Chapter 109: The Master's Second Earth Soul

With her mind in a state of confusion and buzzing numbness, Mo Ran's hands and feet felt cold as she carried Chu Wanning's spirit downstairs in a daze.

"The Great Physician"

"What's wrong with it being you?"

"Are you sure that the one upstairs is my master's earth spirit?"

The ghostly groom was a little impatient: "Of course I am, how could I be wrong"

Mo Ran, reluctantly, asked, "Could it be a spirit of knowledge, or"

"Or what." The ghost doctor tsked, "There are only three souls in a person, earth, knowledge and human, I've been practicing medicine for 150 years, if I couldn't tell these three souls apart, the King of Hell would have told me to go back to my reincarnation."

Mo Ran pursed her lips and suddenly had a thought that she wasn't sure about.

"Doctor, you have been practicing medicine for a hundred and fifty years, have you ever seen a person who would have two earth spirits"

"You're sick," said the ghost doctor angrily, "and I don't think you're in your right mind, so why don't you stay and let me check your pulse?"

Of course, he could not let the ghost doctor check his pulse. Although Master Huai Zui had cast a spell, if he was not careful, he would probably be detected.

The sky in the ghost world is always dark, and to distinguish morning from evening, one can only look up at the sky. If there is a half-warm, half-cool sun behind the red clouds, it is day; if there is a cold moon hanging high in the sky, it is night.

By this time it was night and the roads were getting cold.

Mo Ran walks alone on the street with his head bowed, clutching the spirit guide lamp in his arms. The more I walked, the more bewildered I felt, the more isolated I felt.

This helplessness and confusion had been with him since he was very young and it made him feel very bad. He even remembered some of the people he had known when he was still living in the barracks, when the fire in the Zuiyu Building had killed everyone but him.

Counting the years, he wondered who he might meet if he went on like this, except for his Mother, who should not have been reincarnated yet.

Then he thought of Xue Meng.

He recalled Xue Meng's angry cry to take the spirit-guiding lamp from him, and he scolded him, "Pestilence."

"How do you deserve it, how do you have the face."

Mo Ran hugged his soul lamp and walked slower and slower, finally stopping at the wall, his eyes couldn't help but redden as he looked down at the gentle golden light and murmured in a small voice.

"Master, is it true that you don't want to go back with me"

The lamp did not answer, it just burned silently.

He stood in place for a long time before he gradually calmed down.

Suddenly he remembered Chu Xun, as if he had grabbed a lifeline, and hurriedly ran to Shunfeng House.

When he got there, it was time to close the Shun Fung Building and a masked ghost was about to close and lock the door.

"It's you."

The masked man, the same one who had guided him upstairs earlier, froze for a moment and said, "Why are you here again"

"I'm in a hurry, please." Mo Ran ran in a hurry, gasping for breath, his eyes bright and anxious, he swallowed and said hoarsely, "I want to see Mr Chu Xun again."

Chu Xun was staring at a begonia flower in a white porcelain vase when he was surprised to see Mo Ran return.

"Why is the young master back? But I couldn't find anyone."

Mo Ran said, "I've found it, but I've found it."

When Chu Xun saw that he was in a hurry and seemed to have something difficult to say, he invited him into the room, closed the door and said, "Sit down and talk."

Mo Ran was worried that Chu Xun might see something strange if he held the lamp in his hand, so he put it in his Qiankun bag.

It is not that he thinks Chu Xun is an evil spirit, but it is better not to let the ghosts here know about such things as the living entering the hell until they have no choice but to do so.

"The young lord went to the southeast."

"Hmm."

"" Chu Xun pondered slightly and said, "It's in the Sick Souls Hall, isn't it?"

Mo Ran nodded and spoke after a moment's deliberation, "Sir, I saw him in the Hall of Sick Souls, but he was an incomplete earth spirit, unable to move or speak, and even different from other ghosts in that he was translucent, visible but not touchable."

"This is generally the case when earth spirits are damaged." Chu Xun's expression was somewhat gloomy, "Some spirits of the dead who have been stimulated will also have their souls separated, and it will be difficult to reunite them again."

Mo Ran bit her lip and mumbled, "The medical officer at the Soul Museum said that people with incomplete souls will have some weaknesses in their lives when they are reincarnated. But the person I'm looking for was clearly in good health before he was born, so I wonder if there might be a mistake."

Here he paused for a moment and looked up at Chu Xun.

