The speaker was casual, but the listener was intent.
Jiang Yan unconsciously tapped the swallow’s black feather, her thoughts drifting far away. Because of Shen Xiaoxiao’s words, she suddenly recalled a certain situation—
A case where a thousand-year-old swallow yao could gain high-level innate abilities.
She’d heard it discussed years ago by a crane yao, who said that in this world of myriad wonders, some yao were born able to command all living things, while others lived out their entire lives as nothing special.
The plainest of them all were called mayflies. Mayflies were born in the morning, died by dusk, with only one chance in their whole lives to surface from water—once they used it, they vanished for good that same day.
Mayfly yao were an extremely special kind of yao.
They didn’t need thousands of years to transform—though their lives, from larva to adult, lasted only a few months, they were still yao. But they had no soul and no spiritual power; once dead, they were gone for good, with no hope of reincarnation.
If a mayfly wished to gain a soul and enter the cycle of rebirth, there was only one way—by earning karmic merit.
But it was so tiny and ordinary, its lifetime so brief.
How could it possibly earn merit?
The crane yao had said that no mayfly had ever possessed an afterlife. They were born from nothing, returned to nothing, forever trapped in some remote lake—no one ever cared about their life or death.
But that didn’t stop the crane yao from theorizing.
It compared the mayfly’s case to the “nine-lived cat” or “nine-tailed fox” and deduced that, should a mayfly ever gain an afterlife, becoming some other creature—a flower, tree, river, or human—reincarnating again and again, then in its ninth life, it would become a completely new type of yao.
At that point, the souls of nine lives would stack together in that life, so even if still young and with shallow power, its soul would be incomparably weighty.
Because of the weight of its soul, and the misfortune and fortune both, Heaven might bestow it with an innate power on par with a grand yao.
Jiang Yan pondered a moment, then said, “I’ve read a book before. It said that the abilities possessed by yao differ by rank, and this kind of ability—to probe all memories—is something only a grand yao of several thousand years can have.”
“But I just used a tool, and the owner of this feather is barely past a thousand years, so their case must be extremely special.”
She went on to share with Shen Xiaoxiao what she knew about mayflies.
Finally, she summed up: “A mayfly reincarnating through nine lifetimes almost never happens, so it’s hard to say if this swallow is really such a case, but there’s at least a sliver of possibility.”
Shen Xiaoxiao speculated, “Could it have eaten some really powerful spiritual herb, and its gift just shot up overnight?”
Jiang Yan had thought of that too, but considered it unlikely.
A spiritual herb that could grant such ability wouldn’t end up being eaten by just any little swallow yao.
Spiritual herbs give off heavy spiritual energy; all grand yao can sense that, so if you assume the swallow was hit by luck falling from the sky, it’s more reasonable to think its gift came from itself.
After straightening out her thoughts, Jiang Yan opened the group chat and told everyone her guess.
Mu Wang was the first to reply.
“Agreed.”
Jiang Yan ignored him and began flipping through the files Mu Wang had given her earlier.
Besides birth certificates for the children, there was also a death certificate for Yangzhou.
A photo of Yangzhou’s body was pasted right at the top—an unredacted, nonstandard format, but in an energy field, all clues served the scenario, so Jiang Yan paid it no mind.
But at just a glance, she could tell something was wrong with Yangzhou’s cause of death.
His body had been cut clean in half at the waist, the upper and lower halves separated by several meters. His right arm had also been severed, and the fingers on his left hand had vanished entirely.
This didn’t match the pattern of someone who’d died from a fall.
His body could have been dashed to a pulp, bones shattered, brains spattered—but not cut neatly into pieces.
Jiang Yan flipped the page.
Then she understood.
Yangzhou had been thrown from the roller coaster at its highest point, tossed so high that he landed on scaffolding—metal rods and steel wires meant for a new project nearby.
His body had been pierced, cut apart by the rods, exposing fresh red cross-sections.
Behind the death certificate was a slip of paper and a photo.
[Despite a thorough police search, three fingers from Yangzhou’s left hand were never found, thought to have been picked up by birds in the grass.]
The photo depicted a swallow standing by the grass, spirit in its eyes and teardrops faintly visible.
Jiang Yan had basically put the pieces together.
A few minutes later, Shen Huanhuan sent a voice message.
Jiang Yan played it, and Shen Huanhuan’s bright voice sounded:
“Sister Jiang Yan, I just read the files, and with your mention of the mayfly’s reincarnation, I have a guess.”
