"Ah..." Mother Lin couldn't help but let out a low cry, panic flashing in her eyes.
Jiang Xuxu's expression remained unchanged. Three yellow talismans flew from her hand, cleanly wrapping around the paper lantern layer by layer. The flickering glow that was being pulled finally came to a halt in mid-air.
Before Jiang Xuxu could even catch her breath, she saw the yellow talismans wrapping the lantern begin to turn into black ash, one by one.
She furrowed her brows. Three more yellow talismans flew out to wrap it. At the same time, she flicked two fingers as if catching a speck of light out of thin air, quickly sending it along the red thread and into the center of Lin Ruirui's brow.
The moment the light fully merged into Lin Ruirui's brow, the red thread that had connected her to the lantern vanished instantly. Meanwhile, the paper lantern, now bound by six yellow talismans, began to shake violently.
Mother Lin was terrified, not even daring to look at how her daughter was doing.
Seeing that the Soul Guiding was complete, Jiang Xuxu didn't hesitate. She raised her hand and struck the paper lantern with a burst of spiritual light, shouting coldly, "Behave yourself!"
The paper lantern acted as if it had been slapped. It paused for a second but continued to shake as if unwilling to give up, trying to force its way toward Lin Ruirui.
Jiang Xuxu simply pulled out a bundle of red string. The string flew out, binding the paper lantern until it was nothing more than a ball of yarn.
She slapped another yellow talisman onto it, finally making it quiet down, and stuffed it back into her backpack.
Mother Lin watched from the side, completely stunned. "Little Master, this is..."
Could that also be her daughter's soul?
"Inside is..." Jiang Xuxu was about to speak when a raspy mumble came from the bedside. "...Mom?"
Hearing that voice, Mother Lin's body went stiff. She completely forgot about the ball of red string and whipped her head around to look at Lin Ruirui on the bed.
The moment their eyes met, Mother Lin's heart, which had been numb for over a year, trembled violently. Her eyes turned red in an instant. "Ruirui?..."
Her voice was choked with sobs as she lunged toward the bed, tears streaming down her face. "Ruirui, you're looking at me. You can talk... Ruirui, my daughter... waah..."
Mother Lin grabbed Lin Ruirui in a tight hug, unable to stop her loud sobbing.
Lin Ruirui felt like she had just woken from a long dream, her face filled with confusion and helplessness. She didn't understand why, after what felt like a single night's sleep, her mother looked like she had aged ten years...
Seeing the mother and daughter reunited, Jiang Xuxu didn't interrupt. She stepped out of the room and quietly closed the door behind them.
Inside the room, the sounds of Mother Lin's crying and Lin Ruirui's raspy attempts at comforting her continued intermittently. After quite a long time, Mother Lin finally opened the door.
She wiped her tears. Though she still looked haggard and aged, there was a new vitality to her; her eyes seemed to carry a light. She stepped forward and thanked Jiang Xuxu repeatedly before Jiang Xuxu accompanied her back into the room.
Inside, Lin Ruirui had clearly just finished crying. She looked at Jiang Xuxu with a very complex gaze. She recognized her. She was... Guan Ruirui's sister, Guan Xuxu.
"Did Guan Ruirui send you?" Lin Ruirui hadn't spoken for a long time, and her voice was still raspy. Her gaze was filled with wariness and fear.
Although Jiang Xuxu and Guan Ruirui had gone to the same high school, they weren't in the same class. However, Lin Ruirui had heard Guan Ruirui mention this "older sister" in private.
Back then, Jiang Xuxu had been busy learning metaphysics from her master. She had no idea what was happening at school, let alone that Lin Ruirui existed.
Seeing the girl's gaze, Jiang Xuxu simply said, "My surname is now Jiang. I no longer have any relation to her."
Mother Lin didn't understand the exchange and explained what had just happened to Lin Ruirui. Learning that it was Jiang Xuxu who had saved her, Lin Ruirui remained in a daze. She didn't understand how Guan Ruirui's sister knew such things.
But that didn't stop her from being grateful. "I... I don't know what happened to me..."
Lin Ruirui had no idea what had transpired over the past year. She only felt as if she had been in a very long dream. In that dream, she saw many students with eyes full of despair, jumping off a rooftop one by one. Looking into those eyes, she felt as if she were being wrapped in a shroud of despair herself, unable to struggle.
"Your Vitality Soul was restrained, which caused you to lose all consciousness for over a year," Jiang Xuxu explained. "Initially, I thought the one holding your soul was the owner of that skull in the abandoned teaching building. But while performing the Soul Guiding just now, I discovered it was actually this."
As she spoke, Jiang Xuxu pulled the paper lantern, still bound like a ball of yarn, from her backpack.
Seeing the ball, Mother Lin remembered how it had been shaking violently and instinctively stepped in front of Lin Ruirui. "Little Master, what exactly is in there?"
Jiang Xuxu's eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at Lin Ruirui. "What's trapped inside is the vengeful spirit of your unborn child."
Mother Lin and Lin Ruirui froze simultaneously, their eyes wide with shock. "That child's... vengeful spirit?"
"I suspect that when you miscarried in that abandoned teaching building, the child's infant soul was bound to the rooftop. That place had already accumulated a massive amount of resentment because of the constant student suicides. Combined with the natural resentment of an unborn child, it absorbed that malice and naturally became a powerful infant wraith."
What Jiang Xuxu didn't mention was that the abandoned teaching building had been set up with a Resentment Gathering Array. Those silk threads were Resentment Threads produced by the skull at the array core.
The students who had committed suicide over the years were likely influenced by the malice in the building, which amplified their despair and anger. When they died, their own resentment became nourishment for the skull.
For some unknown reason, instead of being consumed as nourishment, the infant wraith had been kept inside a red silk cocoon. The skull had not absorbed it, but had instead protected it.
Later, Lin Ruirui's resentment had grown rapidly due to the online abuse and humiliation she suffered. The infant spirit sensed its mother's resentment and longed for her company, so it followed that connection and snatched one of her souls away.
On one hand, it wanted her company; on the other, it wanted to turn her into a vengeful spirit just like itself.
However, Lin Ruirui was still among the living. Thus, the infant spirit could only rely on the resentment in her heart to seek out her enemy: Guan Ruirui.
That was why what Jiang Xuxu had initially seen behind Guan Ruirui was a gray shadow of accumulated resentment rather than a simple evil entity.
She had tried to disperse a piece of it before, only to find that it would reform after some time.
If the Mother Talisman she had left on Jiang Su hadn't been destroyed, allowing her to sense a similar aura on Guan Ruirui and trace the black energy back to its source...
she might have had to wait until the black energy on Guan Ruirui's back fully materialized before she could strike. But by then, Lin Ruirui would likely have become a dead woman.
This time, she had stumbled onto the truth just in time to rescue the soul.
As Jiang Xuxu spoke, her gaze fell back onto the paper lantern wrapped in string, a trace of coldness flickering in her almond eyes.
Sensing the emotion in Jiang Xuxu's eyes, Lin Ruirui's heart trembled. She couldn't help but ask in a raspy voice, "Xuxu... Master, what will happen to this child?"
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