Su Kun was particularly eager to meet that eccentric person.

He wanted to know what kind of thought process would lead someone to do something as unreliable as "cultivating a lover". What if they ended up cultivating a whole bunch?

"Hey! His lover was originally a human, a scholarly young man in a blue robe, but with remarkable skills, not as frail as other scholars. That was about a hundred years ago. The scholar had a tough fate, dying young. He was displeased with the short lifespan of mortals, even if reincarnated, they would only live for a few decades before dying again.

"So, in a moment of impulse, he captured the scholar's soul and housed it in a red pine tree in the mountains, nurturing it for hundreds of years, waiting for the scholar to take shape." Granny Camphor Tree took a sip of tea, squinting as she spoke.

"These years are critical; no mistakes can be made. It rained recently, and the spiritual mountain where his lover resides was reportedly struck by lightning. He had to rush over before finishing his work, leaving everything to us."

"What work?" Su Kun asked, confused.

The old lady tilted her head, smiling, "You, of course."

Su Kun looked baffled, "What?"

"Otherwise, how do you think we knew about the situation before the police reported it?" Mo Bao, true to being a figure from a painting, displayed extreme elegance in every move. Even something as simple as drinking tea had an ethereal quality.

"It's because he mentioned to us that the owner of the red bean paste shop near S University seemed suspicious and asked us to keep an eye out."

"Yeah, he dumped this mess on me and ran off." The old lady took out a dark brown wooden disc from her pocket and waved it, saying resentfully, "This little broken disc has been used for so many years, always a step behind when tracking. It's really exhausting... If he weren't the boss, I would have roasted him long ago."

Su Kun, hearing all this, found himself both intrigued and amused by the convoluted and mystical lives of these strange individuals who had suddenly become a part of his world.

“You’ve complained about that eight hundred times already. Go ahead and roast him!” The master glanced at her while releasing paper cranes, “Whenever he gets hurt, you jump higher than a rabbit, vowing to chop up those who hurt him.”

The old lady mumbled, “I can’t bring myself to do it because he looks like my eldest grandson…”

“Your eldest grandson is a camphor tree, thank you. And he’s a thousand years older than you!” the master retorted grumpily.

Listening on the side, Gu Yan and Su Kun were stunned: "A thousand years old…=_="

“Wait a minute! The boss?” Su Kun looked puzzled at the old lady, “Isn’t your captain the clay figurine that the police call Captain Li?”

“That’s a dummy I made to deal with them. Whenever we need to liaise with other departments, Little Li handles it,” the old lady shook a small floral cloth bag, which looked like a coin purse but actually contained several clay figurines used for work.

“Why don’t you handle the liaison yourselves?” Su Kun recalled the figurine, “That clay figurine might look human, but it lacks life in its eyes, and it seemed like it couldn’t see Gu Yan. Isn’t that inconvenient?”

Mo Bao tapped the other two with his finger, “Do any of us look normal to you?”

Su Kun twitched his mouth, “... Fair point.” The old lady and the master would be mistaken for community seniors rather than key members of a special department if they went to the police. As for Mo Bao, his appearance was too pale, and his eyes too dark, making him look eerie.

“But... that bean sprout isn’t much better! You didn’t see how the people at the police station reacted when talking about Little Li; they seemed so frustrated. If you’re going to make a clay figurine, at least make it more robust. That thin one is really out of place.”

The old lady chuckled mischievously.

Su Kun: “…” Great, it was intentional.

The master nodded at Gu Yan, “Given your progress, you’re not far from getting a solid form. You can handle the liaison tasks with the relevant departments in the future.”

Gu Yan gave him a glance without responding.

Su Kun, on the other hand, looked at the shrunken yet still intimidating Gu Yan with interest, imagining him in his normal form—tall, broad-shouldered, long-legged, with solid but not overly bulky muscles. If he were to go to the police station, he’d indeed seem more reliable than Little Li.

But wouldn’t he inadvertently attract the ladies at the police station? Given his looks and physique...

Wait! Why am I thinking so far ahead! QAQ

Su Kun felt his ears heat up, coughed, and quickly shifted his focus back to chatting with the old lady and the others.

Gu Yan observed Su Kun’s every move without missing a detail.

Ever since discovering Su Kun’s orientation, Gu Yan outwardly showed no change, but he had been subtly observing Su Kun out of curiosity.

He didn’t understand terms like congenital or acquired, straight or gay. From his military experience, he assumed such relationships were due to the lack of women, where some expressed mere desire, and others genuine feelings.

But Su Kun clearly wasn’t in an all-male environment; he saw plenty of women around town and even at places they visited together. So, Gu Yan couldn’t quite grasp why Su Kun would be attracted to men.

