The old man's question caught me off guard.
Did that thing... belong to me?
That thing certainly didn't belong to me, but it belonged to Li Fuguang. All the evidence now pointed to Li Fuguang being the Evil Buddha.
If he weren't the Evil Buddha, he wouldn't fall ill every Lunar New Year's Eve.
So that thing belonged to Li Fuguang, at least.
And Li Fuguang was inside me now and couldn't speak, so speaking on his behalf amounted to the same thing.
"It belongs to me."
Hearing my answer, the old man nodded. "Since it belongs to you, and you're looking for it, it must be useful to you, right? If it weren't, why would you be looking for it?"
The more I listened, the more something felt off.
This old man clearly wasn't an ordinary old man.
Every sentence he spoke seemed to carry some deeper meaning.
I wasn't the only one who noticed. Yi Yang did too.
The two of us studied the old man carefully, but neither of us could see any sign that he was a ghost.
Could he be some kind of spirit creature?
He hadn't done anything to us. We couldn't just pin him down here, could we?
Instead of answering him, I asked, "Sir, where exactly do you live? How come I've never seen you before?"
He smiled and said, "There's more than one village at the foot of this mountain. Have you visited every single one?"
After thinking for a moment, I told him plainly, "What I'm looking for is useful to me. I'm not a bad person. Sir, you've seen a lot and know a lot. Could you tell me just how I can find what I'm looking for?"
He said, "Since you know what you're looking for, and it's