I changed the world.

Since there was still a lot of time before dinner, Zhang Jing ate sunflower seeds with his fingers while scrolling through his phone screen. He first checked the situation of several people involved in the "After Sealing the Sword" crew to see their latest activities.

As expected, there was a new development. After the video was released, many netizens were deeply moved by the poem recited when the master departed. However, due to the distance and filming limitations, only the first half of the poem could be heard in the previous video. Therefore, director Sun Yue directly revealed the full text of the poem on his Weibo this time.

The final line, "Looking back at the desolate place I came from, returning, there is neither wind nor rain, neither sunshine nor gloom," in particular, garnered widespread praise online. Even some netizens who had previously questioned the production team's motives for hype expressed, "For the sake of this poem, I won't criticize it anymore..."

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After learning about the crew's recent situation, Zhang Jing then began browsing the posts in the "Zi Bu Yu" sub-forum of the "Jiuzhou Forum".

"Jiuzhou Forum" is currently the largest public forum within the Great Zhao territory. Although the forum model has declined with the rise of new online social networking models, "Jiuzhou Forum" remains an important source of online topics due to its large user base accumulated in its early stages.

The "Zi Bu Yu" forum is currently the largest discussion forum in China for paranormal, ghost, and supernatural topics. Of course, most of the posts have been proven to be fabricated to grab attention, and many are even part of the pre-publication hype for certain paranormal novels. Nevertheless, this forum remains a must-visit place for many paranormal and supernatural enthusiasts every day.

Many people recount their ghostly encounters with great certainty, and some enthusiasts of mysticism and qigong even discuss cultivation methods or mysterious rituals of dubious origin.

Zhang Jing's purpose in coming here was naturally not out of curiosity, but to observe the changes in this world. Although this statement might seem somewhat vague, that was indeed Zhang Jing's thinking. Because of the changes in the world brought about by his wish, coupled with the events such as the vengeful spirits he had encountered before, Zhang Jing clearly realized that this world had become quite different.

He was absolutely certain that, as time went on, more and more things would happen in this world that defied explanation by conventional scientific thinking. However, he couldn't ascertain the frequency of these events or their impact on the world. With the information he currently had, Zhang Jing couldn't possibly know, so he could only try to gather as much information as possible from the internet.

On a deeper level, Zhang Jing harbored a lingering worry: he was unsure what kind of changes this alteration, which he had triggered, would ultimately bring to the world. Would it be positive or negative? In any case, Zhang Jing hoped that he would ultimately be a positive, weighty factor.

Previously, Zhang Jing hadn't been able to gather any particularly interesting information; in fact, in his view, those so-called strange tales and anecdotes were all rather far-fetched. At least in his opinion, they all seemed more like fabrications by netizens.

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Suddenly, Zhang Jing's gaze stopped on a post with an interesting title: "Ghosts really exist in this world!!! What should I do, masters?!"

The post's title was filled with exclamation marks, making it easy to feel the poster's excitement through the screen. Looking at the date, it was posted the day before yesterday afternoon, and it already has tens of thousands of views.

Zhang Jing casually clicked on it and found it was a help-seeking post. The poster was a new ID named "Living Long Enough to See Ghosts." Interestingly, the post was in diary format, making it feel very real.

What follows are my personal experiences over the past few days. Note that this is not a story! Not a story! Not a story!

November 26, 2015 (the 11th year of the Chenghe era)

I used to think of myself as a materialist, and I should say, at least until a few days ago I did.

I live in Kuaizhou City, Central China Province. It's a relatively unknown third-tier city, and my family has lived here for generations. My family lives in the southern suburbs of the city, in the Mijiafang area of ​​the Nanmen District. The house has been passed down from our ancestors. The houses in our area are all old houses, mostly built by the locals themselves.

Next door to my house, across the alley, is a large Western-style mansion. The mansion was built more than ten years ago by the landlord who demolished the old house. However, not long after he moved in, his business went badly, so he sold the mansion to a person from out of town.

The new family that moved in consisted of four people: a husband and wife, and their two children. They were said to be in the liquor business, but they had a bad habit of listening to music, especially rock music, and always playing it very loudly at night. This disturbed the rest of many people in the neighborhood, so some neighbors came to complain. However, the husband was very arrogant and ignored them, even after they complained several times.

To be honest, I was also very annoyed by this at the time, but what happened next was not what I wanted to see.

On the night of the 3rd of this month, a fire broke out in the house next door. It was said that someone threw a whole string of firecrackers over the wall. Later, people speculated that perhaps a neighbor was angry and threw in a lit string of firecrackers to scare them. However, they didn't expect that they had a large number of boxes of liquor piled up in their yard that day, and the boxes somehow caught fire. The large amount of high-proof liquor then became flammable and quickly set the entire house ablaze.

