On the bookshelf.
Various ancient books, incomplete manuscripts, and picture books were piled together in a chaotic mess.
Besides these, the bottom shelf also held a heap of assorted odds and ends.
There was a broken sword, a bloodstained wooden fish, several unidentified ores, and a scroll depicting an evil ghost...
They had all been painstakingly collected by his predecessor back when he was fond of the study of strange tales. Every item had a hair-raising story behind it—though most of them were fabricated.
Fang Xi ignored them and directly pulled out three books: Records of Strange Tales, Records of the Barren West, and Suiyuan's Compendium.
Of these, Records of Strange Tales and Records of the Barren West were old thread-bound editions. Their pages were pale yellow and bore traces of water damage and insect bites.
Most of their contents described strange people and bizarre events passed down by word of mouth. The authors also seemed never to have seriously studied writing, so the records were extremely scattered and mixed with many meaningless phrases, making readers grow drowsy at a glance.
His predecessor had casually flipped through a few pages before finding himself irritated and confused, and had immediately tossed them aside.
That copy of Suiyuan's Compendium looked even worse. It consisted of only a few torn pages, barely bound into a small booklet.
The paper was smooth, seemingly made of parchment.
Fang Xi stroked it, and his expression shifted slightly.
The paper was smooth and pleasant to the touch, thick and firm. As his fingertip brushed across it, it produced an indescribable pleasure.
It was as though he were caressing the tenderest skin of a girl of sixteen or seventeen...
"It was tanned from human skin..."
He spoke inwardly, realizing the paper's origin. It was none other than Human