Isabelle Frost’s expression was unsettling, almost angry, but as she approached me, she suddenly turned away and glared at John Chou.
“This isn’t something that can wait until the end, John Chou. Women are nothing like you imagine. Come with me, Rachel Lan.”
I looked at John Chou in confusion. At that moment, Morgan Shen nodded. I followed Isabelle Frost through the mountain, returning to the front side. We sat down at a small pavilion. Isabelle Frost glanced back at the mountain path we’d come from.
“Has your nose stopped working?”
I shook my head.
“What do you mean?”
“Can’t you smell the stench?”
Isabelle Frost raised her hand to cover her nose. I was puzzled about how they managed to get out of that underground palace. After all, John Chou had said they wouldn’t be leaving for a while.
Sensing my confusion, Isabelle Frost began to explain.
After she and John Chou were trapped in the underground palace, they didn’t panic. No matter how unpredictable things were, there was always a core—a center. They wandered inside for months, always circling within the maze.
But the siblings were both very clever. They quickly figured out the flow and transformation of power within the underground palace and traced it to the center. There, countless dead ghosts had become part of the palace itself.
The ghosts there were dead in the sense that their consciousness had been shattered. Only their ghostly bodies remained, like walking corpses, reduced to mere components of the palace.
The reason John Chou didn’t leave immediately was that he was searching for a way to bring Ethan Zhang back.
“What do you mean?”
I stood up, but Isabelle Frost motioned for me to sit. I’d known all along that John Chou wanted to find a way to bring Ethan Zhang back to this world, but judging by Isabelle Frost’s expression, he had failed.
“Some things are very different from what John Chou imagined. To bring Ethan Zhang back, the living world must have a body capable of hosting him. John Chou went to the underground palace to find a suitable ghostly body, but ultimately failed. We couldn’t bring those ghost bodies out, and now we finally know what Ethan Zhang’s true form is.”
I bowed my head and murmured an acknowledgment. Isabelle Frost continued.
“We thought the special nature of that place would let us find a suitable ghost body to reconstruct Ethan Zhang’s form. But after we learned the truth, John Chou abandoned the plan and continued honing his power inside.”
I made a sound of agreement, and Isabelle Frost stared at me, lost in thought.
“Once you’re done here, I want to take you somewhere.”