Chapter 23 Part 2

“The erased memories need a vessel to contain them, and the one doing the erasing becomes that vessel… These memories are far too vivid. Handle them wrong, and you could lose yourself entirely—end up a raving lunatic. That said, they can be overwritten and absorbed. Three days later, you’d be free of it.”

Xue Tong trailed off midway, catching something off in Xun Ruosu’s tone. She eyed her suspiciously. “Are you planning to do it yourself?”

She hadn’t known Xun Ruosu long, but the woman never took an extra step if she could slack off. This sudden change in character? Xue Tong’s own petty suspicions kicked in. “Something’s fishy.”

“Dealing with this sort of thing will probably become my responsibility down the line anyway, right?” Xun Ruosu noticed Xue Tong’s arched brow and probing stare—she knew the woman was getting ideas—so she pressed on. “I don’t like inviting trouble, but when it’s unavoidable, getting a head start on familiarizing myself with the job saves a heap of hassle later.”

They weren’t close enough yet for her to stop at the first explanation, but Xue Tong’s distrustful glance earlier had stung. For some inexplicable reason, Xun Ruosu felt compelled to make herself clear.

“Xue Tong,” Xun Ruosu said, frowning as she fixed her with a stare. “Do you and I really have some kind of history?”

This wasn’t the first time Xun Ruosu had raised the question, but she’d never pressed for an answer before. A distraction or Xue Tong’s deft deflection, and she’d let it drop.

Answers kept evading her, coupled with constant nudges that refused to fade away. Even if Xun Ruosu didn’t mind much, it lingered on her thoughts, impossible to shake. She wasn’t one for badgering people, so she simply stared Xue Tong down, hoping the pressure of her gaze would prick the woman’s conscience into confessing.

Xue Tong waggled two fingers in front of Xun Ruosu’s eyes. The chill breeze they stirred made Xun Ruosu’s eye sockets water, forcing her to squeeze them shut for a moment.

Those eyes of hers were delicate by nature—intolerant of dryness, grit, or wind. Any harsh weather left them aching in protest, and the pain would drag on for ages.

“Apart from that habit of squinting mischievously when you’re teasing someone, you’ve got another bad trick,” Xun Ruosu said. She couldn’t see a thing now, so she groped blindly with her hand. “Whenever I hit on something right that you don’t want to admit, you try to distract me, just like this.”

“Tch.” Xue Tong’s face soured, plain as day.

Of course, the “blind” woman couldn’t see it. Xun Ruosu’s fingers found Xue Tong’s nose and pinched it playfully. “You absolutely have history with me. You just won’t admit it… Xue Tong, I thought something was off the moment you crawled out of that coffin. My ancestor was formidable, sure, but not legendary enough to make malicious ghosts tremble at her name. One word from her, and you meekly submit to me?”

The obsession that had driven someone to forge an unbreakable prison at the cost of their soul was terrifying, no doubt. If it had been anyone else today instead of Xue Tong, Xun Ruosu figured the Sanskrit script alone would have bound her tight. But Xue Tong had endured through endless ages, scattering countless malicious ghosts beneath her hands.

Unless the Heavenly Dao intervened and a malicious ghost became a world-ending calamity struck down by lightning, obliterating a soul across lifetimes invited massive karmic retribution. Xun Ruosu’s own father had nearly been doomed to eternal unrest because of it. Xue Tong shrugged off that kind of backlash—surely breaking free of her ancestor’s cage couldn’t be harder?

Over the past day or so, Xun Ruosu had learned one thing: no one could force Xue Tong to do anything unless she willed it herself.

“You really want to know?” Xue Tong fell silent for a beat. “I’ll tell you after we wrap this up.”

Xun Ruosu hooked out her pinky. “Deal? Pinky promise.”

“Childish,” Xue Tong scoffed.

Even so, she linked her own pinky with Xun Ruosu’s. The other woman’s hand was shockingly cold, as if all the warmth had drained from her body—like touching a block of frozen iron. Xue Tong caught herself chasing after it as Xun Ruosu pulled away, and they only fully separated after a few lingering seconds.

