My Human Identity Was Exposed by an Evil Spirit Wife

Jiang Che looked at the two-meter-high wall, then glanced at his own tall frame.

Ding Ning, straddling the wall, was waving frantically at him, signaling him to hurry up. He glanced at the surroundings. On the wall on the school’s side, there was a string of black footprints, some large, some small, which showed that sneaking into school from here happened quite often.

"Hurry up already!" Ding Ning was still urging him from above, but Jiang Che didn’t move.

He was just wondering, is all of this really real?

Lowering his head to think back, he could even remember everything now: for example, his parents ran a bun shop, and he lived upstairs from the shop. Ding Ning had been his childhood neighbor. After her parents passed away, she had been working part-time to pay her way through school, and Jiang Che’s parents would invite her over for meals and have her tutor him with his homework.

It was also with Ding Ning’s help that he got into Nancheng First Middle School.

Compared to another set of memories, those memories seemed blurry instead.

A life repeating day after day from childhood to now: taking medicine, getting checked, spending time with a group of mentally unstable people, never leaving the doors of Red Pearl Mental Hospital.

Eating on time, sleeping on time.

Days repeating endlessly, with no sense of how much time had passed—he only remembered that the clothes he wore were always short, ill-fitting shirts, ones that other patients had worn before him.

But now, he was wearing clean, well-fitting clothes, standing at the base of the wall.

In that other memory, he’d never gone to school, didn’t even know what a school looked like.

Now, he stood beneath a wall, looking at the black marks from shoes on the top—this was his way into the school.

"I’m not waiting for you anymore, just stand there if you want. Who knows what illness you’re having today!" Ding Ning, seeing his lack of movement, rolled her eyes at him and then jumped down out of sight inside the wall.

There were two voices in Jiang Che’s head: one kept telling him that this was a trial, and that once the trial was over, he would have to wake up.

The other voice kept insisting that what he was experiencing now was reality, and what he’d had before was just a long dream—now the dream was over and it was time to return to reality, to attend school and fall in love.

The earlier memories were fake? Only now was it real?

Jiang Che stood at the corner by the wall, unmoving.

He looked at the black footprints on the wall. If those days in Red Pearl Mental Hospital were real, how come these black footprints felt so familiar? He could even picture the layout of the school in his mind, even knew how to get to his own classroom and seat if he climbed over the wall.

In the Red Pearl Mental Hospital memories, he had never attended school, only learned some things from watching the TV set up in the lobby of the hospital.

Compared to that, the days in Red Pearl Mental Hospital now seemed fake, because who spends their whole life never stepping outside a tiny hospital?

Now, he had memories of his family, and of school, and even information about his classmates. All of this seemed much more like reality.

Jiang Che did not move. He stayed standing by the wall.

Hua had once talked about key points to pay attention to in illusions: for example, there would be many inconsistencies with reality, and the illusion never changed based on the actions of characters, because illusions were set by someone else—abnormal behavior was the hallmark of breaking the illusion.

The illusion would keep leading the people inside by the nose, making them follow the route it set out.

If he didn’t follow the path, then the entire plot in the illusion would stagnate.

That was the key to breaking the illusion after all.

Jiang Che didn’t want to believe that all this was fake, because everything about it was just too wonderful.

Even though Ding Ning kept talking about being late, he didn’t see lateness as a big deal.

If he stayed still here, maybe the illusion would just disappear.

Jiang Che reluctantly looked at the black footprints on the wall; in the other memories, he knew nothing at all about school.

But in these memories, he knew that late students always sneaked into the school this way.

"Hey, student over there! What are you doing here?" A shout came from behind. Jiang Che turned to see a security guard charging at him with a stick.

A trace of confusion flickered in Jiang Che’s eyes. Was the illusion still going?

...

"How long do you think it’ll take him to wake up?" Hua stood next to Ding Ning, looking at the crystal ball in front of them. The ball projected a scene: Jiang Che had been dragged to the academic office, still unmoving, but his eyes looked even more confused now.

"No idea." Ding Ning shook her head.

She was also watching the scene in front of her intently. This was the first time she had seen something like this.

So this is a human school?

"I selected this one carefully. His life isn’t perfect, but I think it’s pretty good." Hua was holding a small flower, and at the base of the stem, there was a human brain.

Ever since humans entered the evil spirit dungeon, she’d been learning everything about them. As she was adept at Illusion Techniques, her way of learning was to extract their brains and root them at the base, absorbing the entirety of their lives.

After understanding, she just felt that humans were exceedingly ordinary; most humans followed the same script: go to school, work, get married, have kids...

The pattern was so consistent it felt like every human was carved out of a template.

At most, one or two rose above the rest, making it to a place of respect among the crowd.

This wasn’t simply an illusion, but Hana had given Jiang Che a copy of someone else’s life, with only the main character switched to him, and his childhood friend turned into Ding Ning.

"This life didn’t get into any particularly good college. The wife died not long after giving birth to a child. He just worked as an ordinary company employee, but I thought this person’s life suited him," Hua explained briefly what she remembered.

She’d forgotten most of the details, only remembering a vague general path.

Because of this, she felt people were too ordinary.

Everyone followed the same trajectory.

Hardly any difference.

"This one is pretty nice." Ding Ning cupped her chin in her hands, watching the girl who had become her jump into the school without hesitation and stealthily sneak into the classroom.

But Jiang Che was still at the bottom of the wall, and had been taken to the academic office by the security guard.

"If this was just an illusion, you couldn’t get this kind of split-off plot." Hua looked at Jiang Che, who had been taken to the office. "Lucky for him—this student got to keep a set of memories because he saw someone else do it before."

Sometimes you don’t need to experience certain things yourself to understand them.

"Teacher, the problem lies with this kid. His mental state has been off these past two years. He keeps talking about evil spirits and strange, supernatural things."

"Sorry to trouble you with all this." Jiang Che looked at his mother, who was bent over, apologizing to the school administrators.

"Take him to see a psychiatrist. The college entrance exam is coming soon, and he can’t go on like this," the dean sighed, clearly already aware of Jiang Che’s situation.

Jiang Che was stunned. His mom actually knew about these things? She knew about his other set of memories?