The next morning, all the gloom on Wu Qiong's face had vanished.
He strolled into the dining hall, glowing with delight and even humming a wildly off-key tune. Carefree and radiant, he looked like a man half his age.
Bai Shuang narrowed her sharp eyes and scanned Wu Qiong up and down. The more she looked, the more she felt something was off.
She had reviewed the surveillance footage from Chahua's room—Chahua hadn't left it all night.
But Wu Qiong was positively glowing, the unmistakable look of someone who'd had a long, happy night with some little vixen.
This time, Bai Shuang was truly baffled. When did a master sneak into Whale Fall City—one powerful enough to evade all her surveillance and come and go from Wu Qiong's room as they pleased?
"Father," she said coldly, "which wandering spirit did you hook up with last night?"
Wu Qiong looked particularly smug, like a man showing off.
"Shuang'er, I have to tell you… I think I've started to form a golden core."
"Huh?" Bai Shuang looked at him like he was mentally impaired. "You've only lived a few hundred years. You haven't learned fasting, haven't learned sword-flight, you can't do anything. How the hell are you forming a golden core?"
Wu Qiong spread his arms wide, full of pride.
"I've broken through the dimensional barrier. At certain times, I can summon the dead."
Bai Shuang's lip twitched.
Here he goes again, she thought. Brain glitching in intervals, as usual.
"I'm serious!" Wu Qiong insisted solemnly. "Last night, I saw your father."
Bai Shuang froze. The usual scorn in her face gave way to something softer—hope.
"What did he say?"
Wu Qiong opened his mouth, then quickly shut it again. He'd been just about to blurt it out—that he had asked Bai Qing whether she had killed Chairman Chang and been told no.
It had given him great relief. But if he said that out loud now, Bai Shuang would lose it and probably beat him into the floor.
He had raised her since she was little. How could he admit he once suspected his sweet daughter of being a killer?
Thinking fast, Wu Qiong lied:
"He said... he doesn't like Chahua."
"Tch." Bai Shuang rolled her eyes. "And here I thought you really broke through a dimensional wall. Turns out it was just a dream."
Just then, Zhuang Mo walked in, scratching his head with an awkward smile.
"Brother Xiaohei!" Bai Shuang instantly swapped to her cute-and-gentle girlfriend voice. "Have you eaten? Come have breakfast with me!"
Zhuang Mo grinned goofily.
"I've already eaten. Daoist Wu, do you have a moment today? My master found some new clues and would like to consult with you again."
Wu Qiong nodded. Outwardly calm, inwardly he was a sea of turmoil.
He needed to verify something—was Bai Qing telling the truth last night?
If Bai Qing had been real, then today Officer Huang would definitely bring up the autopsy report on Chairman Chang.
And if events unfolded just as Bai Qing had predicted, then Wu Qiong could be sure of one thing:
What he saw last night wasn't a dream.
That had truly been Bai Qing himself—or at least, his ghost.
And if Bai Qing's soul had appeared once… then surely, it could appear again.
Excited beyond belief, Wu Qiong was itching to confirm it. He wanted to know for sure: had he really opened a gate between the living and the dead?
Later, in the Reception Hall
Everything was exactly the same as last week.
Two police officers—one old, one young—sat waiting in the reception hall. Wu Qiong entered silently and sat down across from them.
Huang Peiyu conjured a holographic screen in the air.
"Daoist Wu, you've practiced as a surgeon for hundreds of years. I wonder—how much do you know about forensic pathology?"
It's happening! Wu Qiong cheered inwardly. Right on schedule!
Bai Qing hadn't lied.
Thanks to centuries of practicing a stoic expression, Wu Qiong kept a deadpan face despite his heart doing backflips of joy.
"When someone dies, not all autopsies are done by forensic pathologists. The hospital's pathology department does plenty. I worked in that field for a few years myself."
Without further preamble, Huang pushed the floating screen toward Wu Qiong.
A semi-transparent hologram drifted to Wu Qiong's side. He immediately focused on the forensic report.
After five minutes of reading, Wu Qiong had formed a theory.
Bai Qing had been right. One look at the report, and Wu Qiong could deduce the real cause of death.
"I don't know medicine," Huang said from across the table. "So I don't really understand the terms in the autopsy report. But on the day Chairman Chang died, he didn't drink any alcohol. Yet his blood tested positive for ethanol."
"There were no needle marks either," Huang continued, "so the alcohol wasn't injected."
Wu Qiong asked, "How do you know he didn't drink?"
"I checked with the medical examiner. There was no alcohol in his stomach or intestines."
"Alcohol doesn't have to enter through the stomach or intestines," Wu Qiong replied.
"I asked that too. They said swishing with alcohol might allow a tiny amount into the blood, but it wouldn't be fatal."
Wu Qiong pushed the screen back.
"The human digestive tract is seven meters long. Besides the mouth, stomach, and small intestine, it includes the esophagus, large intestine, and rectum."
He pointed to the screen now floating in front of Huang again.
"The medical examiner you used is too young, too green. He only checked if the rectum was intact—not whether it had any residual alcohol inside."
"And now that more than 96 hours have passed, testing for alcohol again is pointless. But if I'm right, the alcohol in Chairman Chang's blood entered through his rectum."
Huang's brows furrowed. "How is that even possible?"
Wu Qiong smiled faintly.
"I've lived a long time. I've seen things you wouldn't believe. Back in the late 20th century, Europe had a short-lived party trend called... 'liquor chocolate bombs'."
"What?"
"Liquor-filled chocolates," Wu Qiong explained. "Each one contains just a drop of alcohol—low proof. But that one drop… can kill."
Huang leaned in, intrigued. He'd only shown the report to probe Wu Qiong's reaction—he hadn't expected an anatomy lecture.
But now that free knowledge was being served up, he was all ears.
"The digestive tract is seven meters long," Wu Qiong explained, "and most of the blood from it flows through the liver, where toxins are filtered. That's how we survive all the poison we ingest over decades—thanks to our livers."
"Alcohol is one such toxin. Normally, it gets detoxed in the liver before reaching the heart."
"But when our ancestors evolved, they assumed food went in the mouth and out the rear. They never expected that one day… some people would try to put food in from the back."
"Food absorbed through the rectum bypasses the liver entirely and goes straight to the heart. That's what made the 'liquor chocolate bomb' so dangerous. Some young people inserted liquor-filled chocolates into their rectums—wanting to feel the thrill of being poisoned to death by a single drop of alcohol."