My gaze drifted to the very top of the page.
April 5, 2013.
If I remembered correctly, this should have been after Gu Mo went missing.
Gu Mo had disappeared at the end of 2012. By April the following year, that was about when the people from Greenleaf had given up looking for him.
So Ye Qing had come to see my parents then. Had he thought about trying to save Gu Mo?
My heart felt terribly uncomfortable, aching with a dull heaviness.
Things weren't quite as I'd imagined.
In my mind, Ye Qing had grown up like most people, changing a great deal through childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. He probably hadn't had a middle age, and he wouldn't grow old, either, because he'd died before then, frozen at that stage of his life. But until then, he must have changed at least a little.
And I had indeed seen Ye Qing change.
When I first met Wu Ling on Guangyuan Mountain, Ye Qing had been a headstrong, unruly young man. That was different from the Ye Qing in the diary. He hadn't treated his fellow practitioners with the courtesy and warmth he'd shown my parents.
Perhaps my experiences had stirred memories of Ye Qing's own childhood, which was why he'd treated them that way.
For ten years, he'd led the Greenleaf Paranormal Agency, working alongside his companions. They'd saved people, destroyed evil spirits, and failed, too—sometimes watching helplessly as their clients died.
When one of their own companions went missing, they couldn't possibly stay calm.
It made sense that Ye Qing had thought of me and come to see my parents.
But I had no memory of it.
Had my memories been altered?
Or...
I couldn't help holding my breath as I read on.
"He spoke with such