“Ghosts are pros at whipping up cold winds,” Xun Ruosu said. “I’m used to it by now. No big deal.”

Silence settled around them again. Somehow, since that exchange, the invisible walls between them had softened… though not enough for casual arm-slinging camaraderie. They’d transitioned smoothly from wary acquaintances to something like reluctant friends.

Xun Ruosu mulled it over and couldn’t help chuckling to herself. She rarely obsessed over where she stood with people—things just happened naturally. One minute, everyone’s politely exchanging small talk over dinner; the next, they’re swapping contacts and planning the follow-up meal. Yet with Xue Tong, she’d turned pettily cautious, dead set on “playing it cool—no matter how stunning the beauty, no love at first sight.”

Less than two days, and their rollercoaster ride had shattered time itself—every minute crammed with drama just to keep pace with her shifting moods. Back in the graveyard, laying eyes on Xue Tong, Xun Ruosu had admired the universe’s fine taste. That haughty arrogance only made her more endearing. But the gorgeous troublemaker had promptly ruined everything, dragging her out of the coffin against her will.

Had they not clashed right off the bat, Xun Ruosu would’ve been eager to learn more about her. Unfortunately, their meeting lacked any heavenly or earthly fortune, turning strangers into enemies before they could even know each other.

Chen Huaiyue’s obsession had been worn down to total docility by now. It hovered by the well’s edge, pondering why it even bothered sticking around in the world, waiting for these two blockheads to perform the exorcism.

Chen Huaiyue had died young, but she’d already weathered two great loves. Her marriage had been laced with hatred, resentment, fear, and terror. With Yuan Jie, it was attachment, growth—a glimpse of a wider sky.

Xun Ruosu, knowing her own early death might burden others, had embraced a life of restraint since middle school. Sure, she’d nursed a grade-school crush on the ponytail-sporting class monitor, but that was it. Roadside bricks had more romantic escapades than she did.

Xue Tong? The millennium-old demon flirted freely but never committed. Her heartbroken suitors could fill a league of their own—ghosts, humans, gods, and buddhas crowding a three-hundred-square-meter courtyard—while she sauntered unscathed through the flowerbed.

Compared to that, neither measured up to Chen Huaiyue’s depth.

“I’ll just say it outright,” Chen Huaiyue’s obsession declared. Bolder than the woman herself, it couldn’t wait any longer. “I just want to see Yuan Jie one more time. I have words for him that need saying face-to-face. Only then can I let go.”

It was the obsession itself volunteering the perfect solution—like acing a final exam with the answers handed straight to you.

No need for force now that they had the key. Even Xue Tong rarely saw clients this cooperative; she muttered under her breath, “Why are they all special cases lately?”

First there was Zhang Yue with his double-layered Sumeru, now Chen Huaiyue surrendering without a fight. Top-tier ghosts, one and all—maybe one every few decades.

“Ghosts are notorious liars, or so they say,” Xun Ruosu remarked, toying with the copper coin in her hand as she eyed the suddenly meek “Chen Huaiyue.” “But they’re driven by their truest hearts—a single root of attachment that compels them to cling to the mortal world by any means… Are you truly ready to leave?”

The coin in Xun Ruosu’s palm featured a square hole encircled by eighty-one loops of red thread, the ultimate lie detector. Tied to a wrist, it snapped one loop per falsehood. Exhaust all eighty-one, and a jolt of lightning would strike—a mild shock, more warning than execution.

Xun Ruosu recalled her father getting zapped all the time.

“Chen Huaiyue” knew nothing of these arcane tools, but Xun Ruosu’s solemn expression sent a shiver through it. It wasn’t even a proper wisp of soul anymore—just an offshoot of Chen Huaiyue’s heart. The woman’s iron self-control hampered it greatly. In a real scrap, not even the unfathomable Xue Tong need intervene; Xun Ruosu could pin it down and grind it into the dirt.