" Mr. Chu, can there be anyone in this world who has two earthly souls"

Chu Xun was stunned: "Two earth spirits"

"Hmm."

Instead of immediately rejecting Mo Ran's claim, as the healer at the Sick Souls Pavilion had done, he lowered his eyes in contemplation, thought carefully for a moment, and said, "I don't think it's out of the question."

Mo Ran flinched and jerked her head up, her gaze bright in the dim candlelight of the room.

"Sir, are you serious?"

Chu Xun nodded, "Ordinary people have only three souls and seven spirits, but I once had a woman who had two conscious souls."

"I would like to hear more about it."

Chu Xun shook his head, the curtain of his eyelashes dropping and trembling gently, and he was quiet for a moment before he said, "It is too long in the past to mention it again, and now that woman has also sunk into the seventh level of hell, suffering from torment. Those whose souls are sick, once discovered by Yanluo, are sent to the seventh hell and slowly stripped away."

Hearing him say this, Mo Ran was even more anxious, the light was dim, he did not notice the hidden pain in Chu Xun's eyes and asked, "That woman, why did she have an extra soul of knowledge?

"It should be so."

"And the girl the gentleman was talking about."

"After she died, she was forced to go to the yang world because she was used by the Nine Kings" Chu Xun paused, the slender fingers resting on his knee slowly squeezing into a fist, "to the yang world, to give birth and eat her own child."

"" Mo Ran suddenly remembered what he had seen of Lin'an in Peach Blossom Yard, and realised that the "woman" Chu Xun was referring to was in fact his wife, which must have been the most painful part of Chu Xun's life. That must be the most painful part of Chu Xun's heart.

So Chu Xun is staying in Nanke Town, not reincarnating, waiting for his wife to divest herself of the extra strands of her soul and return from the seventh level to reunite with her for reincarnation.

Mo Ran was unable to resist asking further questions.

Chu Xun no longer speaks either. The short phrase "having eaten her own child" is mentioned again after two hundred years, but even a ghostly body cannot suppress the trembling in its throat.

He closes his eyes.

"That woman's soul was disordered and torn, and fused with the child's consciousness soul." After a long time, he slowly went on, "So what she had extra of was actually the child's consciousness soul, stuck between her three souls and seven spirits, slowly assimilating with her and finally deriving completely into her likeness, making it difficult to separate."

This is a man who, in life and in death, always tried his best to help others by holding back his own pain whenever they asked for help.

When Mo Ran saw this, it was even more difficult for him, but he could not say it explicitly, so he had to say, "Sir, there is no need to go into details, I am all, already clear."

"I say this to tell you that if the Master Chu you seek really has two earth souls, there is another one that was not originally his."

Mo Ran ponders for a moment and asks, "There is no way that it could be one earth spirit, split in two."

"Possibly, but in your case, no."

"Why?"

Chu Xun said, "A soul splitting into two halves is something I have seen, and that is another story. Such people are often so evil and murderous that their three souls will shatter if they cannot bear it. But the ones that shatter in such cases are the human souls that master the good and human nature, and it will never be the earth soul or the knowledge soul."

"So that's it." Mo Ran murmured.

When he heard that he had committed the most heinous crimes and killed so many people, Mo Ran felt that he had nothing to do with Chu Wanning, but he thought that when he died in this life and came to hell, would his soul split into two and he would get what he deserved.

Chu Xun added, "What's more, if it really is one soul and two halves, then the other half of the earth soul must also be unable to walk and would have been sent to the Sick Soul Hall. Since young master only saw one mutilated earth soul in the Earth Soul Hall, I think the other one should be an intact soul and will not be in any trouble."

Mo Ran was enlightened by his mention of it and said, "Thank you, Mr Chu... I'll go and look for it again then."

"Good, just now, in addition to pointing in the direction of the Hall of the Sick Souls, Sinan also shifted to the northeast, so why don't you walk to the northeast and take a look, but there is a vast Nanke Town, coming and going, bustling with souls waiting to be sent down"

Chu Xun sighed.

Mo Ran saw the pity in his gentle eyes and knew what he wanted to say.

There are thousands of displaced ghosts in the vast Nanke Town. Even if one knows that one has to go in the north-east direction, it is not so easy to find a wisp of earth spirit.

If people have no destiny, it is a brightly lit, nightless sky street where two people rub shoulders, one to the east and one to the west, neither will see the other and look at the other.

