"Could I have guessed wrong?" I asked calmly, kicking the thin man's foot behind Ye Zhengyi's back. "How much do you know about my abilities? How much do you know about me?"
The thin man fell silent, watching the painting without a hint of emotion.
"I'm not the Ghost King because I can't be." Ye Zhengyi didn't answer my question. Instead, he answered the one I'd asked before. "I can't. Do you understand?" He smiled. "You think I have plenty of choices, but from the moment I met Liu Che, I had none. I had no choice, and no power to change my fate or change this world. Neither did Liu Che. It took so many years for the right time, place, and people to come together... You can use that Nangong Yao's ability, right? Then use it to look at this painting."
My heart gave a jolt.
I'd been certain Ye Zhengyi didn't know what my real ability was. He would have mistaken Liu Miao's ability for mine. His knowledge of Greenleaf should have been limited to Ye Qing, Wu Ling, and Perfected Xuanqing. Those three were well-known figures in the paranormal world. Nangong Yao, Liu Miao, and Gu Mo weren't. After Ye Qing decided to act—that is, after he founded the Greenleaf Paranormal Agency—he would have guarded against every possible threat. A ghost like Ye Zhengyi could never have gotten close to Greenleaf.
Ye Qing should have protected me even more carefully. A year ago, I hadn't even known I had a special ability. Ye Qing had already dealt with the "new thing" Ghost King who'd been targeting me. There was no way Ye Zhengyi could have found out about me.
But the situation now was beyond anything I'd expected.
I was probably wrong about the nature of