The ceiling light in the room flickered on for a moment, then abruptly went out.
This allowed everyone to see Fu Sang’s eerie state, as if he had been possessed by a ghost.
His pupils, originally one black and one red, were now layered with a grayish haze, and blackish-purple vascular patterns crawled beneath his pale skin. He was clearly in bad shape, convulsing on the ground at a frequency that looked like some kind of seizure, which was rather terrifying.
Fang Zehao had seen far too many things beyond his understanding today, and this wasn’t even the scariest episode among them, so he managed to stay relatively calm.
He looked at Xia Kui, who seemed to have lost consciousness, then at Fu Sang, who was clearly not in a normal state, and finally at Huo Wei, who stood nearby with a grim expression mixed with anger. He carefully spoke up:
“Is he… aren’t you going to save him?”
“Even a powerful spirit master can’t save a ghost who’s determined to die.”
Huo Wei casually pulled a random storage crate and sat down,”Just wait. He brought this on himself. I’m out of options.”
Fang Zehao said sheepishly: “I thought you two were close.”
“A close relationship can’t stop him from exorcising his own soul and inviting a ghost into his body on a whim!” Huo Wei said in despair.
As if to confirm her words, Fu Sang suddenly curled up on the ground and let out a bloodcurdling scream. The scream was chilling, with two voices completely overlapping. One was a male voice, belonging to Fu Sang himself, and the other was a female voice that Fang Zehao knew all too well. It was his “Yuanyuan”… or now, Xia Kui.
After the long, drawn-out scream, everything fell silent again. Fu Sang lay motionless with half closed eyes, like a corpse about to turn cold.
Though Huo Wei’s skills were lacking, as Fu Sang had said, she might not have eaten pork but she had seen pigs run. Looking at the situation now, she knew Fu Sang had already achieved half of his goal.
At the very least, the ghost had successfully entered his body. What happened next, and whether he lived or died… she’d have to wait and see. There was indeed little else she could do.
All she could do was stand by and watch, ready to send Fu Sang off on his final journey if his plan failed and his consciousness was completely overtaken.
Huo Wei didn’t know how things had come to this. She really wanted to kick Fu Sang a few times while he was unconscious to vent her anger. Just as she was mentally weighing the feasibility of this idea, someone suddenly tugged on the hood of her jacket.
Huo Wei turned her head and saw it was Qi Changying.
She had no idea what Qi Changying meant by this, but after a moment of inspiration, she activated a Spirit-Communication Spell on herself.
“What’s wrong, young general?”
Qi Changying nodded and sat down beside her, “I would like to ask, Miss Huo, what did you mean earlier when you said Fu Sang had ‘died once’?”
“Oh? You didn’t know???” Huo Wei’s eyes widened, “Haven’t you been following him all this time? How could you not know whether he’s died or not?”
Qi Changying shook his head: “I only remember Fu Sang entering this room. I wasn’t by his side…a very familiar scent led me in another direction. Later, I heard sounds coming from his direction, and when I went over, I lost consciousness. When I came back to my senses… he was already covered in blood.”
Huo Wei felt that something about this didn’t seem right, but she couldn’t quite figure it out at the moment.
It wasn’t really her problem to worry about anyway, so she put it aside and answered the question at hand:
“Oh, it’s like this. He’s got some… little quirks… so he usually keeps a few reversal talismans on him. Um, those are talismans that can restore objects to their original state. This talisman normally can’t reverse living things, but I have to admit he’s a genius when it comes to this kind of weird stuff. He can modify and create his own talismans, and his reversal talisman has been altered, so it works on his own body too.”
“To sum it up, unless his reversal talismans are removed beforehand, as long as he uses the incantation in time, he can’t die. Even if he’s chopped into mincemeat, he’ll survive… of course, this only applies to physical damage inflicted by others. What he’s doing now…exorcising his own soul…that’s suicidal behavior. I’m not sure if he was aware of that when he cast the exorcism talisman on himself, but knowing his style, I think he was aiming for death.”
“…” Qi Changying nodded.
After a moment of silence, he asked again:
“What are these ‘little quirks’?”
“Uh…” Huo Wei seemed a bit embarrassed to bring it up, “He…?”
“Yes.”
“He’s… into pain.”
Seeing the puzzled expression on Qi Changying’s face again, Huo Wei explained:
“He likes the feeling of pain. I’m guessing that’s why he loves tormenting himself so much.”