Nowadays the Silent Spectre is even easier to talk about.

But Chu Xun was gentle after all, and he lifted his hand and patted Mo Ran on the shoulder: "Your sincere heart will be reunited with your son."

He looks very much like Chu Wanning, and as he says this, tears flow from the candle and the flame of the candle flickers, making his face even more blurred.

In this blur, Mo Ran seemed to see Chu Wanning's gentle face, as if he heard Chu Wanning telling him that he would see him again.

Mo Ran's eyes became moist and watery as she felt uncomfortable.

He was busy bowing low and said in a mute voice, "Sir, thank you very much."

Chu Xun did not say a word until Mo Ran turned away and closed the door for him, but he remained there in a daze, his phoenix eyes glittering with astonishment.

He had just seen what looked like tears in the boy's eyes

Ghosts don't cry, did he see it wrong or

He looked back at the quietly blooming bunch of begonias in the vase. The mortal flowers were extremely difficult to hold down the hellish aura, and even though they were carefully cared for, a petal still drifted and landed on the ancient wooden case.

Chu Xun walks over to the flower and twists the petals, but the leaves soon crumble and fall to mush, crushed to powder and dispersed from his fingers.

"Come on people."

" Mr. Chu." Immediately a masked man pushed his way in and stood at his side.

Chu Xun did not turn around, he looked at the begonias and asked softly, "Has that man, himself, been to Shun Fung House again recently?"

"No, it's the same as always, coming once every ten days with a begonia plant. He doesn't dare to enter the Shunfeng House, and never only sends them from afar."

""

"Sir, is there something wrong with the gentleman who came here? If that man dares to send someone to bother you again, you can ask Yanluo."

"No." Chu Xun snapped back and interrupted, turning his head to smile faintly at his subordinate and sighing, "It's nothing, he should not have been sent by that man, and even if he was, the boy only wanted to find someone and it was none of my business."

"But if he was sent to the ghost world by that man, then why should the gentleman"

"Sin does not involve others." Chu Xun, clothed in snow, stood quietly by the flowering branches, "Let him be."

The streets were deserted as Mo Ran left Shun Fung House and headed north-east, taking Chu Wanning's portrait with him and asking door-to-door, but he was like a needle in a haystack, unable to find any answers.

Most of those who looked at the portrait waved their hands, and some even avoided him without even looking at him.

"This man in the portrait has never been seen."

"Never seen never seen, don't interrupt my business."

"Don't get in the way annoying don't you see it's so late roll out roll out what portrait don't want to see take away take away"

Although all the ghosts in Nanke Town are ghosts, they have not been cut off from their emotions and they live together in groups, and most of them are gradually coming back to life. During the long wait of eight to ten years, they find friends and relatives. Or even a dead cat or dog, but in any case they will live as they did in the mortal world. So although they did not need sleep, they would lie down in bed when the moon rose.

As night fell, there was no one to talk to, and even less to give him a message, a clear path.

The long endless streets to the northeast were visited by him alone, door by door, house by house, head bowed, smiling

"I told you I was wrong... on second thought it doesn't seem to be the person on the painting at all... will you stop bugging me?"

This bearded man was ready to rest with his wife and children in the ghost world and to close the courtyard door.

When he came back from a trip earlier, Mo Ran met him on the street and asked him if he had seen the man in the portrait. He thought for a moment and said that he had seen him around the east city a few days ago, but his wife gave him a wink and he stopped talking immediately, as if he had realised something, and immediately waved his hand and said he didn't know.

Mo Ran felt that he was clear and was therefore reluctant to give up, begging him all the way to the door with him.

The man roughly pushed him against the door, pulling at the wooden bolts, Mo Ran said anxiously, "Can you think again about where in the East City the man painted and where he went afterwards please"

"I don't know."

A group of ghosts around the room heard the noise and looked around, while the man roared at the top of his lungs, ignoring the fact that Mo Ran's hand was still broken on the doorframe, and fiercely tried to close the door.

His five fingers were caught so hard that it hurt like crack. But he couldn't care less, he just held on, unwilling to pull his fingers out of the gradually closing doorway, instead pushing and breaking again with all his might

"I beg you, please think again, I just want to know where he went afterwards."

But the man opened the door violently, not noticing that Mo Ran's fingers were bleeding, and pushed the man heavily before barking, "I said I don't know, so I don't know."