Zeng sat together in silence, neither of them speaking. It seemed they wouldn't be able to see the sunrise today.

Half an hour later, the proprietress took out her phone from her pocket and started typing.

"Didn't we say not to leave the room at night? Why were you all there just now?"

Listening to the mechanical AI voice, Lin Jue knew that the landlady would probably tell him something. After all, she had just witnessed Lin Jue's hand pierce through the old man's body, and some things could not be hidden from him.

"I want to watch the sunrise with my friends. By the way, what was that just now? Why did our hands pass through that old man's body?"

Lin Jue handed over the phone. As she looked at the text on the screen, the proprietress's expression changed several times before she finally sighed silently.

"Those are my mother's memories, my father's." (End of Chapter)