As a dignified max-level Celestial Master, who am I supposed to explain this to?

The old house's gate was tightly shut, and the rusty brass lock on it clearly hadn't been opened for a long time.

Han Xuan reached out and pushed the door, but it was locked from the inside.

Without saying a word, he gently applied force, and the latch snapped.

The moment I pushed open the door, a musty smell hit me.

The yard was overgrown with waist-high weeds, and most of the windows of the main house were broken, making it pitch black inside and impossible to see anything.

Han Xuan walked into the courtyard and looked around.

There was nothing there.

There wasn't even a rat, let alone any evil spirits.

He closed his eyes and spread his divine sense throughout the entire old house.

There was no corpse energy underground, no ghost energy on the roof beams, and not even a trace of yin energy remained in the air.

It was spotless, as if it had been deliberately cleaned by something.

"They ran away?" Han Xuan asked incredulously.

He walked out of the old house, stood in the alley, and looked around.

At this moment, an old man peeked out from the house next door, and his eyes lit up when he saw Han Xuan's Taoist robe:

"Master! Are you the master who came to exorcise the ghost?"

Han Xuan nodded:

"Old man, I am a Taoist priest from Longhu Mountain, sent to investigate the missing persons case in town. What exactly has happened in town these past few months?"

Upon hearing that he was from Longhu Mountain, the old man was immediately moved to tears.

"Longhu Mountain! Longhu Mountain has finally sent people! Daoist Master, you don't know, our town has almost become a ghost town in the past two weeks! First, Wang Lao Er's daughter disappeared in the middle of the night, then Butcher Li, then the schoolteacher... Seven people in total, disappeared without a trace!"

"We invited several Taoist priests to come and see, and they all said it was the work of a vengeful ghost, but none of them could do anything about it, and some of them even got injured..."

"That thing?"

Han Xuan caught the key phrase, "Old folks, have you seen that thing before?"

The old man hesitated for a moment, then lowered his voice:

"I...I've never seen it, but my neighbor's nephew's cousin has. He said it was completely black, like a cloud of mist, but inside the mist were a pair of blood-red eyes, and just looking at it sent chills down your spine..."

Just as Han Xuan was about to ask more questions, he suddenly sensed a faint yin energy drifting by from not far away.

It wasn't the same kind of yin energy from the old house, but a completely new, moving yin energy.

The direction is east of the town.

"Sir, please go home first, close the doors and windows, and don't come out no matter what noise you hear."

After Han Xuan finished speaking, he swayed and chased after the direction in which the Yin energy had drifted away.

The yin energy moved quickly, but Han Xuan was even faster.

In a few leaps and bounds, he caught up with the source of the yin energy...

A white zombie.

Yes, a white zombie.

The lowest grade kind, covered in white fur, slow-moving, the kind that even an ordinary farmer could handle with a hoe.

The white zombie was staggering along a narrow alley at the east end of town, seemingly on patrol.

It sensed Han Xuan's presence, turned its head, and glanced at Han Xuan with its murky, blood-red eyes.

then.

Its whole body stiffened.

It's not a description, it's truly frozen.

Its body seemed frozen in place, completely still, with only its eyes darting around frantically.

Then it did something that Han Xuan had never expected.

It knelt down.

A white zombie knelt on the ground and kowtowed repeatedly to Han Xuan.

He banged his head so hard that a patch of white hair on his forehead was knocked off, revealing the grayish-white skin underneath.

Han Xuan: "Uh..."

He took a deep breath and tried to keep his expression normal.

"Can you...talk?"

The white zombie shook its head frantically.

"Can you understand what I'm saying?"

The white zombie nodded frantically.

Han Xuan pondered for a moment, then squatted down to look Bai Jiang in the eye.

"I'm asking you, were you responsible for the people who went missing in town?"

The white zombie nodded first, then shook its head frantically, and then began to kowtow.

This complex body language made Han Xuan's temple throb.

"never mind."

Han Xuan stood up, slightly activating the Golden Light Spell, a faint golden light appearing in his palm. "I'll ask, you answer. Just nod or shake your head. The people who went missing in town, were they killed by your zombies?"

Bai Jiang hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

"Where is the mastermind?"

The white zombie pointed to the northwest.

It was the old house that Han Xuan had just visited.

Han Xuan frowned: "I've already checked there, there's nothing there."

The white zombie's hand trembled slightly, then it wrote a line of words crookedly on the ground.

Its nails were so long that the characters it wrote looked like earthworms crawling, but they were still barely legible:

"The master just moved away. He sensed you entering the town and moved overnight."

Han Xuan stared at the words and fell silent.

The phrase "moved overnight" was like a knife, stabbing into his ambition to make a name for himself.

"Where did you move to?"

Bai Jiang wrote again:

"I don't know. The adults didn't say, they just told us to run for our lives."

Han Xuan remained silent for an even longer time.

