His efforts couldn’t make up for the ever-widening gap between them.
In their final year of middle school, Thư Dương told him she’d been accepted to Anh Hoa High School as a special-admissions student.
She was overjoyed. The school had excellent teachers and top-notch educational resources, and studying there would give her a brighter future.
He was happy for her, even though he knew they were about to part ways.
After graduating from middle school, Thư Dương enrolled at Anh Hoa, while Hà Tiểu Phi chose a technical school nearby.
Every weekend, Hà Tiểu Phi went to see Thư Dương. At first, everything seemed fine. But gradually, he realized something was wrong.
Thư Dương didn’t smile as much anymore, and she’d become easily frightened. Even in summer, she wore long sleeves and pants. Sometimes bruises appeared on her arms, but when he asked about them, she just smiled and said she was fine.
Hà Tiểu Phi deeply regretted it. He regretted not asking one more question.
In the second semester of his junior year, Thư Dương stopped seeing him as often. She said she had too much schoolwork and no time.
Hà Tiểu Phi understood, so every now and then he’d just walk around Anh Hoa on the weekend.
He hoped he’d run into her.
At last, he did.
That afternoon, just as he arrived at the gates of Anh Hoa, he heard a commotion. An ambulance siren blared, and medical staff shouted instructions. Then he saw someone being carried out of the school on a stretcher, covered in blood.
It was his Thư Dương.
By the time Hà Tiểu Phi finished telling the story, his eyes were red. He turned to look at the two little jars in the left corner, where dark gray liquid churned inside.
They held the souls of Hoàng Huy and Du Minh Sinh.
“They deserved to die.”
Hà Tiểu Phi said bitterly, “If it weren’t for them, Thư Dương wouldn’t have ended up like this.”
“I have to save her…”
Until then, Hà Tiểu Phi hadn’t been able to do anything to the souls of Hoàng Huy and Du Minh Sinh. After all, he was only an inexperienced soul-capturer.
But later, he discovered that the girl named Khương Uyên, who had just transferred to Anh Hoa, was strange. Her power far surpassed his.
Then one day, he discovered that Du Minh Sinh’s body was actually inhabited by a dog. From that moment on, a plan began to take shape in his mind.
He would use these villains’ souls to save Thư Dương!
10.
Vân Như Ý gave a snort.
“You almost made me feel sorry for you.”
I looked at Hà Tiểu Phi and pointed behind him. “Have you asked her what she thinks?”
Hà Tiểu Phi froze and turned around.
At some point, Thư Dương had opened her eyes. She was looking at him through tear-filled eyes.
“You told me all these souls belonged to stray cats and dogs that had died…”
Hà Tiểu Phi clenched his fists and said nothing.
I stepped closer and pointed at the first jar. “This is the soul of a thirty-year-old young mother.”
Then I pointed at the second jar. “This is the soul of a seventy-year-old woman who scavenged for trash…”
“This is the soul of a three-year-old child…”
And this one…
“Shut up!” Hà Tiểu Phi shouted at me.
“Stop talking! I said shut your mouth!”
I glanced at him, then turned to Thư Dương. “Would you want these people sacrificed in exchange for another decade or so of life?”
Thư Dương shook her head through her tears. “I don’t want that. I don’t!”
Hà Tiểu Phi rushed over and grabbed her hand. “I can save you. You have to trust me.”
Thư Dương kept crying.
Her sobbing gave me a headache.
“All right.”
I turned to Vân Như Ý and nodded. “Take these souls away and return them to where they belong. Your mission should be complete now.”
“Right.” Vân Như Ý stepped forward, waved her hand, and swept the jars into her storage bag. Then she handed me the last jar.
“Du Minh Sinh’s is yours.”
Just as Vân Như Ý was about to leave, Hà Tiểu Phi charged at her frantically. “You can’t go! I was so close to succeeding!”
I held him back. “Succeed? You’re getting ahead of yourself.”
“The soul-reversal technique you got your hands on can only be performed by the Minh clan. You’re just a soul-capturer… Give it up, kid.”
“You lied to me…”
Hà Tiểu Phi stared at me, dazed. “You lied to me.”
While he stood there stunned, Vân Như Ý had already disappeared.
Hà Tiểu Phi and Thư Dương embraced and sobbed.
What a pitiful pair of lovers.
“All right, stop crying.”
I muttered, “I never said I wouldn’t save her.”
The next morning, after an exhausting day, I finally returned to my rented room.
Outside the door, a tall figure sat with his head bowed, like a lonely dog.
I stood in front of him and patted his head. “A Hoàng.”
A Hoàng wrapped his arms around my waist and rubbed against me anxiously.
I paused. “A Hoàng, it seems this body isn’t right for you anymore.”
