I wandered around all night and was truly exhausted. I lay back on the bed, and in less than ten seconds, I was fast asleep.
The next morning, I went to school as usual. Vân Như Ý told me to pay closer attention to my classmates. The person behind this might not be from the school, but they were certainly connected to someone there.
After all, out of so many people, that person had chosen Hoàng Huy—and had acted the day after he was injured. That was very unusual.
She had a point, so I started paying attention to people I’d never noticed before.
At a glance, everything seemed normal.
It wasn’t until the afternoon of the third day, as I was heading to the cafeteria, that a girl bumped into me.
“Sorry!” the girl murmured, then hurried away.
I watched the girl’s retreating figure and narrowed my eyes.
I sensed a heavy aura of death, as well as a powerful vitality. The two states coexisted in the same person.
People nearby whispered, “Isn’t that Thư Dương? She’s back at school?”
“She’s been back for ages. You just haven’t noticed.”
I reached out to stop them and smiled. “Hey, could I have a moment of your time?”
With the gangsters backing me up, nearly everyone at school knew who I was. As a result, their attitude toward me had changed completely.
The two students answered my questions one after the other. They said the girl was named Thư Dương, and like me, she was a specially admitted student. She had been an orphan.
Before I came to this school, she had been bullied by Du Minh Sinh, Hoàng Huy, and their gang. After the bullying went too far, Thư Dương tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists in the school bathroom.
She survived, but the incident was posted online, causing serious repercussions. The school covered all of Thư Dương’s medical expenses and took special care of her life and studies. Because of that, Du Minh Sinh and his gang left her alone.
Thư Dương was able to study at the school in peace. As time went by, no one paid much attention to her anymore.
She seemed to have an exceptionally low profile…
But my instincts told me this girl was no ordinary person. If an ordinary person had that much death energy, signs of corpse rot would probably have appeared by now. How could she seem so normal?
I called Vân Như Ý. “Thư Dương, class 11-5 at Anh Hoa High School. Can you look into her?”
She thought it over for a moment. “I know.”
8.
After school that evening, I tossed my backpack aside and sprawled across the bed. After resting for a while, I sensed that something was wrong.
Why was the little mouse so quiet today? I got up, went to the door, and bent down. The mouse was lying motionless on the floor. I touched it, but it didn’t respond.
Frowning, I swept my hand over its head. A flash of silver light appeared and quickly vanished.
Du Minh Sinh’s soul… was gone.
I went outside and called Vân Như Ý. “Someone came to my house. Du Minh Sinh’s soul is missing. If I’m not mistaken, it was that soul-capturer. How’s your investigation going?”
Vân Như Ý sounded just as serious. “I went to Thư Dương’s house, but it’s been abandoned for a long time. Are you sure the address you gave me was right?”
We agreed to meet in the alley behind Anh Hoa High School.
Before leaving, I sneaked into the school, found Thư Dương’s classroom, and took a book from her desk. I handed it to Vân Như Ý.
She frowned, holding the book in one hand while forming a spell with the other.
“Soul-Seeking Formation! Rise!”
Golden light appeared on the book, slowly forming a small eight-trigram formation.
The formation spun and shot off in one direction.
“Follow it!”
At her quiet command, we both set off after the formation.
On the western outskirts of Hải Thành, Vân Như Ý leaped from a bridge and landed steadily. She looked toward the abandoned factories in the distance, the golden light of the Soul-Seeking Formation extinguished and concealed in her palm.
I came up behind her.
“Over there?”
“That’s right.”
“Khương Yên, can you sense the soul-capturer’s aura?”
I closed my eyes and focused. Three seconds later, I opened them. “Right ahead! Hurry!”
My voice was urgent. Vân Như Ý looked surprised. “What’s wrong?”
“The soul-capturer is using a soul-reversal technique to change someone else’s fate! It’s a forbidden art of the Minh clan!”
I might be a little mischievous, but I’ve always kept the clan’s rules in mind. The soul-reversal technique is a cruel method that uses eleven living souls to change someone’s fate and extend their lifespan. It was banned hundreds of years ago.
I never thought I’d encounter it today…
So that was why this soul-capturer had been collecting so many living souls!
Only then did I finally understand.
