Chapter 300: 296 I Am Not Me

Fang Mu firmly believed at this moment that he had forgotten something, so he asked his assistant to investigate what had happened to him while he was away on his trip.

The assistant was sensible and obedient, and since it concerned the author he admired, the assistant immediately set out to investigate.

Feeling unwell, Fang Mu returned home to search for any useful clues.

Thinking of the eerie young man in white who had suddenly appeared and disappeared at the book signing, Fang Mu should have felt fear, but an inexplicable sense of calm enveloped his trembling heart, and his mind gradually stabilized instead.

In a corner of his bookshelf at home, he found a notebook with a leather cover, which was being used to prop up a corner of the shelf to keep it balanced.

As he pulled out the worn notebook, the bookshelf suddenly collapsed with a boom. Fang Mu dodged just in time, nearly being crushed under the heavy shelves.

Fang Mu felt a certain thread maintaining his sanity begin to tighten, pulled taut, as if it could snap at any moment.

"A notebook... a diary, yes, the element of a notebook should be in the memories I lost." Vague memory fragments surfaced in Fang Mu's mind; he steadied himself and opened the first page of the notebook.

But when he opened the first page, Fang Mu was dumbfounded. The contents of the notebook were so abstract and strange, as the notebook was filled with drawings—drawings that likely held deep meaning.

Later, he realized he was holding the notebook upside down; he had only opened the last page. He flipped it over and started again from the first page, and this time, he finally saw the name of the notebook's owner: "Lin Sen."

"Lin Sen..." Fang Mu felt a bit lost; why did this name sound both strange and familiar?

Just then, Fang Mu's phone rang. It was buried under the collapsed bookcase. He hurriedly pushed the bookcase aside, threw away the sketchbooks and manga that had fallen from it, and finally found the phone and answered it before the caller hung up.

"Hello." Fang Mu leaned against the wall, exhausted. He had just checked the caller ID on the screen; it was his assistant. "Did you find anything?"

"Mm-hmm, Teacher Wumu, I know where you went on your trip the other day and what you did!" The assistant's lively voice was pleasant and melodious.

Listening to the assistant's voice, Fang Mu could imagine the young girl's smug and proud expression, and his mood actually settled a bit. He said, "Tell me."

He adjusted his posture against the wall, trying to sit as comfortably as possible, while also glancing at the books that had fallen from his shelf, muttering to himself, "Why are there so many drawing and manga books?"

The assistant said: "You went to the Azite Region for a trip and stayed in a city called Tenoch in the Azite Region. Except for the night you arrived in that city and went out to visit the local market, you spent the following days holed up in your hotel room drawing, and then you suddenly booked a flight back to Shenzhou."

"How do you know so clearly?" Fang Mu was a bit confused upon hearing this; he seemed to have some impression of these events, yet also none at all.

"You drew them all down," the assistant said as if it were obvious. Fang Mu heard the sound of drawing paper flipping over the phone.

Drawings? Why would he be drawing?

"My Teacher Lin Sen, it's not good to be so forgetful. Fortunately, the hotel contacted your tour guide, and your tour guide happened to know about your identity as a manga artist in Shenzhou, so they immediately mailed all those manga you left behind at the hotel to the studio. Oh, right, the things you bought locally were also sent over together. It looks like a pendant with quite some age to it, but it's broken, so it shouldn't be worth much." The assistant clicked her tongue a few times, saying it was a pity.

Fang Mu was stunned, his heart suddenly turning cold.

"What did you just call me?" Fang Mu asked, trembling.

"Teacher Lin Sen, ah, I forgot you don't like your real name; I should still call you Teacher Wumu."

"I... what do I do for a living?"

"My heavens, Teacher, your amnesia is too severe! You didn't even forget that you're a manga artist, did you... You just rest and wait at home, I, I, I'm coming to find you right now!" Hearing Fang Mu's words, the assistant immediately began to panic and shout. Through the phone that Fang Mu had dropped on the floor, the sound of clattering and banging could be heard from the other end. "You wait there, I'm coming!"

Beep, beep, beep...

Fang Mu stood up and walked slowly to the bathroom. He looked at the familiar face in the mirror, held his breath, and stared intently... Suddenly, his vision flashed, and the figure in the mirror flickered with the silhouette of another person. He was so startled he jumped on the spot.

At the same time, a massive amount of memories was rushing into his mind like a tidal wave. He quickly took off his shirt and touched the hideous, centipede-like surgical scar on his chest in the mirror, but as his hand touched the spot in the reflection, he felt absolutely no protrusion.

"No, no, no..." Fang Mu slammed the vanity, roaring at the person in the mirror who was slowly turning into someone else, "You are not me, you are not me! My name is not Lin Sen! My name is Fang Mu! My name is Fang Mu! Fang Mu!"

!

!

The strenuous shouting flushed his entire face, and the veins on his neck bulged and throbbed. The person in the mirror roared and jumped in sync with him.

Until oxygen deprivation made him dizzy, and he fell backward, the back of his head hitting the wall. The real pain forced him to believe that all of this was true.

He was Fang Mu, but this body was not Fang Mu's; it belonged to a man named Lin Sen.

He was actually a novelist, not a manga artist.

He was actually a transmigrator swimming against the current of history, not a reborn person who had changed his identity.

Everything had become different; it shouldn't have been like this.

At this moment, Fang Mu remembered the young man in white who had appeared at the book signing. He now recalled the other's identity: the owner of the Forest Cabin who had bestowed upon him the Space-Time Divine Nail Hammer, also an unknown and powerful existence.

The words Lin Ling had spoken at the time echoed in his ears, and Fang Mu muttered along: "Everything can deceive you, but your heart will not."

As he spoke, Fang Mu touched his smooth chest, and then an ugly smile flashed across his face.

"So that's what it meant..." Fang Mu laughed hysterically, though his expression was like he was mourning, "I didn't transmigrate; I was reborn into this manga artist named Lin Sen."

"But... Lin Sen... Wumu... why is it such a coincidence?" Fang Mu did not understand whether it was a coincidence or if someone had done it on purpose. This "Lin Sen" and "Wumu" happened to correspond to the name he would have chosen for his fifth life.

And also...

Fang Mu found the new work released at today's signing event from the collapsed bookcase. It was indeed a novel, but it was adapted from one of his original manga, and he was one of the screenwriters for this novel. It was precisely because it was a novel that he hadn't been able to notice the anomaly happening to him so quickly.

He opened the second page of the book, where there was a folded, smooth page. On it were the character designs for the main characters of this manga-adapted novel, and the name of the protagonist, Linpeng, also made him gasp for air.

Linpeng, when broken down, is the character for "six woods," which meant it could be his identity in his sixth life.

But... how could his fifth-life self have written the story of his sixth-life self?