It hadn’t been a very smooth exchange.
Of course, that was from Wen Zhi’s perspective.
As for Ghost… just having someone talk to it had already made it very happy.
It wouldn’t dare hope for anything more.
Not long ago, Ghost could only entertain itself on the beach by cosplaying as air.
Now that someone could perceive it and communicate with it, the experience felt like a dream.
Still, the fact that the exchange hadn’t gone smoothly was within Wen Zhi’s expectations.
Expecting a human and a ghost to exchange any useful information through Turtle Soup and You Draw I Guess was asking a little too much.
Besides, Wen Zhi had discovered that, for some reason, Ghost might know even less about the Diary than he did…
Fortunately, after spending a full four hours, Wen Zhi had still managed to figure out a few things.
First was Ghost’s origin.
Based on the Turtle Soup… no, based on his questions, Ghost had once been like him.
It had ended up here after an accident and transformed into its current form after dying.
In the Diary, Ghost drew Wen Zhi fragments of its memories: the remnants of its Impression of the world it had once lived in.
It was a Swords and Magic World, fantastical and dazzling.
At least, that’s how it looked on the surface.
As for any further details, Wen Zhi couldn’t find a good way to ask, and Ghost had a hard time expressing them with their current means of communication.
But the information that Ghost came from a fantasy world was enough for Wen Zhi to explain a lot of things.
‘That explains it!’
Because he was a carbon-based monkey who didn’t understand magic, whenever he thought about a lot of things in terms of fantasy, he naturally arrived at the conclusion.
‘This must be magic!’
Ghost also couldn’t explain the supernatural rules of its world to Wen Zhi, so this misunderstanding continued for a long time…
After accepting that the other party came from a fantasy world, Wen Zhi became much more receptive to Ghost’s existence, the Diary, and all the strange things about them.
But his curiosity didn’t diminish.
If anything, it grew stronger.
It wasn’t as if the world Wen Zhi had lived in lacked supernatural elements.
They were simply incredibly secretive and rare, utterly unlike the sort of magical world that existed only in pure fantasy as Ghost had described.
Of course, aside from the world Ghost had once lived in, Wen Zhi had plenty of questions about Ghost itself.
He had clearly been maliciously set up by something and dragged to this godforsaken place.
What about Ghost?
What had brought it to its current state?
Wen Zhi tried to piece together the truth behind their transmigration, bit by bit.
Unfortunately, Ghost no longer had any memories related to that.
Even though it had recovered more memories than before, the ones in its mind were still scattered and fragmented.
What it could recall was entirely a matter of luck.
But Ghost did remember how it had died.
In the end, it drew Wen Zhi the reason it had become what it was now in the Diary.
As Ghost drew, three pictures appeared in succession on the Diary’s pages.
The first showed a young child holding a Diary.
Was it a boy?
Or perhaps a girl?
The child looked younger than 14, with a small, slender body, dressed in an ornate court robe.
Its snow-white feet were bare, and jeweled rings circled its delicate ankles.
A laurel wreath rested on its head.
It had a cool, noble air, silky hair, and dark eyes like gemstones.
Its excessively beautiful face made it impossible for Wen Zhi to tell its gender.
‘Why had its drawing suddenly become so detailed this time?!’
After silently commenting on that, Wen Zhi let his gaze linger for a second on the figure’s bare feet before shifting it to what interested him more.
The ears.
More than the figure’s appearance or clothes, its ears were what caught Wen Zhi’s attention.
They were much longer than a human’s, with pointed tips.
‘An Elf?’
Wen Zhi naturally matched this feature with the famous fantasy race he knew.
And judging by its clothes, Ghost must have held a rather distinguished position in life.
It might even have been a prince or princess…
All sorts of guesses popped into Wen Zhi’s mind, but he couldn’t interrupt Ghost’s drawing just yet, so he had to keep them to himself.
Meanwhile, Ghost, who was drawing while keeping an eye on Wen Zhi, noticed that his gaze had lingered on the figure’s feet before moving to its ears…
It gave Ghost a strange, hard-to-describe feeling.
In Ghost’s Impression, some humans did seem to have strange feelings about Elves’ bare feet and ears.
Was the man in front of it one of those people?
And even if Wen Zhi was a pervert with some peculiar interests, Ghost was only a white blob now.
Surely even a pervert like him wouldn’t make a move on it in this form?
‘No, even if the other party really is a lowly, hairless naked ape, I shouldn’t make assumptions like that without solid evidence.’
‘It’s incredibly rude and immoral.’
After setting aside its strange thoughts for the moment, Ghost quickly finished drawing the second and third pictures.
The second picture was simple.
It showed countless wild, sloppy, dark-black lines drawn over the first picture.
In the end, the lines completely swallowed the figure, leaving nothing but darkness.
The third picture showed only a Diary.
Though Ghost’s way of depicting things was rather abstract, Wen Zhi understood at a glance that Ghost had been swallowed by Darkness and become what it was now.
Well, that was a rule-based kill.
Even someone who knew magic couldn’t escape it.
Wen Zhi had originally wanted to ask if Ghost knew of any way to avoid the Darkness, so he could compare it with his own guess.
But now, it seemed there was no need…
Just as Wen Zhi was thinking this, Ghost sensed his thoughts.
Ghost really didn’t know how to avoid the Darkness.
On the Deserted Island, it had spent most of its time avoiding Night by losing consciousness.
But it remembered that when it had been alive and fallen into Darkness, in the midst of extreme pain and emptiness, it had seemed to yearn for something…
‘What was it?’
Ghost fell into deep thought, then a flash of inspiration struck.
It remembered what it was.
‘Light.’
It was an obvious answer.
To dispel Darkness, shouldn’t you use Light?
Then how could they make Light in the Night?
‘Fire.’
Ghost reached this conclusion.
It couldn’t be completely sure, but its intuition told it that this had to be the right answer.
Ghost was incredibly excited.
It hurriedly drew Wen Zhi’s attention again, as if eager to prove its worth, and sketched a picture in the Diary.
The scene showed a cartoon ghost and a man in a straw rain cape gathered around a fire.
Radiating lines streamed from the Fire, dispelling the dark blackness around them.
Wen Zhi looked at Ghost, quite surprised, and asked uncertainly.
“You mean… lighting a fire can dispel the Darkness?”
“Ding!”
The answer was almost exactly the same as Wen Zhi’s earlier guess.
When he’d looked through the Crafting Menu, he’d seen that the descriptions of every fire-related item, like torches, fire pits, and campfires, all included the same phrase.
“Dispel Darkness.”
It was clear what they needed to do next: finish something he’d started on the first day.
Make a fire.
But before that, Wen Zhi had one question.
“I didn’t say anything just now… how did you know what I was thinking?”
Wen Zhi had always wondered how Ghost could understand him when it didn’t seem to know Chinese.
But now, he had more or less figured it out.
‘So this little thing can read minds!’
Ghost realized that it seemed to have accidentally revealed its ability to read minds…
Putting itself in Wen Zhi’s shoes, it figured that if a stranger who could read minds suddenly appeared and peered into its thoughts without permission, it would feel rather violated and uneasy too.
After thinking for a moment, Ghost once again made the expression, trying to play dumb and get away with it.
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