Chapter 18

The mirror surface was smooth and spotless. A face split down the middle from its center, but Xun Ruosu showed no fear. She pressed her fingertip against the glass, and white frost spread outward from that point, slowly forming the number “four.”

Xun Ruosu asked, “Are you a living soul?”

When people lost their souls while still alive, these wandering, fragmented remnants became living souls.

Those who lost their souls were either addled fools or comatose. There was also a chance they might turn into lunatics with fractured personalities, though that was less likely.

The person in the mirror sighed. “It’s all karmic retribution… That day, I went to press rapeseed oil. My bicycle skidded out of control on the road, and I fell into an irrigation ditch. I’d only cursed this girl half a day earlier, but a wisp of my living soul followed the curse’s path and latched onto her.”

If it attached to a living person, a soul-summoning ritual might have called it back. But Chen Huaiyue had thrown herself down the well that very night.

“But I didn’t curse her to die at the time,” the Mirror Image said, sounding aggrieved. “Her man wept and begged me for help, saying his wife—who was pregnant—had run off with another man. He didn’t care about anything else; he just wanted his wife and child back. I took pity on him and accepted the job.”

The more she spoke, the guiltier she felt.

In her era, people simply went along with the crowd. Matters of life and death paled beside family honor. Running off with someone else was an unforgivable crime, worthy of being pilloried and spat upon.

Chen Huaiyue, who had been sitting motionless at the dressing table, suddenly stirred at some word or another. She began clawing frantically at the wood with her nails, producing a shrill scraping sound.

Her emotions had always been unstable in life, and death had only intensified them. Moments ago, she had been staring blankly in silence, but now she was in a frenzy, as if desperate to smash the dressing table to pieces.

Xun Ruosu didn’t stop her. Instead, she suggested, “The dressing table’s made of pear wood—valuable and sturdy. You won’t pry it apart with your hands. I suggest grabbing a stool and smashing it.”

“…” Chen Huaiyue, her face unnaturally pallid, stared at Xun Ruosu.

When someone actually went along with her impulse, Chen Huaiyue fell quiet again. All her frenzy suddenly seemed pointless.

“The temple is full of monks. Even if they needed to look in a mirror, they wouldn’t specially craft a dressing table like this. Your brother gave it to you, didn’t he?” Xun Ruosu shivered slightly as she spoke softly.

This trip would leave her with a cold for sure. She only hoped that exorcising these souls would earn her enough merits to keep it from being too severe.

Love’s knots were hard to untie, yet untie them she must. She couldn’t let Chen Huaiyue remain trapped in this courtyard forever. In her current state, the courtyard wouldn’t hold her much longer anyway… If Chen Huaiyue ever got out, she would surely become a malicious ghost.

Yet amid the tragic tales of this era’s turbulent times, Xun Ruosu couldn’t attribute genuine love to Chen Huaiyue’s husband. For her to let go of her hatred after death and retain any sanity was odd enough. It was as if some deeper, closer bond overshadowed the piercing agony of that hatred.

The dressing table had been custom-made, with thoughtful details—even accommodating Chen Huaiyue’s lame leg. Earlier, when Xun Ruosu had touched the mirror frame, she had found an inscription: “To my beloved sister Huaiyue.”

Familial love was a kind of love too. The former Abbot had clearly cherished his sister dearly.

Monks were said to enter the temple to sever worldly ties, but this sister had been a lifelong regret. Over the years, who knew how much suffering she had endured? A monk’s heart was ever compassionate. Even if she weren’t blood kin today, The Abbot would have sought to ferry her soul across regardless.

Chen Huaiyue had been a ghost for far too long. Some memories had worn away entirely. Even Zhang Yue, who had wandered for just three days, had lost his wits under stimulation. Ghosts differed from the living. A healthy human mind could forge memories throughout life, barring grave injury or illness. Ghosts were the opposite: unless etched deepest in the heart—unforgettable love or hatred—people and things faded into vague shadows over time.

In the end, even without entering reincarnation, they forgot who they were and why they lingered.

After more than thirty years, did Chen Huaiyue still remember what had sparked this bond?

Xun Ruosu sighed.

The human mind was sometimes like a cursed net, ensnaring all emotions and desires—unable to attain or release. Everyone caught in it was pitiable.

A butterfly fluttered its wings and landed on Xun Ruosu’s shoulder. They didn’t grasp profound truths, but they mirrored their master’s mood, their antennae drooping listlessly.

There was movement outside the room—likely Xue Tong clashing with the Infant Spirit. Infant Spirits were among the hardest entities to deal with. Not yet born, they belonged neither to the living nor the dead—like a soul stuck midway through reincarnation’s door, twisting into perversion from the impasse.

Through the door, both verbal and physical battles raged. Suddenly, a shadow fell across the windowsill. Xue Tong’s voice carried a hint of amusement. “The latecomer takes the lead. I’ll exorcise the Infant Spirit while you handle this ancient ghost. Looks like I’ll finish first.”

No sooner had she spoken than a scrawny, withered hand smashed through the glass window. The hand was tiny, little more than desiccated skin over bone, dark brown—like a tree branch rather than flesh.

