After discussion with Father Wang, Wang Ling became deeply aware of the threat that was Landscape Manor. Such a colossal group had unexpectedly fixed their attention on the Wang family — regardless of whether or not this deal went the way Landscape Manor wanted, things weren’t likely to end well.

　　The information that Wang Ling had at present was actually quite limited. Although he now knew about Landscape Manor’s side business in antiques from Father Wang, that was only scratching the surface.

　　He had heard the rumor about the curse of the stone ghost mask from the seller. If the rumor was true, then the mask would probably be an existence that people would avoid like the plague — no one would be foolish enough to invite disaster upon themselves by spending such a huge sum of money on a cursed mask.

　　Judging from all of this, there probably was something wrong with this mask. But the strangest thing was that Wang Ling hadn’t noticed it at all!

　　At dinner, Wang Ling swallowed his rice somewhat listlessly as Father Wang’s words repeated themselves over and over in his mind… Are you sure there’s nothing wrong with the mask? Don’t tell me you can’t ever be wrong? Have you considered that you might not be able to detect any special traits the mask might have through ordinary means?

　　These three questions were a wake-up call for Wang Ling — although he felt that in a sense, he was an unrivalled existence in the world and could even be said to be almost omnipotent, in the end, to err is human and he could still make mistakes.

　　He was perhaps invincible in terms of his realm, but compared with those old cultivators who relied on their hard work to achieve their realms, he was far worse in terms of temperament and cultivation experience.

　　One should learn to be modest.

　　This was also what Father and Mother Wang had taught him since childhood.

　　The whole time he was eating, Wang Ling was thinking about the stone ghost mask and Landscape Manor, to the point that he appeared completely absent-minded. He took a lump of rice out of his bowl, then accidentally dropped it on the table.

　　Mother Wang looked at him and frowned. “Why is Ling Ling distracted at dinner today?”

　　The old man gazed at his grandson with a pained heart. “Is the food not to your taste? Do you… want to open a packet of crispy noodle snack?”

　　Father Wang’s lips tilted upward slightly in a smile. “Both of you eat, leave him alone. I had a little chat with him earlier, he’s likely thinking about it. Given Ling Ling’s realm, it’s fine even if he doesn’t eat every day.”

　　As Father Wang said this, Wang Ling suddenly thought of something, and with a ” pa ,” he straightaway slapped down his bowl and chopsticks, then hurried upstairs.

　　When Loopy Toad saw Wang Ling go upstairs, it hurriedly got up from the floor and rushed up after him.

　　The old man looked at Loopy Toad. “This dog is not bad; its face is a little fat, but there’s no flab on its body. It looks quite powerful. Just don’t know whether it’s useful — can it scare villains away when it’s watching the house?” The old man remembered that there was some kind of dog breed called doge ¹ that had recently become popular with young people. The old man had always thought that it looked too cheap and happy to be able to scare people away at all.

　　“This dog used to be a demon king, but Ling Ling has tamed it and it’s now reformed.”

　　“Oh… demon king! That’s good! Enough of a deterrent! And this dog… somehow it looks a little familiar… it reminds me of quite a few things.”

　　“Dad, have you seen Loopy Toad before?” Both Father and Mother Wang were startled.

　　“No, that’s not it.” The old man took a sip of white wine and shook his head. “When I had just started out as a chef, I took a fancy to a girl who had been studying to be a teacher at that time. In the end, before I could confess my feelings, she got a boyfriend. Later, I heard that her boyfriend had been dating twenty-three women at the same time.”

　　Father Wang and Mother Wang took deep breaths. “…”

　　That… how to handle so many at one time?

　　The elderly man sighed. “That man was real trash. If that girl back then hadn’t been so anxious, our paths might have crossed. I wanted to marry her at the time. But fortunately, I later met your mom, and she was very virtuous. Otherwise I might have still chased after that girl. If that had been the case, you wouldn’t be here today.”

　　Hearing this, Father Wang felt like crying, but had no tears to shed. “…Why are you suddenly saying this, dad?”

　　Whenever the old man came, Father and Mother Wang were usually very careful to not mention Wang Ling’s grandmother, and didn’t even dare say her name; they were afraid that it would grieve the old man if he heard it and aggravate his dementia. Who would have thought that he would bring her up himself today at dinner, which Father Wang felt was a little strange.

　　The old man paused at Father Wang’s question for a while, then said, “Hm, nothing, just that when I looked at this green dog fur, I suddenly felt that the girl I liked also seemed very green ² …”

　　Father Wang and Mother Wang: “…”

　　…

　　…

　　Wang Ling returned to his bedroom and picked up the stone ghost mask on the desk to scrutinize it carefully again. Unlike the simple test he had done previously, this time, he opened his Heavenly Eye. If there was something wrong with this mask, he believed that the Heavenly Eye’s ability to disentangle the truth from lies would reveal the stone ghost mask’s true nature.

　　But most unfortunately, despite Wang Ling gazing at the mask for a long time, it remained as inert as before.

　　However, through his inspection with the Heavenly Eye this time, he had obtained two bits of information.

　　The first piece of information was that, judging from the material alone, this really was just an extremely hard mask made from primordial black crystal. The Heavenly Eye’s ability was to separate what was true from what was false, to see the nature of the real world. If the mask had been tampered with, there was no way he wouldn’t be able to detect it. The problem was, this stone ghost mask really wasn’t as simple as it seemed.

　　This was the conclusion Wang Ling came to after repeatedly confirming it with the Heavenly Eye.

　　Then, there was only one possibility that he could think of…

　　This stone ghost mask was a twin; there were two of them, one sent out as a cover while the stone ghost mask that had been cursed for real and tampered with had been secretly hidden somewhere else.

　　Simply put, one was in the light and one was in the dark.

　　If they were twin stone ghost masks, as long as one had been tampered with, then the other would also reflect the same curse effect. But if this was the case, the Heavenly Eye wouldn’t be able to detect any problem with the mask that hadn’t been tampered with.

　　This was a speculation Wang Ling had had at dinner, and it was a detail that he hadn’t thought of before.

　　So the question now was where was the other stone ghost mask, the one with the curse?

　　Under normal circumstances, Wang Ling was completely capable of exerting the Heavenly Eye to trace the whereabouts of the stone ghost mask. Nowadays, twin magic weapons weren’t as rare. Feather Lin’s parent and child swords, for example, were actually also a kind of twin magic weapons. As long as he had one sword, in theory, Wang Ling could use the Heavenly Eye to trace the whereabouts of the other sword.

　　But his Heavenly Eye actually wasn’t reacting at all!

　　This was very unusual…

　　But it was exactly this that gave Wang Ling his second piece of information.

　　And that was that the second stone ghost mask, the real, cursed one, simply didn’t exist in the world that he lived in! It was very likely that it had been hidden in an alternate universe!