The fourth floor of the hospital was relatively quiet. It housed storage rooms and various utility spaces. Beyond those were single-patient rooms like Xue Minghui’s. Family members rarely stayed overnight; they hired caretakers instead. Even if someone was there, they would keep their door shut and avoid meddling in anything outside.
Xun Ruosu and Xue Tong made their way peacefully to Professor Xue’s room.
It was as quiet as ever—in fact, even quieter. Almost no sounds could be heard. Earlier, in the corridor and on the third floor, the clamor of passing cars and bustling voices had filtered in. But here, right in front of the room, there was only dead silence.
“I’ll go in first.”
Xue Tong pushed the door open. The room’s lights were off, but the various instruments glowed faintly, their light flickering intermittently. Xue Minghui’s condition was stable, and the mechanically amplified heartbeat sounded steady and rhythmic.
Though the rooms varied in size, their layouts were much the same. Xue Tong barely had to fumble before switching on the light. Harsh white illumination flooded the space in an instant.
Only then did she turn back. “Come on in.”
Xun Ruosu felt utterly useless.
Xue Minghui lay peacefully in his bed without a care, but the two people glaring at him looked like villains set on harming the innocent—especially Xue Tong, whose fingers twitched as if itching to yank out his tubes.
On top of that, countless snowflake-like objects floated through the room. They were crystalline and translucent, shimmering faintly. Only when the overhead lights shone down did they fully materialize, drifting thickly and filling the entire space.
“His Three Souls and Seven Po aren’t here. All that’s left is an empty shell,” Xun Ruosu saw through it at a glance. “But he hasn’t died yet. There’s still a connection between his soul and body. Tracing it won’t be hard.”
As she spoke, she pulled a sheet of talisman paper from her pouch. She pressed the red thread onto it and drew patterns with cinnabar, leaving the final stroke for the thread to complete. Then Xun Ruosu affixed the paper to Xue Minghui’s forehead and intoned, “Soul Return.” The paper burst into flames and burned away, but the red thread snapped taut.
“It’s in that direction.”
“We can basically confirm that all these hospital incidents are connected to Professor Xue. He picks his targets deliberately, and these…” Xue Tong reached out and caught one of the white flakes in her palm. Up close, each proved to be a cage-like fragment holding looping memories of life’s miseries.
There were absurdly many of them. Xun Ruosu and Xue Tong both had several clinging to their clothes. Of course, they didn’t all belong to one person. By rough count, memories from over a hundred souls had been lost here.
The psychological ailments listed on the medical record cards, combined with the suffocating tragic memories crammed into the room, gradually formed a clear line—
Xun Ruosu softly recited the hexagram she had divined just hours earlier. “Hoary Hair Gives Rise to Wind and Rain, Life Full of Partings.”
“Let’s go. Time to exorcise his soul.”
The red thread wound around Xun Ruosu’s pinky didn’t look long, but anything that passed through a cultivator’s hands took on an otherworldly quality. It stretched straight ahead, vanishing into the corridor lights.
Xue Tong casually plucked a few flakes and flipped through them like a lantern show in front of her eyes. Xun Ruosu followed the thread’s lead, guiding them past the inpatient wards and emergency department to an open area outside.
More critically injured patients were still being rushed inside. Police cars lined up outside the perimeter wall for half a block. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, and though the town’s evening bustle had died down some, it was far from bedtime. The streets were inevitably chaotic, with flashing batons in officers’ hands as they directed the backed-up traffic.
One side buzzed with frantic disorder; the other lay cold and desolate.
Xue Minghui’s soul stood in the moonlight, silently watching the suffering before him.
That snow-white figure appeared once more. He hesitated toward Xun Ruosu, words catching in his throat, then slowly approached Xue Minghui.
“He’s atoning,” Xue Tong said, pointing. “Look at his feet.”
Souls had no physical form, so light passed straight through them without casting shadows. But roots sprouted beneath Guan Yunian’s feet—black shadows like interlocking iron chains, binding him to the mortal world. More precisely, chaining him to Professor Xue’s side.
Strangely, though both were souls, Xue Minghui seemed blind to Guan Yunian. No matter how Guan pulled at him or danced in front of him, Xue Minghui remained utterly unmoved.
Guan Yunian exhausted himself trying. Even as a bystander, Xun Ruosu felt tired just watching. But after a brief rest, Guan Yunian redoubled his efforts.
“What’s going on here?” Xun Ruosu asked.
“Guan Yunian feels he owes him something, but Xue Minghui doesn’t want to see him. Their clashing obsessions have formed a cage, trapping each of them inside. In this state, Xue Minghui might be able to see every dead soul and living person—except Guan Yunian.”
Xue Tong continued, “Your Xun Family should understand this best. How does a perfectly good pair of eyes end up unable to see the living at night?”
Xun Ruosu frowned slightly.
