Bound by Blood - Chapter 9
Chapter 9
With a single soup ladle, I rewrote the reincarnation of the Three Realms.
In a physical fight, I might not necessarily be a match for Siming.
But when it came to altering soup, water, and karma, no one in the entire Underworld was more experienced than me.
I had spent seven hundred years brewing Meng Po Soup. I knew which herb could make a person forget their love, which could make them harbor a grudge, and which, if used too heavily, would cause a soul to dissipate on the spot. Siming knew how to write the Book of Fate, but I knew how to cook fate itself.
That was enough.
Amidst the swirling white mist, I smeared the blood from my palm onto the handle of my ladle and thrust it forward.
That ladle was originally just a wooden spoon, but after being stained with my blood and the essence of the soup for seven hundred years, it now emitted a faint layer of green light. As I swung the ladle through the air, the white mist was sliced open as if by a knife, revealing the golden fate vein on Siming’s chest.
His expression finally changed.
Once a fate vein was exposed, it meant he was no longer a high-and-mighty deity, but merely a living creature who could be held accountable.
“Meng Qi, how dare you?”
“What is there for me to be afraid of?” I laughed. “I’ve even splashed the King of Hell before.”
With that, I brought the ladle down hard.
Golden light exploded around Siming as he stumbled back, a crack instantly splitting the fate vein on his chest. He laughed in pure rage, and nine starlight beams shot out from his sleeves simultaneously, aiming to sever the Red Thread between me and Xie Wujiu.
Xie Wujiu grabbed me and pulled me into a roll on the ground.
The starlight grazed my ear, shearing off a lock of my hair.
I was beyond furious. “He’s trying to break our thread!”
Xie Wujiu gave a low grunt of affirmation. “Well, his aim is certainly true.”
Even at a time like this, he actually had the heart to joke.
I gritted my teeth. “Try being cheeky one more time!”
He looked at me, and a hint of a real smile finally appeared in his eyes, as if he had finally reclaimed the life he lost seven hundred years ago.
“Ah Qi,” he said. “If we survive today, I want to marry you all over again.”
My heart trembled, and my eyes suddenly grew hot.
But I didn’t answer.
Siming’s second killing move had already arrived.
A massive phantom of a golden plate suddenly descended from the sky. It was the projection of the Destiny Plate, covered in a dense thicket of rotating fate lines belonging to mortals. Once it pressed down, it wouldn’t just be me and Xie Wujiu-the entire Underworld would be forcibly reset.
Siming was clearly desperate.
Since he could no longer cover up the fact that he had illegally altered the Book of Fate, he intended to simply erase all the anomalies of this night by force.
The King of Hell roared from below the platform, “Siming, you’re mad!”
Siming only replied coldly, “If the Underworld will not obey orders, then it shall be reset.”
Reset.
He said it so lightly, but I knew what those words meant.
It meant every soul that had remembered the truth tonight would be washed clean again. It meant the records Cui Jue had uncovered would be completely destroyed. It meant Xie Wujiu would vanish forever. And it meant that every ladle of soup I had brewed over these seven hundred years, every moment of hesitation, and every time I had secretly shown mercy by giving someone an extra moment to say goodbye, would be stamped with the words “invalid.”
I would never accept that.
I looked up at the golden plate drawing closer and closer in the sky, and I suddenly remembered what the Old Meng Po had told me on my first day on the job.
She said the most powerful thing about Meng Po Soup wasn’t that it made people forget.
It was that it let people choose.
For those whose lives were too bitter and who truly wished to forget, the soup would grant them that wish. For those who still had obsessions they couldn’t let go of, the soup would be a bit heavier, leaving them a sliver of a chance to look back.
True reincarnation was never about forcing someone’s head down.
It was about giving all living beings a chance to start over.
I had always thought she was just humoring me.
Now, I finally understood that she was telling the truth.
I took a deep breath, held the ladle high, and threw it with all my might toward the Destiny Plate above my head.
