Unlike from the time at the Peach Blossom Springs, this time he was no longer involved. He was just a bystander, and no one in the memories could see him. He walked up to the cavalry, lowered his head, and looked at the young man who was weeping and touching the corpse.

     A blue vein in his skull kept pulsing and throbbing.

     He felt a bone-piercing chill, and goosebumps rose all over his body. Seeing this scene once more, he was well aware of what role the young man played in the shocking turn of events in Lin’an—betraying Chu Xun, the young master of the city, in order to bring his adoptive father back to life. He didn’t hesitate to sacrifice the lives of everyone in the city.

     “Xiao Man, the dead can’t be brought back to life. Don’t be too sad. We can’t stay here for long. Let’s go back quickly.”

     “No… no… I’m not going anywhere. I want dad… He, he went to find food for me, that’s why he died. I let him down. Dad! Daddy!”

     Mo Ran stared at the young man.

     Who was this person?

     Huaizui’s father? Or…

     His eyes fell on Xiao Man’s left hand. There was a black mole the size of a grain of rice between the thumb and index finger of his left hand.

     He suddenly thought of Master Huaizui’s hand. In this same place, the exact same spot, there was also a mole. It was exactly the same.

     Mo Ran was stunned.

     At this moment, that distant voice slowly sounded again.

     “I was born in Lin’an. Since I was a child, I had no parents and was adopted by a groom from the city. When I was fourteen, there was a crack to the ghost realm, and Lin’an suffered. There was no rice or food at home. I was very hungry, so my adoptive father took the risk to go out of the city to find food for me. But he didn’t come back in the evening.”

     His heart skipped a beat—

     Was Huaizui really Xiao Man from two hundred years ago?!

     Huaizui said softly, “When I left the city and found him, he had been killed by evil spirits. His intestines were outside of his body, and his eyes were pecked out by crows. I will never forget that scene for the rest of my life.”

     Mo Ran’s ears were buzzing as he followed Xiao Man back into the city. Back then, the sky in Lin’an was cracked, and the Ghost King coerced the people into surrendering Chu Xun. He had seen all these things once before, but seeing them again, he still felt miserable and mournful, and felt that people’s hearts were sinister.

     He saw that on the night of the incident, Xiao Man had begged everyone not to dismember his foster father. He begged the housekeeper to let him wait until Chu Xun returned to see if he could keep his father’s corpse intact.

     “Please, I beg of you, just wait a little longer. Gongzi will be back soon. I’ll definitely keep an eye on his corpse. If he rises, I’ll definitely stop him. I beg you…”

     “You can’t stop a corpse once it’s risen. You have to be clear about which is more important!”

     “No! Don’t dismember him! Please don’t dismember him…”

     In the torrential rain, Xiao Man knelt on the ground and kowtowed over and over. Eventually, his head and face were covered in blood, but he still wouldn’t stop. His father’s body was roughly pulled from his arms and dragged out of the governor’s office by the stewards. Outside, they surrounded the body that could change at any time.

     Xiao Man’s vision was blocked. After a while, he saw blood flowing from under the crowd’s feet, which was instantly washed into a light pink by the heavy rain.

     “I was selfish at that time. I only felt disheartened and full of resentment towards everyone. So I betrayed Lin’an and recommended myself to be the Ghost King’s subordinate. I wanted to take revenge on them.”

     Following his narration, Mo Ran once again saw the scene that had once shaken him to the core.

     The mother ate the child’s intestines.

     The citizens betrayed their hero.

     Chu Xun knelt on the stone steps in front of Chenghuang Temple, hunched over in the mud, and sobbed.

     He saw the mob escort Chu Xun to the temple, like vultures eating decaying flesh, and surround him. In order to prolong their lives, this mass of people didn’t hesitate to sacrifice Chu Xun’s life.

     He saw Chu Xun pull out his heart, along with his spiritual core, and hand it over to the scattered citizens who cried for him. He told them to leave this place as soon as possible and not stay any longer…

     Xiao Man had also seen all of this.

     “Later, I went to the ghost realm. Many times when I was alone, I would always think of Chu-gongzi’s miserable situation at that time, of the heart he gave up, and how he used to… treat us well. Every time I thought of this, I felt uneasy, and the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t escape the condemnation in my heart.”