However, through these days of observation, he didn't discover the reason why Su Kun became a cutsleeve. Instead, he noticed something else—Su Kun's gaze always seemed to unintentionally fall on him.

If their eyes met, Su Kun would immediately look away and find something else to do, with the tips of his ears turning slightly red. If Su Kun was watching him out of the corner of his eye and wasn't caught, he could stare at Gu Yan for a long time, lost in thought, not making a sound or moving, with an unknown contemplation in his heart. He would eventually cough and hurriedly look away, shifting his attention elsewhere, with a hint of awkwardness in his expression.

At first, Gu Yan thought there might be something on his face or that he had unknowingly done something amusing due to his unfamiliarity with this world, causing Su Kun to keep glancing at him. But as it happened more frequently, Gu Yan dismissed that idea.

It was unlikely he had done something foolish repeatedly without knowing it. If that were the case, Su Kun would more likely laugh openly and tell him what the issue was, rather than acting so evasively.

Although Gu Yan had a stoic face, it didn't mean his mind was slow. He just preferred not to show his thoughts on his face. Having spent years in the military and political arenas in his previous life, he was adept at reading people, even if he wasn't as skilled as those who spent their days watching the emperor and their colleagues in court.

His emotional intelligence was definitely higher than Su Kun's, so it was unlikely he couldn't figure out what Su Kun had already understood.

Connecting Su Kun's little behaviors to the fact that he was a 'cutsleeve', Gu Yan quickly guessed the likely reason behind it.

Still, he remained outwardly indifferent. This was just a hypothesis and couldn't be confirmed. Even if it was highly likely, there was still a small chance that he might be misinterpreting things.

While he was lost in these thoughts, Su Kun's voice interrupted him, "By the way, I've always wanted to ask, the first time I met you was in that alley outside Guanyang New Town, do you remember?"

Gu Yan, pulled from his thoughts, turned his attention back to Su Kun, waiting to hear more about what he wanted to ask.

Gu Yan turned his head and saw the camphor tree old lady pondering, then said, "Of course I remember. You were so scared by me that you almost passed out. Did you think I was a ghost?"

Su Kun twitched his mouth, "Well, you're not human. I thought you were Meng Po or something because you grabbed me in the alley and asked if I was thirsty. Who knew you were a camphor tree spirit?"

The old lady waved her hand and pulled out a delicate porcelain bottle from her sleeve pocket, saying, "I'm not Meng Po, but I'm quite familiar with her. She can't come up here, so I sometimes bring some soup for her and help her out occasionally."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"The old lady mistook you for a harmless wild ghost who had been overlooked by the ghost messengers and was planning to give you a sip of soup and send you down. Things are too chaotic these days..." the master interjected.

"Chaotic? The world seems pretty peaceful to me," Su Kun felt like their thought processes were on completely different tracks.

"Not the kind of chaos you're thinking of," Mo Bao tapped the ground lightly with his foot, "We're talking about the chaos in the underworld. In recent years, there have been numerous cases of souls that should have entered reincarnation ending up in someone else's body or another place entirely. The original souls of those bodies are forcibly displaced and left wandering because their time hasn't come. Some even cross time, reliving years gone by or ending up many years in the future."

His gaze landed on Gu Yan with a half-smile, "Like him… So, the underworld is overwhelmed and has asked us for help. When we encounter such souls, we assist in handling them before handing them over."

"Handling?!" Su Kun widened his eyes, then glanced worriedly at Gu Yan.

"Hey~ He's already part of our department, so he doesn't count as one of those needing handling," the master waved his hand and gave Su Kun and Gu Yan a reassuring look, "We follow proper procedures, reporting both to the higher-ups and the underworld."

He pointed at several people and then said to Gu Yan, "In Li City, we have all kinds, but we're missing a strong, self-controlled ghost with sufficient fierce energy. We finally found one, and we can't let you slip away."

Gu Yan: "..." Suddenly felt like he boarded a pirate ship.

While everyone was chatting, Su Kun suddenly slapped his forehead, "Wait! I almost forgot the main point!"

"What main point?" The old lady and the others looked at him, puzzled.

"The master said you mistook me for a wild ghost. I also remember you said something about making a mistake... But why did you mistake me for a ghost? Are humans and ghosts that hard to distinguish?"

Su Kun widened his eyes, looking at the old lady in confusion. A few seconds later, as if he remembered something, he turned to the master and said, "When you first met me, you splashed me with black dog blood because you mistook me too? ... Why did you only mistake me and not others?"

The old lady and the master stared at him in silence for a while, then, in perfect synchronization, turned their heads to look out the window, sighing, "Oh, the sky is getting cloudy again. It will probably rain tonight."

Gu Yan: "..." Nothing to see here.

Su Kun: "..." Could you be more obvious?

Mo Bao covered his face: "..." I don't know these people.