Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I set up the incense burner, lit three sticks of incense, and planted a Soul-Summoning Banner beside it, then started murmuring an incantation.

Summoning Yang Souls and Summoning Yin Souls were two entirely different things. Summoning Yang Souls meant the person was still alive, just missing their soul. Some children’s souls were unstable; a sudden scare could make them lose one. That kind of soul-calling was fairly simple-plenty of old folks in the countryside knew how.

Summoning Yin Souls was another matter. You had to petition Qingxuan, Beiyin, Tianqi, and the Five Dippers above, then send down a writ to summon the local City God.

“Heavenly stars shine clear as I pace the turning axis-now is the time the jade altar seizes and summons;

Let the talisman’s command be proclaimed to the Quanqu Mansion-let the dead soul come to the Taihuang Banner;

With three sacred titles the long night is broken, in one lift the ritual banner reaches the earthbound deities…”

I moved through Pacing the Dipper Steps, circling the altar as I chanted. When the rite ended, a sharp gust of yin wind surged up and blew the yellow paper offerings off the altar.

I stared.

“No way…”

Jiang Haoyan jolted and swept his gaze around, on guard. “Where’s the ghost?”

I shot him a look, deadpan. “Right behind you.”

He stiffened for half a heartbeat-then I clicked my tongue.

If there really had been a ghost behind him, I wouldn’t have been so annoyed.

I’d gone through all that trouble, and I still hadn’t summoned Li Zhu’s yin soul. Fine, maybe Li Zhu wouldn’t come-but not even a single stray wandering spirit showed up.

The incense I’d used was top-grade Soul-Guiding Incense, blended from agarwood, sandalwood, rosin, frankincense, cloves, costus root, and patchouli. One short stick cost several thousand yuan. For roaming souls, it was practically a feast.

Even setting Li Zhu aside-an old woman in the village had died just a few days before him. Why hadn’t she come to take a bite of my Soul-Guiding Incense?

“This doesn’t make sense,” I muttered. “Li Family Village can’t possibly be so clean that there isn’t even one lonely ghost.”

I rubbed my chin, thinking. Jiang Haoyan lowered his voice. “Could he have already been reincarnated?”

I shook my head.

“A young man who died a wrongful death goes to the back of the line. Even if it somehow became his turn, he’d still have to wait until the forty-ninth day to see his family one last time before reporting to the Underworld.”

So there was only one explanation: someone had seized Li Zhu’s soul. That was why he couldn’t come.

“Forget it,” I said. “Tomorrow we’ll look at the photos from the death scene first.”

I snuffed out the Soul-Guiding Incense and packed up the altar.

With my bag on my back, I was about to climb out through the window when I paused.

The wet patch beneath the window from earlier was gone-vanished without a trace.

I stepped onto the dirt. It was dry enough that a faint haze of dust puffed up.

I crouched and rubbed the ground with my fingers. This spot still wasn’t the same as the rest. The door had been locked for a while; the other parts of the floor had a thin layer of pale gray dust. But where the water had been was noticeably cleaner.

Jiang Haoyan had seen it too. He let out a quiet sound of surprise. “That water evaporated insanely fast.”

A flicker of suspicion rose in my chest, but I had no thread to pull on. In the end, I let it go. Jiang Haoyan and I climbed out the window and covered our traces.

When we returned to Li Yuan’s house, he was no longer in our room.

Early the next morning, Li Zhu’s father rushed back. Before he even entered, his booming voice carried into the house:

“Where’s the master? Master-please save my son!”

I had just stood up when a figure threw himself at Jiang Haoyan and dropped to his knees with a heavy thud.

“Master, you’re so young… Master, my second uncle called you here-I know you’ve got real skills. Everyone in the village says my boy was harmed by an Evil Cultivator, that even his soul can’t rest. I’m begging you-help him!”

The man was in his late forties or fifties, hair already half white. His weather-beaten face was streaming with tears, and it was hard not to feel for him.

Jiang Haoyan fumbled, trying to haul him up. “Uncle, you’ve got the wrong person. I’m not the master-Qiao Moyu is.”

Li Zhu’s father stared at me in disbelief. “A female Daoist? That… that can’t be right.”

I waved him off. “That doesn’t matter. Show me the photos from when Li Zhu died-and tell me his birth chart details, too.”

Still half doubtful, Li Zhu’s father wiped his face and pulled a rolled bundle of materials from his bag.

“This is that weight. A weight this big was hung from my boy’s feet. The rope cut so deep into his ankles-left a groove.”

“And these are the photos. Look at how they tied him up… Give me an hour and I still couldn’t bind a person like that, and then hoist him onto the house beams. They said it was suicide. I don’t believe it even if you kill me. Who could hang himself like that?”

I hadn’t even gotten to the photos. Just the moment I saw that so-called scale weight, my scalp prickled.

“That’s not a scale weight,” I said.

“It’s a Soul-Sinking Weight.”

It looked ordinary enough-an iron weight with the number “1” carved in the center. I turned it over so it lay the way it was meant to be placed. The “1” now read as a single horizontal stroke-the talismanic mark for “one.”

That was the correct orientation for a Soul-Sinking Weight.

One Qi Transforms into Three Purities; the three souls return to one place. In Taoist practice, “one” symbolizes primordial qi and the power of gathering and binding.

I flipped to Li Zhu’s photos. Sure enough, there were several tiny puncture marks on his forehead, and the rope wrapped around his body was anything but normal.