The family of four was sleeping on the third floor when the fire spread so rapidly that they were trapped upstairs and unable to escape. Their cries for help could be heard from a great distance… but the fire was so intense that no one dared to try to rescue them. They could only call the fire department, but our alley was too narrow for the fire trucks to get in, so the effort was delayed. By the time the wall was demolished and the fire trucks were brought in, it was too late. When they were later discovered, the entire family was dead, suffocated by the thick smoke from the raging fire—a truly tragic scene…

The police came, but everything was burned to the ground. The victim had no relatives and was essentially childless. The case was hastily closed as an accidental fire, and the matter was dropped. Neighbors pooled their money to bury the family of four. Of course, privately everyone speculated about who had thrown the firecrackers, but such things were discussed behind their backs; it was a taboo subject among the neighbors.

The house, its exterior walls blackened by fire and even its door burned through, lay abandoned and uninhabited.

Chapter Eighty: Mystery of the Abandoned House

For my family, the biggest problem is that there's an abandoned house next door. It feels really unlucky, and it'll be difficult to sell our house in the future. My wife keeps complaining about this...

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A strange thing happened! The night before last, around 9:30 PM, my wife and kids went out to visit relatives while I was at home playing on my phone. I clearly heard rock music coming from next door again, just like many nights a month ago. I almost thought that family had come back! I opened the window and looked out, and you know what I saw?!

I saw lights on in the house next door! I swear! By the moonlight, I could clearly see that the lights were on on the second and third floors of that house!

Besides, the house that was burned black seemed to have returned to its pre-fire state. The yellow exterior walls were clean, and apart from some ivy, the parts that were blackened and damaged by the fire had been restored!

I was stunned for a long time. I even thought that, without my knowledge, new residents had moved in and renovated the house!

The next morning at breakfast, I even told my wife about it. My wife said I must have been mistaken, because she didn't hear any music when she came home last night.

Then I opened the window and pulled her to look, and guess what I saw?! It was still an abandoned house, with its exterior walls blackened by fire!!!

I was completely stunned! I told my wife that I really saw it last night... My wife said I was hallucinating, and that I've been under too much stress lately, and she wanted to help me make an appointment with a doctor!

She thinks I'm mentally ill, you know that?!

But I am truly mentally sound!!!

Am I being haunted?! Is there any master who can help me interpret this phenomenon?!

The first post ended there. Zhang Jing saw a bunch of replies, but almost no one took the original post seriously. The subsequent replies were mostly things like:

"Good story, bumping this up, to be continued."

"Update soon! I'm looking forward to reading the rest; it's quite well written."

"Mental illness doesn't even make people realize they're mentally ill, just like drunk people always say they're not drunk..."

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It seems the original poster was angered, as a series of photos were posted on the third page. The photos showed a three-story detached Western-style house with its exterior blackened by smoke. The windows were all missing panes, and through some of the windows, one could see a dark interior. The photos were likely taken from an upper floor of another building not far away. A wall was clearly visible surrounding that building, with a large iron gate on one side. The yard was overgrown with weeds and appeared quite dilapidated.

The moment Zhang Jing saw the building, his eyes narrowed slightly. He instinctively felt a sense of unease. This feeling was not unfamiliar to him. The last time he felt this way was during the cat demon murder incident, when he had a similar feeling about the house with the cat demon.

A golden glint flashed in his eyes, and Zhang Jing, activating his secret technique, stared at the photo on his phone again. At this moment, he could see a black mist, like smoke and fog, lingering around the house.

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Below the photo is the poster's comment: I reiterate, this is real! I'm not making this up! If you have friends in Kuaizhou City, Central China, you might remember this fire, as it was widely reported by the media at the time because four people died!

Perhaps intrigued by the poster's reaction, some netizens actually searched for it online, and soon after, some netizens posted screenshots of the report in subsequent posts.

"Pictures don't lie! I found the haunted house the poster mentioned, and it really exists!"

However, overall, skepticism still prevailed, as seen in the following comments:

"Are the schemes this sophisticated now? But it's not good to profit from human suffering, is it? People are dead and they're still being used to make up stories, that's not right..."

"The original poster is profiting from tragedy and trying to grab attention, but that's not how you do it..."

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However, this also led to a significant increase in replies, indicating that many netizens had indeed started paying attention to the post. However, most still treated it as a topic for hype, and the few who took it seriously mostly offered suggestions such as chanting scriptures, practicing religion, garlic, or black dog blood…

Zhang Jing flipped through the pages one by one, and on page 7 he saw the same poster again, this time shorter:

November 27, 2015 (the 11th year of the Chenghe era)

Last night, I heard music again, very loudly. I opened the window and saw the light on in the next room again! I quickly woke my wife to come and see. However, when my wife came to the window, we saw that the next room was completely dark, as if what I had just seen was all a hallucination.