“Tormenting himself?” Qi Changying seemed not to fully grasp what those two words encompassed.
“Yeah, I actually find it quite hard to understand too. His explanation to me was that he finds life too boring, but pain can stimulate him. It’s like how some people like playing games or eating desserts…he likes pain, that’s all… but honestly, I don’t really buy it.”
“Then what exactly does he do?”
“At first, he liked carving himself up with fancy cuts.”
With that, Huo Wei extended one arm and used her other hand to make a slashing motion along it. “But because it was too easy to get caught, he was forcibly sent to psychological counseling a few times. He thought the carving felt good but the aftermath was too much of a hassle, so he changed to another method.”
Huo Wei really wanted to vent about this to someone, but it wasn’t really appropriate to talk about it with just anyone. Now, things were better. There was Qi Changying, someone who could keep secrets better than the dead and was more suitable as a sounding board. That is, a fierce ghost who was sometimes so kind it was almost baffling.
The evidence was that even after hearing something this outrageous, this fierce ghost showed neither revulsion nor any other natural negative reaction. He only looked a little confused, “What?”
“Piercings.”
Huo Wei held up one finger:
“He uses a needle to pierce through his own skin and leaves a stud in.”
Qi Changying understood: “Like the little ring on Fu Sang’s lip?”
“Exactly. He’s had piercings on his earlobes, ear cartilage, eyebrows, and tongue…he only kept the one on his mouth; the rest have healed.” Huo Wei got back to the point, “But you know, people build up a tolerance to pain. If you keep getting pricked by a needle every day, maybe on the first day you think the pain is unbearable, but after enough times, it doesn’t hurt as much. So he came up with his own creative twist.
“That is, he goes up to the roof of an abandoned building and then comes back down…not by stairs and not by elevator. That’s the original purpose of his reversal talismans.”
Qi Changying played along, “How does he come down?”
Huo Wei pursed her lips, used her finger to draw a little figure on her palm, and then…made it jump down.
……
People automatically become poets when they’re in suffering. Fu Sang felt he had that tendency too.
The world was like a pot of thirty-degree plain boiled water…no color, no taste, and even the temperature was wearying. Transparent and endless, it didn’t stir up the slightest spark of excitement or desire.
But what Fu Sang needed was scalding heat. If it was intense enough to burn him to shreds, so be it.
The only things in this world that could stimulate him were pain, and now, playing with his life counted as one too.
Exorcising your own soul really didn’t feel great, especially when he’d used the most extreme and ruthless method. It was like his soul had been ripped apart and forcibly invaded by another completely foreign soul, a nauseating sensation akin to being thrown into a centrifuge and spun eighty-one rounds until body and soul were torn apart.
Along with that came a flood of fragmented memory clips forcing their way into his mind, like someone had dumped a multi-terabyte compressed file into his brain, and with one click of the unlock button, the memories and emotions belonging to that person surged in violently, overwhelming him completely.
Fu Sang’s perception of emotions and feelings was faint. Perhaps because he’d never experienced feelings. As for emotions, he didn’t know why, but it might be some innate deficiency. No matter what happened, nothing could stir the slightest ripple in his heart, to the point where he’d always thought “emotions” might be an abstract scam fabricated by humans.
But in this moment of regaining consciousness, Fu Sang felt the intense emotions belonging to Xia Kui.
Only then did he realize that this thing was indeed not a virtual concept, but something truly tangible, something you could actually feel and distinguish clearly.
Because he realized almost immediately that what Xia Kui brought him was a sorrow so overwhelming it was almost suffocating…or rather, despair.
This girl’s life had not gone smoothly.
That was the first thing Fu Sang felt.
Xia Kui came from a single-parent family and had grown up living with her mother.
Her mother was a poor, frail woman who lived with her in a cramped, crowded rental basement. The place always had a damp, musty smell.
That smell accompanied Xia Kui as she grew up, almost melting into her very soul.
When she was eight, her mother took Xia Kui to live with another man.
The man wasn’t particularly wealthy either, but at least his house was above ground, and sunlight could be seen through the glass windows.
Having one more person in the small household somewhat improved their lives and lessened her mother’s burden. So her mother had told Xia Kui more than once that she needed to please this man, to be obedient and compliant, because he was their only source of support.
Xia Kui had indeed done just that.
She always listened to her mother.
Her mother said she needed to study hard so she could earn money and have a better life in the future, so she studied diligently and always got first place in her class.
