The World Was Vast, and the Sky Limitless

"Forgive me for living a wild, unrestrained life and loving freedom..."

"And I'm afraid that one day I might fall, oh—no—"

Huang Jiaju's melodious Cantonese song rang out from Ning Zhe, making his face darken at once. Under Feng Yushu's curious gaze, he pulled out his phone. The screen was already lit, and the caller ID read: Gu Yunqing.

"You're not even pretending anymore," Ning Zhe muttered. "You're calling me directly from a dead person's phone."

Ning Zhe hung up without hesitation, but it was too late. Feng Yushu, standing beside him, had already grown suspicious.

Ning Zhe's phone was always on silent, so incoming calls only made it vibrate; they never rang. The ringtone they'd just heard hadn't come from his phone at all. It had come from someone else's.

Lin Zhiyuan's.

"Ning Zhe, do you... always carry two phones?" Feng Yushu asked, puzzled. Modern smartphones—aside from iPhones—generally supported dual SIM cards, so people who carried two phones around had become very rare.

Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't have caught her attention. But in He Family Village, everyone who had survived this long had become exceptionally wary.

Ning Zhe was just about to say something when the phone in his hand rang again. This time, the caller was Ye Miaozhu.

He hung up without hesitation, but another call came in as soon as he did. This time, it was Zhang Yangxu.

The empty street was eerily silent. Huang Jiaju's song was the only sound, and Feng Yushu's face turned deathly pale as she listened. "A g-ghost... Why...?"

Why did the ghost keep changing identities and calling Ning Zhe's phone?

In the midst of her terror, Feng Yushu suddenly realized something. "Wait, Ning Zhe... how does the ghost know your phone number?"

The ghost had stolen the identities of Xie Sining, Zhang Yangxu, Gu Yunqing, and Ye Miaozhu. It wasn't surprising that it knew Ning Zhe's number. But the phone receiving these calls wasn't the one he'd exchanged numbers with everyone on. It was another one.

Feng Yushu had never seen Ning Zhe take this phone out. In other words, he'd never given anyone the number for his second phone.

So how did the ghost know it?

Or... did the phone in Ning Zhe's hand really belong to him?

As he watched the caller ID shudder on the screen, Ning Zhe's expression darkened to the extreme. He silently raised his head and looked at Feng Yushu, who stood before him, bewildered.

"The ghost is forcing me to kill you," Ning Zhe said evenly.

"Huh?!" Feng Yushu's already pale face turned even whiter. "What's going on? W-why?!"

"Don't ask. Don't dig into it. I need you to trust me blindly from here on and stay exactly as you are now, knowing nothing. Don't try to figure out the truth—or you'll die." Ning Zhe's voice remained calm, not betraying the slightest panic. "So will I."

Feng Yushu nodded fearfully. Ning Zhe looked at her as if she were already dead.

Ning Zhe grabbed her wrist, switched his phone to silent, and strode forward, pulling her along.

"The ghost is trying to expose me." Ning Zhe walked quickly, his thoughts racing even faster.

In less than two minutes, he'd figured out what had just happened.

The ghost kept changing identities and calling Lin Zhiyuan's phone to expose Ning Zhe's lie and tear away his disguise.

Ning Zhe knew perfectly well that even though he'd stolen part of the Snake God's identity and seemed to have a slight advantage, that wasn't the case. His situation was extremely dangerous. He was dancing on the edge of a knife.

Stealing the Snake God's offerings and identity sounded simple, but the process was actually complicated and extremely fragile.

It all came down to the rules of the ghost haunting He Family Village.

Its rule was: [When someone mistakes the ghost for a person they know, the ghost can use that "false perception" as a medium to steal the person's identity and all information related to it.]

When Zhang Yangxu mistook the ghost for Xie Sining, the ghost gained the identity of "the Xie Sining Zhang Yangxu knew," as well as all the memories in Zhang Yangxu's mind connected to that identity.

Ning Zhe had stolen the Snake God's identity by exploiting this same rule. He'd made the villager who saw the offerings being eaten mistake him—the one who'd stolen them—for the Snake God. Using the villager's false perception as a medium, he'd stolen the identity of "the Snake God Villager Jia knew."

But was it really that simple? Could just anyone steal a few offerings and pass themselves off as the Snake God?

Of course not.

"Identity theft using perception as a medium" was the ghost's rule. Only the ghost could trigger it.

Just as only the Snake God was entitled to punish someone who broke a taboo in the Almanac.

Ning Zhe had been able to use that rule to steal the Snake God's identity because before impersonating the Snake God, he'd first impersonated the ghost.

—On the roof of the Ancestral Hall, Feng Yushu had received a call. The caller had been Lin Zhiyuan.

"Knowing Lin Zhiyuan was already dead, the call from him had terrified Feng Yushu. I took the opportunity to lead her on with a few words, making her think that the ghost was using Lin Zhiyuan's phone to call me."

Ning Zhe strode across the deserted street. The phone in his hand kept vibrating. "But the truth was, Lin Zhiyuan's phone was in my hand. I was the one who called her."

[Feng Yushu mistook Ning Zhe for the ghost.]

It was precisely through this false perception that Ning Zhe had triggered the ghost's rule and stolen part of the ghost's identity.

Only after successfully gaining the identity of "the ghost as Feng Yushu perceived it" did he begin stealing the offerings and impersonating the Snake God, deliberately triggering the rule to steal the Snake God's identity.

[If only the ghost can trigger the rule, then why not just impersonate the ghost?]

Ning Zhe's plan was meticulous and ingenious, each step linked to the next like a carefully calculated chain of dominoes. One nudge, and the whole thing would move.

But as ingenious as the plan was, it was also extremely fragile. Ning Zhe knew that he could trigger the rule and steal the Snake God's identity only because he had the ghost's identity—and he had the ghost's identity only because Feng Yushu had misinterpreted the call she'd received that morning.

Because Feng Yushu had mistaken Ning Zhe for the ghost, he could impersonate the Snake God as the ghost.

And once Feng Yushu learned the truth and realized that the "Lin Zhiyuan" who'd called her that morning hadn't been the ghost but Ning Zhe, then...

"It'd be like a skyscraper collapsing the instant its foundation was pulled away. Everything would be over." Ning Zhe gritted his teeth slightly, his grip on Feng Yushu's wrist tightening unconsciously.