What's even stranger is that my wife said she didn't hear any music at all. She said I must be hallucinating or experiencing some kind of supernatural phenomenon. She suggested I go to a temple to pray, and if that doesn't work, I should see a doctor.

Do I really have a mental illness?

This morning I made a point of carefully observing the abandoned house next door, and I don't know if it was just my imagination, but I felt a bit chilly when I got close to it. However, apart from that, I didn't find anything particularly special.

I feel I really need to go to the temple to pray, so I took the day off this afternoon to go there...

November 28, 2015 (the 11th year of the Chenghe era)

Yesterday I went to the temple and paid my respects to every pagoda statue. I also spent 300 yuan to get a talisman.

I also tried the methods that many friends suggested: pasting door gods on the door, hanging peach wood charms, and garlic.

I even went to the entrance of that abandoned house and splashed a bowl of rooster blood, which I bought from a chicken-killing stall at the market.

But it didn't work!!! It didn't work at all! Last night, I heard music coming from next door again. Could it be that I've really gone mentally ill?

I don't believe it, this is impossible, I'm mentally sound!

To those in the post who said I was profiting from tragedy, I'll prove them wrong today. If I hear music again tonight, I'll go in and check! Whether it's ghosts or not, I'll take a picture of it with my phone!

Zhang Jing noticed that the comments following this post were generally those of onlookers and those praising it, such as:

"OP is awesome!" "OP is amazing!" "Let's all watch, grab a chair and wait for OP to upload photos..."

There were many similar replies, and of course, there were also some dissuading voices. Some netizens suggested that the poster call the police, while others suggested that the poster find local religious figures to help deal with the situation.

However, after that, until Zhang Jing scrolled to the last post, he did not see the poster post any new replies.

The post's popularity continued to rise, and the title was now tagged as "hot," with many netizens discussing whether the poster had actually been trapped in a haunted house. Of course, Zhang Jing could tell that, overall, most netizens didn't believe it and were commenting with a lighthearted, spectator-like attitude.

However, Zhang Jing's expression was serious, and he had no thoughts of joy in his heart. If he was not mistaken, the host was probably already in grave danger.

Zhang Jing silently added the post to his favorites, intending to keep an eye on how things would develop.

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Zhang Jing stayed in the teahouse until around 17:00 PM before leaving. He ate dinner at the same barbecue restaurant as at noon, enjoying their whole roasted lamb so much that he ordered another one. After dinner, Zhang Jing strolled to the train station, picked up his ticket from the machine, and after a short wait, boarded the train back to Luntai Station.

Zhang Jing spent the night on the train and arrived at Luntai Station at 11:03 the next day. Because the network signal on the train was poor, with only a few areas receiving intermittent network signals, Zhang Jing mainly read books and newspapers on the train. For this reason, he also brought a newly bought copy of "Faith and Glory - Three Thousand Years of the Western Continent".

He found this book online; it's said to be an important book for understanding the West. The original author is Guy Schoffier, a famous historian from the Republic of Grande. The copy Zhang Jing has is a translation.

In Zhang Jing's view, this world, which shares many similarities with his previous life, including the Age of Exploration, geographical discoveries, and the eastward spread of Western learning, truly requires him to gain a deeper understanding of the West, especially while he is still refining his plans...

After getting off the train, Zhang Jing found a quiet corner in the station, turned on his phone, and found that the network signal at the train station was quite good. He quickly connected to the internet and then started checking the post on the Zi Buyu forum. Sure enough, the poster had not reappeared so far. Instead, there were more and more comments below, with some netizens even calling on netizens in Kuaizhou to check whether the poster was really in danger or if it was just a publicity stunt.

At the end of the post, what brought a new climax was a netizen who claimed to be a streamer on the Cool Donkey live streaming platform. This netizen, whose ID was "Master Hua," claimed to be a local and that he would be visiting the haunted house that night, hoping that netizens would watch his live stream.

Zhang Jing wasn't very familiar with live streaming platforms in this world. After searching online, he discovered that "Kulv Live" was a relatively new platform that had emerged in the last two years. It mainly featured live streamers who were into travel, adventure, wilderness, or exotic topics, making it a popular live streaming platform in a niche area.

After careful consideration, Zhang Jing decided to go and take a look. On the one hand, it would give him some experience in dealing with such events; on the other hand, he should be able to collect some wish points along the way.

Kuaizhou City is located in Zhongzhou Province, which is in the central part of Dazhao. Although Kuaizhou is not the provincial capital, as a populous province, it still has an airport with direct air routes. Its flight route is located in the middle of the route from Luntai to Linzhou. Therefore, there is no need to take a detour to Kuaizhou City in terms of flight routes. It just requires more money to buy air tickets. However, given Zhang Jing's current net worth, this amount of money is not much.

So Zhang Jing booked the next available flight to Kuaizhou City using his mobile phone, and then took a car directly to Luntai City Airport...