The abandoned factory was empty, strewn with rusty machinery and blackened wood. A foul stench hit my nose.
We had no time to check our surroundings and hurried inside.
We ran out of the dark corridor, and a vast formation appeared before us.
Someone was kneeling on the formation, their expression devout.
Thư Dương stood in front of them.
“So that’s how it is…” I murmured.
Vân Như Ý asked, “What?”
“Now I understand why Thư Dương’s death energy and life energy contradict each other.”
If my guess was right, Thư Dương’s suicide attempt in the school bathroom a year ago might not have been as simple as everyone thought.
Maybe she couldn’t have survived back then. And as she was dying, the soul-capturer had forcibly kept her soul inside her body.
But that couldn’t stop her body from dying.
As time passed, the death energy inside her grew heavier. The heavier it became, the more unstable her soul grew, eventually leading to her death and the destruction of her soul.
That was an inevitable outcome.
So, to suppress the death energy inside her and stabilize her soul, the soul-capturer had to suck out other people’s souls, refine them, and use them as nourishment.
And now, they were planning to use the soul-reversal technique to stabilize Thư Dương’s soul completely.
Though this couldn’t bring her fully back to life, it was entirely possible for her to live another ten or twenty years as an ordinary person.
Vân Như Ý exclaimed in surprise, “Your Minh clan really has all kinds of tricks.”
“Enough talk. If we waste any more time, it’ll be too late.”
I lowered my voice and jumped down first.
When I hit the ground, dust billowed up.
Vân Như Ý landed right after me. Our sudden appearance startled the soul-capturer.
The person turned to face us, instinctively moving to shield Thư Dương behind them.
Only then did I realize the person was just a young man of eighteen or nineteen.
He looked at me, then at Vân Như Ý, his body trembling.
He was afraid…
“Are you here to arrest me?”
Vân Như Ý pointed to the row of jars behind him. “Arresting you isn’t my job, but you have to return the souls you stole. Otherwise, the Ten Great Spirit Sects won’t let you get away with it.”
If he didn’t return them, the victims’ souls would never wake up again.
Hoàng Huy and Du Minh Sinh were beyond saving anyway.
But there were many other ordinary people.
Their parents and children were waiting day and night for them to come home.
9.
“No.”
The young man was frightened, but still stood his ground. “I can’t give them to you.”
“I have to save A Dương. I have to save her!”
“This kid’s become obsessed.”
Vân Như Ý patted my shoulder. “We’ll have to use force.”
With that, she stepped past me and charged straight at him.
The young man had never seen anything like this and panicked. But aside from sucking out souls, there was nothing else he could do—and he couldn’t even touch Vân Như Ý’s soul.
After just three exchanges, Vân Như Ý had him tied up tight and tossed him at my feet. The young man struggled and cried.
Seeing him like that softened my heart, too.
“Hey.”
I crouched down and looked at him. “What’s your name?”
The young man’s name was Hà Tiểu Phi. His mother was from the Minh clan, and his father was an ordinary man.
His parents died in a car accident when he was ten, leaving him an orphan. That same year, Hà Tiểu Phi awakened his ability to suck out souls, but he was afraid people would think he was a monster, so he carefully kept it hidden. Even so, people shunned him simply because he was an orphan.
When he was twelve, a beautiful girl transferred to his school. Her name was Thư Dương, and she was the top student from the moment she arrived. Everyone loved her. Hà Tiểu Phi liked her, too, but didn’t dare talk to her. He was afraid she wouldn’t like him, afraid she would look down on him.
Then, Thư Dương was the one who approached Hà Tiểu Phi first.
“Hi, I’m Thư Dương. Can we be friends?”
Thư Dương was beautiful, kind, and warmhearted. Little by little, she became the only light in Hà Tiểu Phi’s world. Though his grades were only average, he did everything he could to attend the same middle school as Thư Dương—and in the end, he succeeded.
It was the luckiest thing that had ever happened to him.
Throughout their three years of middle school, Thư Dương made many friends and was loved by many. She never neglected Hà Tiểu Phi; in fact, she even declared him her best friend. She brought him delicious lunches, sang for him, and shared the new movies she’d watched with him.
Hà Tiểu Phi had thought how wonderful it would be if time could stop right then.
But time kept moving, and they grew up.