136: Chapter 136 A Broken Mirror Reunited

The entire restoration process of the bronze mirror lasted for nearly half an hour.

The Yin energy within the quiet room was heavily drained, forming a miniature vortex visible to the naked eye in mid-air.

When the final streak of golden light receded into the mirror surface,

A crisp bell-like chime of "Dong" echoed throughout the quiet room.

The bronze mirror steadily fell back into Lin Ye's palm.

At this moment, the soul-fixing mirror no longer had its previous dilapidated appearance.

The mirror surface was as smooth as water; although it could not reflect human figures, it could reflect the flow trajectories of the surrounding aura fields.

The back of the mirror was carved with ancient Eight Trigrams formation patterns and dark patterns of the Four Symbols divine beasts.

The patina on the edges completely faded, replaced by a layer of warm, lustrous sheen.

Information about this fully repaired magical artifact instantly surfaced in Lin Ye's mind.

[Item Name: Eight Trigrams soul-fixing mirror (complete state)]

[Grade: Profound Tier Top Grade]

[Effect 1 · Concealment: The wearer can completely shield themselves from heavenly secrets deduction, Round Light Technique probing, and the locking of all malicious karma. Entities not higher than the host by two major realms will absolutely be unable to discover the host's trace on the karmic thread.]

[Effect 2 · Soul-Fixing: Aiming the mirror surface at evil and sinister objects can forcibly freeze their three souls and seven souls for three seconds (ineffective against the Ba-grade and above).]

"Good stuff."

Lin Ye stroked the smooth mirror surface, a satisfied smile curving the corners of his mouth.

With this mirror, even if the so-called administrator of the Yellow Springs Market turned Jiangzhou City's network upside down, they wouldn't even think about finding Lin Ye along the karmic thread.

He stood up from the stone platform and tucked the soul-fixing mirror closely into his chest.

A cool stream of air instantly enveloped his entire body.

Lin Ye could clearly feel that the illusory karmic connection between himself and this world had been forcibly severed by a portion because of this mirror.

From then on, in the eyes of those evil cultivators skilled in divination and calculation, he would be a non-existent transparent person.

Glancing at his watch, it was already four o'clock in the morning.

Lin Ye walked out of the quiet room, returned to his bedroom upstairs, and fell fast asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

...

At ten o'clock the next morning.

The sky of Jiangzhou City was shrouded in a thick layer of dark clouds, and the paused autumn rain looked like it was about to make a comeback.

A black Raptor pickup truck bearing special internal license plates, accompanied by a dull engine roar, steadily stopped in front of Lins Funeral Shop.

The car door pushed open, and Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan, wearing a form-fitting black tactical outfit, stepped down with her long legs.

Tucked in the quick-draw holster at her waist was impressively that large-caliber service pistol loaded with depleted uranium cinnabar armor-piercing bullets.

She carried a faint smell of gunpowder and a trace of black dog's blood stinks, her stunning face revealing uncontainable exhaustion, and her eyes were bloodshot.

Obviously, this captain of the Second Division of The Ninth Bureau had gone through another hard-fought battle last night.

Pushing open the minimalist industrial-style glass door of the Funeral Shop, Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan walked straight toward the reception hall.

Lin Ye was sitting behind that golden-thread nanmu tea table, holding a cup of freshly brewed top-grade Dahongpao tea in his hand. Rising steam blurred his slightly pale yet excessively handsome face.

Leng Yue was still wearing a black windbreaker, standing quietly by Lin Ye's side like a dutiful guardian deity.

"Boss Lin, ever since your Funeral Shop was remodeled, its class has been getting higher and higher."

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan pulled out a chair and sat down, casually slapping a metal encrypted USB flash drive bearing the top-secret symbol of The Ninth Bureau onto the desktop.

"One million. The money to buy out the intelligence has already been approved by the bureau."

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan cut straight to the point, her tone crisp and neat.

Lin Ye took a leisurely sip of tea and pushed a kraft paper envelope across.

"Captain Chu is a straightforward person. Inside here are all the transcripts of a supernatural commission I handled last night, as well as core clues regarding the app named [Yellow Springs Market]."

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan took the envelope, pulled out the papers inside, and quickly glanced over them.

When she saw the paragraphs describing "dead people using second-hand trading platforms to look for substitute ghosts" and "using the network to erase karma across regions".

Her pupils shrank slightly, and her brows tightly knitted together.

"As expected..."

She muttered softly, then raised her head to look at Lin Ye, her gaze carrying a bit more solemnity.

