Chapter 225
Chapter 225
Li Qingying and I had originally thought one night would be enough to reinforce the Formation in the backyard.
Instead, Liu Junyan and Hui Moqiong remained back there for three days and three nights.
For me, those three days and nights felt like enduring a Calamity.
I didn’t dare sleep. The moment I did, I would hear the Grand Witch’s voice.
She kept repeating the same words over and over: “Return to Cangwu Mountain…”
The ordeal left me visibly thinner, and I truly had no idea what to do.
According to the information Liu Junyan had uncovered before, the Grand Witch had originally lived on Cangwu Mountain. Perhaps returning there had become her final obsession.
Maybe once I brought her back to Cangwu Mountain, she would separate herself from my body.
But there was another possibility: I could bring her back to Cangwu Mountain, only for her to use Body Possession to take me over.
After all, we knew very little about the Phoenix Clan, and even less about the Grand Witch.
Over those three days and three nights, I barely managed two hours of sleep in total.
I didn’t even dare meditate.
By the end of it, I was so dazed that everyone I looked at seemed to have a double.
And it wasn’t simply exhaustion. I genuinely felt as though my soul was about to leave my body.
On the evening of the third day, while Li Qingying was cooking, I passed out in the kitchen doorway.
I hit the floor with a heavy thud, scaring Li Qingying half to death.
Yet at that moment, I could clearly see myself standing in the kitchen doorway while my body lay on the floor. Li Qingying picked it up and rested my head on her lap.
She pressed hard on the pressure point beneath my nose.
Then she checked my breathing. I was obviously still breathing.
In other words, I was still alive, but my Souls had drifted out of my body. Yet because the Grand Witch was still parasitizing my Souls, I hadn’t died?
The whole thing lasted less than thirty seconds before I heard the Grand Witch chanting.
An unseen force immediately dragged me back into my physical body, and I slowly came to.
I had scared Li Qingying badly. When she saw me wake up, her eyes turned red.
She made me a cup of brown sugar water and forced me to drink it before hurrying back to finish cooking.
While she cooked, she had me bring over a small stool and sit right beside her. She refused to let me move even half a meter out of her sight.
I was so sleepy that I leaned against the edge of the stove and fell asleep right there on the stool.
Sure enough, the moment I drifted off, the Grand Witch’s voice returned.
This time, however, she didn’t insist that I return to Cangwu Mountain.
That thirty-second out-of-body experience seemed to have frightened her too. It was as if she were reassessing the condition of my body.
After a while, her voice rang out again, rattling off a long string of incantations.
She chanted so quickly that my ears couldn’t keep up, yet the incantations seemed to sprout legs and crawl straight into my mind.
Her lips moved constantly as she recited them again and again, never tiring.
Strangely, whenever I had fallen into one of the Grand Witch’s dreams before, I would quickly jolt awake on my own.
But today, I sank deep into the dream, trapped by the sound of the Grand Witch’s chanting and unable to pull myself free.
It wasn’t until a stream of True Qi poured into me through my back that my eyes suddenly flew open.
The first person I saw was Liu Junyan.
He asked anxiously, “Xiao Jiu, what’s wrong?”
I opened my mouth, intending to tell him I hadn’t slept for days and was simply exhausted.
But after instinctively stretching, I realized that my previously sluggish body suddenly felt much lighter and more refreshed.
I told Liu Junyan everything that had happened over the past few days, including every detail of that thirty-second out-of-body experience just now.
Liu Junyan frowned deeply when he heard that.
But before we could come up with any countermeasures, my spirit slipped free of my body again that very night.
At the time, I was curled up in Liu Junyan’s arms. He held me close, and we slept soundly in each other’s embrace.
My Souls, however, had ended up beside the bed, watching that tender scene.
As though he had somehow sensed it, Liu Junyan abruptly opened his eyes in the middle of his sleep and turned toward me at the bedside.
He could see my Souls.
His slit pupils contracted, and his brow furrowed.
Even so, Liu Junyan did not dare make a sound for fear of startling me.
He carefully sat up, formed a Sword Finger, and pressed it to the center of my forehead while murmuring an incantation.
Before long, he had drawn my Souls back into my body.
Over the next week or so, the same thing happened frequently.
Sometimes Liu Junyan noticed in time and pulled me back himself.
Other times, if I had been out of my body for too long, the Grand Witch would chant a spell and draw me back.
Nothing irreversible had happened yet, but if this continued, it was bound to be worrying.
After going over every possibility, we eventually reached a conclusion: my condition might have something to do with Feng Lishu’s death.
A week later, Liu Junyan made all the necessary arrangements and insisted on taking me to Mount Song.
The Buddha Lamp he had enshrined at Great Dharma King Temple was clearly no longer enough to protect me against the Symbiotic Curse. He had already spoken with the Abbot and arranged to bring me there so they could perform a Release from Suffering rite for me.
Not to grant me Release from Suffering, of course, but to grant Release from Suffering to the Grand Witch within my Souls.
I did not object to Liu Junyan’s arrangements.
For one thing, something clearly had to be done about my condition. Whether it worked or not, it was better to try.
For another, I had always been deeply curious about Great Dharma King Temple.
If Liu Junyan truly was Liu Xingyi — Chan Master Dahui — then his previous incarnation had come from Great Dharma King Temple.
I wanted to see the place for myself. Perhaps I could find some clues there.
Mount Song was quite a distance from Jiangcheng, and the drive took most of the day.
Liu Junyan drove while I sat in the passenger seat. At first, I chatted with him along the way.
But as we talked, I drifted off to sleep.
The moment I fell asleep, the Grand Witch’s chanting began echoing in my mind again.
I spent the rest of the journey listening to her chant.
Mount Song was vast, and Great Dharma King Temple was sprawling as well.
The Abbot knew Liu Junyan was coming and personally greeted us at the Temple entrance.
The current Abbot of Great Dharma King Temple went by the Dharma name Kongji. He was a plump man who looked exceptionally kind and approachable.
He first paid his respects to Liu Junyan, then studied me for a moment.
I did not know whether he had seen something in me. He merely kept smiling, calm and unhurried.
He led us into the Temple and took us straight to the meditation room where he normally meditated and performed his daily devotions.
A young novice monk brought us tea, and we sat across from each other at a tea table to talk.
After exchanging a few pleasantries, Liu Junyan told Abbot Kongji everything that had been happening to me.
Abbot Kongji did not seem surprised. Still smiling, he said, “A week ago, the Buddha Lamp enshrined for Shopkeeper Xiao Jiu suddenly flared. Afterward, its Lamp Oil began dwindling at an alarming rate. I knew then that something must have happened to her.”
Liu Junyan asked, “Is the rapid loss of Lamp Oil some kind of omen?”
Abbot Kongji replied, “You must have heard the saying… ‘When the oil is spent, the lamp goes out…'”