Chapter 5: The Book of Strange Cases

Carrying the thread-bound book, he followed Old Wang out of the archives and returned once more to the back hall of the magistrate’s office.

Old Wang said nothing and soon departed, leaving him alone.

Seated in a chair, he ran his fingers over the cover of the thread-bound volume, then opened to the first page. The paper was already yellowed, the ink slightly blurred with time.

He began reading from the first line. The opening page contained little more than a note explaining the reason for writing the book. As Yao Qian finished reading the page, his expression changed without his realizing it.

This book, it turned out, also bore the contribution of his original self’s father. In fact, it had been his father who led the project, with Old Wang and the fathers of these now-young men as contributors. And it was his own father who had served as chief scribe.

His mind already racing with thoughts, his hands, almost of their own accord, turned to the second page.

In the fifth month of the 188th year of the Dongjiang Kingdom, a sudden thick fog enveloped the village of Xiaoqiao. Visibility was lost, no one could enter, and after five days the mist dissipated—yet the entire population had vanished without a trace. Not a single soul remained. An eerie event!

Having read this entry, Yao Qian’s heart was in his throat.

The account was profoundly strange.

The entire village—men, women, and children—all mysteriously disappeared. In ancient times, people rarely traveled far from their villages; some never left at all. How could they have all vanished at once?

“There must have been some calamity… or something supernatural,” he muttered to himself, then continued reading.

He finished the account, which concluded with the authorities finding no trace of the missing villagers. The official verdict: the villagers, unruly and unwilling to submit to the king’s rule, had fled to the mountains to become bandits.

Turning to the next page, another case emerged.

In the third month of the 189th year, in the bustling marketplace, a cloth shop erupted in flames without any apparent cause. The fire blazed fiercely. When people tried to break down the doors to save those inside, they found the doors firmly sealed, impossible to open, and those inside unable to escape. The entire shop was reduced to ashes, everyone inside perished, and only then did the fire subside.

Strangely, the blaze was immense but burned out as quickly as it began, without spreading to the neighboring shops—a truly unusual event.

This case, too, ended without resolution, dismissed as an ordinary fire.

He turned another page, and yet another case appeared.

In the tenth month of the 191st year, twenty li outside Kunyang Town, a hunter mysteriously vanished in the mountains—neither alive nor dead was he found. Fellow hunters from the same village went searching, only to disappear in turn. Over thirty people vanished in succession; not a single body was ever found.

In the seventh month of the 194th year, the whole of Xiasong Village disappeared overnight, leaving behind only a giant crater; not a soul remained.

In the sixth month of the 195th year, thirty li outside the city, the renowned Hanshan Temple rang with a thunderous peal of its great bell. The sound lingered for days, and when people finally entered, not a single monk or devotee remained. The temple had become a field of scorched rubble and broken walls, with only traces of fresh blood and bizarre objects left behind.

In the twelfth month of the 198th year, snow fell heavily. Three or five children, playing outside, suddenly sank into the snow. When the drifts were dug up, the children had long been dead—their bodies mummified as if they had died years before.

In the seventh month of the 200th year, the villagers of Fengzhai heard strange cries in the night. The next morning, over twenty people were found missing.

Yao Qian leafed through page after page; each recorded some bizarre, unsolved case.

In every instance, neither the cause nor the perpetrator was ever discovered. In many, even the victims’ bodies were never found. The authorities could only close the files in haste.

Ordinary people likely never even knew such events occurred. If not for Old Wang and his companions recording them, Yao Qian would never have believed that so many unnatural events had taken place in this seemingly peaceful little city.

One or two might be coincidence, but to see case after case, relentless and strange, squeezed out any last shred of hopeful denial from his heart. And this was just Pingyang City—who knew how many such disappearances or deaths occurred across all of Dongjiang each year?

The more he pondered, the grimmer his face grew, his shock and unease mounting.

