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But Jiang Luo still kept a measure of vigilance in his heart.

It was late. The police, very considerate, arranged a hotel for them and told them to rest.

The moon was bright, the stars sparse. Jiang Luo lay with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling, and the Madam Owner's memory flashed through his mind again.

Protection.

The single obsession that had made a mother pull herself up off the ground to stand beside her child again.

This kind of emotion was foreign to Jiang Luo. He had no real friends, had never felt anything like familial warmth, and of course considered himself to have no need of friends—and was politely uninterested in family ties. Even the colleagues he spent every day with at the design institute got along fine with him on the surface, but they had never once been let into his private life.

Living alone, dying alone, feeding yourself and the whole family's not hungry—for Jiang Luo, that was the best way to live.

He slowly expelled these heavy emotions that didn't belong to him, and closed his eyes.

A peaceful night.

The next morning, when they came down for breakfast, a young police officer who looked to be in his twenties was sitting at a table beckoning them over. 'Baozi, youtiao, hu la tang—alright?'

Jiang Luo took a youtiao, tore it into small pieces and soaked them in the hu la tang. The officer said, 'The owner of 129 Hotel has woken up. His mental state isn't great right now.'

The officer played them a video. The owner lay on a hospital bed, clutching his son and refusing to let go, tears streaming down his face, frantic, mumbling over and over: 'Wife, I'm sorry, wife...'

The child was scared by his state and started wailing. The owner immediately held the boy tighter, stroking his fine, soft hair again and again, and for a long while wept in silence.

Because of the business, the owner had truly neglected his family in many ways. When he had money, there was no time to be with them; when he didn't, his anxiety left him no patience for them either.

One day, the owner came up with a new promotional tactic.

He planned to bring his elderly mother, whom he hadn't seen in a long while, back to the hotel, film some amusing videos of the old lady, and turn her into an internet celebrity to draw traffic. Short-video audiences these days were soft on children and the elderly alike; once she had fame, his hotel might just catch fire again.

The owner brought his mother back to the hotel. It had been a long time since they'd lived together, but she was still his birth mother and he her birth son, and the longer they spent under one roof, the more he felt something was off. Yet he didn't look into it. All his thoughts were on his career—nothing major could possibly happen, he figured.

But it was precisely his neglect, his slapdash thinking, that had caused all of this.

Jiang Luo watched the Black Mist on the child's arm gradually fade away in the owner's weeping. He swallowed the last bite of youtiao and turned to ask Ye Xun, 'Did you see it?'

Ye Xun set down his baozi and looked back calmly. 'See what?'

'A ball of Black Mist,' Jiang Luo said. 'On the child's left arm.'

Ye Xun frowned, looked carefully at the child in the video, and after a moment shook his head. 'I didn't see it.'

Jiang Luo fell into thought.

Someone as capable as Ye Xun couldn't see this Black Mist. The original body hadn't seen it either. Why could he?

The only difference between him and the original was the soul—and Chi You's death.

Was it his soul that had caused this change, or was it because Chi You was by his side that Jiang Luo could now see Black Mist?

Jiang Luo hoped it was the former.

After all, who didn't want to be a genius.

After the meal, the officer smiled and pulled a backpack out from under the table, handing it to them. 'We looked into this headless ghost's life. He really hadn't done anything evil. We consulted him directly, and he wants to be taken back to the school and kept there.'

The bag was placed in Jiang Luo's arms. He unzipped it, looked down, and the pale, greenish-white head peeked out with a shy smile. 'Little friend, this one greets you.'

Jiang Luo tossed the bag to Lu You, thoroughly uninterested. 'It's yours.'

Lu You held the headless ghost, baffled. 'Keep him? How do you keep him? Bury him in the dirt?'

The headless ghost's eyes welled up. 'Yesterday you still called this one Ning Xiu-laoge, today you just hand me off to someone else. Truly, the prettier the person, the better they know how to break this one's heart.'

Lu You's ears hurt. He yanked the zipper shut. 'You're so loud.'