     Huaizui paused.

     His voice became extremely pained.

     “I am a traitor.”

     Mo Ran couldn’t tell what he felt in his heart.

     Sometimes, good and evil were separated by a single thought. Some people actually regretted it the moment the knife was stabbed, but so what?

     There was no going back.

     “Not long after, I heard that Chu Xun’s soul was cast to the underworld. He was a good man. Although his cultivation hadn’t reached its peak, and he couldn’t become an immortal, it was enough for him to enter the cycle of reincarnation. He would be rich in his next life and enjoy a peaceful and tranquil life. But he didn’t leave. Because of the great calamity that had occurred that year, the souls of his child and his wife had been fractured and torn apart. He had gone to Yanluo to beg, willing to use his three lives of good fortune to exchange for the release of his wife and child. But in the end, it didn’t go smoothly.”

     Mo Ran watched Huaizui run across the ghost realm. He was too ashamed to face Chu Xun and carefully avoided him. But he tried his best to pull aside the ghost soldiers and ask, “What about the wife and child? What did Yanluo say in the end? Can we think of a way to piece their souls back together and let them enter the cycle of reincarnation?”

     “Can you think of something? Please.”

     “I beg you to help Chu-gongzi think of a way. No matter the price…”

     A ghost soldier laughed at him and mocked, “I’ve long heard of your glorious deeds. Back then, wasn’t it you who helped the Ninth Ghost King kill Chu Xun’s family? Why did your temperament suddenly change when you came to the underworld? Are you afraid Chu Xun will come settle the score after he becomes a ghost?”

     Mo Ran followed behind Huaizui, watching him beg and kneel before many people—perhaps they shouldn’t be called people, but ghosts. But most of the time, the nature of people and ghosts was the same.

     Just as Chu Wanning had said, the soul may change its character, hobbies, and temperament, but its nature would never change because of the cycle of reincarnation.

     Huaizui asked about the reincarnation of Chu Xun’s wife and child, and the Ninth Ghost King soon found out.

     When the Ninth King fought with Chu Xun, he lost one of his eyes, so he had long hated Chu Xun. When he heard that his subordinate, Xiao Man, was filled with guilt and secretly asked about the method of reincarnation for his former master, he couldn’t help but get angry. He took back the token that allowed Huaizui to travel freely to and from the ghost realm and ordered him to return to the mortal world, taking away Huaizui’s eternal life as a ghost soldier.

     “Go back to the world of the living. When all the yin energy of the underworld in your body dissipates, you will die. After death, you will fall into the infernal hells for an eternity, and your soul will never be reincarnated.” The Ninth King stared at Huaizui with his one good eye. “This is the price you will pay for helping your old master.”

     The darkness of the underworld disappeared.

     Mo Ran heard the patter of rain. It was spring, and the drizzle was soft, moistening the green buds.

     He saw Huaizui had become a monk, and he walked in the spring rain.

     “I returned to the mortal world. At this time, a hundred years had already passed in this world. Although the Ghost King took away my token, the remaining yin energy in my body allowed me to return to the ghost realm at midnight, when the yin energy was at its strongest. However, if I stayed for a long time, the energy consumed would be too great. Actually… I am still very afraid of death, so I dare not stay in the ghost realm for too long. Only when I really need some clues and help, will I secretly return to the underworld.”

     Mo Ran listened to his self-narration and looked at Huaizui, who was walking alone in the bamboo forest. Plum blossoms lay in the winter snow and lotus flowers listened to the rain in summer as he walked alone, from the spring of ten thousand trees to the frosty winter.

     The hemp shoes were worn out one after another.

     Huaizui searched and inquired everywhere, hoping to find even a little bit of information that could give the mother and son, whose souls he destroyed, a chance to reincarnate.

     Huaizui said, “It was also a chance to atone for a small part of my sins.”

     Others may not feel anything at all, and only think that Huaizui was ridiculous, but when Mo Ran heard this, his eyes moistened.

     Atonement.

     Everyone who had committed a crime and wanted to repent was like a fish thirsting for water, longing for atonement.

     He was like this, and so was Huaizui.

     They were not good people, with blood dripping from their hands and severed heads at their feet.

     How to atone for their sins?

