# 1544
Chapter 1540: The Guise
Jiang Er thought carefully. "It's probably around the time you just woke up?"
Just woke up?
An Qingyu suddenly froze.
He clearly remembered that he woke from his coma, dragged out of unconsciousness by a splitting headache... and then, the first Migo descended upon Shangjing; the second Migo invasion also appeared when his head was hurting.
Both Migo invasions coincided exactly with the times his head hurt... wasn't that too much of a coincidence?
When the first Migo descended, Lin Qiye had immediately set out to hunt it, not knowing that An Qingyu had a headache at the same time. He only knew that An Qingyu woke up the moment he returned, so naturally he wouldn't connect An Qingyu with the Migo's descent... but An Qingyu was different.
He immediately linked the timing of the Migo's two descents with his own headaches.
"Is it a coincidence? Or..." An Qingyu's brow furrowed even tighter.
"What's wrong?" Seeing his strange expression, Jiang Er asked.
An Qingyu explained his thoughts. Jiang Er was stunned for a long moment, then quickly shook her head:
"You're overthinking this. Your headache is an aftereffect of having a piece of your soul cleaved off by the Lingbao Tianzun, while the Migo are Cthulhu Faction creatures that live in the rifts of time and space—these two things have absolutely no connection."
"But before the Lingbao Tianzun cut off a piece of my soul, I was contaminated by the Cthulhu Faction."
"Plenty of people have been contaminated by the Cthulhu Faction—Chen Yangrong, the gods of Takamagahara, the gods of Asgard, Zhuaige... they all have been, to varying degrees. Why hasn't Migo descended on them?"
An Qingyu was speechless.
"Maybe I'm overthinking this..." After much deliberation with no other factors linking him to this phenomenon, he decided to table the idea for now.
"Jiang Er and the others are handling this, so don't worry about it." Jiang Er checked the time. "We still have some time before the performance starts—let's go to the cafeteria first."
...
Fifth Teaching Building, Room 609.
"She's right inside. Go find her yourself."
Fang Mo sent the white figure into the classroom, turning to Li Yifei behind her. Li Yifei studied the room's gloomy atmosphere under the night sky, then stepped inside while Fang Mo and Lu Baoyou departed to continue searching for scattered soul fragments. Since classes had ended and the welcome party was underway elsewhere, the entire sixth floor lay silent except for Li Yifei's footsteps.
As Li Yifei wondered what to do, a white figure suddenly drifted out of nothingness, spreading its arms as if to embrace him.
However, the moment its fingertips touched Li Yifei, they passed right through him like nothing was there. The figure froze in place.
Li Yifei turned around to look carefully. The plain skirt from last century, the twin braids���it was indeed that same soul fragment that had blocked him before.
Her mouth opened and closed, as if trying to call out to him, but without vocal cords, she couldn't produce any sound at all.
From her lip-reading, the name she was calling was "Changhong."
At the same time, other white figures silently drifted to the back of the classroom, curiously watching the two of them, occasionally whispering among themselves—like a group of last-century gossipers gathered together.
"Miss, there might be some misunderstanding between us." Li Yifei cleared his throat and said seriously, "My name is Li Yifei, not Changhong. Strictly speaking, I'm not even human..."
The white figure hesitated slightly, gesturing wildly as if trying to convey something, but Li Yifei couldn't understand any of it. She could only stand there in bewilderment.
Just then, a thoughtful onlooker among the gossips handed over a blurry notebook.
The notebook looked extremely old, surrounded by a faint aura of yin energy. It didn't look like a modern object—it seemed to be a personal item belonging to one of these soul fragments. The white figure took the notebook and quickly wrote something on it, then held it up in front of Li Yifei:
—You're him. You look exactly alike.
Li Yifei reached for the pen and paper to write a response, but his fingertips passed right through them. Only then did he understand—these things weren't objects from the living world.
He withdrew his hand and said helplessly, "Miss, you really have the wrong person. Maybe we just happen to look particularly alike, but..."
The pen, under the white figure's control, quickly wrote again:
—There's a mole on your second-to-last vertebra.
"Wait, what?" The moment Li Yifei saw these words, he instinctively covered his lower back, eyes wide with shock. "How... how do you know that?"
—Back then, I saw it when you were bathing.
"?? Miss, that's not something you should just say!"
—You're Changhong. I remember every detail about you. I couldn't possibly be wrong!
The white figure wrote this sentence, staring seriously at Li Yifei. Though her face was invisible, Li Yifei could feel that stubborn gaze.
Li Yifei scratched his head, feeling his mind go blank... He was clearly meeting this girl for the first time, and she was a soul fragment from decades ago. How could the two of them have ever interacted? Could it be reincarnation?
If he were human, reincarnation might make sense. But he was a snake demon!
Just then, a flash of insight struck Li Yifei's mind. His body trembled slightly.
He stared at the white figure in front of him, his expression gradually growing complicated.
He probably understood what was going on now.
Strictly speaking, "Li Yifei" didn't exist in this world at all. He was merely the second personality that the Nanda Snake Demon—a "mystery"—had created after descending to Earth, for the sole purpose of hiding its true nature. He had understood this fact years ago.
He was a snake demon, so reincarnation was impossible, and he couldn't have met this girl decades ago... The only explanation was that "Li Yifei," this human guise, originally belonged to the "Changhong" this girl knew.
The Nanda Snake Demon wasn't human, and it didn't have a human body. The reason it could survive in human society for so long under the appearance of "Li Yifei" was most likely because when it first descended to Great Xia, it had killed a human and transformed into his appearance.
And that human was the "Changhong" that this girl had known.
This could explain why this girl would mistake him for Changhong, while Li Yifei himself had no idea.
Li Yifei gazed at the white figure before him, his eyes filled with complex emotions. A unprecedented guilt rose within him... In a sense, the "Changhong" in this girl's memory was someone he had killed with his own hands.
Watching Li Yifei stand frozen for so long, the white figure tilted her head, thought for a moment, then excitedly wrote in the notebook:
—Changhong, do you remember now?!