Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The Reason I Quit Is Because You’re All Too Filthy

The thing I hate most about Siming is that he never gets angry.

Even when I splashed a bowl of soup in the King of Hell’s face on the Naihe Bridge, made off with a soul on death row, and turned the Underworld upside down in the process, he stood there on the stone steps without a single wrinkle in his robes.

He looked like a fake bodhisattva enshrined in a temple.

Looking at him, all I wanted to do was smear soot all over his face.

“Meng Qi,” he sighed. “You have been in the Underworld for many years. You should understand that reincarnation is not child’s play.”

“Indeed,” I said. “But you lot treat reincarnation like an abacus, and you’re certainly clicking the beads loud enough.”

The King of Hell, standing nearby, looked grim. “Meng Qi, watch your tongue.”

“Watch your own head!” I had been holding back my fury for a long time. “For seven hundred years, I’ve served soup on that bridge every single day. I’ve watched as the wicked were rewarded with good births, while those who lived blameless lives suffered through misery. I used to think it was just fate. But now I see it wasn’t fate at all-it was people like you tampering with the Book of Fate.”

The Ghost Officers all lowered their heads.

No one dared to say such things on a normal day.

But today, I was going to say it.

Siming merely smiled. “Since you have looked into the Mirror of Past Lives, you should know that Xie Wujiu was always an anomaly in Heaven’s Mandate. If he lives, he will disrupt the grand design.”

“What grand design?”

“The design of the world. The design of the Three Realms.”

“Bullshit,” I spat coldly. “How can a man you’ve already killed nine times disrupt your precious grand design?”

Siming watched me quietly, finally dropping his mask of mercy.

“The fact that he did not forget you for nine lifetimes was already a great sin,” he said. “If he carries that obsession into his tenth life, it will cause an imbalance in reincarnation.”

“So you want his soul to be utterly annihilated?”

“Yes.”

He spoke with such casual indifference, as if he were deciding to crush an ant.

Suddenly, I realized something.

In the eyes of these people who claimed to hold Heaven’s Mandate, Xie Wujiu, myself, and every soul that wept while drinking Meng Po Soup on that bridge were nothing more than numbers in a ledger. Who should forget, who should die, and whose fate should be rewritten-it was all decided with a flick of their brushes.

They never asked if it hurt.

I pushed Xie Wujiu behind me and swept my arm out.

Three Soul-Severing Nails hidden in my sleeve whistled through the air, flying straight for Siming’s face.

With a wave of his sleeve, Siming easily deflected them. Finally, a hint of coldness entered his eyes.

“Take them.”

At his command, Soul-Binding Chains swarmed from every direction like a suffocating net.

I might have spent my time brewing soup on the Naihe Bridge, but I was once the daughter of a general. My spear techniques might be gone, but my ability to beat people up remained. I snatched a chain, whipped it back, and sent the two leading Ghost Officers flying. Then, grabbing Xie Wujiu, I vaulted down the stone steps and sprinted toward the River of Forgetfulness.

Xie Wujiu’s soul was unstable, yet he still moved to shield me from two talismans.

I smelled the scent of burning on his soul. My heart hardened. I grabbed a discarded soup ladle from the riverbank and smashed it over White Impermanence’s head.

White Impermanence clutched his head and shrieked, “Sister Meng, we’re on the same side!”

“Who’s on your side? I quit!”

The scene descended into utter chaos.

But in the end, two hands were no match for many, especially with Siming himself stepping onto the field. As the Soul-Capturing Formation began to close in, Xie Wujiu suddenly grabbed my hand.

“Ah Qi.”

“Speak.”

“If I break the eye of the formation in a moment, run west. Don’t look back.”

My heart sank. “What are you planning to do?”

He didn’t answer.

In the next instant, he wrenched himself away from me and lunged into the center of the formation.

Black iron chains exploded into a burst of white light against his soul. The Soul-Capturing Formation buckled under the impact. Without thinking, I reached out to grab him, but Siming was faster. A golden talisman descended from the sky, pinning itself deep into Xie Wujiu’s chest.

My vision went dark.

That was a Soul-Annihilating Talisman.

He intended to destroy the soul right here and now!

“Siming!” My voice cracked.

By the time I reached him, Xie Wujiu was half-kneeling on the ground, his soul nearly transparent. He looked up at me with a faint smile, as if he were afraid I would cry, coaxing me like a child. “It’s fine… I’ve died many times. I have experience.”

I trembled with rage. “If you say another word, I’ll kill you myself.”

Siming walked over slowly, looking down at us from his height.

“Meng Qi, instead of acting like a madwoman, you should think back to the agreement made all those years ago.”

I snapped my head up. “What agreement?”

“Do you truly believe that simply kneeling before the King of Hell was enough to buy him nine reincarnations?” Siming said flatly. “The one who truly established the Pact back then was me.”

I froze.

“Su Du becomes Meng Po, and Xie Wujiu’s soul remains for nine lives,” he said unhurriedly. “The condition was that you would personally send him to forget his past in every life, never allowing him to remember a single thing. Now that he remembers you in his tenth life, the Pact is broken.”

“Therefore, it is not I who am killing him.”

“It is you who has doomed him.”

Those words were like a knife driven straight into my heart.

This was what I feared most.

I feared that seven hundred years of suffering weren’t enough, and that in the end, I would be the one to personally send him to his death.

Xie Wujiu suddenly laughed out loud.

He looked at Siming, blood at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes were startlingly bright.

“Even now, you are still lying.”

Siming’s expression darkened.

Xie Wujiu slowly pushed himself up. The Soul-Annihilating Talisman on his chest was burning hot, causing the cracks in his soul to grow deeper and deeper.

“Ah Qi, don’t listen to him,” he said. “The one they truly wanted to keep alive back then was never me.”

My head buzzed.

Siming’s face finally changed.

“Shut up!”

But it was too late.

Xie Wujiu looked at me, enunciating every word: “The one they wanted back then… was you.”