Qin Qiu: “???”
Did Ye Yuxuan pull a muscle in his face? What’s up with his expression?
Did he get a facial expression tic disease after being facially paralyzed for too long?
Qin Qiu asked cautiously: “You, have you recently become religious?”
Now he was bringing up souls. Would the next sentence be about God creating the world?
Ye Yuxuan quietly lowered his head, but his pitch-black eyes stared darkly at the hospital.
“I know her name.”
For a moment, Qin Qiu didn’t respond. “Who?”
Ye Yuxuan quietly mumbled over and over, “Weiwei, Bai Weiwei…”
These words, in his faintly murmuring lips, carried a few traces of deep and persistent affection.
“I saw it, on the Sansheng stone. Her name was clearly written on it.”
Ji Yongchuan and Bai Weiwei’s names covered the entire Sansheng stone, densely packed together.
All written by the man in the dream. Using his finger, stroke by stroke.
The words were messy and chaotic, full of crazed grief.
—
Blood-red mist filled the air. Cold and gloomy ghost qi wrapped around the entire Naihe Bridge.
The spirits trembled in fear as they crossed the bridge.
Bloody strokes filled the entire ash-grey face of the Sansheng stone.
Over the years, the stone had turned almost bloody brown.
Meng Po measured the amount of the Meng Po soup with a ladle. “There’s not enough again. All of you line up.”
These words made all the spirits waiting in line indignant and resentful.
But Meng Po’s words rendered them all silent.
“All the Meng Po soup was taken away by the ghost king. This old lady has no choice but to cook day and night.”
A new ghost was puzzled: “What does the ghost king need so much Meng Po soup for?”
Meng Po raised her old eyes to look towards the Wangchuan River. “They all say that if you don’t reincarnate1, if you aren’t reborn2 and soak in the Wangchuan River for a thousand years, you can exchange infatuation for a lifetime of love3.”
In the center of the blood-colored river stood a tall and noble figure.
The blood-red robe swayed with the flow of the river.
Meng Po looked away. “But who can endure the torment of the Wangchuan River for a thousand years?”
So he could only drink Meng Po soup again and again.
Just to forget that woman for a second, to get a moment of peace.
“Xiao gege…”
In the river, she reached out for his hand, her smiling expression radiant and lovely..
Ji Yongchuan foolishly reached out, but when he touched the surface of the ice-cold river, her face shattered, only leaving behind fragments of her body.
He stared blankly. Intense pain wracked his entire body as his bones were tormented by the water of the Wangchuan River.
The river water was like a mirror projector.
Continuously showing him the best parts of her.
And again and again, in the cruelest way, shattering before his eyes.
Ji Yongchuan didn’t know how many years he had stayed in the Wangchuan River. He had killed every last ghost that had devoured her that year.
To this day, the rivers of hell ran red.
Then he used all the bones in hell, the resentment accumulated by all the spirits, and the most terrible summoning methods. None could call back the soul he sought.
Later, he kept trying out all kinds of methods.
She couldn’t be found.
That shouldn’t be.
He hadn’t devoured her soul that year. He could become the ghost king because he had absorbed enough ghost qi.
That meant that her soul hadn’t been scattered. Her soul should still exist.
He hadn’t seen her be reborn, cross the Naihe Bridge, or drink Meng Po soup.
He constantly searched for her among the reincarnated people through the mirror of the human world.
He constantly searched among the new ghosts for that familiar figure.
He had been disappointed far too many times, and he had lost all hope.
Ji Yongchuan chose the most hopeless path.
Just like those useless ghosts, continuously soaking in the Wangchuan River.
He had heard that if he stayed for a thousand years, he could obtain a lifetime of fated love.
Even a hundred years was fine. If they could be together, he could soak in the river for ten thousand years.
1: 转世: turn/shift/circle + world/life. = reincarnation or transmigration. This term doesn’t have a connection/affiliation to any single religion↩
2: 投胎: throw/to cast + fetus/birth. Both this and the other word refer to reincarnation, but this word seems to refer specifically to reincarnation as the soul leaving the body after death and finding a new vessel (in other words, a fetus in the womb). It’s also more specifically a Buddhist term, as compared to 转世 (footnote 1). Originally comes from Dream of the Red Chamber↩
3: 痴情: infatuation or lovesickness. Based on the different suggestions I’m getting, it seems to have a more negative connotation, or an implication of an emotion that isn’t reciprocated or doesn’t come to fruition. 情缘: predestined love/love affinity.↩