Chen Huaiyue recoiled in terror at the sight.

She hugged her knees and shrank onto the chair, her gaze vacant. The Mirror Image, fused into Chen Huaiyue’s body as a living soul, shifted with her emotions, her expression growing sinister.

The mirror had once reflected the surroundings. Xun Ruosu had turned on the light upon entering, revealing the mottled white wall behind Chen Huaiyue, streaked with yellow-tinged mold from the damp warmth. But now everything in the mirror vanished. Chen Huaiyue’s face remained, yet it slowly receded from the surface. Darkness closed in around it. The face fixed on Xun Ruosu and asked abruptly, “Do you know where my child is?”

“If I haven’t guessed wrong, he’s buried under the locust tree,” Xun Ruosu reminded her. “Don’t you remember?”

Chen Huaiyue stared blankly. “I don’t remember… I don’t remember…”

As her words trailed off, a gust stirred the air behind Xun Ruosu’s head. A strange sandalwood scent swept in. Two of the flapping butterflies seemed struck by something and dissolved before her eyes.

Xun Ruosu disliked fighting, but she wasn’t helpless. As the sandalwood-scented demonic wind rushed at her, she spun and seized an object—

It was a wooden child carving, half a meter tall from head to toe. The craftsmanship was crude, its eyes marked with two “X”s, its mouth a single knife slash.

The wooden child wore clothes, crudely hand-stitched. It resembled a shoddy toy overall, yet this sizable block of sandalwood carried a potent aged fragrance—not some cheap trinket.

Books spoke of it: for a child who died young, draw the soul into sandalwood and nurture it daily, and the child could live again. But resurrecting the dead was demonic sorcery, forever doomed to failure.

Xun Ruosu had sensed something amiss with the courtyard’s geomantic layout the moment she entered—beyond the maze confining the ghost, there was that massive locust tree.

Soaring Firmament Temple featured mostly pines, cypresses, and bamboo groves. The only flourish was a handful of plum trees, less than five years old, near the rear mountain gate. In such a stark setting, a lone locust tree stood out.

The tree was unnaturally lush. Stranger still, the courtyard’s feng shui was poor—overly rigid and square, with no leeway; every corner chopped flat like surplus cut away. At its center, the well had a reputation as a “wealth-gatherer.”

Water symbolized wealth. Fine for a common household, but this was a temple. Hoarding riches corrupted a monk’s pure heart.

In such flawed feng shui, planting the locust tree had turned it into a “treasure grave”—ideal for the honored dead.

From the start, Xun Ruosu had known a body lay buried under the locust tree. Chen Huaiyue had drowned in the well, and later the well had been sealed with a stone table, so the tree concealed something else.

A treasure grave satisfied the buried soul, smoothing the reincarnation wheel path without hitches—unlikely to rise as a zombie. Yet Chen Huaiyue, dying so close as its mother, had continued nourishing the Infant Spirit postmortem through water nurturing wood.

Had the child lived, it would have been a full-term “coffin birth.” But the Infant Spirit had died first, absorbing the mother’s vital blood. Even without striking a blow, it had killed!

It was a heaven-nurtured malicious ghost!

Xun Ruosu felt no fear. She lacked a full measure of compassion. Since her mother’s passing after her own adulthood, the vast world had opened her heart. Few ghosts lingered in the mortal realm from pure-hearted kindness, leaving regrets behind. The ruthless died cleanly, unburdened by life’s review, departing freely.

Thus, pity filled Xun Ruosu’s eyes for all things.

A bell tolled mournfully from the distant mountains, cold and desolate, proclaiming, “The first watch ends—bar the doors, seal the homes; let human and ghost realms part untouched.”

All this commotion—from Chen Huaiyue crawling from the well, to the mirror-gazing, to facing the malicious ghost—had lasted just two hours.

Xun Ruosu pinched the wooden doll’s wrist between two fingers. A golden Buddha Seal gleamed like a copper bracelet, twin interlocking rings clamped around the doll’s wrists. Its joints were distinct; head and limbs could move. Restrained, the doll’s head lolled sideways. The “X”-shaped eyes betrayed no emotion, yet conveyed an eerie childlike innocence.

Silk threads bound the doll’s back, looped twice around its joints. When the threads moved, so did it—a mere puppet doll, manipulated by another.

Golden-red butterflies swarmed the threads, eroding the bindings for their mistress. They were no match for the puppet doll or its hidden master. The silk vibrated, shattering butterflies into airborne ash. Yet they pressed on relentlessly, these fragile lives refusing retreat.

“Xue Tong,” Xun Ruosu called softly, knowing the one outside could hear. “Though the Infant Spirit lacks a malicious ghost’s grim visage—no blood-scent in the air—his core may be no different. Be cautious.”

The door creaked and rattled in a gust. Xue Tong laughed. “No grim visage?”

The Infant Spirit had gestated six or seven months in the womb, fully formed. A child that size would have been stillborn or premature, dying at birth.

It had a humanoid shape, but undeveloped features—only the nose somewhat defined; eyes and mouth mere sticky slits. Its skin was withered like bark, parched despite burial by the well, shriveled like a wind-dried duck.