The officer went on: 'This morning we went through every toilet in 129 Hotel. In every single room we found Jiao Paper wrapped around the flush mechanism. We'll follow up on the guest list, find out who used these methods—but you don't need to worry about any of that.'

Ye Xun nodded. 'The second-floor window of the Hotel has a window sha. Have him place a Longwu Zi 'Paxi' ornament on the windowsill—that'll break it.'

The officer noted each of these down and beamed. 'Thank you for your hard work, classmates.'

After saying goodbye, the three of them slowly prepared to head back.

On the road back to school, Lu You and Ye Xun kept their heads down, playing with their Mobile Phones. Jiang Luo found it strange, leaned over and glanced with his peripheral vision—and found them chatting in a group.

The group was called 'Burn Incense for Matters.' It showed eight members.

The more Jiang Luo looked, the more familiar it seemed. Suddenly it hit him—wasn't this the class group the original owner had blocked?

He opened his Mobile Phone, found the class group, tapped in, and the messages were already at 99+.

Jiang Luo scrolled up. Good lord—this lot didn't care in the slightest that he was still in the group. Every single message was gossip about him and Chi You.

[Zhuo Zhongqiu: When are you coming back? Until I see them in person, I absolutely refuse to believe what you said about Chi You and Jiang Luo.]

[Ge Zhu: How strange, how strange—how did I fail to see these two had this kind of fate between them?]

Lu You rattled on without pause: [Chi You is dead now, so of course there's no fate. Actually Chi You-ge's behavior was already plenty obvious—you just didn't notice. But I had a vague feeling something was off long ago, I just didn't say it.]

[Ye Xun: All you ever did was talk badly about Jiang Luo.]

Lu You's heart skipped a beat. He carefully raised his head from his Mobile Phone to steal a glance at Jiang Luo, and only relaxed when he saw nothing out of the ordinary on Jiang Luo's face. He had indeed cursed Jiang Luo plenty in the past, but right now he felt inexplicably guilty, didn't dare let Jiang Luo know.

Because Lu You had realized Jiang Luo wasn't actually the kind of person he'd imagined.

Jiang Luo finished scrolling through the messages. So Lu You and Ye Xun had told the whole group the story of his and Chi You's mutual secret crush.

The group was in a daze, unable to believe what the two were saying was true.

Chi You had long been deeply in love with Jiang Luo? Had even taken the initiative to confess?

All those times he'd left Jiang Luo alone for extra lessons had been to spend time alone with him?

Hahaha—had Ye Xun and Lu You been bewitched?

Compared to Chi You and Jiang Luo liking each other, they were more willing to believe Lu You and Ye Xun were making up stories to fool them.

[Zhuo Zhongqiu: How could Chi You possibly like Jiang Luo?]

Lu You said, faintly: [Think about Jiang Luo's face.]

The group went silent for a few seconds. Lu You added, awkwardly: [Actually, Jiang Luo is pretty good.]

Ye Xun said: [Lu You's not wrong.]

Under their firm insistence, the group's original attitude of 'can't believe it, scoffing at it' shifted to 'half-believing it.' Jiang Luo glanced at Ye Xun and Lu You with quiet satisfaction. He knew he'd picked the right people.

Deceiving the two of them was easy. Deceiving the rest of the class was hard.

Whether it was the original or the current Jiang Luo, to the people in this class he was an outsider. In this situation, having Lu You—who had always disliked Jiang Luo—and the aloof Ye Xun be the ones to speak up, the class would be more inclined to believe the information that 'Chi You likes Jiang Luo.'

Obviously better than Jiang Luo saying it himself.

CP, after all—isn't it all about the maybe-yes-maybe-no? The sweetness you piece together yourself feels more real.

They were almost at the school. Lu You shook his sore fingers and sent out one last message: [We're almost at school. If you don't believe it, ask Jiang Luo yourself. Besides, even if you don't believe Chi You would like Jiang Luo, you should at least believe Chi You's taste in people.]

Jiang Luo: '...'

After transmigrating, he didn't know how many times he'd thanked his own face.

