Chapter 74

The cage snapped shut far faster than anyone anticipated. Qin Yu clawed at it with both hands, her fingers torn open and drenched in blood from the bars’ piercing sharpness.

“Xue Tong!” With no other choice, she cried out to the others for help. In that instant, the yellow silk beside Xue Tong thrust into the cage. Ignoring all else, it seized Xun Ruosu and yanked her backward. Moments earlier, Xun Ruosu had exuded the poise of an immortal sage, but now she was trussed up like a meticulously wrapped rice dumpling.

Xun Ruosu: “…”

The cage mended itself with terrifying speed. Even with Xue Tong’s advance preparations, Xun Ruosu’s old waist still slammed into it hard enough to jolt her heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys all out of alignment. Yet she found the spare capacity to muse, “At least there was no ‘crack’—my spine’s still intact, barely.”

Xue Tong yanked with tremendous force and couldn’t rein it in, sending Xun Ruosu hurtling straight onto her. Fortunately, Xue Tong sat at the head of the bed, her back braced against the wall; otherwise, the pair would have tumbled head over heels several times. Forget immortal poise—the resulting awkward spectacle might have driven Xue Tong to claw out everyone’s eyes on the spot.

The cage had failed to ensnare its primary target. Over its thousands of years of existence, it had never suffered such a blunder, leaving it dazed and hollow in an instant.

Qin Yu had bought Xun Ruosu precious time, but at the cost of her fingers being impaled by the bars, her blood seeping in to temporarily soothe the four prisons hunting for their master. She knew, however, that this was only a fleeting reprieve. Unless she bled nonstop, day and night without pause, the cage would seize any lapse and lunge for Xun Ruosu again.

“Xue Tong, keep an eye on Xiao Ran. I’ll head next door to find Zhong Buman!” Though Xun Ruosu had escaped the cage itself, the fierce ghost’s punishment came in two forms. Inside lay mountains of corpses and seas of blood, thronged with the ravenous grudges of the dead eager for flesh. The victim, meanwhile, bore invisible shackles: chains concealed in the light but lurking in shadow, gnashing and clawing as they cinched around limbs, neck, and weary waist. Even the tiniest shift was excruciating.

Xun Ruosu shuffled toward the door. Those few short meters felt like the trek of someone midway through a stroke, half-paralyzed and riddled with osteoporosis. Had the doorknob been any farther, she might have crawled the rest of the way… Then came sounds from outside. Zhong Buman’s voice filtered through the wooden door, muffled and indistinct.

“What did you do to it?”

Huang Xiaoran served as Zhong Buman’s vessel for all his sins, the half-body he planned to discard. The slightest alteration drew his notice. Emboldened by the dam that shielded his life, he rampaged unchecked—ripe for scolding but untouchable. Jiang Changting proved utterly irresponsible, letting Zhong Buman slip his bonds and hop right up to the door.

Plans never survived contact with reality. Xun Ruosu’s task was critical, but her body refused to cooperate. She inched forward like a tortoise for two steps when the target delivered himself. Without a second thought, she flung open the door, leaped up, and slapped Zhong Buman across the face. The motion flowed like water, swift as a thief’s bell-snatch. Even Zhong Buman, who’d stormed over demanding answers, froze in shock.

He soon realized the slap had adhered a yellow talisman to him, inscribed in blood with handwriting so grotesquely hideous it was otherworldly. In a flash, one glimpse alone ravaged Zhong Buman body and soul.

He retreated at once beneath the eaves, putting distance between himself and Xun Ruosu as he reached to pry the talisman from his brow. But the moment it brushed his mask, it dissolved inward, seeping into his very skin texture. Zhong Buman pawed at his face for a long moment before grinding out through clenched teeth, “Xun Ruosu!”

“Hm?” Xun Ruosu half-leaned against the doorframe. Her body was crushed and aching under the chains’ merciless grip, yet her expression remained serene, her tone mild as everyday chatter.

“The talisman I just planted on your brow draws power from your bloodline… Binding Zhong Li and Xiao Ran would’ve produced a similar result, but Zhong Li is merely a puppet you crafted. There’s a link, true, but it falls short of full potency.” The chains at Xun Ruosu’s feet stirred restlessly. They’d caught the scent of blood on Zhong Buman and recognized their true master.

“This talisman is called the Source-Tracing Talisman, a creation of my ancestor,” Xun Ruosu murmured. “Legend holds it carries quite the history. My ancestor poured his life’s energies into forging it to bind a traitor of the Xun Family.”

“They say the great clans began as masters of divination, aiding the Tenth Hall from behind the lines rather than charging into the fray themselves. Lacking the Xun Family’s gifts, most veered onto other paths, taking up demon-slaying and exorcism firsthand. Even that ancestor’s prowess in divination couldn’t surpass mine as a latter-day Xun… Which is why divining your whereabouts last time jogged a certain memory.”

His face lay shrouded beneath the mask, expression inscrutable, but Zhong Buman’s hand slowly fell from it. He lifted his gaze to fix on Xun Ruosu. For a moment, the courtyard offered only the soft patter of rain on sodden grass.

