Chapter 302: 298 Inn

Gandeng Town in the Guinan region...

An Qin had been to this small town before; as long as she had opened the relics left behind from his second life, wanting to find the places he had once visited from his diary and then revisit them was actually a very simple matter.

Although Gandeng Town was only a rural town, it was still not easy for Fang Mu to find the traces An Qin had left here over ten years ago; that spanned the distance of time and space.

But it was not without clues; An Qin would likely continue to follow the descriptions in his second-life diary, such as coming to the inn where he had once stayed.

Arriving at the inn, the innkeeper, who also doubled as the front desk clerk, swept a glance at Fang Mu, who had come to check in. Taking in the delicate and pretty appearance of "Lin Sen," he faked a smile while processing the check-in, but muttered in the Guinan dialect: "Could this little backwater town be about to strike it rich? In less than half a month, several outsiders have come, all with such tender skin and delicate flesh, tsk tsk..."

In the decades Fang Mu had spent traveling backward through time, he had taught himself the Guinan dialect. Although there were differences in accents and ways of speaking between towns in Guinan, the innkeeper's dialect pronunciation was not too far off from the Guinan dialect he had learned, and Fang Mu could still understand what the boss was saying.

After pondering for a moment, Fang Mu also spoke in the Guinan dialect: "Have many outsiders been coming here lately?"

Hearing this, the innkeeper suddenly gave a start. He turned around in astonishment and said incredulously: "You can speak the Guinan dialect too?"

Seeing Fang Mu's meaningful smile, the innkeeper blushed a little out of embarrassment. He coughed a few times awkwardly and hurriedly shifted back to Fang Mu's previous question, saying: "This is just a small town, and there's nothing famous here. Although the transportation isn't exactly cut off, the scenery and culture here aren't enough to attract passersby to stop and rest. I've run this inn for sixty years, and counting from when I took over twenty years ago, the number of outsiders who have come to stay at my inn can be counted on one's fingers."

As he spoke, he picked up a ledger and flipped through it from back to front, revealing large swaths of blank pages. The innkeeper shrugged helplessly, "See? I use this ledger specifically to record the stays of outside travelers. It's been over twenty years, and only ten pages have been used. I reckon I'll be able to pass it on to my next generation."

"How did you know I was an outsider?" Fang Mu asked curiously, "Guinan as a whole is also a very large place."

"Believe it or not, I can tell whether you're from our Guinan or not just by your skin texture, eyes, and hair," the innkeeper smiled.

Fang Mu wanted to ask in more detail, but the innkeeper just smiled mysteriously and did not answer.

Fang Mu did not continue to press him. He took the key and pretended to tidy his luggage to go upstairs and move into his temporary room, but he stole a glance at the innkeeper's actions, seeing the other man put the ledger into a desk cabinet, lock it, and put the key away.

At midnight, Fang Mu, who had been resting with his eyes closed, twitched his ears. When he heard that there was no more movement in the lobby on the first floor, he opened his eyes and tiptoed out to the lobby.

The front desk window was not closed, but the innkeeper, who had been sitting in the room by the window during the day, was nowhere to be seen. Fang Mu could hear the snoring of the innkeeper sleeping soundly in the next room.

His extrasensory abilities had not disappeared due to changing bodies; the Nail Hammer left behind by the two gods seemed more like it had opened the "Apertures" for his soul.

There also seemed to be a folk saying that the Seven Souls among the Three Souls and Seven Souls actually corresponded exactly to the seven orifices of the human physical body; thus, it was not hard to understand.

The front desk window was a bit narrow, but "Lin Sen's" build was not large. "Lin Sen's" delicacy was not just reflected in his looks; his physique was also as slender and frail as a girl's, so it was not impossible for him to squeeze through the not-so-wide window into the inner room.

Fang Mu squeezed into the window with a little effort and, without much trouble, snuck into the innkeeper's room.

He still remembered the cabinet where the innkeeper kept the ledger during the day, as well as where the key was kept.

The innkeeper was sleeping like a log and the noise of Fang Mu entering the room could not wake him. He easily and successfully obtained the key and opened the desk cabinet where the ledger was stored.

Without needing to light a lamp, Fang Mu's eyes could see through the darkness. He silently browsed the ledger records, which contained the identity information and check-in times of outside guests over the past twenty years.

When he opened the second page, Fang Mu saw An Qin's name registered there. She had indeed stayed here before, and the room number she stayed in was 204.

Continuing to flip backward, when he reached this year's ledger, Fang Mu also saw the check-in information for "Fang Mu," as well as the check-in information for his current identity, "Lin Sen."

And what surprised Fang Mu somewhat was that between the two names "Fang Mu" and "Lin Sen," two other people had checked in.

When Fang Mu saw the check-in time for those two people, he keenly sensed something strange.

Those two people had checked in on the same day as "Fang Mu," but since they checked in on the same day, Fang Mu had no impression of any other outsiders coming to this inn.

"Could it be that they deliberately hid their tracks from the first-life me, with the goal of following me?" Fang Mu felt suspicious, sweat beading on his forehead. He had experienced too many bizarre events to avoid having some paranoid delusions.

Of course, Fang Mu was not entirely without grounds for his suspicion.

Checking in on the same day but never seeing the people from start to finish was one thing; one could barely say it was bad luck, just such a coincidence that they didn't run into each other.

But... why did those two outsiders also check out on the same day that Fang Mu checked out!

This was extremely unreasonable! The suspicion of them being "stalkers" was simply too great.

"Wei Hai... Li Yingqi..." Fang Mu frowned, reciting the names of these two suspects, and felt the air grow cold.

The innkeeper was still sleeping like a dead pig with no sign of waking up. Fang Mu returned everything to its original place, and just as he was about to leave, his gaze could not help but be drawn to a tightly closed room door next to the key hooks.

The door to this room had a talisman pasted on it, as if the room had been sealed; it seemed there was something inside.

Fang Mu hesitated for a moment, looked back at the innkeeper's room directly behind him, and decided to go inside and take a look.

He gently turned the doorknob, and it opened very easily; the innkeeper had no intention of locking this room.

"Then this talisman isn't used for sealing?" Fang Mu was somewhat surprised. After all, if a person wanted to seal a room, the best physical way would naturally be to lock the room and never open it again.

Since the innkeeper had not done so, Fang Mu could only guess at other reasons.

When Fang Mu pushed open the room door, he only saw a Shrine, on which was enshrined the portrait and spirit tablet of an old person.

When he saw the face in the portrait, Fang Mu froze again, almost blurting out: "Wang Jie?"

The portrait being enshrined was exactly the nanny that Fang Mu's family had hired during his second life, which was also the daughter of Wang Zheng, whom Fang Mu had struck down in his third life after she attacked him with desire, only for her to be bitten by a toad-frog until she was neither dead nor alive.