Jiang Luo put away his Mobile Phone, mulling over how to perform—how to both act out Chi You's love for him and show a scumbag's resolve to turn over a new leaf.

Unlike Ye Xun and Lu You, among the remaining five people in the class, three were not easy to handle.

One was the Daoist disciple Ge Zhu. One was Zhuo Zhongqiu, eldest daughter of the Zhuo Clan, who cultivated both body and soul among the Six Great Families. One was Wenren Lian, whose perpetually smiling eyes made him impossible to read.

One relied on intuition, one on experience, one on reading hearts. None of them were easy to fool.

Ten minutes later, the three of them arrived at the school gate.

The moment they got out, they saw a handsome guy standing outside the school gate.

The guy was in a casual short-sleeve and shorts, his two straight legs whiter than any girl's. He wore a duckbill cap and was leaning against the wall, fending off a group of girls swarming around him.

Lu You clicked his tongue at the sight of him. 'They actually came to pick us up. These people are way too gossipy.'

Jiang Luo squinted, trying to see who it was. Before he could make out the face, the guy had already spotted them, walked out from the girls, came straight up to them, and casually raised a hand in greeting. 'How come you brought back a ghost thing?'

His voice was husky, thoroughly androgynous, as if soaked through with smoke and alcohol.

The guy was looking at the backpack on Lu You's back, where the headless ghost's head was stowed. Yet before the headless ghost had shown the slightest sign of anything off, the other had already detected its presence.

Ye Xun and Lu You weren't surprised. Ye Xun complained mildly: 'It clung to Jiang Luo and wouldn't let go.'

The guy looked at Jiang Luo. He was a little shorter than Jiang Luo, so he tilted his head up slightly, revealing beneath the duckbill cap a face that was sharp yet still carried feminine features.

Eyes sharp and deep, features ambiguously gendered, the shape of his face faintly carrying a woman's soft grandeur—and only then did Jiang Luo realize this handsome guy was actually a girl.

Zhuo Zhongqiu's gaze had a tangible weight as it swept over Jiang Luo. She suddenly let out a whistle. 'Chi You's taste isn't bad.'

The girls behind her timidly caught up, stopping two meters away, light blush on their faces. 'Senior...'

Zhuo Zhongqiu turned around helplessly, pointed at Jiang Luo. 'Sisters, senior likes this kind of look.' She paused, then smiled. 'Preferably with a big chest—after all, senior herself is flat.'

The girls' cheeks went scarlet and they scattered in one breath.

Lu You: '...so jealous.'

Ye Xun nodded silently.

Zhuo Zhongqiu was very curious about Jiang Luo. On the way back she asked him a lot of questions. 'So, Chi You's death really wasn't an accident?'

She crossed her arms, rubbed her chin, and suddenly laughed. 'Interesting.'

Jiang Luo also thought it was interesting, but he couldn't show it. He smiled, caught sight of a couple being lovey-dovey on a bench by the path, had an idea, and suddenly stopped in his tracks, looking dazed.

Zhuo Zhongqiu followed his gaze and understood. 'You two used to come here on dates?'

The black-haired, beautiful youth smiled. 'Not exactly a date.'

Chi You had indeed brought the original body here—but to humiliate him in front of ordinary students.

Jiang Luo's gaze on the flower beds was gentle. He liked plants; after finishing his sophomore design fundamentals, he'd leaned toward landscape design for that very reason. Stripped of his excessive arrogance and conceit, this expression made him look like a piece of jewelry wiped clean of dust with silk—a kind of sublimated radiance.

Soft eyes, a smile like wind carrying dew, ethereal and otherworldly, yet with a hint of hidden seductive aura in his bones—a contradictory charm.

Even Zhuo Zhongqiu couldn't help stealing a few more glances, thinking love really could transform a person. Even a scumbag like Jiang Luo had turned over a new leaf. But a reformed scumbag was worth his weight in gold, and Zhuo Zhongqiu wasn't the type to judge people by stereotype.

She read Jiang Luo's displayed tenderness as missing Chi You, glanced at his neck, and probed: 'I heard from Lu You that Chi You appeared last night?'

