The proctor whose candidates had been completely wiped out walked over to the chief invigilator monitoring Lu Yun.
"Is this... a Specter's ability? When did this candidate Lu Yun sign a contract with a Specter?"
"It could be a Bizarre Artifact left behind by his elders."
Six seconds later, Lu Yun successfully bypassed the Pig-headed Man by entering the Spirit Realm.
When he reappeared in everyone's view, he looked somewhat drained.
It was only then that Xiao Qian and Xiao Chun realized Lu Yun was not destroying his own body, but rather training himself to use the power of a Bizarre Artifact!
"Just what else is this guy keeping from us?" Xiao Chun muttered.
"Who knows? It's probably something our uncle and the others left him. Don't go asking him about it later," Xiao Qian warned.
"...Do I look like that kind of person, Sister?" Xiao Chun asked helplessly.
The group quickly reached a consensus: Lu Yun possessed a Bizarre Artifact given to him by his family.
A Bizarre Artifact, as the name suggests, is an item that can be used within a Secret Realm.
Secret Realms are never short on Anomalous Energy, unless it is a specific kind of Secret Realm where you have just entered and have not yet begun to undergo specterization.
The Anomalous Energy inside a Secret Realm allows one to barely manage using a Bizarre Artifact.
As for Spirit Artifacts, no current candidate could possibly use them; those required Spirit Qi to activate.
The Spirit Master College Entrance Exam did not restrict the use of Bizarre Artifacts and Spirit Artifacts, as they were considered part of a candidate's "strength."
Returning home, Lu Yun did not see Ghost Mother anywhere; he had no idea where she had run off to.
He went back to his room, locked the door from the inside, and took out the phone.
One corner of the phone was cracked, and the phone case was caked in dust, exuding a strong sense of age.
Just by looking at it, Lu Yun felt that this thing had a severe electrical leakage problem.
Without daring to delay, Lu Yun immediately powered on the phone.
Accompanied by a startup sound, the phone successfully booted up, displaying a battery level of only 3% in the top right corner.
Lu Yun looked at the phone, thought about a passcode, and on a whim entered 0103. To his surprise, it successfully unlocked.
"0103... Ah, it's the numbers on the back of that group photo," Lu Yun remembered.
If there was any information on the phone, it would typically be in the notepad or the photo gallery.
Lu Yun first tapped on the notepad, but it was completely empty.
He quickly exited the notepad and closed its background process.
Then he immediately opened the photo gallery, which contained photos of the phone's owner and his family.
The owner of the phone was none other than Hui Cat.
Lu Yun tapped on the "latest" video and began watching the records inside.
The phone's battery was down to just 2%; he wondered if it would last through the tens of minutes of video.
In the video, three men were engaged in a fierce argument.
"Tang Lun, this is the breeding boar you bought for me? It's so tiny, how is it supposed to mate with the sow at my house?"
The owner of the phone said, "You were the one who said that as long as we bought it back for you, you'd take it. Now you're saying the breeding boar we got you is too small? Where on earth have I ever seen such a shameless person?"
"Who are you calling shameless? You goddamn bastards are the shameless ones, picking out the big pig for yourselves and leaving me with the small one. I can see you're all in cahoots to bully me."
"Who's bullying you? You're the one who said you wanted it as soon as we bought it, and besides, that breeding boar farm only had a few boars left," said another man who was with Hui Cat.
"Fine, I'll go get the money from the kitchen for you guys. Wait here," the man said.
After saying that, the man went straight to the house's kitchen.
He was hardly going to the kitchen for money; he was clearly going for "US dollars."
Gripping a butchering knife, he suddenly charged at Tang Lun and slashed him right across the head, instantly sending reds and whites spilling all over the floor.
Hui Cat was scared out of his wits. He dropped the phone and turned to run.
But how could a man who had gone berserk with killing let him go? He chased after him, hacking at his back, and after a few blows, Hui Cat lost all ability to resist.
Lu Yun fast-forwarded the video bit by bit.
He skipped ahead to where the man cut open the enormous breeding boar's belly and brutally shoved Tang Lun's corpse straight into it!
Lu Yun flipped through the video further, and saw that man... Lu Yun remembered, that man was very likely Yang Chuandong, the one written about in the diary of the female homeowner behind the house!
Wielding a hoe, that man buried Hui Cat's corpse beneath a huge pear tree on the side of his house.
Little did he know, a Grey Hakimi in a distant corner had witnessed the whole thing.
Lu Yun kept flipping forward. The Hakimi stood at the burial site of Hui Cat for a moment.
Suddenly, its eyes gained intelligence; it ran over and picked up the phone in its mouth.
At this point, whether the phone's recording had ended or the battery had died, the screen went completely black.
"I never expected a tragedy to be sparked by such a trivial matter. That's absurd," Lu Yun sighed.
The flow of time in this world seemed to have accelerated; in just this short while, it was growing dark.
Ghost Mother finally returned. Several tears had been slashed into her clothes, and black blood dripped onto the ground step by step as she walked.
The Pig-headed Man seemed on the verge of advancing into the courtyard.
Yet, accompanied by the cries of the Grey Hakimi, the Pig-headed Man retreated.
"Now we can confirm that the Pig-headed Man is Yang Chuandong. He wanted to kill his own family so that this matter would never be known by anyone. How can such a detestable wretch exist?" Lu Yun said angrily.
Although this event did not happen around him, but rather in another world, he still felt somewhat infuriated.
How could Yang Chuandong trample upon other people's lives so casually?
Lu Yun was now somewhat worried about Ghost Mother's condition; he didn't know how severe her injuries were.
For now, Ghost Mother was still protecting him, and the initial prompt had also stated that none of the three entities—the breeding boar, Ghost Mother, and the Grey Hakimi—could die.
This indicated that there must be a way for these three individuals to communicate.
Lu Yun knocked on Ghost Mother's bedroom door.
Outside, the spectators watching his proctoring footage looked at each other in dismay, some of them involuntarily drawing in a sharp breath.
"Is he asking for a death wish? If he angers Ghost Mother, even in her injured state, it would be more than enough to tear him to pieces, wouldn't it?" said one spectator.
"What do you know? Just watch and see first. What if there's a plot twist?" another spectator watching the proctoring livestream beside him replied.
The chief invigilator was also furrowing his brow as he watched the situation on screen; he was the one those people called "Chief."
He was the overall head of the city's Special Anomalous Incidents Response Team.
It could be said that everyone who joined the Special Anomalous Incidents Response Team had to go through his screening.
Originally, he had wanted Xiao Chun to be a proctor as well, but Xiao Chun's younger brother was a candidate this year. Following the rule that relatives of exam candidates could not serve as proctors, Xiao Chun was not assigned to invigilate.
"Xiao Chun really brought up a good younger brother..." the chief examiner sighed.