“It’s not lying,” Xue Tong said. With a pinch of her fingers, she snatched the coin from Xun Ruosu’s grasp unnoticed and cradled it in her palm. Xun Ruosu’s craftsmanship was impeccable—the threads even, without overlap, a work of art.

Xue Tong suddenly felt the urge to keep it.

She continued, “Chen Huaiyue’s been trapped over thirty years. Her obsession is unusual: she desperately wants release, not to linger and haunt. But love’s a stubborn knot—easy to want untied, impossible to pull loose.”

“You’re quite the expert, huh?” Xun Ruosu shot back swiftly. “Who’d have guessed the capricious Miss Xue was such a romantic at heart.”

“…Do you have to pick at me every single day, or does your mouth just itch without it?!” Xue Tong rolled her eyes.

Xun Ruosu hummed in agreement, utterly shameless. “Mouth itches.”

“…” Fine. Xue Tong had lost that round.

“Chen Huaiyue” gazed hopefully at Xue Tong. Xue Tong’s gritted-teeth glare looked ready to wrench her head around and force a nod, but one sharp glance from Xue Tong rooted it in place. It stood quietly to the side, awaiting the experts’ decision.

“Fine, then—you’ll get your face-to-face with Yuan Jie,” Xue Tong said, her eyes narrowing into a sly smile. “About time that old monk owned up to his responsibilities. He sowed this karma; he doesn’t get to dump it all on me.”

Outside the lamp vessel, in the Abbot’s Quarters, Yuan Jie hadn’t slept a wink. Yan Qing had commandeered his bed. The first half of the night, the young man had grumbled about the ghosts next door keeping him up. By the latter half, he’d gone off to dreamland. Yuan Jie, meanwhile, had spent the night at the table, chanting sutras.

A breeze rustled at the door, tickling his nose into a sneeze. He wondered who was badmouthing him behind his back.

The full story of Chen Huaiyue’s thirty-plus years trapped in the courtyard was now crystal clear. Even if meeting Yuan Jie didn’t resolve it, Xun Ruosu could wipe her memories of “love” clean and forcibly exorcise her.

But the courtyard was vast, teeming with three spectral layers: ghosts, an infant spirit, and a living soul. Clear one, and two remained.

When Xun Ruosu finally emerged from the lamp vessel, she spotted the wooden doll kneeling on the dressing table, eyes crossed into wobbly equals signs like it was keeping vigil.

This was only Xun Ruosu’s second time entering the Lamp Vessel, and the side effects were still hard to endure. Her head felt like it had been run over back and forth by a truck dozens of times, aching from the inside out. But at least she still retained her consciousness. She braced both hands against the dressing table for quite a while, yet her mouth never stopped moving. “If I end up sick because of this, you have to take responsibility.”

Xue Tong’s voice drifted over, sounding somewhat indistinct. “How exactly do you want me to take responsibility?”

“Reimburse my medical bills.” Xun Ruosu lived the life of an ordinary person, after all.

Xue Tong replied with disdain. “If you die, I’d be happy to cover the coffin and cremation costs.”

The wisps of darkness finally cleared from Xun Ruosu’s vision, allowing her to start seeing things again. The headache subsided quickly. She took two deep breaths, but Chen Huaiyue was still dutifully generating beside her, so the air she inhaled was icy cold. Xun Ruosu choked and coughed harshly a couple of times.

The chill stabbing into her lungs restored a bit more of her awareness. Xun Ruosu didn’t like showing weakness in front of others. Ghosts were like that—docile and obedient when you appeared stronger than them, but the moment they sensed any vulnerability, they pounced. In the past, with no one to rely on, she had always handled everything herself.

Seeing how violently Xun Ruosu was coughing, Xue Tong awkwardly reached out to pat her back. But her reluctance made her use too much force, and for a moment, Xun Ruosu felt like her heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys had all jolted upright in mortal peril, as if Xue Tong meant to silence her for good.

“Stop, stop… that’s enough,” Xun Ruosu said, her eyes wide as she stared at Xue Tong. “I haven’t committed a crime worthy of death, have I?”