The black-haired youth's neck had been wrapped in two layers of gauze by the medical staff, giving him a somewhat ascetic look. He raised a hand to touch his neck, recalled his last meeting with Chi You, and his smile only grew wider. 'Yes. He came to find me.'

A malicious ghost wanting to take him away had choked his neck like this, and Jiang Luo could still smile—Zhuo Zhongqiu was now thoroughly convinced he loved Chi You. She rubbed her brow, head aching. 'No way. You can still smile? He came to find you—he wants your life.'

Jiang Luo put on an 'I'm not listening' expression and said stubbornly: 'Chi You wouldn't do anything to hurt me. He just missed me.'

Zhuo Zhongqiu: '...Exactly like those love-brained fools.'

Even Lu You couldn't watch anymore. He started to speak, then hesitated: 'But your neck...'

Jiang Luo showed a sweet smile and said softly: 'That must be because he was too excited. I know—he didn't mean it.'

Zhuo Zhongqiu sidled up to Ye Xun and secretly pointed at her own head. 'Has Chi You fed him some kind of love potion?'

Ye Xun sighed. 'He likes Chi You very much, and he feels guilty toward Chi You. I'm afraid if Chi You really asked him to die, he'd go without a second thought.'

'That won't do,' Zhuo Zhongqiu decided on the spot. 'We absolutely cannot let Chi You kill Jiang Luo.'

Even for Chi You's sake, they couldn't just watch him do something like this.

This was definitely not his true intention. Chi You had already become a ghost, and the idea of killing his lover so the lover could keep him company might well have become his obsession. They had to stop him—otherwise, once Chi You regained his senses and remembered what he'd done, he'd fall into an abyss of regret and pain.

Zhuo Zhongqiu and Ye Xun exchanged a glance and nodded in tacit understanding.

Baihua University's Old Campus sat in the City Center, where every inch of land was worth its weight in gold, so the Old Campus wasn't large. The college of Natural Science and Social Research was at the very back. Jiang Luo followed them, turning left and right—he'd lost count of the turns—when a brand-new path he'd never noticed before suddenly appeared in a remote corner ahead.

Two words rose in Jiang Luo's mind: formation array.

Beyond the path, the view opened up at once. A tall teaching building stood on the semicircular shore of Clearwater Lake, forming a 'jade belt around the waist' feng shui formation.

Every flower, tree, and blade of grass was placed just so. Jiang Luo looked out, and at first glance saw countless faint wisps of golden mist in the sky above—this was the auspicious qi unique to a feng shui treasure land.

Looking more closely, the qi of heaven, the spirit of earth, the sun and moon, mountains and rivers, grass and trees—each one's vitality and spiritual energy gathered by the water, giving this place faintly the effect of a Dragon Vein. A top-tier formation. Whoever had designed this college was definitely an extraordinary feng shui master.

Jiang Luo marveled as he walked toward the classroom, and the people inside were watching them through the windows.

Ge Zhu, hair in a bun, dressed in loose Daoist robes, hands folded, smiled as he watched the three approaching outside. His face was peaceful, his eyes bright and clean, giving anyone who looked at him a sense of transcendent freedom. 'Look—they're back.'

The tall, burly man sitting across from him responded silently. He looked outside for a while, then suddenly said: 'The doll in Ye Xun's hand has been used.'

Ge Zhu was mildly startled. 'Just a guesthouse commission, and they actually used the resentful spirit doll?'

Kuang Zheng, sturdy and taciturn as a mountain, gave a 'mm.' He was a weapon refiner, with a telepathic connection to the tools he'd refined. 'Don't worry. It was only used a little.'

Ge Zhu wiped the cold sweat from his brow. 'You scared this Daoist half to death. I thought Little Pink had been eating things randomly again.'

While they spoke, the four people outside had already walked in. Ge Zhu beamed, sunshine-bright, and warmly waved at them. 'Welcome back.'

Kuang Zheng stood up. Though he was a big guy, he seemed especially awkward, silently pulling out chairs for them.

