Pan Long found the booklet on the Demonic Path in Yun Province rather interesting. After some thought, he went back into the shop and bought a great heap of books on all sorts of subjects.
Some described local customs, some recounted strange events, and others were simply stories made up by obscure writers. Pan Long even found one called The Creepy Fat Frog's Travels Across Four Continents. It told of an ugly, short, fat man with red cat eyes and the shape of a frog, traveling through a strange world divided into four continents by a vast sea.
This story feels familiar. Haven't I seen it somewhere before... or am I imagining things?
He spent several days at the inn reading his haul, savoring every page.
One day, he came upon a travelogue by a man who called himself Old Man South Mountain. The man had traded across southeastern Yun Province for years and compiled what he had seen and heard into this book.
As writing went, the travelogue was dreadful. Its prose was dry as dust. In the online fiction world of Pan Long's previous life, it probably would never have had a chance to go on sale, let alone earn subscriptions.
But its greatest strength lay in one word: truth. According to the author, he had witnessed every custom and practice recorded in it with his own eyes. Not a single account came from hearsay.
Reading it felt like following the old man, who had spent half his life on the road, through the mountains and rivers of southeastern Yun Province, past town after town and village after village, meeting all manner of people and seeing all manner of things.
After reading for a long while, Pan Long set the book down, lay back on the bed, and