Chapter 378 - An Incomplete Soul and a New Companion

Chapter 378: Chapter 378 - An Incomplete Soul and a New Companion

"Then it really did come from another realm," Su Bai said.

Jingyuan looked at him. "You’ve had reason to suspect that before?"

"I caught another soul that had taken over someone else’s body. There were arrays on the man it possessed and on several people traveling with him."

Su Bai looked down at the lines the demonic cultivators had left unfinished.

"One part of this formation works the same way. I still don’t know what they meant to do with it."

Liu Meng had been about to step across a gap in the lines. She drew her foot back and went around.

Near the trees, Qin Baoshan took out a jade slip and asked her to show him where the man with the brush had been working. She pointed out the spot from the edge of the clearing while Han Yuelin finished the surviving demonic cultivator.

Ji Ruyue stayed by the borrowed body, close enough to hear what Su Bai and the monk were saying.

Su Bai watched the gray shape shift between the golden fingers.

The last soul had left him with memories of a great many things and nothing that told him who had set all this in motion. He still didn’t know whether those particular memories had been taken away or simply hadn’t survived.

If this one remembered even where it had received its orders, he could give Liu Meng something better than another place to search.

"Senior, may I take the soul?" he asked. "There may be something left in it that tells us where these people were sent from."

Jingyuan’s hand remained closed. "Have you done this before?"

"With the one I caught," Su Bai said. "It had already escaped a body once. I made sure it didn’t escape again."

The monk glanced toward the body by the tree. He seemed to be thinking it over when the soul pressed against his fingers again.

He turned his wrist, and the golden hand came down close enough for Su Bai to make out the outline of a shoulder through the light.

Jingyuan stepped nearer to keep his voice from carrying.

"I was going to ask you something earlier, Benefactor Su. I thought it would be rude to raise it in front of your companions." His eyes went briefly to the needles still hovering beside Su Bai. "Did you know you carry a great deal of merit?"

Su Bai looked back at him. "Is that what you saw when your eyes changed?"

Jingyuan paused, then eventually gave a nod.

"I’ve met few people who carry as much as your companions. Then I looked at you, and for a moment I could hardly see the ground in front of me." He said it plainly, though he still looked faintly put out by the experience. "The Buddha granted me this sight. Most of my brethren don’t have it, and I rarely speak of it. I’d be grateful if you kept it to yourself."

Su Bai had thought the monk’s reaction might have something to do with his Vajra Body.

He’d never considered that merit could be seen at all.

His first thought was of the Immortals he had helped in Fallen-Star Sanctuary. Then he remembered the flesh he’d devoured there. He’d done plenty of that for his own benefit, though he supposed there might have been people who benefited from it without either side knowing.

There were also years of smaller deeds he wouldn’t have known how to count. He couldn’t point to any one of them and tell Jingyuan that was where it had come from.

The Immortals had spoken of merit when they wondered where they might be reborn. They had hoped to enter the Deva Realm.

At the time, Su Bai had been thinking about how he would recognize them if they met again. Now he found himself wondering whether someone with Jingyuan’s eyes could tell where to start looking.

"Can that sight tell you where a person will be reborn?" he asked.

"I can see the merit they carry," Jingyuan said. "Where they go is for the cycle to decide. There is much it takes into account that I can’t see."

He lowered the golden hand another inch. The soul went still inside it as soon as it felt Su Bai draw closer.

"I’ll entrust it to you, Benefactor Su. Be careful when you take it. Something is missing from that soul, though it still has enough strength to slip away if you give it room."

Su Bai brought his right hand up and wrapped his fingers in Qi. Jingyuan opened the golden hand just far enough for him to reach through.

The soul had been waiting for the gap. It twisted sideways as Su Bai caught it, and he felt part of it stretch almost to the edge of his grip before he tightened his Qi and pulled it free.

Jingyuan’s eyes took on their golden color again.

