Yu Xian did not disturb Nora's reunion with her mother.
After watching them from afar for about as long as it took to drink half a cup of tea, he teleported straight back to his villa.
He felt that Super Smell still held immense untapped potential, especially when working in tandem with Super Taste, which vaguely allowed him to perceive even more information.
Snakes used their tongues to collect scent particles from the air, and what a snake could do, Super Taste could do just as well. It was just that previously, even when Yu Xian gathered those scent particles, he had lacked any way to decipher the information contained within them.
With Super Smell, however, the two abilities complemented each other perfectly.
Returning to his garden, Yu Xian allowed only the scents from inside the villa into his spatial bubble this time.
With Silver Blood bolstering his brain and both Super Smell and Super Taste acting simultaneously, he closed his eyes and felt as if he had become a higher-dimensional being. The past peeled away like an onion, unfolding layer upon layer within his mind.
A mental progress bar seemed to appear in his thoughts. He could adjust it at will to "see" everything that had ever transpired here in the past.
Prospective buyers touring the villa, the laborers constructing it, and hundreds of years ago, when the area had been a slum, with chaotic, haphazard wooden shanties housing dozens of families...
The farther back he looked, the more information was missing, and the voices and faces of the people grew increasingly faint.
After a long while, Yu Xian opened his eyes, feeling as though he had traveled through centuries before returning to this exact moment. Exhaling a long breath, he could not help but mutter, "To think the perfect creature only used an ability like this for hunting. What an absolute fucking waste of a heavenly gift."
Super Brain, Super Smell, and Super Taste—the combined effect of these three abilities was downright absurd.
Yu Xian stepped indoors. He knew exactly who had crafted each piece of furniture in his home, which mover had carried it in, and even that the man had smoked a cigarette right before lifting it.
To be frank, it defied science.
He had merely caught the scent lingering on the furniture, yet his brain automatically linked it to a furniture factory on the outskirts of Silver City.
It was practically like quantum entanglement: the moment he learned about one end, he automatically gained knowledge of the other.
Unscientific as it was, Yu Xian had to admit it was remarkably superhuman.
"The bed has to be thrown out."
"These three pairs of boxers can't be kept either."
"Holy crap, who the hell is disgusting enough to drop a bowl in dog shit, rinse it off, and sell it?"
Yu Xian inspected every item in the house, only to realize that once he traced them back to their origins, countless things were utterly unusable.
The bed he normally slept in was supposed to be brand new, but in reality, it was refurbished second-hand goods, and its previous owner had been a serial player.
Sometimes, the more one knew, the less happy one was. At any rate, everything in Yu Xian's sight now filled him with a mild sense of revulsion.
Night fell.
Yu Xian bustled about, replacing a great many items in the house.
A police cruiser pulled up in front of the villa's main gate. Yu Xian instantly teleported into a bubble outside the gate. Zhang Kai sat inside the car and called out with a grin, "Come on! Today's my day off—let's go grab a feast. My treat!"
"Tsk, look at the iron rooster finally plucking a feather! Let's go, let's go!"
Hearing that he could score a free meal, Yu Xian immediately shrank the bubble's perimeter and floated into the car with a grin.
Beside him, Zhang Kai eyed Yu Xian inside the bubble and asked curiously, "Are you training your ability?"
"No, quite the opposite. Something's a little off with my ability, so for now, this is the only way," Yu Xian sighed.
Zhang Kai asked with concern, "Are you all right? Do you need to see an ability corrector?"
"No need. I'll be fine in a few days," Yu Xian replied.
An ability corrector was essentially a psychological counselor for Transcendents. Some Transcendents developed deviations while training their abilities, suffering setbacks like qi deviation and carrying psychological scars.
In those cases, an ability corrector was needed to guide them and rectify the anomalies in their abilities.
Zhang Kai drove up to a small tavern. The two got out and headed inside, where Zhang Kai promptly rattled off their order with ease, evidently a frequent patron.