The Xun Family archives were stuffed with obscure gossip from every corner, yet they never mentioned this eye defect. The condition had been passed down from ancestors, closely tied to genetics—and seemingly divorced from anything supernatural.
From Xue Tong’s tone, it sounded as if the Xun Family had once possessed flawless eyes… but how long ago?
Lost in thought, Xun Ruosu watched as Xue Minghui in the moonlight zeroed in on his next target. He took a few steps forward, blending into the chaos. Guan Yunian paled in alarm and lunged to hug his mentor’s waist, straining with all his might to drag him back.
But Xue Minghui not only ignored him—he seemed entirely unaffected. No matter what Guan Yunian tried to block his path, it made no difference. Desperate, Guan Yunian turned pleading eyes toward Xun Ruosu, his face a mask of desperation.
Professor Xue’s target this time was a sobbing little girl, just over ten years old and still in her school uniform. Her arm was broken, crudely splinted on the way in.
Blood soaked her entire body. Her hair stuck to her face, and her collar was stained red—likely from blood trickling down her neck. A nurse had dabbed at her with a basin of water, but things were too hectic to finish. She set it aside to help elsewhere.
The girl wept uncontrollably. With her one good hand, she struggled to wring out the towel and wipe the blood from her eyes. The cloth turned red instantly, the blood swirling in the plastic basin. Suddenly, she began trembling violently. She hadn’t grasped the extent of the blood on her before, but now, staring at the misty crimson in the basin, the nightmare of what she’d endured flooded back.
Empathy and sorrow filled Xue Minghui’s gaze. He reached out toward the girl—just as his vision blurred. Xue Tong stepped between them and jabbed his shoulder.
The soul flew back from the force, crashing five meters away. His Three Souls and Seven Po nearly scattered, thinning to wisps like dust motes in the moonlight.
Guan Yunian recoiled in fright. He had always been a little afraid of Xue Tong, but now, to prevent her from striking again, he spread his arms protectively in front of Xue Minghui. In response, she merely sneered. “Relax. He’s a living soul. I have no intention of erasing him.”
Before Guan Yunian could exhale, she added, “But I won’t go easy on you. Keep getting in my way like this, and I’ll sever your path on the Reincarnation Wheel.”
Guan Yunian had thought souls couldn’t feel normal physical reactions after death. Yet here he was, breaking into a cold sweat before Xue Tong.
External injuries didn’t carry over to the soul, nor did the illnesses that killed the body. Guan Yunian had taken his own life due to depression, only realizing after death that it was truly just an illness. His downturned eyes gave him a naturally sorrowful appearance, but now he had made his peace.
What once seemed an uncrossable abyss was, in hindsight, merely a common fissure in the earth. Everyone tried to step over such gaps. With eight billion people in the world, each bore their own pains—but most saw only their own. In turning inward, they gradually became isolated islands.
Guan Yunian’s heart was too tender, like an immune system gone haywire, attacking itself.
“Don’t believe her,” Xun Ruosu’s voice cut in. “If she planned to exorcise you, she wouldn’t casually scatter you to the winds.”
She had just calmed the hysterically crying girl and summoned a nurse to find her a place to rest. The child’s emotions were too unstable; the hospital couldn’t handle any more incidents.
Looking up, she saw Xue Tong had finished bullying the old man and was now picking on the young one. Xue Minghui lay sprawled on the ground, unable to rise, while Guan Yunian’s eyes brimmed red, on the verge of tears.
Xun Ruosu sighed. She was just an ordinary layabout, yet here she was, worn out like an all-purpose revolutionary brick.
“Little girl, who are you?” Xue Minghui still didn’t know Xue Tong. As a living soul whose lifespan hadn’t ended, no ghost messenger had come to deliver judgment, ordering him to reincarnate or await exorcism. Though he had three months’ experience as a ghost, he wasn’t adept at it.
A ghost messenger’s judgment was standard procedure—delivered within an hour of death. It was the work of King Qin Guang of the First Hall. His relationship with Xue Tong had always been poor; during her busiest times, she even suspected the First Hall of sabotage.
Unaware of her identity—and seeing how young she looked—he took her for a junior. The words “little girl” had barely left Xue Minghui’s mouth when Guan Yunian rushed to silence him—but to no avail.
“I’m Xue Tong, here to settle accounts with you,” Xue Tong said. The surroundings were too noisy, and her expression darkened. “I won’t bother explaining now—you wouldn’t get it anyway. I’ll just ask: your student Guan Yunian is right here, yet to enter reincarnation. Do you want to see him?”
Though Xue Minghui was still a novice ghost, he was a professor with a sound mind. Xue Tong’s words were plain enough for him to grasp the meaning.
Bewildered, he searched the air. “He’s here? He’s been here all along? Of course I want to see him. How could I not want to see my best student?”
“Really?” Xue Tong loomed high above him, cold and pitiless. “Your heart tells a different story.”
