Chapter 301: Inn
Guinan Region Qiandeng Town……
An Qin had been to this small town before. As long as she had opened the mourning articles he left behind in his Second Life, wanting to find the places he had been to from the diary and revisit them one by one was actually a very simple thing.
Although Qiandeng Town was just a town, it was still not easy for Fang Mu to find the traces An Qin had left here more than ten years ago; what spanned between them was spacetime distance.
But it was not entirely without clue. An Qin should have continued to follow the descriptions in his Second Life diary, for example, coming to the inn where he had once stayed.
Arriving at the inn, the innkeeper, who doubled as the counter attendant and master, glanced at Fang Mu who had come to register and check in, taking in the clear and handsome appearance of “Lin Sen.” While pretending to smile and handling the check-in procedures for Fang Mu, he muttered in Guinan Dialect: “Could it be that this rundown little town is going to strike it rich? In less than half a month, several out-of-towners have come, all with fine skin and tender meat, tsk tsk…”
During the decades Fang Mu had reverse-traveled, he had self-taught Guinan Dialect. Although accents and manners of speaking varied between towns in Guinan, the innkeeper’s dialect pronunciation was not too different from what he had learned, so Fang Mu could still understand what the boss was saying.
After thinking for a moment, Fang Mu also spoke in Guinan Dialect: “Have a lot of out-of-towners come here recently?”
Hearing this, the innkeeper shuddered all over. He turned around in astonishment and said incredulously: “You can speak Guinan Dialect too?”
Seeing Fang Mu’s meaningful smile, the innkeeper’s face flushed with some embarrassment. He coughed awkwardly a few times, quickly shifting to Fang Mu’s earlier question, and said: “This is just a small town with nothing famous about it. The transportation isn’t exactly cut off, but the scenery and culture here aren’t appealing enough to attract travelers to stop and rest. My inn has been open for sixty years, and counting from when I took over twenty years ago, the number of out-of-towners who have stayed here can be counted on one hand.”
As he spoke, he picked up an account book and flipped through it from back to front. Large blank sections appeared, and the innkeeper shrugged helplessly. “See? I’ve used this account book specifically to record out-of-town guests staying here. In over twenty years, it’s only used ten pages. I guess it can be passed down to my next generation of descendants.”
“How did you know I’m an out-of-towner?” Fang Mu asked curiously. “Guinan is a huge place overall.”
“You might not believe it, but I can tell if you’re from Guinan just from your skin texture, eyes, and hair.” The innkeeper smiled.
Fang Mu wanted to inquire in detail, but the innkeeper just smiled mysteriously without answering.
Fang Mu didn’t press further. He took the key, pretended to gather his luggage to go upstairs, moved into the room he was temporarily staying in, but with his peripheral vision secretly watched the innkeeper’s actions. He saw the other put that account book into a cabinet in the desk and lock it, then pocket the key.
At midnight, Fang Mu, who had been resting with eyes closed, twitched his ears slightly. When he heard no more commotion in the lobby on the first floor, he opened his eyes and quietly slipped out to the lobby.
The lobby counter window was not closed, but the innkeeper who had been sitting in the window room during the day was nowhere to be seen. Fang Mu could hear the innkeeper snoring sweetly in the adjacent room.
The super senses ability had not disappeared due to changing bodies. The nail hammer left by Shuhu Two Gods was more like it had opened an “acupoint” for his soul.
Folklore seemed to have a saying that the seven po among the three souls and seven po actually corresponded exactly to the seven orifices of the human body’s flesh. This made it not hard to understand.
The counter window was somewhat narrow, but “Lin Sen’s” build was not tall and burly either. “Lin Sen’s” delicate features were not only in his looks; his figure was also slender and delicate, not much different from a girl’s. Thus, it was not impossible for him to squeeze through the not-very-wide window into the inner room.
Fang Mu squeezed into the window with a little force a few times and stealthily slipped into the innkeeper’s room without much effort.
He still remembered the cabinet where the innkeeper had stored the account book during the day, and where the key was placed.
The innkeeper was sleeping soundly, and the noise Fang Mu made entering the room couldn’t wake him. He easily and smoothly got the key and opened the desk cabinet storing the account book.
Without lighting a lamp, Fang Mu’s eyes could see through the darkness. He silently browsed the account book records, which had identity information and check-in times for out-of-town guests over the past nearly twenty years.
When he opened the second page, Fang Mu saw An Qin’s name registered there. She had indeed stayed here, in room 204.
Continuing to flip backward to this year’s account book, Fang Mu indeed saw “Fang Mu’s” check-in information, as well as his current identity “Lin Sen’s” registration and check-in information.
What surprised Fang Mu somewhat was that between the names “Fang Mu” and “Lin Sen,” two other people had checked in.
When Fang Mu saw those two people’s check-in times, he keenly noticed something eerie.
Those two people had checked in on the same day as “Fang Mu,” but since it was the same day, Fang Mu had no impression at all of any other out-of-towners coming to this inn.
“Could it be they deliberately hid their whereabouts from me in my First Life in order to track me?” Fang Mu grew suspicious, cold sweat beading on his forehead. He had experienced too many eerie events, leaving no room for him to avoid some persecuted fantasies.
Of course, Fang Mu’s suspicion was not entirely baseless.
Checking in on the same day but never seeing them from start to finish could be dismissed as bad luck, a mere coincidence of not bumping into each other.
But… why had those two out-of-towners checked out on the exact same day Fang Mu checked out!
This was extremely unreasonable! The suspicion of being “stalkers” was simply too great.
“Wei Hai… Li Yingqi…” Fang Mu frowned tightly and recited the names of these two suspects, feeling as if the air had turned cold.
The innkeeper was still sleeping like a dead pig with no sign of waking. Fang Mu returned everything to its original place and was about to leave when his gaze was irresistibly drawn to the closed room door next to the key hooks full of keys.
This room’s door was pasted with a talisman, as if sealing the room shut, with something inside it.
Fang Mu hesitated slightly, glanced back at the innkeeper’s room directly behind him, and decided to go in and take a look.
Gently turning the door handle, it opened easily. The innkeeper had no intention of locking this room.
“Then this talisman isn’t for sealing?” Fang Mu was somewhat surprised. After all, if someone wanted to seal a room, the best physical method would naturally be to lock it and never open it again.
Since the innkeeper hadn’t done that, Fang Mu could only guess at another reason.
When Fang Mu pushed open the room door, he only saw a shrine with an elder’s posthumous portrait and tablet enshrined on it.
Seeing the face in that posthumous portrait, Fang Mu froze again, nearly blurting out: “Sister Wang?”
The enshrined posthumous portrait was of the nanny his family in his Second Life had hired, who was Wang Zheng’s daughter—that in his Third Life had attacked Fang Mu out of lust but was counter-defeated by Fang Mu and then torn and bitten by the toad frog until her life or death was unknown.