Since Du Minh Sinh is alive, if the Minh clan discovers that I swapped his soul with A Hoàng’s, I won’t be able to escape responsibility.
A Hoàng didn’t stop what he was doing, as if he didn’t care.
What a stupid dog.
11.
The school bully Du Minh Sinh had taken sick leave and been absent for days. Even his underling, Hoàng Huy, hadn’t been seen at school in ages.
Everyone wondered if something had happened to them.
Actually, nothing serious had happened. Once their souls were returned to their proper places, they needed time to recover. What’s more, while I was working, I’d “accidentally” created a consciousness, so their intelligence might have been affected. They’d recover, but they might drool now and then.
On the school rooftop, Vân Như Ý sat beside me and looked at the top of my head.
“Your little dog is really clingy.”
Where no one could see, A Hoàng’s soul floated above my head, its arms wrapped around me.
“That’s right. He’s very clingy.”
Even though I couldn’t find him a body, I could still keep his soul with me. Now he had friends.
“A Hoàng, come play!” my ghost friends called, and A Hoàng happily bounded over.
Vân Như Ý asked me again, “What about Thư Dương?”
I was eating a lollipop, so my words came out muffled. “Still looking for a body for her…”
The only way to save Thư Dương was to find a healthy body that had lost its soul. Those bodies were easy enough to find; they usually belonged to patients who had been in a vegetative state in the hospital for years.
But the time wasn’t right yet.
As I was talking, a sudden explosion rang out to the east.
That was the direction of the school gate.
Vân Như Ý stood up and squinted in that direction. “It looks like… there’s been a car accident.”
The only person injured in the accident was a girl from my school. By sheer coincidence, I knew her. She was the girl who had bullied me, and Du Minh Sinh’s girlfriend, Lê Giai.
I heard that by the time they got her into the ambulance, she was already unconscious. What a shame.
One evening some time later, I took Thư Dương’s soul to the hospital.
In the VIP room, the girl was hooked up to all sorts of tubes. Her family had enough power and money to keep her alive and provide her with the best possible care. But that couldn’t stop her from becoming a vegetable. Her soul had been shattered, and she would never wake up for the rest of her life.
I looked at her for a few seconds, then turned to Thư Dương. “Go on in. Your good fortune is waiting behind her.”
Thư Dương gazed at me for a long moment. Her body turned into a cloud of gray dust and slowly drifted into Lê Giai’s body…
#Epilogue
Vân Như Ý came to see me again.
As expected, she was very clever. “Does Lê Giai have a grudge against you? You caused that accident at the school gate, didn’t you?”
She was right. I had caused the accident. When Lê Giai drove up to the school gate, my ghost friends made faces at her from the back seat. Startled, Lê Giai crashed into a passing truck.
As for whether I held a grudge… of course I did. It happened not long after I first started at Anh Hoa High School. I’d been cornered in the bathroom, soaked through and huddled in a stall, too afraid to come out. I don’t know how long I’d been waiting when two girls came in to smoke. One of them was Lê Giai.
She hadn’t realized anyone else was in the bathroom, so she spoke freely.
The other girl brought me up. “Khương Uyên looks pretty innocent. Aren’t you worried Brother Du will fall for her?”
Lê Giai sneered. “She thinks she can compete with me? Du Minh Sinh would never like her.”
She paused, then asked the other girl a strange question. “Do you know how her adoptive parents died?”
“I heard a truck hit them while they were picking up scrap.”
“Ha…” Lê Giai said nothing more.
At the time, I sensed something was off. Later, after my memories returned, I checked Du Minh Sinh’s memories while collecting his soul. Sure enough, I discovered the secret between Lê Giai and Du Minh Sinh.
My adoptive parents’ deaths hadn’t been an accident. They’d been murdered.
Lê Giai and Du Minh Sinh had argued. One rainy night, she drove out in a rage and hit an elderly couple who were collecting scrap. She ran them over again and again, until they were both completely still.
She called Du Minh Sinh to help cover it up. They used their families’ influence to bury the incident and found someone else to take the blame. They didn’t care about the elderly couple’s lives at all. In their eyes, even the scholarship students at Anh Hoa High School weren’t people—they were just toys to amuse themselves with.
They really deserved to die.
Vân Như Ý looked at me and sighed. “Doesn’t that violate the rules?”
“It does.”
I smiled. “So what? I’m a little girl of the Minh clan. Honesty isn’t exactly my strong suit.”
I’d broken the rules.
The King of the Minh wanted to seal away my memories again.
It was such a pain.
After that, I didn’t see Vân Như Ý for a while. I heard that her husband, the Dragon King, had awakened.
I wondered how the Ten Great Spirit Sects would handle that.
But… that’s not my problem, is it?!
-THE END-