"Forgive my wild and free-spirited life…"
"And fearing one day I might fall, oh—no—"
A lilting Cantonese song drifted from Ning Zhe's person, darkening his expression. Under Feng Yushu's curious gaze, he drew out his phone. The screen, still lit, showed an incoming call from Gu Yunqing.
"Not even pretending anymore," Ning Zhe murmured. "Using a dead man's phone to call."
He hung up without hesitation—too late. Feng Yushu's face registered doubt: he had never answered calls on this phone, which she knew was on silent. The ringtone had come from someone else's device.
From Lin Zhiyuan's.
"Ning Zhe, do you… always carry two phones?" Feng Yushu asked. Dual-SIM Androids exist, but few carry two separate smartphones. In Hejia Village, trauma had sharpened everyone's sensitivities.
Before Ning Zhe could reply, the phone rang again—this time from Ye Miaozhu. He cut it off, and another call followed—from Zhang Yangxu.
The empty street felt deathly still save for the song. Feng Yushu paled. "The ghost… why…?"
Why did the ghost keep changing identities and calling his phone?
In panic, she realized: "Wait—how does the ghost know your number?"
The ghost had stolen Xie Sining's, Zhang Yangxu's, Gu Yunqing's, and Ye Miaozhu's identities, so knowing Ning Zhe's number wasn't odd—except the calls came to his secret second phone, whose number he'd never revealed.
Then how did the ghost know? Or… was this phone really his?
As the incoming ID flickered, Ning Zhe's face went ashen. He met Feng Yushu's bewildered stare and said calmly, "The ghost is forcing me to kill you."
"What?!" Feng Yushu's pallor deepened. "Why?!"
"Don't ask. From now on, blindly trust me—remain ignorant of the truth, or you'll die." His voice betrayed no panic. "So will I."
Trembling, she nodded. He grasped her wrist, silenced the phone, and strode forward.
"The ghost is trying to expose me," he thought as he walked. In under two minutes he pieced it together:
The ghost changed guise and called Lin Zhiyuan's phone to unmask Ning Zhe's deception.
Though he'd seemed advantaged by borrowing the Serpent God's identity, he stood on a knife's edge. Stealing divine identity by sampling offerings required exploiting the ghost's rule:
[When someone mistakes the ghost for a person they know, the ghost can steal that person's identity and all related information.]
When Zhang Yangxu mistook the ghost for Xie Sining, it gained Xie Sining's persona and Zhang's memories of her. Likewise, Ning Zhe posed as the ghost first, triggering that rule when Feng Yushu believed the call was from Lin Zhiyuan's ghost.
Then, wielding the ghost's stolen identity, he sampled offerings to pose as the Serpent God, triggering the god-theft rule.
[Since only the ghost can trigger its own rule, I should impersonate the ghost first.]
His domino-like plan depended on Feng Yushu's false belief that "Lin Zhiyuan's call" was supernatural. If she ever learned the call came from Ning Zhe's hidden phone, the foundation would collapse:
"It's like a skyscraper with its foundation ripped away—it all falls." Ning Zhe's grip tightened on her wrist as realization and dread mingled.
Chapters in advance there: patreon.com/Thaniel_a_goodchild