Deceiving Himself

The investors behind Bishuiwan Manor had a rather twisted sense of humor. The mirror wall in the female employees' changing room was actually a one-way mirror that let people outside observe those inside, which left Ning Zhe baffled.

To build such a luxurious complex in a place like Bishui Bay required both deep pockets and extensive connections. Any man who had those two things could easily sleep with a movie star. Why resort to dangerous little tricks to spy on his own female employees changing?

Ning Zhe couldn't understand the investors' perverted tastes, but there was no denying that some people had them.

And there were quite a lot of them.

After leaving the changing room, Ning Zhe hurried upstairs to the second floor and entered Baizhi's room, where he found Feng Yushu and her daughter.

As soon as he entered, Ning Zhe took off his suit. His short, tousled hair became long and was tied back, while his shirt and trousers changed into a fitted Waiter Uniform. Flesh-colored Stockings covered his long legs.

"Ning Zhe?" Feng Yushu, sitting on the bed, looked curiously at him as he entered the room in a woman's guise. "How did you..."

"Don't ask questions. Just do what I say in a moment." Liu Yunzhi's shrill voice came from Ning Zhe's throat. "Where's Baizhi?"

"She... fell asleep." Feng Yushu shook her head and glanced sideways at her daughter, curled up on the bed like a caterpillar. She sighed softly.

Baizhi had truly started treating this place as a dream. She couldn't tell reality from fantasy, and she had become a complete stranger.

"I feel like something's wrong with her. Her behavior and the way she talks are nothing like the person I know. It's as if she's someone else," Feng Yushu said softly. "Azhi's a very quiet child. She doesn't have many friends, but she's gentle with everyone, even if it's only on the surface. But today..."

"Maybe the person you thought you knew was never the real her," Ning Zhe said offhandedly. "Come out when you're ready. We're about to begin."

"Okay." Feng Yushu stood up from the bed and followed Ning Zhe out into the hallway.

The electrician's corpse, which had previously been possessed by the Ghost, was still lying beside the balcony. It hadn't been moved.

"Listen. What you need to do is simple." Ning Zhe took a Flashlight from his pocket and placed it in her hand.

"I'll count to three. Then you turn on the Flashlight and cast my shadow. The Ghost will be drawn over soon."

"If nothing goes wrong, the Ghost will possess that corpse and try to kill me. I need you to keep your eyes fixed on it and watch the entire time as it kills me. Don't even blink."

"I'll be killed by the Ghost in Liu Yunzhi's guise. As soon as I die, you must turn off the light. Don't hesitate at all. Understand?"

"Understood." Feng Yushu gripped the Flashlight tightly and nodded solemnly.

She understood what Ning Zhe was doing. He had reached the final step and planned to use a close-up death to test the exact conditions that triggered the Ghost's killing.

"Before we start, I have a question," Feng Yushu suddenly asked. "Why Liu Yunzhi? Why not Li Ge?"

Ning Zhe had already stolen the identity of "Li Ge, whom Xie Ya'an knew." Old Li was still alive, though barely. Why wasn't Ning Zhe using his identity for the experiment? Why go to all the trouble of stealing Liu Yunzhi's identity instead?

"Because Old Li's identity isn't complete enough," Ning Zhe replied calmly.

"What do you mean, it isn't complete enough?" Feng Yushu was even more confused.

"Exactly what it sounds like. All right, we're short on time. Let's begin."

"Okay."

Feng Yushu flipped the Flashlight's switch. A colorless white beam lit up, driving back the darkness in front of her and casting the shadow of a woman in a skirt on the wall. The electrician's corpse lay not far from Ning Zhe.

Ning Zhe waited quietly for the Ghost to arrive, his mind perfectly calm.

He hadn't explained to Feng Yushu why he'd chosen Liu Yunzhi, because the reason involved the underlying logic of the Taiyi rules. Rules were the Ghost's lifeline, and they were Ning Zhe's lifeline, too. The more people who knew the details, the more danger he would be in.

Let's go over Taiyi's rules again:

[When someone mistakes Taiyi for a person they know, Taiyi can use that mistaken perception as a medium to steal that person's identity and related memories.]

Put simply—you are whoever they think you are.

A person is the sum of all their social relationships. The way someone appears varies from one person's perspective to another. A person's identity can be divided into the son known to his mother, the brother known to his buddies, the student known to his teacher...and so on.

The same identity, viewed from different perspectives, is dissected into different slices. Only when all those slices overlap do they make up a complete person.

When Taiyi impersonated Person A, the more people who knew A that it successfully deceived, the more slices of A's identity it acquired, and the more complete its theft of A's identity became.

Once the identity was complete enough, it could even fool the rules—even the rules of Snake God Zhaoyou.

When Ning Zhe violated the Death Taboo in He Family Village, enough villagers mistook him for the Snake God that his Snake God identity became complete enough to fool the rules. He was able to transfer the punishment for the Death Taboo that should have befallen him onto the Snake God.

But the "Old Li" identity Ning Zhe had now wasn't complete enough.

He only possessed the single slice of "Old Li as Xie Ya'an knew him," with perhaps Liu Yunzhi's perspective added.

If those two had been Old Li's parents or siblings, or other people very close to him who knew him deeply, Ning Zhe might have been able to steal a sufficiently complete identity through their perceptions. But that wasn't the case.

They were just ordinary coworkers. Their knowledge of Old Li was limited and incomplete. Such a clumsy impersonation couldn't fool the rules.

So what was the fastest way to steal the most complete identity, and let Ning Zhe obtain a life he could use to test the rules as soon as possible?

Or, to put it another way: if you had to find the person in the world who knew you best, who would it be?

The answer was yourself.

No one knew you better than you knew yourself, not even a psychologist who could see into your mind.

Using the one-way mirror wall in the changing room, Ning Zhe had successfully fooled Liu Yunzhi into thinking that the reflection in the mirror was herself, stealing the most complete identity he had acquired so far.

There was no deception harder to see through than fooling yourself, and no one knew Liu Yunzhi better than Liu Yunzhi.

The Flashlight's beam fell on Ning Zhe's skirt, making the flesh-colored Stockings on his legs look like White Silk. The silence stretched on. Suddenly, a noise came from the hallway. The corpse stood up.

The Ghost was here.