"Lin Ye, this piece of intelligence from you counts as doing The Ninth Bureau a huge favor, but it also confirms the bureau chief's most worried speculation."

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan did not hide it, leaning her body forward and lowering her voice.

"For the past half month, our Division One's [Skynet] satellite array has monitored dozens of abnormal Yin energy outbreak events in Jiangzhou City and the three surrounding provinces."

"The decedents in these incidents had no intersection with each other in real life. The only commonality was that before their deaths, they had all browsed certain specific second-hand transaction information on the internet or downloaded installation packages of unknown origin."

She took a deep breath, picked up the tea Fatty Wang had just poured on the table, and drank it in one gulp.

"This kind of cyber ghost relying on internet transmission completely subverts our previous containment logic."

"The special operations team members of Division Two are used to physical transcendence. When encountering those corporeal zombies and malicious ghosts, a few rounds of depleted uranium armor-piercing bullets can directly solve the problem."

"But these things hide in cables and servers; we couldn't possibly blow up all the network base stations of Great Xia, right?"

"So, the authorities are currently helpless?" Lin Ye twirled the teacup in his hand, his tone calm.

"Division One's hacker technicians are reverse-tracking along the IP, but the opponent's firewall is mixed with a dense Yin energy formation. Every time they are about to break through, the tracking equipment inexplicably short-circuits and catches fire."

"Now, two operatives have had their living souls scattered by the resentment crawling over through the network cable because they wore VR headsets for reverse tracking, and they are still lying in the intensive care unit."

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan sighed, looking at Lin Ye with a complex gaze.

"Boss Lin, last night you were able to rely on your own strength to forcefully shatter the Yin domain of a drowned evil ghost using traditional mystic door methods and retreat completely unscathed. The high-level officials of the bureau have upgraded their evaluation of your current strength by two levels."

"If necessary, the bureau chief hopes you can join this sweeping operation targeting the [Yellow Springs Market] as a specially appointed consultant. As for the reward, you can pick anything you want from The Ninth Bureau's treasury."

Hearing this, Lin Ye did not show any excitement; instead, he leaned his back against the chair.

"Captain Chu, what kind of person do you take me for? I am a law-abiding individual industrial and commercial household. Fighting and killing is your official responsibility."

"This muddy water is too deep and cannot be resolved in a short while. I don't want to jump into it for the time being. That one million was just a clue fee; as for helping out..."

"Wait until you find the true body of that so-called administrator. If your firepower cannot transcend him, then come talk to me about appearance fees."

Now the enemy was in the dark while they were in the light. The opponent could obliterate malicious ghosts from afar, and their methods were bizarre and unpredictable.

Before figuring out the opponent's background, Lin Ye would not be foolish enough to rush to the front and act as cannon fodder.

Furthermore, the system did not give any options, so huddling in the Funeral Shop to make money from wealthy tycoons and improve his own cultivation was the right path.

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan seemed to have expected that Lin Ye would refuse. She helplessly shook her head and stood up.

"Fine then. I knew that a money-grubbing capitalist like you wouldn't easily relent, but this intelligence is already enough for me to report back."

"Be careful yourself recently as well. Such evil objects involving network rules have an extremely strong desire for revenge. You ruined their rules last night, so they are very likely to track you down along the karmic thread."

"Don't bother worrying."

Lin Ye touched the [Eight Trigrams soul-fixing mirror] in his chest, a confident sneer appearing at the corner of his mouth.

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan didn't stay long. She picked up the kraft paper envelope on the table and turned to stride out of the Funeral Shop.

Watching that Raptor pickup truck disappear into the curtain of rain, Lin Ye picked up his teacup and drank the remaining half cup of Dahongpao in one gulp.

"Fatty Wang, where is Ayugu?" Lin Ye turned his head and asked.

"Playing games all day long, this kid is practically ruined. She said she lost all night yesterday and insists on winning it back today."

Fatty Wang walked over with a rag to wipe the table.

Just as Lin Ye wanted to say something, a harsh sound of tire friction suddenly came from the street outside the Funeral Shop.

An eye-catching pink Porsche 911 sports car steadily parked in a roadside parking space with a wild drifting action.

The wheels rolled over the accumulated water on the road, splashing up water half a meter high.

The car door was pushed open forcefully.

A hot-bodied woman wearing tight yoga pants and a black windproof jacket sprinted toward the Funeral Shop through the puddles without even holding an umbrella.

That was Ms. Jiang, a major exploration live-streamer with twenty million followers across the entire network.