Bishuiwan Manor

The hotel where Bai Fugui, Feng Yushu, and their daughter were staying was outside Ancient Tablet Town. It was a resort manor built in a scenic bend of the river downstream from Xuanhu Waterfall. It covered about a hectare, roughly the size of a regular elementary school.

Bishuiwan Manor had a remarkably innovative design, with a layout and decor in the popular European style of recent years. It clashed badly with the quaint Jiangnan water-town atmosphere of Ancient Tablet Town, as if someone had cut and pasted it in from somewhere else.

In fact, that was more or less what had happened. Bishuiwan Manor was no historic old building; it was a new business venture that had only been completed a few months ago. Supposedly, its investors had gotten word through certain channels that Ancient Tablet Town was about to undergo extensive development. That was why they had spent a fortune on the land downstream from Xuanhu Waterfall and secured it in advance.

Bai Fugui's family were among the manor's first guests. Zhang Yangxu hadn't booked a room there simply because he didn't want to risk bringing bad luck on himself.

Under the bright moonlight, a magpie spread its wings and rode the cool evening breeze down onto the hair of a human statue in the manor's side courtyard. The statue depicted a pale maiden holding a ceramic jar in both hands, with clear water pouring from it. It was a fountain.

Beneath the burbling fountain, a lavishly dressed woman in a purple gown sat on a wicker chair, repeatedly glancing toward a winding path that led out of the manor. Her eyes darted about as if she were anxiously waiting for someone.

Seeing that no one was around, the magpie perched atop the statue glided down beside her and transformed into a handsome young man with a tall, straight figure. His slender, pale hand, as fair as a woman's, gently patted Feng Yushu on the shoulder.

"Who—!"

Feng Yushu cried out instinctively. Only when Ning Zhe clapped a hand over her mouth again did her tense body relax. "Ning Zhe?! ...When did you get here?"

"I flew here," Ning Zhe said jokingly. He turned back into a black-and-white magpie and perched on Feng Yushu's shoulder. "Though He Family Village fell apart, that Ghost's Rule doesn't seem to have disappeared with it. It's transferred to me instead."

In other words, Ning Zhe now had the ability to "steal someone else's identity through mistaken beliefs" as a medium.

"Really..." Feng Yushu turned her head, gazing in wonder at the little bird perched on her shoulder. "I thought the target of identity theft had to be a person."

"I used to think so too." Ning Zhe transformed back into a person and raised a hand. "Let's find somewhere secluded to talk."

"Okay."

Feng Yushu led Ning Zhe to a Small Pavilion nestled among flower beds and ornamental trees. It was secluded and hidden away. Before the Ancient Tablet Town scenic area was fully built and Bishuiwan Manor officially opened to the public, no one paid any attention to this spot. Only gardeners and other maintenance staff came by during the day.

The two sat facing each other in the pavilion. Feng Yushu was the first to ask the question weighing most heavily on her mind. "What exactly happened in He Family Village? In the last few seconds before I returned to the real world, I heard two different voices screaming and crying. Then everything was over. How... how did you do it?"

"Like I told you, I killed the Snake God and the Ghost." Ning Zhe spread his hands. "As for how, don't worry about that. You only need to know that I kept my promise."

He didn't want to reveal too much about something so personal, so he asked her in turn, "What about you? What did you go through in He Family Village while we were apart?"

Feng Yushu nodded and recounted everything she had experienced.

—After "Zhang Yangxu" had the bad luck to be crushed to death by a roof tile, the Ghost didn't disappear. It appeared before her again in Ye Miaozhu's form and tried to persuade Feng Yushu to listen to its explanation.

But Feng Yushu's mental state had already been on the verge of collapse. In her madness, she first blinded herself, then pierced her eardrums with a pair of chopsticks. Once she was completely blind and deaf, she had no way to receive information from the outside world, and the Ghost was finally helpless.

"I knew you weren't doing too well," Ning Zhe said, taken aback. "But if your ear canals are badly damaged and you don't get professional treatment in time, you won't live long. You were trying to kill yourself."

"I... I don't know." Feng Yushu shook her head, dazed. "I really had no other choice then. After Zhang Yangxu died, it was Ye Miaozhu. After Ye Miaozhu died, it was Xie Sining... The Ghost kept turning into different people to lead me astray. I... I really had no other choice..."

"It's over now. You're okay, Auntie." Seeing that she was on the verge of breaking down again, Ning Zhe quickly stopped her. He pulled a tissue from his pocket and handed it to her to wipe her tears. "Your makeup's smudged. If you go back like this, your husband will notice."

"Mm..." Feng Yushu took the tissue and wiped her eyes. "He won't notice. We've slept in separate rooms for years."

"I'm not interested in your married life. There's no point telling me that." Ning Zhe shook his head. "What about your daughter, Baizhi? I want to know more about her."

It would be even better if he could get his hands on her computer and read the original diary entries.

"Oh! Right, right... Azhi." At the mention of her daughter, Feng Yushu became much more animated. She took an iPad Mini from her handbag, unlocked it, and handed it to Ning Zhe. "I couldn't bring her computer, but I have a backup of her diary. Please, take a look... I really want to know what happened to Azhi."

Why had Baizhi dreamed of scenes from He Family Village over and over again?

She'd never even been to Ancient Tablet Town...

"Sure, let me see. A troubled girl's private diary... This feels like a visual novel."

Ning Zhe opened the text. The first sentence that appeared was, "This world is beyond saving." He couldn't help covering his eyes with a hand. "Holy crap, that's so chūnibyō."

Baizhi's diary made a powerful impression. The first entry had been written five years ago, when she was fourteen and in her first year of middle school. She attended a well-known private school in Yongzhou. The relationships between the new students could be described as either friendly or distant.

Some boys had kindly approached her because of her beauty; some girls had tried to get close because of her wealthy family. But Baizhi shut everyone out and didn't form even the most basic relationships with anyone.

In her diary, her assessment of her classmates was: childish.

"Oh my god..." Ning Zhe quickly finished reading Baizhi's three years of middle school diaries. It felt like he'd just read "Baizhi: The Corrupted Version." "Auntie, did you know your daughter has a serious case of chūnibyō?"

"What is chūnibyō?" Feng Yushu asked anxiously.

"Right, I guess people your age don't know much about anime and manga." Ning Zhe wasn't surprised by her reaction.

He swiped across the tablet screen, ready to skim Baizhi's high school diaries, when the sky overhead suddenly darkened.

"What's going on?" Ning Zhe turned to look. The bright moon that had hung in the sky had vanished without warning, as if a lightbulb had suddenly gone out. The whole world plunged into darkness, and not a single star could be seen.

In the pitch-black darkness, where he couldn't see his own hand in front of him, only the iPad in Ning Zhe's hands gave off a pale, cream-colored glow. The distant manor remained dark and silent, with only the rushing sound of water.

But the very next second, the pitch-black manor suddenly lit up. Every light in every room switched on at once. The bright glow shone through the peaked roofs of the Castle-like buildings, as if a gigantic lightbulb had flared to life in the night. It was blinding.

Then a shrill scream rang out from inside the manor.

"Someone's dead!"

Ning Zhe lowered his gaze. The first sentence in Baizhi's high school diary read: "There are ghosts everywhere."