Taboo Mage - Chapter 62 - Human Tragedy

Jue Chi wouldn’t suddenly develop a sense of compassion at the critical moment and get deceived by that departed spirit, would he?

I pondered what Jue Chi might be thinking, quietly slipping my hand into my pocket. Inside was a soul-capturing bottle I had kept from earlier, ready to capture the departed spirit when the opportunity arose.

“Qingshu, don’t be hasty. Let me first explain why I decided to release him.”

My movements rarely escaped Jue Chi’s notice. He walked over to me, grasped my wrist, and took the soul-capturing bottle, only to place it on the table beside me.

I snorted, asking him what he really wanted to say.

The departed spirit lay quietly on the ground, its body tinged with shades of blue and purple, resembling a sleeping baby with its soft hands placed beside its head, occasionally turning over.

“This Baby,” Jue Chi began, “is the first child of Li Meng and Du Qiang.”

His first words made my eyes widen with intense curiosity about the whole situation.

Jue Chi told me that this departed spirit was the first child of Du Qiang and Li Meng. In this city, being a first-tier urban area, many migrant workers flood in every year, yet few manage to settle down here permanently.

Most of these individuals cram into tiny urban villages, constantly encountering faces both strange and familiar. Du Qiang and Li Meng were among these workers.

After arriving in this urban village, Du Qiang was a young assembly line worker, and Li Meng merely a waitress in a small diner. From strangers to acquaintances, from mutual encouragement to budding love, and eventually moving in together, everything seemed so natural and inevitable.

However, during their first year living together, Li Meng became pregnant. The two unmarried young people were anxious; living on a few thousand yuan a month, they barely managed to support themselves, let alone an unborn child.

The immense pressure of life forced Du Qiang and Li Meng to give up on the child.

Abortion is a common occurrence in today’s society. Every day in hospital operating rooms, many people line up to terminate the little lives within them, driven either by economic pressures or youthful impulsiveness.

Hearing this, I sigh. If one is not ready to welcome life, then protective measures should be taken from the start.

A spirit, having waited ten years or even longer to be reborn as a human, is deprived of even a glimpse of the world because of the rash actions of two young people, plunging back into the cycle of reincarnation.

The Cycle of Cause and Effect begins with such acts, and inevitably, the consequences will follow.

However, Li Meng having an abortion at the hospital isn’t a rare occurrence per se. If abortions were to turn unborn babies into Resentful Spirits, then countless people would be haunted by them daily.

This doesn’t make sense, especially given the appearance of this Resentful Spirit, carrying such immense resentment and already in the form of a baby.

Though I’ve never committed such a reprehensible act, I’m aware that most abortions occur within the first two months of pregnancy. At that stage, the fetus is barely more than a sprouting seed and couldn’t possibly have developed into a complete baby form.

There’s something peculiar about this case.

I shared this concern with Jue Chi, who nodded before responding, “If it were just a normal abortion, it certainly wouldn’t form a Resentful Spirit. But the wrongdoing of Li Meng and Du Qiang lies in their decision to give birth to the child only to sell it.”

“What?” I exclaimed, my eyes widening.

Sell… their own child?

I felt my moral foundations being continuously eroded, but Jue Chi’s next statement completely made me want to strangle the despicable couple, Li Meng and Du Qiang.

They actually gave birth to this poor baby and then sold it to a wealthy woman. This woman, unable to conceive, had been seeking medical advice everywhere. Somehow, she came across a dubious remedy claiming that consuming a newborn’s placenta could induce pregnancy.

Therefore, the wealthy woman bribed the hospital’s obstetrics doctors to buy placentas, which she ate for several months to no avail. Eventually, her depravity escalated to consuming the flesh of newborn babies.

At this point, I had already guessed what had happened.

Indeed, as I suspected, Du Qiang and Li Meng, lured by a substantial sum of money, sold their child to a wealthy woman. The child met a brutal end, dying without even a whole body left intact.

In ancient times, there was a form of execution called “lingchi¹,” where the criminal was tied to a post, and the executioner would cut off their flesh inch by inch.

This method of execution sounds exceptionally cruel, and one can only imagine how hated a person must be to commit such unforgivable sins.

In fact, the purpose of such a punishment was not only because the criminal’s sins were so grievous but also because there was a belief that the body, given by one’s parents, should not be harmed without good reason. Those who damaged their bodies without cause would be punished after death. The person subjected to this severe mutilation would not only face equivalent punishment in the Netherworld but would also be deprived of the chance for reincarnation.

That is, as the legend goes, forever unable to reincarnate.

That baby… had become a forever wandering lost spirit…

Hearing this, my whole body uncontrollably trembled. What kind of parents could push their own flesh and blood into such a dire situation?

I even began to regret why I had helped them when they were haunted by the departed spirit. Such people do not deserve sympathy even if they died a thousand times.

The room fell into silence, and I sat on the bed, looking at the baby still lying on the floor. If only he hadn’t met such parents, perhaps he could have enjoyed a happy life.

He would have grown up happily, married, and been surrounded by his children and grandchildren.

But now, he had forever remained a baby, wandering the world in the form of a spirit.

“Jue Chi, is there really no way to redeem him?”

Jue Chi shook his head and covered the departed spirit with a Kasaya. In an instant, the Kasaya wrapped around the spirit like a swaddle, tightly enveloping it, and his cyan-purple body gradually lost its color.

“Is there anything else we can do?” I couldn’t bear to see such a small spirit wander like this.

Jue Chi sighed softly, “His resentment is too great, and the Netherworld has rules regarding the reincarnation of spirits. He has already lost the qualifications for reincarnation.”

Footnote:

1. Lingchi(凌迟):Also known as “death by a thousand cuts,” Lingchi was a brutal form of execution used in ancient China, where the condemned person was slowly dismembered.