Chapter 49

Xue Tong’s words hit like a bucket of cold water dumped straight over Xue Minghui’s head.

Guan Yunian stood right in front of Professor Xue, close enough that he could have reached out and touched him. His lips kept forming the same words over and over: “Teacher, I’m here. Teacher, I’m here…” But it was all for nothing.

Two souls, living in entirely different worlds, utterly unaware of each other.

“Then how could my heart speak to yours?” Xue Minghui turned to Xue Tong. “Doesn’t that mean Yunian doesn’t want to see me? After he died, I kept dreaming of the moment he took his own life—but there was only blood. I couldn’t even make out his face clearly. Yunian must hate me, his teacher, so much that he never once appeared in my dreams.”

“I don’t hate you at all, Teacher,” Guan Yunian sobbed uncontrollably. “I was wrong—I know I was wrong, Teacher. Please look at me. I’m begging you, just look at me.”

Xue Tong didn’t budge. She pressed on with Xue Minghui. “It’s never been that Guan Yunian refused to see you. It’s that you refused to see him. He killed himself right in front of you, shattering your heart. You sealed yourself away—how could you have noticed the real culprit then?”

Her words had barely faded when Xue Tong thrust her finger into the old professor’s chest. Living souls had heartbeats—steady, powerful ones—but her poke plunged him into an icy blizzard. Red lines spiderwebbed across the old professor’s face, and chains erupted from the ground, wrapping him layer upon layer.

Those chains had always been there, lurking just beneath the surface, silent and unassuming.

Xue Tong bore similar bindings on her own body. Xun Ruosu had glimpsed them once before. Hers, though, were far fiercer—more domineering, flashy, and utterly arrogant by comparison. If they fully manifested, Xun Ruosu suspected a single yank might rip the heavens down.

Dozens of black chains, at least, turned the old professor into a bird in a cage. And they weren’t just restraints; they were weapons. If Xue Tong’s hands tried to push through, the chains would snap taut around her arms, shredding any mortal flesh to pulp.

Xue Tong’s face remained impassive. She seized one chain and gave it a twist. The supposedly unbreakable links scattered like dust, ring by ring. Professor Xue clutched his chest and doubled over in agony, half-kneeling on the ground, unable to stir.

The pain had nothing to do with blades or bullets. It stemmed from memories—the kind that cut deepest.

Beautiful memories. Bitter ones. Encounters and farewells that swallowed him whole.

Snowflakes began drifting down from the sky. The flakes that had piled up in Xue Minghui’s hospital room now blanketed the summer air in a heavy goosefeather flurry. Some belonged to him. Others came from the victims named on the Medical Record Card.

The second time they had flipped open those records—adding Miao Xuanxuan’s name—Xue Tong and Xun Ruosu had already pieced it together. They just hadn’t known his motives yet.

He was a renowned professor of psychiatry and psychology. An expert. A scholar. Even a doctor. And yet five years ago, he couldn’t save his wife and child. Five years later, he couldn’t save his student.

That compulsion to heal the world could become its own shackle. Xue Minghui’s soul teetered between life and death. Drawing on his sharp observations and ironclad expertise, he spotted one troubled soul after another—people like Guan Yunian, crushed under anxiety and pressure. When talk therapy failed, he turned to their memories.

Erasing the root causes of mental anguish seemed like a miracle cure at first. Except it defied the Heavenly Dao.

Memories weren’t playthings. They formed the core of a person’s life. Tampering with them warped personality, emotions, even mannerisms. Meddling in the natural growth of an independent soul invited retribution.

And his heavy-handed meddling had caused deaths.

Xun Ruosu had steered clear of those snowflakes until now. She was human—or at least she appeared to be. Letting those memories in would taint her inevitably.

It wasn’t like Xue Tong, for whom they were mere films flickering past. The only things that swayed her were the undead emotions crammed in by the Rules of the Heavenly Dao. Xun Ruosu, though? She could feel the weight of an entire lifetime’s secrets—memories too profound for words.

Memories kept hidden, never shared.

Much like her own past, slowly resurfacing.

Xun Ruosu slipped into another trance of recollection. This time, the scene shifted indoors. Dim light filtered through, and faint writing scarred the walls—but those details blurred into irrelevance under a mosaic haze, impossible to probe.

Then she spotted Xue Tong. A much younger Xue Tong, barely a teenager, radiating a very different air. None of the haughty disdain for mortals, none of that arrogant disregard for the laws of the world.

This Xue Tong wore an ancient skirt, her hair pulled into a ponytail with a simple cord. She clutched bamboo slips in both hands, though her chin propped them up as she dozed.

An unidentified turtle crawled lazily around the slips. The room was so still she could almost hear a cat purring. Wuchang sprawled at her feet, glaring hungrily at the turtle.

Then Xun Ruosu watched herself scoop up the cat and deposit it in her lap. “If you kill it, Xue Tong won’t let you hear the end of it.”

Wuchang retracted its claws with obvious reluctance, prodding her instead with its soft paw pads.

