Chapter 161: Ghost Hunters and Cannon Fodder

“Who are they?”

I wondered aloud.

Just then, a resident from the neighborhood walked over
and rudely demanded:

“What are you people sneaking around here for?”

The group lifted their heads from the bushes.
One of them replied:

“We’re the Ghost Hunting Special Search Team.
We were hired to come here and catch ghosts.”

Ghost Hunting Special Search Team?
What a strange name.

So those devices in their hands that looked like walkie-talkies
were probably magnetic field detectors?

They also carried radios, cameras, ultraviolet lamps,
and all sorts of odd equipment—
one person even held two dowsing rods.

The most eye-catching was a man carrying a trumpet-shaped instrument
connected by a tube to a bottle at his waist.
That must be some kind of ghost-capturing device.

How should I put it…
they gave off the impression of being both very professional
and completely unreliable at the same time.
Their equipment looked bizarre and mismatched,
nothing like Yi Zhiqiu’s style at all.
I wasn’t sure whether these tools could actually catch a ghost.

The resident grew impatient and snapped:

“Bad luck! There are no ghosts here!
Stop messing around and get the hell out!”

It was normal for a resident to chase them away,
but the rudeness and crudeness caught me off guard.

The ghost hunters got a bit angry too:

“What do you mean no ghosts?
Someone went missing here not long ago—
even the police couldn’t find him.
We were hired by the family to come look for him!”

So they were hired by the family of that missing middle-aged man.
But the police hadn’t found any clues?
This neighborhood was overflowing with ghostly qi—
how could those officers have missed it entirely?

“If someone’s missing, go hire a search-and-rescue team!
What good is a bunch of ghost catchers?
Get lost—now! Or I’m calling the neighborhood security!”

The resident seemed to have a huge prejudice against them,
swearing in almost every sentence.

“Heh, sorry, brother.
We already reported to the property management when we entered.
We’re licensed professional ghost hunters.
You have no right to kick us out—
this isn’t your personal neighborhood.”

One of the hunters replied with a laugh.

The resident’s face turned red.
He started arguing with them heatedly,
but it quickly devolved into meaningless trash talk.

I quietly took out my phone,
snapped a photo,
and sent it to the Supernatural Events Department group chat.

“Ran into a strangely equipped ghost-hunting team in the neighborhood.
They claim to be licensed professionals.
What do you guys think—are they legit?”

Bai Shi: “Wow! Real ghost hunters!
This is my first time seeing them.
I’ve only ever seen them in online spirit-hunting videos before.”

Gui Cheng: “I’ve seen them.
They don’t look very professional.
That equipment is all basic level—probably just hobbyists.
My family has a set too, and ours is even more complete.”

Ou Zhiqing: “It still depends on what Dharma artifacts they’re carrying.
Those tools can at best help them locate ghosts.
Whether they can actually defeat them depends on personal strength.”

Mo Qingyan: “They’re nothing more than disposable scouts.
Ghost hunter licenses are extremely easy to obtain.
If you wanted one, you could get it too—just show some basic skill.”

Ou Zhiqing: “Huh? We could?
But we’re still students…”

Mo Qingyan: “Yes.
These so-called ghost hunters are actually just amateur enthusiasts.
Rather than letting them run around causing chaos,
it’s better to give them some form of management.
The license system is basically just registration and record-keeping.”

The group chat exploded after I sent the photo.
As I walked home,
I read their messages and gradually understood what the “ghost hunter” profession was really about.

According to Mo Qingyan,
ghost hunters were essentially cannon fodder.
They were the disposable scouts sent in first
to probe supernatural sites
before the real professionals—half-immortals and heavenly masters—stepped in.

Supernatural incidents often came with deadly “first-encounter kills.”
Even a true master could die inexplicably without prior intelligence.
Real masters were far too valuable to sacrifice.

So the authorities recruited civilian volunteers—
these ghost hunters—
to go in first and test the waters.
They would figure out the type of entity, its danger level,
and its killing methods,
gathering crucial intel
before the real experts arrived to deliver the finishing blow.

These curious, fearless, adrenaline-junkie ghost hunters
made perfect cannon fodder.
They thought a bit of theory or a protective artifact was enough to resist ghosts.
Lured by high bounties,
they usually ended up dying without a corpse—
mere stepping stones for the true masters.

Of course, there were exceptions.
The group chat mentioned several veteran ghost hunters
who had survived countless encounters,
their strength and experience reaching impressive levels.
These people had already been officially recruited
and granted advanced titles,
becoming part of the “master” class themselves.

Toward the end of the discussion,
I faintly detected a chilling implication in Mo Qingyan’s words:
the very existence of ghost hunters
might be the authorities deliberately using supernatural incidents
to thin out the number of people who knew about ghosts—
by letting them die.

This conspiracy theory was terrifying.

It wasn’t baseless speculation either.
After dinner, I searched online for information about the ghost hunter profession.
There wasn’t much valuable data,
but there were indeed official statements encouraging ghost hunters to explore haunted sites—
claiming that even just surviving and returning would earn a reward.

Moreover, in a hard-to-find forum,
I actually found a genuine thread discussing the existence of demons and ghosts.
One claim there shocked me completely.

It said that many people assume
the chaotic eras of history—
when generals rose on mountains of bones,
people resorted to cannibalism,
and the common folk barely survived—
must have been times when demons and ghosts ran rampant,
terrifying beyond imagination.

But in reality,
although chaotic times did produce many ghosts and demons,
their danger level and strength were actually quite low.
Because almost everyone had died,
the remaining survivors knew about ghosts but had grown numb.
Very few still felt extreme fear toward them.

As a result,
the power of ghosts and demons dropped off a cliff.
In those chaotic times,
it was much easier for great monks who transcended millions of souls to achieve merit and enlightenment,
or for terrestrial immortals who slew demons and exorcised evil to emerge.

Demons and ghosts only appeared after the evolution of intelligent humans.
The more people there are, the stronger the ghosts become—
and vice versa.
To completely eradicate them,
humanity itself would have to go extinct.

This post completely overturned my previous impressions.
But if what it said was true,
I could understand it this way:
in chaotic times, there were too many ghosts and too few people.
The fear produced by humans was spread thin across countless entities,
weakening the average strength.

Meanwhile, monks and Daoists could treat those ghosts as mere mobs to farm experience,
allowing true great immortals to rise much more easily.

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