Chapter 30

Chapter 30

Early the next morning, Feng Fei took Feng Yang to the county library.

Even in a county-level city with relatively underdeveloped economic growth, internet coverage still exceeded 90%. Social media, online games, video and livestreaming apps, webnovel apps, and all sorts of media platforms had gradually replaced traditional ways of getting information or entertainment, such as watching TV, reading books, and newspapers. The library, which had been packed every summer and winter vacation in the Feng brothers' memories, was now deserted as well.

The old-fashioned hall was cold and empty. The staff member on duty sat behind the service desk, listlessly playing games. Feng Yang stepped forward and asked which floor the Local Gazetteers were on.

The staff member looked up impatiently, then immediately recognized Feng Yang. "Oh, isn't this Professor Yang's youngest grandson? You haven't come by in quite a while. You took the college entrance exam this year, right? How did you do?"

"I got into X University's journalism department," Feng Yang replied with a smile.

"Oh, X University is one of the country's key universities!" The staff member was genuinely impressed. "Your grandfather is really something. Both his daughter and grandson went to top universities. I remember your mother attended X University too. It was such a pity she didn't stay in Beijing after graduation. We all thought it was a shame back then. College students in those days weren't like they are now, running all over the streets. Your mother had such great qualifications, so why did she—"

Only then did the staff member realize something was wrong. He gave an awkward laugh and hurriedly changed the subject. "Right, what book did you say you wanted to borrow?"

Feng Yang smiled. "Local Gazetteers."

"Sure!" The staff member looked it up and said, "Third floor, sixth row. There's a photocopied edition of the Local Gazetteers."

Feng Yang thanked him with a smile and took his older brother up to the third floor.

Songjiang County's Local Gazetteers had records dating back to the Sui Dynasty. Following the index, Feng Yang found the volume covering the forty-sixth year of the Wanli era in the Ming Dynasty through the end of the Chongzhen era, then read it word by word. Just as expected, he found nothing useful at all.

Feng Fei frowned and asked suspiciously, "Xiao Yang, what exactly are you looking for? Do you need my help?"

Feng Yang shook his head.

On the drive back, Feng Yang sat in the passenger seat with his eyes closed, resting. In his mind, he slowly sorted through every clue he had.

If he traced everything back to its source, it had all begun with Su Nan's rebirth. Thus, the only clue currently known was that, at eighteen in his previous life, Su Nan had been reborn in the haunted house. In the life Su Nan had lived before being reborn, he had been killed by Feng Yang and his so-called fiancée. Reborn in the fire, Su Nan had wanted revenge. Catching Feng Yang off guard, he shoved him, causing Feng Yang to crash into a prop cabinet and be pinned beneath it. Feng Yang had been disfigured and burned, yet he had not died. Instead, he had awakened Yin-Yang Eyes and gained the ability to see ghosts and monsters.

Afterward, Feng Yang, whose family had been destroyed and who claimed he could see ghosts, was treated as a madman by everyone and sent to a sanatorium. He escaped midway through, then wandered from place to place, encountering all kinds of ghosts and monsters. Two years later, he met Yin Li, who had already become a Vengeful Ghost.

Twenty years after that, he and the Vengeful Ghost had joined forces against the Heavenly Dao. In the end, the Vengeful Ghost's soul had scattered, with only a trace of his soul power preserved to send Feng Yang back twenty years. That had marked the beginning of this life.

And the point in time when Feng Yang was reborn happened to be the very same point when Su Nan had been reborn in his previous life.

Having already experienced Su Nan's outburst once in his previous life, Feng Yang had not taken the matter to heart. Whether Su Nan's first life had been real or false was unimportant to Feng Yang. He had not lived through Su Nan's first life, nor could he accept that the heartless scumbag, even more disgusting than Chen Shimei, described by Su Nan could possibly be his future self. Feng Yang had no way to determine whether Su Nan's memories were real. More importantly, he could not empathize with the tragic experiences of the culprit indirectly responsible for his entire family's deaths.

To Feng Yang, Su Nan was nothing more than a time bomb threatening his family's safety. Between him and Su Nan, counting even the life before Su Nan's rebirth, six lives had already been lost—the three members of the Su Family and the three members of the Feng Family. Their blood debts ran too deep; reconciliation was naturally impossible. Su Nan wanted to kill him, and Feng Yang wanted no less to destroy Su Nan. If not for his concern that the Heavenly Dao might take out its anger on others, Su Nan probably would not have walked out of the haunted house alive that day.

In Feng Yang's plan, using the energy that spilled out when the Vengeful Ghost's soul scattered to open the Six Paths of Reincarnation, reverse time and space, and return twenty years into the past was meant to change both their fates before anything happened. Although Su Nan had been the culprit behind the Feng Family's destruction, he had only been an accidental factor. Beyond guarding against him, Feng Yang had not considered him worth much attention.

Thus, by Feng Yang's habitual way of thinking, in this life, apart from the variable that Su Nan had failed to harm him, every other course of events should have remained unchanged. Or rather, even if there truly had been changes afterward, the ones erased by the butterfly effect should not have been the Scholar Ghost and the Willow Tree Spirit, two ghosts entirely unrelated to Su Nan.

Yet the ones who had vanished into thin air were precisely the Scholar Ghost and the Willow Tree Spirit. Combined with the Scholar Ghost's engraved handwriting, identical to his grandfather's, Feng Yang faintly formed a suspicion. Perhaps the Scholar Ghost and the Willow Tree Spirit from his previous life really had some connection to his grandparents.

It was precisely because, after Feng Yang's rebirth, he had thwarted Su Nan's revenge and saved his parents and older brother that his grandparents had not died suddenly of heart attacks and wasted away in despair. That was why he could find no trace whatsoever of the Scholar Ghost or Willow Tree Spirit in Willow Tree Village.

But that raised a question. In Feng Yang's experience, every wronged soul and vengeful ghost retained the appearance it had at the moment of death. Of course, powerful vengeful ghosts could alter their appearance, even transforming into the person a human most wanted or least wanted to see, thereby confusing and frightening people. But no ghost or monster could create an illusion that even a Ghost King could not see through.

Yet in his previous life, the Scholar Ghost and the Willow Tree Spirit Feng Yang had encountered bore not the slightest resemblance to his grandparents, whether in appearance or soul fluctuations. If the Scholar Ghost and the Willow Tree Spirit really had something to do with his grandparents, then what exactly had happened in his previous life?

Thinking of the Feng Family Ancestral Residence he and the Vengeful Ghost had seen when they returned to Willow Tree Village in his previous life, already reduced to burnt ruins by a great fire, Feng Yang's mood grew increasingly heavy.