Jiang Luo glanced at these two classmates with his peripheral vision. The friendly-looking Daoist was Ge Zhu; the one with wheat-colored skin like a construction worker was the weapon refiner Kuang Zheng.

Kuang Zheng was no small figure. Talent in the Xuanxue World was growing scarcer by the day, and weapon refiners were one in a hundred. Yet Kuang Zheng possessed a powerful talent in the art of weapon refining. What was even more rare was that his thinking was simple and his focus unwavering—in the path of weapon refining, he advanced at a pace that could only be called meteoric.

Ge Zhu and Kuang Zheng were also looking at him. Jiang Luo sat by the window, propped his chin on his hand, and smiled at them.

Ge Zhu smiled back faintly, his gaze fixed on Jiang Luo.

A person is supported by their skeleton, just as a house is. The five features are the windows of the house. So when a physiognomist reads a face, the first things to look at are bone structure and facial features.

Bone structure requires hands to feel; facial features do not. A person's five features gather spiritual energy, and the primordial spirits of the five organs all connect to the face. Ge Zhu had long studied physiognomy, and could judge an ordinary person's whole life's fortunes with a single glance. But now, all he could see on Jiang Luo was a tightly covered fog!

He was shocked. He sprang to his feet with a whoosh and stuttered: 'Th-this-this...'

Jiang Luo wrapped a strand of black hair around his finger and looked at him with interest. 'Mm?'

Ge Zhu strode over to him and seriously extended a hand. 'Classmate Jiang Luo, may this Daoist have a look at your palm?'

Jiang Luo smiled and held out his left hand. 'Please.'

Ge Zhu took his hand.

The hand felt fine and smooth, soft as moss, with slender fingertips—a sign of a clever and handsome person, with a physiognomy of great wealth and nobility. These were only the most basic palmistry features. Ge Zhu wanted to look closer, but the chaotic lines on the palm dazzled his eyes; even with eyes wide as brass bells, he couldn't make out a thing.

The people around him were quiet, afraid to disturb him. After a while, Ge Zhu, drenched in sweat, set Jiang Luo's hand down and returned to his seat in a daze. He cradled his thermos cup and smiled weakly. 'Nothing, nothing. In this life, one must know there's always someone better, mountains beyond mountains. How can a person's fate be so easily seen through? Only through effort can things get better. Don't let the heart be troubled, don't let feelings ensnare you. Only by passing through the bitter cold can one welcome peace. You should know—a life you can see through at a single glance is truly too tragic to look at.'

A laugh came from outside. 'Ge Zhu, what chicken soup for the soul are you brewing now?'

Before the words had finished, two people walked in through the back door. The speaker was a lady in a red dress, long hair flowing, laughing with her eyes squinted. A cream-colored shawl draped over her dress, she stepped forward elegantly on high heels.

'She' was very tall—very tall, taller and more slender than the blonde, blue-eyed foreign youth behind her. This pleasing, dignified, elegant beauty was none other than the low-key, mysterious Wenren Lian.

A man who liked to dress as a woman.

The foreign youth Sailor behind Wenren Lian scratched his head bashfully, and in a clumsy foreign accent said: 'Sorry we're late.'

Ge Zhu sighed. 'Wenren, you're here.'

Wenren Lian gathered his shawl and sat down across from Jiang Luo with a smile. His eyes were squinted into slits, his lashes thick—it was hard not to wonder if he could actually see anything.

'Ge Zhu, what did you see?'

'Couldn't see a thing,' Ge Zhu said honestly. 'Want to try?'

Ge Zhu studied physiognomy; Wenren Lian studied divination.

Wenren Lian heard this and, still smiling, refused. 'If even you can't see it, I won't embarrass myself. Compared to these mysterious and unfathomable things, I'd rather ask Classmate Jiang Luo a few questions.'

He mimicked Jiang Luo's pose, propping his chin on his hand. A satin-like wig slid down to his chest. Wenren Lian asked curiously: 'Classmate Jiang Luo, have you slept with Chi You?'