The Celestial Observatory: Reborn as the Changing Line

Five people returned from the Republic of China era, but only one was reborn! One of them has two people hidden inside their body: one in the open, one in the shadows; one wants to live, one is waiting.

Lu Zhiwei opened his eyes inside the Suolong Well, his mind full of memories from the Republic of China era. He went down the mountain to attend university and found a feng shui shop called Guantian Studio behind the campus. Its owner was an old man who brewed Pu’er tea that nobody ever drank. Lu Zhiwei thought this was some strange twist of fate, but the old man looked at him as if he’d been waiting a long time. Gradually, Lu Zhiwei realized something was wrong. Qin Xue always happened to pass by whenever he was in danger. Wang Pangzi kept dreaming of chains by the Yangtze River. Whenever Shen Linyuan, the architecture student, stood beneath the banyan tree, his thumb would automatically return to the upright position of Liu Lian. None of them said a word, but every one of them was connected to the Republic of China era.

Even stranger, Lu Zhiwei discovered another consciousness inside him. It knew Qin Xue, Wang Pangzi, Shen Linyuan, and everyone else. But it refused to reveal itself, only giving him a gentle nudge whenever he had to make a choice. Lu Zhiwei didn’t know who “he” was, and “he” didn’t know what Lu Zhiwei was thinking. Two consciousnesses shared one body, yet they had never spoken face-to-face.

This novel’s feng shui system centers on Feng’s Small Six Ren divination, with intricate deductions linking campus hauntings to the dragon veins of Lingnan, the knocking sounds from a wall of bones to a dragon-locking formation in the Yangtze River. Feng Qingya believed himself to be the one moving the pieces, unaware that the board had long since been placed in a much larger game by another hand. That hand had laid its pieces before he’d even waited seventy years, and among the five of them was a move even he had failed to see.