Xue Tong pressed Huang Xiaoran deep into the bedding, leaving just her eyes peeking out. The little girl had become a soul of pure innocence, her every karmic obstacle dissolved—including childish scraps with the neighbor’s kids before age eight, all that even-matched scratching and clawing. This purity heightened her sensitivity to the moods around her.

Take now: Through the thin blanket, she dimly sensed Xue Tong’s displeasure. The dormitory light fractured into countless beams by the intervening golden cage, shadows dappling Xue Tong’s profile as she cradled half her chin in thought.

Abruptly, Xue Tong whipped her head around. Her eyes skipped past Huang Xiaoran to land on Qin Yu. “You’re one and the same with Xun Ruosu right now. Can you tell me what’s going through her head?”

Qin Yu remained a flesh-and-blood mortal; restored memories did nothing to lift the weight of her small frame. Chubby hands belonging to an eight-year-old fumbled as she disinfected and bandaged them with the dregs of medicine from her cloth pouch. Xue Tong tsked in distaste once she’d asked. “Get over here. I’ll handle it.”

Qin Yu dragged her cumbersome bundle over to Xue Tong’s side.

“I haven’t a clue what she’s thinking,” said Qin Yu. She stood while Xue Tong knelt to wind fresh gauze around her hands. A mature contentment lit Qin Yu’s babyish face as she sighed, “You’ve finally grown up, huh.”

“…” Xue Tong glanced up into the radiant maternal glow of this seven- or eight-year-old and nearly retched at the corniness. She snatched half the thin blanket shrouding Huang Xiaoran and flung it over Qin Yu’s face. “Keep that on whenever you talk to me from now on.”

Qin Yu left it in place. Muffled from beneath came her voice: “We’ve split completely now. No more interference between us. She’s not me; I’m not her. We’re stuck together only because you released the Buddhist Seal. Without me, she’d die. Without her, I can’t become whole.”

A beat later, Qin Yu’s voice droned on, stuffy under the blanket. “Xue Tong, you’ve nursed this nasty habit forever—not voicing your dislikes outright, but shying from anything you actually like, never probing or reaching out. Just waiting for the other side to bridge the gap… Love doesn’t conjure bridges from nothing. It takes two. If you’re truly curious about her thoughts, ask her straight out.”

Qin Yu matched Huang Xiaoran in size—perhaps even a smidge shorter—but her perspective belonged to a rambling centenarian. Huang Xiaoran burrowed her eyes into the blanket, desperate to shrink her presence.

No sooner had the childish lecture ended than Xun Ruosu returned from outside. She lingered under the eaves, dry as a bone, while Zhong Buman dripped thoroughly soaked.

Hidden chains prowled the darkness, one end knotted around Xun Ruosu, the other inching toward Zhong Buman. It wouldn’t be long before her sins washed clean—wrongs claimed their source, debts their debtor. Zhong Buman’s ploy of substituting another soul for his own flew in heaven’s face; returning the karmic due flowed as naturally and effortlessly as water downhill.

Upon entering, Xun Ruosu’s eyes fell first on the blanket-shrouded Qin Yu, hands poking out, then on Huang Xiaoran, brimming with curiosity about her surroundings. Xun Ruosu shook her head in fond exasperation. “What did you two discuss while I was gone? Xiao Ran’s just eight. Don’t go corrupting her.”

Xue Tong jutted her lower lip. “Relax—even if I felt like saying something risqué, Qin Yu would shut me down… You two stubborn blockheads with your bleeding hearts of Bodhisattva.”

“She’s mad,” piped Huang Xiaoran, playing peekaboo with her blanket. Spotting Xun Ruosu’s return, she popped her eyes out again and jabbed a finger at Xue Tong. “Sis thinks you’re keeping secrets from her.”

The eight-year-old proved shrewd, adept at summing up, sniffing out danger. She’d no sooner spoken than she yelped “Ah!” and vanished under the covers. Xue Tong didn’t even have time to shoot her a glare.

“…” Xun Ruosu sighed deeply and settled beside Xue Tong. “What do you want to know? Ask away. I’ll hold nothing back.”

Xue Tong fell silent. Qin Yu twisted her bandaged hand in Xue Tong’s palm, pinching the soft pad beneath her thumb—an unmistakable prod to speak up.

The Bodhisattva hadn’t yet sloughed off mortal flesh, her heart still skewed to the left like anyone else’s. Xue Tong at last tasted a dose of her teacher’s “affection.” After mulling it over, she ventured, “You share blood with Zhong Buman?”

“That’s all you want to know?” Xun Ruosu laced the words with veiled disappointment, though she still offered a faint smile. “I spent my childhood holed up in the study, pawing through the ancestors’ relics every few days… The Xun Family’s current genealogy got revised later on. There was an older version before—frayed at the spine, yellowed with age, perched on the top shelf and wrapped in oiled paper against the air.”

“It only clicked when Zhong Wei mentioned his ancestor striking a name from the rolls. That ancient Xun genealogy had one blacked out too, painted over in pitch.”

“The Xun Family never lacked for connections back then. Ancestress Xun Jian spawned four branches beneath her. One got erased outright. The other two snuffed out in kin-on-kin butchery before they hit twenty, not even graves dug for their ashes. Ours was the sole survivor—the last branch.”

Xue Tong connected the dots swiftly. “Zhong Buman’s the one who got erased?”