"I love three dishes here. The fresh lamb chops satisfy cravings like crazy, and the braised tendon and brisket along with the Dongpo pork are pretty good too," Zhang Kai said with a smile.
Yu Xian laughed. "Don't talk it up just yet. I have Super Taste. Whether it's good or not, I'll be the judge."
"Heh, knowing you have Super Taste is exactly why I brought you here. Do you know what ability their chef has?" Zhang Kai asked smugly.
Yu Xian remained silent, waiting for him to finish.
"Word has it that this restaurant's chef inherited the legacy of the God of Cookery. One of his abilities is the Tongue of the God of Cookery, which can discern the subtlest shifts in flavor among ingredients," Zhang Kai introduced earnestly.
Yu Xian deadpanned, "Across the country, there must be at least eight hundred thousand people, if not a million, claiming to have inherited the legacy of the God of Cookery. Give me a break."
"This is different. It feels pretty authentic to me, anyway," Zhang Kai chuckled breezily.
Just then, two servers brought over the fresh lamb chops together. Zhang Kai urged Yu Xian to dig in at once. Once Yu Xian took a bite and nodded in approval, the atmosphere livened up as both tucked into the food.
"Waitress, bring me a bottle of green plum wine! Oh, right, you're not eighteen yet—bring a can of fruit juice too," Zhang Kai said to the server as soon as the braised pork and two vegetable dishes were set on the table.
Yu Xian picked up a slice of lotus root with his chopsticks. Just as he opened his mouth to eat, he froze.
He sniffed the lotus root and said, "Brother Zhang, once we're done, ask the staff where they source this lotus root."
"What's wrong?" Sensing the change in Yu Xian's expression, Zhang Kai asked in a low voice.
Yu Xian placed the lotus root slice onto the table and said quietly, "Others might not be able to smell it, but I have Super Smell. There's a scent of corpse qi on these lotus roots."
"Then what are we waiting for? I'll go ask right now," Zhang Kai said, immediately standing up.
Yu Xian quickly cut in, "Keep it discreet. Don't ruin their business."
"Don't worry, your Brother Zhang knows how to handle things," Zhang Kai nodded.
Yu Xian set his chopsticks down, his appetite completely gone. After waiting a moment, he decided to let a fraction of the surrounding air into his bubble, and he immediately caught a scent of corpse qi coming from the kitchen's lotus roots that was even thicker than on the cooked slices.
In truth, "thicker" was only relative to the cooked slices; the scent of corpse qi was actually exceedingly faint, not nearly enough to turn an ordinary person into a zombie if consumed.
The human body possessed natural detoxification abilities. As long as one's yang qi was sufficient and they got some sunshine during the day, such a minuscule trace of corpse qi posed no danger whatsoever.
Yet the presence of corpse qi meant there was bound to be a source of zombies, and that source was precisely what Yu Xian wanted to find.
A moment later, Zhang Kai walked back with his hands in his pockets. Sitting down, he said, "They source their stock from Green Lotus Pond in the south of the city. Want to go check it out?"
"Let's go take a look. I'm worried there might be a zombie beneath the pond," Yu Xian nodded.
Zhang Kai had known Yu Xian for some time now and knew well that he was not the type to make baseless claims. Since Yu Xian had spoken up, there was a high probability that an actual zombie lurked by Green Lotus Pond.
A knot tightened in his chest. Forgetting about the food, he immediately went to settle the bill.
Leaving the tavern, the two got into the cruiser, and Zhang Kai set off toward the south of the city.
He drove very fast this time, fast enough that Yu Xian could sense a hint of his tension.
"A few nights ago, while on night patrol, I saw several brats catching loaches over there in the dead of night. I chased them all home. But yesterday, I heard A-Bing from the squad say those brats were back catching loaches again," Zhang Kai said to Yu Xian, his gaze fixed on the road ahead.
If there really was a zombie in the pond, those kids might be fine if they never crossed paths with it, but if they did, provoking its ferocity would mean certain death.
Evidently, Zhang Kai was worried for those children's safety.
Chapter 96