*Unfortunately we were unable to reach our goal of top 200 throughout this week. Please vote and review if you like! Active goals mentioned at the bottom of the chapter. Thanks!*
Jiangxia Tongzhi struggled for a moment, put the ghost down again, and opened the door.
This time, it was Natsue standing outside.
Jiangxia glanced at her hands and saw she was holding something too—cookies, this time. Lumpy, uneven ones that looked homemade, packed into a clear bag.
"I originally made these for Takeshi, but now… just take them as an apology on his behalf." Natsue shoved the bag into Jiangxia's arms with tear-brimmed eyes. "I heard from Sonoko that you're a detective. I… I really don't want to believe Takeshi is the killer. If there's any chance, please help find the truth…"
She wiped away a handful of tears and ran off sobbing.
Jiangxia looked down at the cookie bag and flicked off the teardrops clinging to the plastic. He was going to just toss them on the table like everything else, but when he turned around, the small table was already full.
Left with no choice, he rearranged three dinner plates and a pile of snacks into a makeshift platter situation to squeeze in space for the cookies.
Just as he set them down, another rapid dong dong dong came from the door behind him.
Jiangxia: "…"
He looked down at the ghost parents.
They looked up at him innocently, and gave him a chibi-style thumbs-up, like they were congratulating him for being such a social butterfly.
Jiangxia sighed, shifted his gaze away, walked to the door, cracked it open, and peeked out.
This time, it was Hattori Heiji and Conan.
The two of them were munching on a bag of compressed biscuits—emergency rations they'd dug up earlier while investigating.
As the door opened, Conan handed Jiangxia a bag and got right to the point: "We wanted to ask about the handkerchief. Before leaving the restaurant, did you check under the table? Also…"
They fired off a few more questions and, in between, tried to subtly gauge why Jiangxia seemed so off today. Then they left with a load of intel.
…
Jiangxia returned to the room and stared at the door.
After waiting a bit and confirming no one else was coming to knock, he turned back to look at the ghost parents who'd definitely been tinkering with something.
As a psychic contracted to these ghosts, Jiangxia knew their one and only ability: Making oneself/area around him fire proof.
They didn't have any additional skills like "summon motherly love."
So if the issue wasn't with their skillset, maybe it was some weird side effect of their aura. Synthetic ghosts like these were rare even in the psychic world. Who knows what strange effects they might have…
Jiangxia pondered a while but couldn't figure it out. In the end, he just asked directly, "Did you buff me without permission?"
The ghost parents stared blankly at him.
Jiangxia tried a different tack: "When do you consume more murderous aura than usual?"
The parents looked at each other, thinking deeply.
After a few seconds of intense ghost brain activity, they released Jiangxia's legs and floated slowly to the side.
Jiangxia kind of got what they were trying to show.
He tossed the other three lurking ghosts back into the tattoo space to get a clean reading.
Once it was just him and the ghost parents, he focused on measuring how much murderous aura they were consuming, then touched them again to see the difference.
Bingo.
——When in contact with the ghost parents, the amount of murderous energy being drained subtly increased.
Jiangxia: "…"
No wonder he always felt like they were eating more aura than the others. He thought it was because there were two of them, always clinging together like a sandwich, double the appetite.
Turns out, it wasn't about "eating" at all—they were just quietly leaking passive aura buffs.
Jiangxia poked the ghost parents, now floating beside him. "Can you control it? If this keeps up, it'll mess with my judgment."
——If this strange buff had infinite range and could affect the entire world, then fine, slap it on me 24/7.
But like most aura effects, its range was limited. Unless he was in close contact with them for a long time, it would fade.
That made things tricky. It would mess up his ability to accurately judge the true personalities of the people around him.
And when that happens, the whole murder script he carefully pieced together becomes nothing more than… soggy toilet paper.
But "controlling an aura," even for a trained psychic, was no easy feat. For the ghost parents? Nearly impossible.
They tried a few times—Jiangxia helping them experiment—but each time they grabbed onto his legs again, the aura consumption quietly spiked.
*Goal #1: Top 200 fanfics published within the last 31 - 90 days by POWER STONES.
Progress: 3/60(approx) for 10 BONUS CHAPTERS
Goal #2: One BONUS CHAPTER per review for the first 10 REVIEWS.
Progress:2/10*