Her mother said she needed to be obedient and sensible, so she did her best to help her mother with chores, pouring tea, fetching water, washing clothes, and cooking.
The man had a violent temper, so she kept a low profile and tried not to provoke him, because her mother had said he was their support.
Xia Kui grew up in this kind of environment. She was used to being alone, and was used to curling up in corners. It had been that way since she was little…she never even had anyone she could call a friend. She lived cautiously, not daring to be sad, not daring to be angry, not daring to have her own emotions.
This wouldn’t have been a huge problem, as long as Xia Kui had an appearance that matched her personality; unremarkable, not attracting attention.
But the terrible thing was that she happened to have a face that was far too beautiful.
By the time she was thirteen or fourteen, in middle school, she had already grown into a very beautiful girl, so beautiful that she easily attracted covetous eyes.
She became aware of this when she noticed the man in the house starting to look at her with strange eyes.
The man had a bad temper. He smoked and drank, and sometimes when he was drunk, he’d hit her mother. Whenever that happened, her mother would always shield her behind her back and tell her to go to her room and not come out.
Back then, she thought her mother would always protect her.
Until the man began to deliberately avoid her mother to be alone with her, repeatedly “accidentally” entering her room, and reaching for her hand with a disgusting, hypocritical smile… When she told her mother about all this, her mother smiled a little stiffly and told her, no, Daddy loved her very much, she was just overthinking.
Her mother had once told her that if she was ever bullied outside, she must come back and tell her, because her mother loved her the most and would seek justice for her and protect her forever.
But this time, her mother broke her promise.
Xia Kui later thought that her mother must have known about the man’s intentions and believed her experiences, but she chose silence, chose to turn a blind eye, chose to spend more and more time away from home.
Xia Kui was sad. She probably didn’t want to give up the stability and support she had worked so hard to gain, so she chose to let Xia Kui suffer and bear all the injustice.
People change. No one is obligated to love another person forever.
Even a mother is the same.
Once Xia Kui understood this, she no longer felt hurt or resentful.
Her mother often said she was an obedient child.
But this time, she didn’t choose to continue being “obedient and sensible.”
Xia Kui applied to live at the school dormitory. Besides her school hours, she worked part-time to earn her tuition and fees. She became more and more independent, and spent less and less time at home.
Later, her mother often came to find her crying, rambling about all sorts of things, but mostly saying she was sorry to her.
Xia Kui comforted her, said it was okay, and gave her a very gentle hug.
If you don’t hold expectations for love, you won’t be disappointed by reality.
That’s what Xia Kui told herself.
But as far as reality was concerned, love was a legend, and suffering was ordinary.
Growing up, people often envied her looks, but only she knew that beauty hadn’t brought her much benefit. On the contrary, it had brought her countless troubles.
People would approach her because of her appearance, saying they wanted to get to know her and be friends, but in reality, before they came, they’d already set up bets with their friends behind her back, betting on whether they could win her heart, and how many days it would take to “bag” her like a piece of merchandise.
They came with their own agendas, and after learning about her experiences and personality, they’d be disappointed that she didn’t match the fantasy they’d built up in their heads. Then they’d distance themselves, embellish the story, and spread it far and wide.
Xia Kui had never liked socializing with people. And after a few attempts that ended in rejection and hurt, she became even more silent and withdrawn.
But she never lost hope in the world.
Even though she always met terrible people and was hurt countless times, she still believed there were good people out there, she just hadn’t met them yet.
Later, in her second year of high school, she forgot exactly what or who it was, but a nasty rumor about her spread through the school again. During that time, everyone looked at her with mocking eyes, especially loving to whisper and snicker when she passed by, pointing and gesturing as she went.
Xia Kui had long been used to these things. So no matter how ugly the rumors were, she didn’t let them bother her.
She just lived in her own world, never trying to make others understand her.
Until one day, during evening self-study for boarding students, Xia Kui returned from the restroom between classes and found an extra note on her desk.
She assumed it was another prank or some rubbish written by a bored boy, and was about to toss it away. But when she picked it up, she noticed it wasn’t crumpled into a ball…it had been neatly folded into a clean, square shape. She hesitated.
She sat down at her seat and slowly unfolded the note.
There was only one short paragraph written inside;
[They envy you, so they belittle and slander you. Don’t mind what they say. Their opinions don’t matter, because they’ll spend their whole lives stuck in the mud, while you are a flower growing cleanly toward the sun.]
