The girl's helpless expression was truly pitiful, her pleading gaze cast toward the onlookers, but all she received in return was even more discussion. Just as the girl was falling into despair, someone sharp-eyed suddenly cried out, “Look! There’s something moving in the river—it’s a person... it’s a person!”

This exclamation became the girl’s lifeline. She hurriedly looked toward the river, and couldn’t help but cry out in delight, “Brian Cooper, is that you? Don’t scare me, hurry and swim to the shore!”

The figure in the icy river gradually approached the bank, climbing up with the help of a thick rope by the railing. The crowd’s chatter only grew louder, now mixed with quite a few voices of reproach.

“Whose child is this, so thoughtless? Do you know how hard it is for your family to raise you? Of all things to learn, you choose suicide, playing with your life!” a middle-aged woman scolded sternly.

“I like it. It’s none of your business.” The boy who climbed ashore looked about ten years old, with striking features—a tall nose and thin lips that gave him an air of arrogance without him even trying.

The boy’s cold response clearly infuriated the middle-aged woman, who was about to give him a lecture. But the boy paid her no mind, quickly stepped forward, grabbed the girl’s hand, and simply said, “Let’s go.”

The girl noticed that the boy was acting strangely after coming ashore, but she was also afraid of being surrounded and pointed at by so many people. Besides, Brian Cooper was strong, and she was half-dragged as she followed him out of the crowd.

They ran all the way until they were out of everyone’s sight. The boy pulled the girl into a small alley before finally stopping. “Little Emily, I hope you can keep tonight’s events a secret for me.”

Sensing the boy’s uncharacteristic coldness, the girl looked at him in confusion. “Brian Cooper, please don’t worry about the exams anymore, okay? Do you know you almost scared me to death just now? Do you know how anxious I was on the shore?” As she spoke, the tears that had been welling up in her eyes finally fell.

The boy frowned slightly and repeated, “Little Emily, keep tonight’s events a secret for me.”

The girl’s name was Emily Baker, and both she and the boy were in their third year of middle school. In this hazy period of adolescence, their immature relationship had already lasted two months. They both thought that spending National Day together at the Bund would be incredibly romantic, but unexpectedly, the boy suddenly jumped into the river.

Emily Baker nodded with tears in her eyes. “I won’t tell anyone about tonight, but you have to promise me you’ll never do this again. When you did that, I almost wanted to jump in after you.”

Perhaps moved by the sincerity in Emily’s words, the boy’s cold expression softened a little, and he managed a slightly stiff smile. “Alright, I promise. You should head home first. I live closer, so I’ll just walk back.”

After saying this, the boy unceremoniously pulled a wet fifty-yuan bill from his pocket and stuffed it into the girl’s hand. He then hailed a taxi, put the girl in the back seat, quickly shut the door, and gave the driver an address.

“Brian Cooper, remember to call me tomorrow, or I’ll come looking for you myself...” The taxi had already started moving, and the girl stuck her head out the window, shouting, “Don’t forget... call me!” Clearly, she was still worried about her “first love” who had just attempted suicide a few minutes ago.

Watching the taxi speed away, Brian Cooper finally turned and walked toward the other end of the alley, a faint, age-inappropriate smile appearing at the corner of his mouth. “After wandering the world for a hundred days with a wisp of a primordial spirit fused with memories of my past life, I finally found a passable body before my spirit dissipated. It truly was a narrow escape from death.”

……

At Cangmang Mountain, after failing to overcome the tribulation and being struck by the annihilating Five Elements Divine Thunder, Eric Carter did not dissipate as he had expected. Though his physical body was destroyed and ninety-nine percent of his primordial spirit was refined by the divine thunder, he still managed to let a wisp of his primordial spirit, fused with memories of his past life, escape.

To be honest, existing as nothing more than a wisp of wandering primordial spirit, Eric Carter was not much different from being completely annihilated. In fact, he was even weaker than the most feeble wandering ghosts. If Eric Carter hadn’t chosen the spiritually rich Cangmang Mountain as the place to undergo his tribulation, and had instead been in a place with weaker spiritual energy, even if he had managed to escape with a wisp of his spirit, he would have been devoured by a stronger spirit in no time.

“Possessing a new body for rebirth is out of the question. I’m not a complete primordial spirit, and I even have to avoid ordinary ghosts... The only way to be reborn is to find someone who has just died, whose consciousness has faded but whose body is still intact and whose yang energy hasn’t dissipated, and merge with them.”

With this plan in mind, Eric Carter deliberately sought out crowded places to try his luck. After nearly a hundred days of wandering, Eric Carter had traveled all over the country, but never found a suitable body that met his requirements. The conditions were simply too strict. Even though Eric Carter had come across a few people who had committed suicide, by the time he found them, they were already completely dead. With his current abilities, there was no way he could merge his spirit with a body that had lost its yang energy.