     Using the hands that had once killed people to put life into the pool of merit, could their sins be written off? He hoped that all good and evil in this world, the blessings and karma, could be so simple.

     But he knew that was not the case.

     “I’d been walking in the mortal world for nearly a hundred years.” Huaizui sighed slowly. “In these hundred years, I have always helped when I encountered difficulties and rescued when I saw suffering. I knew it was useless. No matter how many good deeds I accumulated, after death I would still go to purgatory and suffer all kinds of torment. But I just wanted to make myself feel better. I just thought that if gongzi was still in the human world, he would definitely… worry about other people’s worries and suffer hardships, right?”

     In these hundred years, many memories of the past flowed by.

     He saw Huaizui carrying a blind orphan through the mountains and forests. He saw him helping in the fields, mending old clothes under a lonely lamp, and donating all his money to repair two villages that had been destroyed by evil spirits.

     “Chu-gongzi had never been reincarnated. Later on, I plucked a haitang branch that bloomed brilliantly in the mortal world. Thinking that it was his and his wife’s favorite flower, I became so dazed that I mustered up the courage to go to the ghost realm and see him once. The result was obvious. Needless to say, he turned me away and told me never to come back.”

     The memory showed Huaizui standing between the alleys of the underworld. At this time, his back was already slightly hunched.

     “I didn’t dare to bother him, so I never appeared in front of him again. But he didn’t throw away the haitang branch. I thought that he might still like things from the human world. He couldn’t see these things in the underworld, so I asked someone to bring it to him. I hoped that his hatred for me would lessen because of this, even just a little bit. Later, I heard that Madam Chu’s soul could be recovered, but it would take some time. However, the little gongzi’s three souls and seven spirits had already shattered, and I was afraid that he would no longer exist in heaven and earth. After I learned of this news, I felt even more guilty and regretful—until one day, I procured something.”

     Spring Mountain on a moonlit night, on the Misty River, Huaizui sat in the cabin of his boat. The sparks of the fishing fires were reflected in the river, which also reflected the object in his hands.

     Mo Ran walked over to take a look. He sat down next to Huaizui. When he got closer, he realized it was a piece of wood. The wood looked strange; the branches of other trees had rough bark and fine lines, but this one didn’t. It was only the size of a palm, and the bark was smooth and delicate, exuding a faint luster. Even in the illusion, Mo Ran seemed to be able to feel that this piece of wood flowed with a light fragrance.

     “Flame Emperor’s Divine Wood.”

     “!”

     Mo Ran’s eyes suddenly opened wide, looking at the broken piece of branch flowing the brilliance in disbelief.

     This was… the Flame Emperor’s Divine Wood?!

     Legend had it that at the end of the east sea, where no one had ever reached, there was a sacred tree that had grown for thousands of years. Mo Ran had lived two lifetimes and roamed the cultivation world for many years, so how could he not know the legend of the Flame Emperor’s Divine Wood?

     It could revive the dead and make flesh grow on bones.

     It could be tempered into a magical weapon that was even more powerful than a holy weapon.

     It could even help a mortal ascend, directly breaking away from the suffering of reincarnation and allowing one to become an immortal forever.

     Huaizui was obviously aware of these rumors. He said softly, “The sacred tree has a spirit. If one refines it into a spiritual core, they can ascend to immortality in a day… I will no longer be cursed in purgatory. From now on, I’ll be free.”

     Mo Ran suddenly recalled the rumors about Huaizui.

     It was said that he rejected the invitation of the heavenly realm and stayed in this world forever.

     Could it be that the truth was he tried to refine the Flame Emperor’s Divine Wood and failed?

     “I really… really wanted to take this piece of sacred wood for my own use. There was a time when I even felt that this was the will of the heavens, that it was the heavens who took pity on me and granted me forgiveness; they didn’t want me to fall into hell and suffer, so they let this piece of Divine Wood come to my side by chance.”

     Inside the cabin of the boat, Huaizui stroked the piece of Divine Wood, his eyes flashing with longing and confusion. His expression was so contradictory, just like the voice echoing in Mo Ran’s ears.

     “However, I once read in an ancient book that the Flame Emperor’s Divine Wood was the same as Nuwa’s remains. With this piece of Divine Wood, a living person can be created.”