For some reason, Xun Ruosu knew that meant surrender. Clearly, tangling with Xue Tong was a fight even Wuchang couldn’t win.

“Tsk. I stuck her with you hoping you’d groom a solid pick for the Tenth Hall. But all she does is sleep, and you don’t even rein her in… We all clawed our way up back in the day. What, you too old to handle kids now?”

The voice rang familiar—from an earlier memory. The man who’d seen her off by the riverbank.

His face stayed hazy, but the timbre marked him as male, intimately familiar with Xue Tong. He snatched a roll of bamboo slips from the table and rapped her on the head. “Up, up. We’re heading to the mortal world today to see the lanterns.”

Xue Tong had clearly been faking it. Those three words—”see the lanterns”—snapped her eyes wide open, bright and alert.

She grabbed the man’s sleeve and glanced at Xun Ruosu. “Is Teacher coming too?”

Whether the teacher joined them, Xun Ruosu never learned. The real-world Xue Tong slapped her shoulder hard enough to sink half her body, yanking her free from the memory.

Bedhead temper flaring, Xun Ruosu snapped, “What the hell?”

“That’s my line.” Xue Tong eyed her like she’d grown a second head. “Sure, these memories can’t be shoved back where they came from. But they’re no Karmic Obstacles—just dump them somewhere, and time will make them fade. No need to cram them into your body. Unless you’ve got some weird fetish?”

Only then did Xun Ruosu realize her hand was outstretched. The drifting snowflakes seemed drawn to it, melting one by one into her palm.

“…”

Xun Ruosu fumbled for an excuse, talking out of her ass with a straight face. “Just curious about the memories, that’s all.”

“Liar.” Xue Tong called her out without mercy. “The thread snapped.”

One loop of the Red Thread—wrapped eighty-one times around the Copper Coin—had broken. Xue Tong must have stashed this coin from Soaring Firmament Temple in secret; Xun Ruosu never imagined she’d pull it out now, dead serious as she accused her of lying.

Talk about hoist with her own petard. Xun Ruosu clamped both hands over her mouth, gesturing wildly for Xue Tong to put the coin away.

Xue Tong read her loud and clear. Far from complying, she twirled it between two fingers. “Figured the Xun Family’s toys were all show. Color me surprised—this one’s got teeth.”

She jiggled the coin at Xun Ruosu. “Lie to my face again, and think hard first. Karmic retribution awaits.”

Xun Ruosu: “…”

Who the hell came up with this shitty gadget?!

Trapped by memories, she and Xue Tong weren’t alone. Guan Yunian and Professor Xue fared little better.

The chains finally dissolved, and Xue Minghui saw his dead student at last—pale, almost translucent, standing right there before him.

Professor Xue had endured every parent’s nightmare in his later years: losing a wife, a son, a daughter. He’d poured his life into his patients and students instead. Then came the arson by one patient, the suicide by another. His entire worldview crumbled. Xue Tong had nailed it—the old professor truly hadn’t wanted to face Guan Yunian. He had no idea how to confront the young man, or what sin he’d committed to earn such a fate.

The moment Professor Xue’s eyes met his, Guan Yunian lunged forward in near-collapse, wrapping him in a desperate embrace. “Teacher, I’m so sorry. Back then, I couldn’t master my emotions or my actions. I only wanted one last look at you—one final glimpse, and I could have rested. But when I snapped out of it, I’d forged an unforgivable wrong.”

He’d never meant to slash his carotid artery in front of his teacher. It wasn’t revenge. But rumors festered. The hospital and police investigated Xue Minghui thoroughly. Cleared in the end, sure—but Guan Yunian’s family branded the professor morally deficient, convinced he’d done something monstrous to drive a young man to death.

The grudge festered from there. Xue Minghui arrived at the memorial heavy with guilt, only to face cruel jabs that spiked his blood pressure near-fatal.

Guan Yunian had no more earthly ties. But on this count, he owed his teacher everything. If Xue Minghui found no peace for a single day, he’d atone for it.

Who could have guessed his outwardly frail teacher unleashed devastation when pushed? Hospitals brimmed with unrest, ripe for intrusion. His casual memory tweaks snowballed into catastrophe, ultimately summoning Xue Tong.

“Well?” Xue Tong asked. “Got everything off your chest?”

Guan Yunian wiped his tears. He was a young man in his twenties—sentimental, maybe, but still cared about his image. Especially here, with Xue Tong and Xun Ruosu watching. His heart wasn’t in it, but his eyes worked fine. Beauty had a way of making anyone mind their dignity.

“What will you do to my teacher?” Guan Yunian trembled.

“His allotted lifespan had years left—another decade or more. But tampering with memories to cause death? That’s beyond wicked. Today marks his end. And next life? The one after? He’ll keep paying the debt.”

There was a seductive lilt to Xue Tong’s voice. “But I’ll offer you a choice. You’re the chief culprit here. Take his punishment in his stead. Are you willing?”