He’d heard Su Bai say he had dealt with a soul before, and he wanted to see how he would go about it. He watched Su Bai raise his hand and waited for him to speak to the captive.

But then...

Su Bai opened his mouth and swallowed it.

Across the clearing, Han Yuelin let go of his sword. Qin Baoshan looked up from his jade slip, then looked again at Su Bai’s empty hand. Liu Meng took a step toward her senior brother before she noticed how steadily he was breathing. Ji Ruyue blinked at the familiar scene.

The soul struck at Su Bai’s spiritual defenses the moment it entered him. His Nascent Soul acted and sent Needle Qi across the path it tried to take, and afterwards, the Dao-Devouring Blank Stele drew it inward.

Its resistance faded.

Su Bai waited for the impressions that ought to follow.

But nothing came. There was no voice or face, and no glimpse of anywhere the soul had been.

Characters began to appear on the Stele, so he waited a little longer in the hope that some memory might surface alongside them. What he received was just another method.

He glanced at the opening circulation and found himself reading the first passage twice.

The method assumed the practitioner had channels that did not exist in a human body.

The thing had used a human’s meridians well enough to give him trouble in a fight, yet the cultivation it carried had been meant for something else.

Su Bai wanted to know what kind of creature had practiced it. That would take more study than he could give it here, and it would do nothing for the people who were still missing tonight.

When he opened his eyes, Jingyuan was looking at him with his lips slightly parted. The gold in his eyes faded, returned for a breath, then went out altogether.

"What is it, Senior?"

"Your merit went up." Jingyuan spoke so quietly that Su Bai had to lean closer. "I thought my eyes were still playing tricks on me, so I looked again. You have more now than you did before you swallowed the soul."

Su Bai looked down at his hand. He’d hoped the soul would give him some idea of where to go after this. It hadn’t even given him a name, and somehow the monk had come away from the exchange with more to think about than he had.

Liu Meng was waiting nearby. "Did you find anything about the villagers?"

"No. The soul... was incomplete," Su Bai said. He could see how much she’d been hoping for a different answer.

Su Bai sighed. He’d learned before how little a soul fragment could tell him. What troubled him was the possibility that the creature had used only a fraction of its soul to possess the man.

If a fragment could put up that much of a fight, what would the creature itself be capable of?

"We’ll have to work from what they left here. Once Junior Brother Qin has finished copying the formation, we can take these people home."

"I’ll help him finish." Liu Meng looked toward the woman at the edge of the clearing. "I want to make sure we bring back what belonged to them, too. Some of their families may recognize their things before they recognize anything else."

Jingyuan waited until she had gone back to the others before he let the golden hand disperse.

The moon was enough to see by again.

Qin Baoshan called Han Yuelin over to hold a lamp while he recorded the lines under the trees.

"Benefactor Su, would you mind if I went with you?" Jingyuan asked. "My abbot sent me to look for what had entered Nanhe. If there are other places like this one, I’d rather help you find them than spend another night passing by ground someone has hidden from me."

Su Bai glanced at his companions. Ji Ruyue had heard the offer and gave him a small nod. Liu Meng looked up from the gathering basket she had just lifted out of the grass.

"I’d be glad to have you with us, Senior," she said. "If we find another one, we may need someone who can keep it from getting away."

"So would I," Su Bai said.

He had been trying to decide whether True Body Realm was roughly equivalent to Nascent Soul.

The more he thought about it, the less useful the comparison seemed.

He’d seen the monk reach and catch something his own needles had missed. He could think of several reasons to want Jingyuan nearby when they reached the next settlement.

Jingyuan’s face brightened.

He brought his palms together, then went to help Liu Meng with the woman whose basket she was carrying.

He had meant every word about finishing the work his abbot had given him, but there was also something he hadn’t said.

His teachers had warned him that a person who wronged someone with great merit might invite consequences from a direction he’d never think to watch.

They had never told him what to make of a man who could gain more of it in the time it took to swallow.

He wanted to spend enough time with Su Bai to see what else the man did without giving it a second thought.