In such a perilous world, a single misstep or a stroke of bad luck could spell disaster—calamity lurking at every turn. Fortunately, the world was still ancient; news traveled slowly, communication was sparse. Had this been his previous life, it would have felt like the end of days.

Weighed down by these thoughts, he set the book on the table. So many unfathomable cases forced him to question whether this world truly harbored inexplicable entities—those strange forces, supernatural beings, demons, or ghosts.

“If such things do exist, how would one resist them—how could one protect oneself?”

He muttered to himself, lost in thought, and picked up the thread-bound book, intending to leave.

But as he lifted the book, a thin, pale-yellow object the size of a palm slipped from its pages and fell to the floor.

Yao Qian paused, stooped to pick up the leather-like piece. It felt cool and smooth to the touch, almost like a woman’s skin.

As this thought crossed his mind, his eyes suddenly widened. He nearly dropped the thing in horror.

“Skin?”

His hand trembled. Looking closely, it was almost indistinguishable from his own skin, only whiter and more supple—as if it had just been cut from the body of a fair-skinned woman.

His face turned ashen, but before he could react further, something strange occurred.

Where his fingers touched the skin, a crackling sound arose, accompanied by a whiff of burnt stench and a wisp of black smoke. In that moment, he seemed to hear, faintly, the agonized screams of a woman emanating from the patch of skin.

The sound was piercing and heartrending, both real and illusory, drilling into his ears.

It was a long while before he came to his senses. Looking down, he saw the patch of skin had turned to black ash. With a movement, the ash drifted away, and a gust of wind scattered it until nothing remained.

Only then did he realize his back was clammy with sweat. He reached behind and found his shirt damp; that passing gust had left him chilled.

Wiping the cold sweat from his brow, Yao Qian was filled with questions.

“What on earth was that thing—could it have been something left behind by a ghost or demon?”

The more he thought, the less at ease he felt. He opened the thread-bound book again and, sure enough, found a clue: the palm-sized piece of skin had indeed been a peculiar item Old Wang and his companions discovered at Hanshan Temple.

At first, they hadn’t known what it was, but later, by chance, they realized it was a piece of human skin—specifically, a woman’s. The revelation had deeply unsettled them, and they sealed it within the book, likely having long since forgotten about it.

“So it really was a woman’s skin!”

Yao Qian’s face grew even more grim as the memory of that recent scene replayed before his eyes. He was left puzzled—why had it suddenly combusted without fire and turned to ash?

He was about to investigate further when his gaze fell, almost by accident, upon the red panel hovering at the corner of his vision—a look of astonishment crossing his features.

At some point, the information displayed there had changed.

Yao Qian—

Basic Blade Technique: Novice

Locking Technique: Novice

Potential: 3

At some point, the potential indicator had shifted from 0 to 3.

“Could it be that burning the skin caused this change?”

He distinctly remembered that the information had never shifted before; the change must have occurred after he finished reading and encountered that strange patch of skin.

After pondering a moment, he realized that the only bizarre event during this period had been the piece of human skin.

“Is it possible that these supernatural items can somehow power up this system of mine?”

His mind was awash with confusion.

But he quickly pushed the thought aside. For now, survival was his most pressing concern.

With this in mind, he hurried from the hall to find Old Wang, striding through two corridors. Just as he was about to call out, a series of winds rose in his ears.

Within the gusts, he caught the familiar sound of exertion. Turning two more corners, he spotted Old Wang in a courtyard amidst artificial rocks.

The blade in Old Wang’s hand flashed as he moved, his form shifting rapidly, blade arcs cleaving through the air with the ferocity of a tiger descending the mountain—forceful and wild.

Clap, clap, clap—his movements were as agile as a spirit, powerful and vigorous, his bearing fierce and resolute. With each strike, he let out a long, echoing cry—like a tiger’s roar echoing through the mountains, commanding all within earshot, making one’s head ring and senses reel.

“What a formidable blade technique,” Yao Qian murmured, eyes shining with admiration, his longing undisguised.