Chapter 15 - The Second Soul

Early the next day, Yi Ling was already sitting in his office, waiting.

He and Lin Xiusong had agreed to meet at 9:30. He started impulsively checking his watch an hour before then. Time had never felt slower.

Someone outside opened his door gently. His eyes darted over as he took off his glasses, tensing every muscle on his face.

At the door stood Lin Xiuzhu with her arm linked with Yu Haowei’s. She lifted her eyes to peer into the office tentatively before walking in tiny steps.

Just one look told the doctor enough. The tension in his face faded back into its usual composure.

She wasn’t Wu Yaya. Her black eyes weren’t pure, nor were they bursting with spirited vitality. She had been too cautious with her steps, unlike that stubborn little girl who boasted of willfulness in every action.

Yi Ling put his glasses back on and released a downcast sigh. “Sit.”

The young woman acknowledged the invitation nervously, but didn’t move. Her hands were clutching her fiancé’s arm so tightly that her sharp nails dug into his flesh and drew blood.

Yu Haowei inhaled sharply from the pain. He didn’t struggle against her, though. Instead, he assured her softly, “Xiaozhu, go lie down and have a chat with Dr. Yi. I’ll just be outside. I won’t go anywhere.”

He treated this timid woman with even more care than he had with Wu Yaya. At least Wu Yaya was emotionally stable. The main ego, on the other hand, would get triggered by the smallest things. He never knew when she would act out. Just last night, he had been bitten several times, each bite deep to the bones. She also clung to his neck so tightly while sleeping that he almost suffocated.

He’d be a goner sooner or later if this kept up.

The man helped Lin Xiuzhu into the lounge chair, then carefully placed the shoes she had taken off neatly to the side.

Yi Ling watched the scene with keen interest. His sharp gaze lingered on the gauze on the man’s neck before moving away.

“I didn’t think you could control him.” The doctor started in a gentle tone after Yu Haowei left the office.

“Someone… Someone taught me how to control him.” The young lady replied hesitantly.

“Who is this person?” He stared at her intently. The faint blue glow in his amber eyes swirled like flowing light, gradually forming into a deep whirlpool. No one has been able to escape the draw of this mesmerizing current when they gazed into it.

Sure enough, Lin Xiuzhu’s expression turned blank. After a long pause, she shook her head and answered in a daze, “I… I forgot.”

“Try to recall it again, carefully.” Yi Ling put more focus into his gaze.

The young woman clawed at her hair and spoke with great effort, “I don’t remember. I really don’t. My head hurts!”

Yi Ling had no choice but to give up at this point. He put on his glasses and let out an inaudible sigh. A phantom-like tenderness laced his magnetic voice, “Alright, stop thinking about it if it hurts your head. Sleep. You will feel refreshed and content after you wake up. You can leave after that.”

He expected as much. If his suspicions were correct, then it would be impossible to hear the truth from Lin Xiuzhu.

Mere mortals could never pry on the supernatural.

The more this thought sank in, the more his emotions boiled. He already caught a glimmer of light behind this mystery—the little crow took residence in his mind for fifteen long years. How could he give up so easily?

———

Two weeks later, Lin Xiuzhu and Yu Haowei held their wedding.

It wasn’t a grand ceremony. Only their close friends and family were invited. The newlyweds signed their prenups and drafted their corresponding wills. If both Lin Xiuzhu and Lin Xiusong were to pass away, their entire estate would be donated to charity, and Yu Haowei would get nothing.

To the outsiders, the groom was head over heels for the bride.

People were singing odes to their beautiful love story, completely unaware of all the foul toxicity and cruelty hidden underneath the surface.

More than once, Yu Haowei had cried to his emotional manipulators’ group about what he was going through. This had inadvertently discouraged several of his fellow scumbags from their “craft”.

But of course, that's a story for another time.

At present, the sanctuary under the thick canopy welcomed another visitor.

Unlike Lin Xiuzhu, the new client didn’t walk over. She drifted here. Her body was already a corpse but her soul was guided by some greater power to the curtain fig. She looked up at the luscious tree crown and exclaimed, “The legends about the Sacred Dark Spot are real!”

“Caw!” The little crow was startled from her perch on a branch and circled several times in the air before her nerves had settled enough to return to her spot. Then, she peered down sneakily.

This new client touched her swollen, deformed face, smiling wryly, “Have I become so ugly that even birds are scared of me?”

“Caw caw!” Wu Yaya flapped her wings and nodded.

[i]Yes, you’re that ugly! I thought I was looking at a ghoul when I saw your face![/i]

The woman seemed to understand the crow's speech, and lowered her head, hiding her face botched from plastic surgery. There was a circle of bruised ligature marks around her neck, indicating suicide by hanging. She had a great figure, however, with curves in all the right places, giving her an impressive silhouette. Most people would mistake her for a beauty if they didn’t see her face.

She paced around the tree, trying to find a shrine of sorts. Finding none. she settled for a clean spot on the ground and knelt down. She prayed with her hands together, “Dear god, please grant me my final wish. I, your devotee, will offer my very soul as the price. Life as a human is too hard, but living as an animal is harder. I might as well give up my soul and be done with it all. These are my honest words, dear god, please reveal your powers and help me.”

At this point, she couldn't help but let out a bitter laugh, and then bowed three times with utmost reverence.

A lush branch reached out from the canopy while she was prostrated. It brushed the top of her head and withdrew a ball of light and a chunk of soul energy.

With only half of her original soul energy left, the woman’s body became transparent.

But before she could react, the branch swept lightly and sent her into the cycle of reincarnation.