“To hell with Heaven’s Mandate!”
The ladle transformed into a streak of azure light, plunging straight into the center of the golden plate.
In the next instant, a thunderous boom erupted above the Underworld, sounding as if the sky itself had cracked open.
The golden plate split down the middle.
Countless threads of fate fell like a drizzle of severed silk, landing on the bridge, in the river, and upon every Ghost Officer and wandering soul. Those threads hadn’t vanished; rather, they had slipped from Siming’s grasp, returning to where they truly belonged.
A deathly silence blanketed the city.
Siming suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood and collapsed to his knees, the golden light surrounding him dissipating completely.
He looked up at me, and for the first time, his eyes held genuine terror.
“You destroyed the Destiny Plate.”
“No.” I walked up to him and leaned down to look him in the eye. “I only returned what you stole.”
He gritted his teeth. “Do you think the Three Realms will be better off this way? Without the Destiny Plate, all living beings are left to their own karma. Who will be responsible when things fall into chaos?”
“That is the life of the people themselves,” I said softly. “By what right should you be the one responsible?”
Siming froze.
Someone who had sat on a high pedestal for so long had likely never considered those words.
I didn’t want to waste any more breath on him. I raised my hand, intending to send him beneath the Reincarnation Platform to settle his accounts. But suddenly, a hand gripped my wrist.
It was Xie Wujiu.
He stood behind me, his soul-form still trembling, yet he held me with a steady grip.
“Ah Qi,” he said. “Don’t kill him.”
I turned back, frowning. “Are you still being soft-hearted?”
“No.” He looked at me. “It’s just that if you take the life of one of the Celestial Officials, there truly will be no turning back for you.”
My heart skipped a beat.
Even in this state, he was still thinking of me.
Suddenly, all the fight left me.
He was right. I had already gone mad enough today-overturning the bridge, defying the soup, and smashing the plate. There was no need to drag myself into another bottomless pit for the sake of a man like this.
I released my grip.
Siming looked as if he had just regained his life. He was about to retreat when the King of Hell ordered the Ghost Officers forward to seize him.
“Siming, Celestial Official, for the private alteration of the Registers of Fate and the abuse of heavenly power-arrest him,” the King of Hell said in a heavy voice. “He shall be held until we report to Youdu and conduct a joint trial with the Heavenly Realm.”
As Siming was dragged away, he stared at me with a death glare, looking as if he wanted to swallow me whole.
I didn’t bother giving him a second glance.
Because someone more important was still standing behind me.
Xie Wujiu’s soul-light had faded until it was almost invisible.
The Soul-Annihilating Talisman was still there.
My heart sank. Just because Siming had fallen didn’t mean Xie Wujiu would live.
“Xie Wujiu.” I grabbed his sleeve. “Don’t scare me.”
He looked down at his chest, his tone surprisingly calm. “It seems… I really am about to dissipate.”
My vision went dark for a moment.
After all this work-the bridge overturned, the plate smashed-if he was still going to be lost, then what was the point of all my struggling?
I forced myself to stay calm and turned to look at the King of Hell and Cui Jue.
Cui Jue’s face was also pale. “The Soul-Annihilating Talisman has sunk too deep. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
He glanced at me and didn’t say it.
I understood instantly.
Unless we established another Pact.
But a Pact like that had already forced me to be Meng Po for seven hundred years. If we did it again, what would be left of me?
Xie Wujiu clearly understood as well.
He gently tugged on my sleeve, as if to comfort me. “Ah Qi, don’t.”
I looked at him.
I looked at this man who had carried me on his back out of the fire seven hundred years ago, and who had stood in front of the Reincarnation Platform to shield me seven hundred years later.
Suddenly, I really wanted to scold him.
I wanted to ask why he was always so good at enduring, why he always spoke so lightly, as if his own suffering didn’t matter at all.
But in the end, I just sniffled and said in a low voice:
“This time, it’s not me doing it for you.”
“We are choosing this together.”
