Unexpected Visitor

"Yifang, don't forget to be on time tomorrow. The morning's Scott's combat practice class, and you know that rigid guy isn't as easygoing as I am." Storm finished her earnest reminder to Lu Yifang, then walked outside.

She glanced at the sky. The sun was nearly setting. Cleaning this house had taken them the better part of half a day.

"I understand, Teacher Storm." Lu Yifang waved at Storm, watching her and Wolverine leave.

"Then I should be going too," Coulson said from the side. His duty had only been to deliver Lu Yifang here.

If not for Storm and Wolverine, Coulson would have left long ago. He had other missions to attend to. That bloodsucking old skinflint Fury—lounging in the director's office sipping coffee while sending his agents running all over the world without a second thought.

Such a decadent capitalist lifestyle was truly... enviable, Coulson thought darkly. If he ever became director of S.H.I.E.L.D., he'd lie in an air-conditioned room all day drinking coffee, then, like Fury, go out every ten days or so when he got bored of sitting around to show off, forever escaping this life of running his legs off.

Of course, that was just a fantasy. His application for Level 8 agent status still hadn't come back. Worried about his future prospects, Coulson hurriedly got into Lola and drove away.

Taking a deep breath, Lu Yifang looked at the now-quiet house, walked inside, picked up the bag of fast-food containers, tossed it into the trash bin, and closed the door.

The setting sun fell through the window onto the floor, faint dust motes floating in the air. Lu Yifang's nose twitched; he could just catch the slight musty smell of old bookshelves.

His gaze lingered on the bookshelves on the first floor for a moment, then he chose to go upstairs. Although the house had been transferred seven years ago, it seemed the owner from those seven years hadn't changed the layout. More accurately, that owner had never moved in at all.

The first floor was still a normal bookstore, the second floor was living quarters, and the third floor was a storage area for odds and ends.

With Storm and Logan's help, the first and second floors had been cleaned enough to live in, but the third floor hadn't been touched. Determined to get it all done in one go, Lu Yifang decided to tidy up the third floor now.

He wouldn't be going up there often anyway, so a quick clean would do. It shouldn't take too much time.

Creak!

The old door was pushed open, and a thick, moldy smell hit him. Lu Yifang frowned, quickly walked to the window, pulled open the curtain, and opened it.

Light and air rushed in together, letting Lu Yifang breathe easier while revealing everything in the room before him.

As he had expected, it was mostly piled with broken furniture and moldy bookshelves and books.

"A bit more than I thought. Cleaning the room isn't hard, but dealing with all this junk is troublesome. Forget it, I'll just toss everything outside for now and find someone to haul it away later." Having made up his mind, Lu Yifang started working. With his ability, moving things was naturally easy.

His only concern was keeping the dust off his clothes. But just as he was carefully shifting the clutter, he was suddenly drawn to a small drawer table.

Unlike the other junk, this table was old but completely free of dust, as if it had just been wiped clean.

Had someone wiped this table? The thought had barely risen in Lu Yifang's mind when he dismissed it.

Even if someone had wiped it, the dust he'd stirred up moving things would have certainly settled on it. Yet the table didn't have a single speck.

While he was puzzling over this, a ray of sunlight happened to fall on the table as he shifted position.

Through that light, Lu Yifang finally noticed a mysterious energy layer around the table, repelling all the dust in the air.

"Something's off." Lu Yifang narrowed his eyes and focused his mind.

In the real world within his mind, he sensed the flow of magnetic energy around the table. The core of this magnetic field seemed to be something inside it.

Lu Yifang walked over, carefully opened the drawer, and a black leather notebook came into view.

"Learning Journal!" Lu Yifang picked up the notebook-like book and saw four Chinese characters on the cover.

At this moment, Lu Yifang could clearly feel that this seemingly ordinary notebook contained a strange energy, operating in an extremely complex manner. Just a quick glance through the real world made his head spin.

After a moment's hesitation, Lu Yifang still opened the notebook. On the first blank page, three large characters were written: "Lu Shanyan."

"Father!" Lu Yifang stroked the familiar handwriting. This was his father's notebook.

Just as Lu Yifang was lost in memory for an instant, the pages of the notebook suddenly emitted a golden light. In the real world, Lu Yifang could clearly sense that part of the energy condensed in the notebook was now stirring, dispersing into the air as golden specks.

"What's happening?" Just as Lu Yifang wondered what was going on, the golden specks scattered in the air suddenly began to spin rapidly under some unknown force, forming a golden ring over a meter in diameter.

Within the ring, space warped and stretched in an unimaginable way, eventually becoming a passage.

At that moment, from the other side of the passage, a figure in a yellow robe slowly walked through and stood before Lu Yifang.

The mysterious robed figure swept a glance around, finally fixing their gaze on Lu Yifang. A gentle woman's voice came from beneath the robe.

"Long time no see, Yifang."

"It's you!" Looking at the person before him, Lu Yifang couldn't help but exclaim in surprise.

"Good, it seems you still remember me." The mysterious woman in yellow nodded, her voice carrying a hint of relief.

"How could I forget you?" Lu Yifang looked at the mysterious woman with a complicated expression.

"After all, seven years ago, you were the one who sent me to the orphanage!"