Cheng Lin put away his mocking expression.
He fell silent, lowering his eyes to the tabletop.
"Did this change too?" I guessed, though I wasn't entirely convinced.
Cheng Lin had become a Ghost King as soon as he arrived in the future world. Ordinary people feared him, and the Yin energy surrounding him was especially dense—not at all like that of an ordinary Ghost King. The essence of his soul hadn't changed. His father was still the Ghost King of the future world, and his mother was still an ordinary person from the real world.
Cheng Lin spoke softly. "They're still here. My mother... I found her."
His words brought it all back to me. His mother had fallen into the future world even before he had.
My heart skipped a beat. Looking at Cheng Lin's expressionless face, I had the worst possible premonition.
"Did she... turn into a monster?" I asked.
Cheng Lin nodded, then shook his head.
I looked at him, confused.
"No... When I found her, she hadn't. She was just like a normal person." Cheng Lin's mouth twisted. "Well, not quite like a normal person... She'd arrived earlier, after all. She hadn't appeared directly in Yangshan. She'd lived here for several years and adapted to this place. When Yangshan appeared... her memories were altered too. Except the alteration erased Yangshan. She only remembered that she'd originally been from Minqing, that she'd married a Ghost King, and that one day she'd suddenly traveled through time... My father was much the same. He thought he'd ended up in Minqing. After finally making his way back here, he settled down in Yangshan. As for me..."
Cheng Lin pointed to himself. "The useless son of a Ghost King, with intermittent memory loss and something wrong with his head. I gave