Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Behind the Naihe Bridge, there was a Soup-Brewing Room.

From the outside, it looked dilapidated, but inside, it was sturdier than the Hall of the King of Hell. The walls were built from River of Forgetfulness Stone, and Soul-Suppressing Talismans were pasted on the door. It was fully equipped with a furnace, firewood, a medicine cabinet, and Soul Bottles. For seven hundred years, no one had been allowed to enter except for me.

By the time I dragged Xie Wujiu inside, his soul had grown so faint it was almost invisible.

The explosion on the bridge earlier hadn’t been my doing.

It was his soul resisting the Reincarnation Restriction.

This made the situation even more abnormal.

Normal souls trembled in fear when they saw me; they drank the soup and went on their way obediently. Even the most vicious ghosts only struggled for a moment or two. Only Xie Wujiu, after nine cycles of reincarnation, still hadn’t been cleansed. In his tenth life, he could actually crack the barrier of the Naihe Bridge.

I shut the door and slapped three Soul-Sealing Talismans onto it with a flick of my wrist.

“Sit.”

He didn’t move.

I looked up and found him still staring at me. His gaze was so direct it made my heart race.

“You really are Ah Qi,” he said.

My expression remained cold. “You have the wrong person. My name is Meng Qi, not Ah Qi.”

“You were always this stubborn,” he laughed softly. After laughing, he coughed, and the cough caused his soul to dissipate further.

I felt a surge of agitation. I pulled a celadon bowl from the medicine cabinet, scooped a spoonful of Soul-Calming Dew, and held it out. “Drink this.”

He took it but didn’t drink. He only asked, “Why are you here?”

I almost laughed out of sheer frustration.

“This place is my domain. I haven’t even asked you why you still remember me.”

Xie Wujiu was silent for a moment before he spoke softly. “I couldn’t remember clearly at first. It was just that every time I was about to die in each life, I would always dream of a bridge. A girl in green would be standing in the mist, watching me.”

“She never spoke.”

“But I knew she was waiting for me.”

My fingertips trembled, nearly crushing the Soul Bottle in my hand.

During his first eight lives, I had indeed gone to see him.

Not openly, but in secret.

In the life where he was a scholar, I stood by his window for a single glance. He was so cold his lips were blue, yet he still clutched a worn copper coin-the same bit of incense money I had tucked into the hand of a little beggar two lives prior. In the life where he was a young general, I stood outside his tent and heard him repeatedly call out a name I couldn’t quite catch while he was unconscious. In the life where he was a teacher, he looked up at the snow while coughing blood, suddenly telling his students that the worst part of waiting is the fear that the person won’t come-but if that person truly exists, waiting a lifetime is worth it.

Back then, I had been holding a bowl of soup, hiding behind the Reincarnation Mirror and crying like a fool.

But I didn’t dare admit it.

“Don’t flatter yourself.” I turned away. “Your soul is unstable right now. Focus on staying alive first. We’ll talk after tonight.”

“What happens tonight?”

I hesitated for a moment before telling him, “The Book of Reincarnation has been changed. Once midnight strikes, if you haven’t entered the Reincarnation Well, you’ll be treated as a fugitive soul and taken directly to Avici Hell.”

Xie Wujiu didn’t seem to react. He simply placed the bowl on the table and asked, “Are you going to save me?”

I looked back at him.

For seven hundred years, this was the first time I had looked at this familiar yet foreign face from such a close distance.

He was still Xie Wujiu.

High brow bones, a straight bridge of the nose, and thin lips that were naturally a bit cold. But the youth from the Mortal Realm who once rode a horse through the long streets and climbed over walls to bring me osmanthus cakes had been ground down by nine lifetimes until only a skeleton remained, with cracks even marring his soul.

I had a belly full of harsh words I wanted to say.

I wanted to ask why he still remembered.

I wanted to ask how his eyes could still be so calm after reaching this point.

More than anything, I wanted to ask what he had hidden from me during that massacre seven hundred years ago.

But when the words reached my lips, only one sentence remained.

“If I don’t save you, who will?”

He was stunned.

I looked away and forced myself to flip through the Reincarnation Register Copy on the table.

The Copy was only kept in the Soup-Brewing Room. It recorded the past sins and reincarnation destinations of every soul that crossed the bridge, and it was even more detailed than the main register outside. I flipped through it quickly. When I reached Xie Wujiu’s name, my heart sank to the bottom.

The first page read:

Crime: Defying Fate.

The second page read:

Punishment: Nine cycles of reincarnation, none to end peacefully.

On the third page, there was an additional note in vermilion ink:

Tenth life: Kill on sight.

But what made my hands and feet go cold wasn’t any of that.

It was the column for the scribe on the final page. Two words were written there clearly.

Meng Qi.

The pages shook in my hands.

Impossible.

I had never signed such a thing.

In my seven hundred years in the Underworld, I was only responsible for brewing soup and sending souls off; I never concerned myself with sentencing or judging fates. Yet the handwriting on the page was undeniably mine.

Xie Wujiu had stood up behind me at some point.

He glanced at the page and spoke in a very soft voice, “So, it was you who was sending me away all along.”

I slammed the register shut.

“It wasn’t me.”

He didn’t say whether he believed me or not. He just looked down at me. “Ah Qi, have you forgotten something too?”

At that moment, a very faint sound suddenly came from outside the Soup-Brewing Room.

It sounded like someone knocking on the door three times with their knuckles.

My expression changed instantly.

That was Cui Jue’s secret signal.

Whenever the Underworld Judge came looking for me at night, it was never for anything good.