"What level of cultivation do you adults possess?"

The white zombie wrote: "Hairy zombie. It's about to evolve into a flying zombie."

The hairy zombie is almost evolving into a flying zombie.

In other words, it's at least at the level of the hairy zombie beside Chen Jiuyin, or even higher.

In a typical small town, this would indeed be a local tyrant, and ordinary Taoist priests would be no match for him.

But this "overlord," sensing Han Xuan's presence in the town, moved overnight, abandoning even his subordinates.

Han Xuan didn't know whether to be happy or sad.

He stood up and glanced at the white zombie kneeling on the ground.

The white zombie was still trembling, like an old dog abandoned by its owner.

"Fine, you can go."

Han Xuan waved his hand, "Leave this town, and don't harm anyone anymore. If I find out you're still harassing the people..."

The golden light in his palm flashed for a moment.

The white zombie sprang up from the ground as if it had been electrocuted and ran away in a panic.

He ran a dozen steps, then turned back, wiped the words off the ground, and ran off again.

Han Xuan stood in the empty alley, a few fallen leaves swept up by the autumn wind and drifted past his feet.

He suddenly missed the huge crater he had blasted into Longhu Mountain.

At least that big pit won't disappear.

Over the next two days, Han Xuan searched every inch of land within a fifty-mile radius of Qingxi Town.

He found three zombie dens, two ghost lairs, and a fox demon cave.

But each time, before he could even get close, the thing inside would run away.

The fastest runner was the fox demon, who was said to be a three-tailed fox with considerable cultivation.

But as soon as Han Xuan reached the foot of the mountain, she took her entire family and moved away overnight, leaving a note at the cave entrance before they left:

"This house is for rent. If you are interested, please contact Wong Tai Sin next door."

Huang Daxian was that weasel spirit; he ran away half an hour before Han Xuan arrived.

They ran so fast they didn't even have time to take the food stored in the cave with them.

Han Xuan stood in front of the empty fox demon cave, holding the "Room for Rent" sign in his hand, his expression very complicated.

"Should I tone down my breathing?" he muttered to himself.

He has already toned it down considerably.

The Golden Light Mantra was only at the first level, equivalent to the level of an ordinary Taoist priest.

The Heavenly Thunder Technique was completely useless; the peach wood sword was never even drawn.

He even deliberately suppressed the fluctuations of his internal energy, making himself look like a novice Taoist priest.

But these demons and monsters seemed to have radar installed; they ran away as soon as he arrived.

Finally, Han Xuan found a little ghost in an abandoned earth god temple that hadn't had a chance to run away yet.

The little devil huddled behind the statue, trembling and chattering, as if he had seen the King of Hell.

"You...you don't run away."

Han Xuan squatted down, trying to make his voice sound gentler, "I won't hit you, I'll just ask you a few questions."

The little devil stared at him, trembling, his lips quivering for a long time before finally managing to utter a single sentence:

"The golden light emanating from you... is too... too dazzling... it can be seen from ten miles away..."

Han Xuan was stunned for a moment.

He looked down at himself.

The Golden Light Mantra was only activated at one level, and the golden light on the body surface was so faint that it was almost invisible.

He himself felt as if it wasn't turned on.

"Is this still too bright?"

The little devil nodded frantically: "In...in our eyes...you're like...like a little sun...like the kind at noon...just looking at you is enough to blind us..."

Han Xuan fell silent.

He finally understood.

It's not that he wasn't low-key enough, but rather that his "low-key" behavior was still so dazzling in the eyes of the evil spirits that it was impossible to look directly at him.

It's like someone thinking their flashlight is already on the lowest setting.

But to creatures living in darkness, it was a sun.

His previous life's Golden Light Mantra only had five layers, and it wasn't at its peak, so it wouldn't have this effect.

But now he has been reborn, and the Golden Light Mantra is at the sixth level of perfection.

In addition, his understanding of the Golden Light Mantra had reached its pinnacle.

Even if only one layer is activated, it emits "a layer of golden light at the Great Perfection level".

This is like a world champion doing a few warm-up moves; to the average person, it still looks like a world-class performance.

Han Xuan stood up and let out a long sigh.

"This is so hard for me."

The little imp crouched behind the statue and asked cautiously:

"M-Sir, can you leave now? If you stay any longer, this dilapidated temple will be melted by your golden light..."

Han Xuan glanced at him, and the little devil was so frightened that he shrank his head back.

"One last question."

Han Xuan asked, "Are the seven people who went missing in town still alive?"

The little devil shook his head: "He was...eaten by Master Mao Jiang..."

Han Xuan's gaze darkened for a moment.

"Where did that hairy zombie go?"

The little devil shook his head frantically:

"No... I don't know... I really don't know... It sensed you coming and ran away, I don't know anything..."

Han Xuan stared at him for three seconds to make sure he wasn't lying, then turned and walked out of the Earth God Temple.