The part about sacrificing their soul was utter nonsense, and making a soul vanish would never happen. Only demonic beings would devour souls as part of their cultivation; the curtain fig practiced proper Dao. 

“Eat this.” Two crisp green leaves acted like hands to cup the ball of light from the woman and lifted it to Wu Yaya’s mouth.

The little crow covered her mouth with her wings and spoke in a muffled voice, “Can I skip the orb? It’s too bitter! These requests are annoying too!”

“Eat up, Yaya. I’ll give you a treat after.” The curtain fig kneaded the woman’s soul energy into a pink candy and waved it in front of his daughter.

In this Age of Declining Magic, there wasn’t enough spiritual energy for enlightened plants and animals to cultivate. In order for his beloved baby to stay with him forever, the curtain fig had no choice but to make deals with the mortals and use their soul energy to nourish his young daughter. Otherwise, she would die in just twenty years.

If that happened, there would be no living creature to accompany the curtain figure that had lived for thousands upon thousands of years.

“Be a good girl, Yaya. We’re doing this for you. You can only survive by consuming soul energy constantly, and the only way to do that is by fulfilling these people’s wishes.” The tree coaxed.

Wu Yaya took a deep breath, her tiny chest puffing out with it, before she reluctantly opened her mouth and swallowed the glowing orb.

“Ptui!”

The next moment, the little crow braced herself against the tree trunk with her tiny wings and began spitting furiously.

The woman’s memories were even harder to swallow than Lin Xiuzhu’s. The little crow finally understood why she would rather abandon her soul than be born as a human again.

Simply put, her life as a human was hard.

She was a small celebrity and married a top star not long after her debut. Her husband had fans in the tens of millions. He worked hard on his career after their marriage and gradually rose in status from an idol to an acclaimed actor. The higher he claimed, the more fans he had. As of now, he was already one of the influential powerhouses within the showbiz.

In contrast, the woman retired from the screen after their marriage and made no progress in her career.

She wasn’t just a nobody, though. Her position as a famous actor’s wife put a spotlight on her, and it was one full of malicious intent.

The actor’s fans attacked her from all sorts of angles—dragging her down and shaming her—because they found her unworthy of their idol.

The woman had suffered the storm of cyberbullying ever since their wedding. She never did anything wrong, but to the fans, marrying their idol was the biggest crime in itself. She received threatening items in the mail almost every day, including razor blades, letters written in blood, and voodoo dolls, all sent by her husband’s fans.

Everything she did rubbed them wrong. She was wrong for eating, for drinking, for sitting, for walking, and even for breathing. Some fans claimed that they would never stop attacking her unless she was dead.

At first, her husband would speak up for her on Weibo, but as the bullying increased, he accepted it as the norm.

However, the woman couldn’t bear it. She developed anxiety from the immense pressure, and only found solace in shopping.

And so, she spent her days frolicking through various malls, buying anything that caught her eye. She was bringing home all the newest clothes, shoes, purses, and jewellery.

The actor was rich. Not only did he come from money, but he was also a major stockholder in an entertainment company. Her spending habits were more than affordable.

But the fans were outraged. They attacked the woman viciously for it, calling her a spendthrift and a good-for-nothing. They claimed she was incapable of doing anything worthwhile besides squandering their idol's money.

Over time, the woman became labelled a “gold-digger”.

Everyone believed that she married the actor solely for his money. She was just a whore!

A widespread lie becomes the truth. With everyone saying the same thing around him, the actor also grew suspicious of their marriage. Thus, he limited her spending and took back the card he’d given her.

Without money to shop with, the woman was in a constant state of anxiety. The couple fought over money every time they saw each other.

The woman needed money to fulfill her need to spend, while her husband was becoming disappointed by the woman's insatiable greed.

Finally, one day, the actor had enough, not to mention he’d found another woman he loved. He placed the divorce papers in front of her and said, calmly, “I know you only married me for money. I’ll give you money if you leave.”

That broke the woman who still loved her husband deeply.

To salvage her marriage, she took her agent's advice and travelled abroad in secret for plastic surgery. She thought she lost to the mistress’ beauty. She would do anything to win her husband's heart back.

But the surgery failed. They injected her face with a host of shady and illegal substances, causing it to swell monstrously. Excessive connective tissue grew beneath her skin, leaving it pitted and horrifyingly disfigured. To make it worse, the paparazzi caught photos of her walking through the airport with her agent.

Her face, a horrific sight, instantly became trending on social media.

The thought of her husband seeing these unsightly photos and feeling relieved about their divorce was unbearable. She hid in the hotel wardrobe, made a noose from a belt, hung it on the horizontal pole, and sat down hard to help gravity do its thing.

This method had a low success rate. After all, if the person’s resolve falters even a little, they would stand up, and the noose would loosen.

But she didn't stand up. She'd lost the courage to face her husband again.

Guided by her strong wish, her soul arrived before the great curtain fig. She had two wishes: first, to prove to everyone that she could earn lots of money even without a man—that she was neither a gold-digger nor a good-for-nothing; second, to exit the showbiz in the cleanest way possible—so that when people remembered her, they would only think of beautiful memories instead of anything that would cause malice or cursing.

Strangely enough, as she faced her death, she didn’t feel a shred of attachment to the husband she once loved with every fibre of her being.

She had uttered her husband’s name hundreds of thousands of times in her mind as she sank down in the wardrobe and let the belt dig into her throat. By the time her corpse grew cold, this very resolve gave her the clarity she needed to erase him from her life.

From that moment on, they were separated by life and death, free from each other’s debt. Forever.