“Maybe Yangzhou was once the ghost’s benefactor,” she said.
“The swallow never forgot Yangzhou’s kindness, so it kept searching for him. But when it finally found him, Yangzhou was already dead. For some reason, the swallow died soon after, and because of its strong bond and its guilt at being unable to save him, it made the site of his death its energy field.”
“Yangzhou never had a happy childhood; he lost his mom and was abandoned by his dad. The ghost’s obsession is to give every child like Yangzhou a perfect amusement park, where all the kids are accompanied by adults.”
“The welcome sign at Tongyuan Amusement Park even says, ‘No one’s childhood is lonely anymore!’”
Shen Huanhuan concluded, “So this park was the ghost’s world, built for Yangzhou, and as the field grew stronger, it became a cemetery for all the suffering children.”
“In that case…” Yu Renwan picked up, typing in the group, “then the Supernatural Administration Bureau is a bit helpful after all. If the ghost’s obsession revolves around Yangzhou, we can’t avoid him when searching for clues.”
Jiang Yan: “Yes.”
Mu Wang: “Agreed.”
Yu Renwan: “But there’s so little info on Yangzhou, I wonder how the Bureau even found him.”
Shen Huanhuan: “Yangzhou had a language disorder and social problems, was often on leave, so the Bureau didn’t have many channels to learn about him.”
At this point, little Jiang Yan leaned toward Jiang Yan’s phone. After watching her type for a while, she cracked her knuckles and joined in.
She poked at the screen curiously, and after a while, she tapped in, very seriously: “sd.”
Mu Wang: “zc?”
Jiang Yan glanced at the little girl, put away the phone, and little Jiang Yan, bored, burrowed into the covers—only for Jiang Yan to pull her right back out.
“Brush your teeth.”
Little Jiang Yan turned her head away. “I already did.”
Jiang Yan pinched her cheeks. “Lift up your tongue.”
Little Jiang Yan: “…”
The little girl worked at gulping the candy hidden under her tongue. She tried to act natural, but the candy wouldn’t cooperate. With a loud gulp, she swallowed—way too loud.
“…”
Jiang Yan’s expression didn’t change. “Go brush again.”
Little Jiang Yan grumpily climbed down from the bed, but after only two steps, she turned back, fixing Jiang Yan with an icy glare. Jiang Yan ignored her, pulling out her phone to check messages.
Little Jiang Yan held her stare for two minutes to no effect. Finally, bored out of her mind, she slumped her shoulders, grabbed her toothbrush, and started brushing. Partway through, she ran back to glare some more, but Jiang Yan never even raised her head.
That tooth got brushed for seven or eight minutes. Only after rinsing did she dash back, crawl under the covers, roll over twice, and hug Jiang Yan’s waist.
“You’re no fun at all.”
Jiang Yan glanced at her. “Quiet. Go to sleep.”
Little Jiang Yan: “If you didn’t look like my mother, I wouldn’t sleep with you.”
Jiang Yan: “Okay.”
Little Jiang Yan quickly chimed in: “Support.”
A muffled giggle burst out from the next bed.
Both looked over at once—Shen Xiaoxiao and little Xiaoxiao had buried their faces in their pillows to keep from laughing out loud.
Noticing Jiang Yan’s gaze, Shen Xiaoxiao quickly covered her mouth, while little Xiaoxiao schooled her face even faster.
“I’m going to sleep now. None of you better make another sound.”
Little Xiaoxiao slowly sat up, took the bag of milk that little Huanhuan had brought earlier from the table, bit it open, and drank with her head tilted back.
A few minutes later, she climbed back into bed, rolled over to face the wall, and said not another word.
Soon Shen Xiaoxiao switched off the light.
Jiang Yan put down her phone and lay flat on her bed. Since time in this field was accelerated, day turned to night before the day was truly over. She wasn’t tired at all. Lying there for an hour and a half, she still felt no sleepiness, so in the end she got up for a glass of water.
That’s when Shen Xiaoxiao got up too.
“Sister Jiang Yan, can’t sleep either?” she asked quietly.
Jiang Yan offered her the kettle. “Haven’t hit bedtime yet. What about you?”
They’d cleared many missions together by now, and as always, Shen Xiaoxiao could fall asleep in seconds—she’d never had insomnia before.
Shen Xiaoxiao didn’t hide it: “I was thinking about my childhood.”
Jiang Yan made a sound of acknowledgment.
Maybe it was because she’d opened up, but Shen Xiaoxiao seemed unable to hold in her feelings. She took a deep breath and said softly, “You have no idea how awful I was as a kid.”
“I always tried not to think about the past, but now that she’s here, I’m confronted all over again—and I was really terrible.”
Since Jiang Yan couldn’t sleep, she was happy to listen.
She followed naturally, “Did something happen between you and Shen Huanhuan when you were little?”
At that, Shen Xiaoxiao, who’d been ready to confide, suddenly fell silent. She looked hesitantly at her toes and shook her head. Seeing she didn’t want to talk, Jiang Yan didn’t press, and lay back down.
Shen Xiaoxiao lay flat too.
Time ticked by. Half an hour later, just as Jiang Yan was finally drowsing off, Shen Xiaoxiao spoke up.
It seemed she just wanted to talk, whether or not anyone was listening.
“I had two kittens once,” Shen Xiaoxiao said. “Same mother, snow white, blue eyes. So pretty, so sweet. At first, I liked them both, but later that changed.”
“They were totally different in temperament.”
“One was so sweet—if I offered my hand, it would show its fluffy belly for me to rub. The other was a bit standoffish, but not unfriendly. One winter, the sweet kitten died. My first thought was, why did this one die, not the other? If only it had been the other…”
“That’s when I realized—even real sisters can’t be treated perfectly equally. If you don’t fight for your parents’ love, whenever someone has to choose, I’d be the one thrown away.”
“My health was always terrible—I couldn’t go to school. All my classes were with tutors at home. I was constantly getting sick, every year close to death at least once, surgery after surgery. I always felt like such a burden. Eventually, I got stuck thinking: if I could just be my parents’ favorite, even if I’m such a burden, they wouldn’t abandon me.”
“Mom and Dad were always so busy, barely around a few times a year.”
Shen Xiaoxiao rambled, with no real chronology, but anyone could follow the thread: “Because my father received kindness from so many people as a child, he spent his life trying to repay it, becoming ‘Papa Shen’ to thousands upon thousands of kids. Mom, too, had a rough start—raised by the support of all the villagers—so she always stayed by Dad’s side.”
“To many kids, they were their mom and dad. But to me and my sister, our closest company was our nanny.”
“So…”
Her voice faltered, turning hoarse.
“Honestly, I wasn’t in all that much pain, but every time Mom and Dad came home, I’d scream extra loud—they’d only come to my room if I cried about how much it hurt. I’d hug them and only then could I sleep.”
“My sister never slept with them—I always said she kicked me at night and made my injuries worse.”
“In the end, Mom and Dad spent twice as much time with me, three times, many times more than with my sister. Once, Dad came home and ran straight for my room with presents. When he saw my sister, he froze, then quickly said he had gifts for Huanhuan too.”
“I thought I’d succeeded.”
“I really thought I understood myself—I could do without my sister, but I couldn’t do without my parents’ love,” Shen Xiaoxiao said softly. “I was selfish, jealous of her health, and I flaunted my suffering.”
“My illness wasn’t caused by her—but everything I did seemed like revenge.”
“My sister was our parents’ daughter too.”
Jiang Yan spoke: “Does Shen Huanhuan know about all this?”
Shen Xiaoxiao went silent. After a pause, she murmured, “I thought you were asleep.”
Jiang Yan said nothing.
After a long time, Shen Xiaoxiao answered.
“I used to think she didn’t know.”
“But once, after waking from anesthetic, I saw Mom and Dad rush to my bedside. My sister didn’t come over—she stood at the door, holding a perfect test paper, just quietly watching me.”
“There was nothing in her expression, but I knew then that she’d figured it out.”
“I was so scared I forgot to even cry from pain. But she pointed at her own throat, reminding me to thank Mom and Dad,” Shen Xiaoxiao said. “She mouthed at me, ‘Mom and Dad rushed all the way back for you—hoping Xiaoxiao would get better soon.’”
Shen Xiaoxiao said, “I can never make it up to her.”
“Mom and Dad are gone, and I can never make it up to her.”
Jiang Yan asked, “Have you ever talked to Shen Huanhuan about it?”
Shen Xiaoxiao answered right away, “No.”
Jiang Yan asked, “Why not?”
Shen Xiaoxiao wiped the tears welling at her eyes and whispered, barely audibly:
“I’m so scared she’d forgive me.”