Free Web NovelChapter 306: The First Soul Freed
For the next sixteen hours, Anji cooped herself in the Red Palace’s VVIP room. Hong Nian Niang lamented how her duty called her and had to leave after only three hours. However, Anji was too engrossed in her work that she did not realise the lady in red had already left.
Thanks to her excellent education under Yan Ping’s guidance, Anji meticulously recreated the soul spells mentioned in the ancient texts left by previous immortals. It was compiled messily in scraps, as those who ascend often do not have much time to impart wisdom. However, Anji and her shifu had a cheat ability. They were both able to view memory crystals and dabble in soul arts as part of the clarivoyant training. Her Heavenly Eyes were the prerequisite for crafting soul spells, as energy from the physical world could not be used.
"No wonder nobody could figure it out for the longest time," Anji grinned tiredly after finally succeeding in replicating the first part of the soul spells. "It was written in invisible ink over obvious ink."
The brainwashing hairpin in her possession was an excellent case study. Anji accidentally broke the first a few hours ago before she realised there was more to it. Whichever innocent soul that belonged to, Anji apologised profusely and swore to pray for a better reincarnation for them.
While she had accidentally killed one in the name of studying the curse, the silver lining was that the brainwashing curse was a life-linking spell written in soul spell language. Unlike Soul Wither poison, the souls remained unaffected by the curse.
After figuring out how there were two parts to this complicated soul-switching curse, Anji successfully separated the two spells woven together in two different spell languages. The physical part of the spell that she studied previously was only affecting the target wearing the brainwashing hairpin. That part was the hook or the trigger, but not the real ammunition.
That second part, figuring out how the ammunition and loading another person’s soul into the possessed body, was the harder part that took Anji almost half a day of intense testing to identify every segment of the soul spell language and what they did. She documented them properly and finally attempted her first curse-breaking when it failed. That was when Anji took a closer look and belatedly realised the cause of her failure.
Hong Nian Niang was right about the diversion, about the guilt, about everything. However, Anji’s conclusions were wrong. Song Min was not the only person who was capable of writing these spells. Something else, or rather, there were many spell scribes doing it for him. Pu Jianming was not the only spell caster. This was new information for them all and probably a crucial one.
Eventually, in the last hour, Anji finally pieced together what she missed previously. Between her regular sight and second sight to view natural qi and otherworldly energy that was woven into the spells, Anji noticed something else that tied both spell languages together.
It was tiny. Just a small section consisting of three symbols that Anji initially thought was a spellcaster’s signature. Oftentimes, spells might include such elements to protect the spellcaster’s creation and to help other spellcasters trace the origins of a spell back to the creator and origin for further studies. That assumption cost a life, and Anji regretted not confirming it before attempting to break the first curse.
She was overly hasty.
The small symbol was not stated in the research notes Elder Shen consolidated. Neither was it something Anji had ever come across in her advanced spell casting studies. The memory crystals and her past life memories did not recall it either. However, Anji figured out it was a new element created by the one who wrote this advanced spell. It might be a collaborative research between Pu Jianming and Song Min, but Anji had no further information to tell.
All she knew was how all three small symbols were written to convert, or rather, to communicate between the two different realms. This knowledge did not exist previously, but Anji understood where it came from.
Like the ghost general, Zhong Kui was once a human who had become a spirit. Then, she was reincarnated into a human body repeatedly, trapped in a karma cycle. However, unlike Anji, Song Min was a human who turned into a ghost. He did not cross over and required energy from the other side to sustain his form here.
How else would a ghost remain in the mortal realm for over a thousand years without fading away like Lady Mang Yuan and her followers?
There was only one method—possession.
Song Min had to become a parasite of living energy to grow in power. Hence, the small tri-symbol element was a mark of Song Min’s possession mechanic tied into the spell.
To transfer a soul into a marked target, there were three parts — body, mind and soul. The Mind was frozen for brainwashing, the bodies were marked, and the souls swapped. In a mix between borrowing energy from living bodies to support a foreign soul, Song Min had to include a converter spell to keep the mind frozen in place on both ends. fгeewebnovёl.com
Limbo was a spell space that had to be sustained using a vast amount of energy. Spiritual prisons were difficult to construct, and Song Min, the ghost general, did not have the means to contain that many spiritual prisoners in his heart world. Hence, he borrowed Pu Jianming’s flag array knowledge to build a time-limited limbo in each brainwashing hairpin’s medium by marking the possessor, the possessed and himself.
By working backwards, Anji easily identified the two symbols for possessed and the possessor. That only left the last symbol with the same third energy trace unique to itself. The energy trace was so small that it was overpowered by the other two energy signatures writing the spell, causing Anji to miss it initially. However, since her failure, she paid special attention and finally found the trace.
"This is it," she smirked. "This is Song Min’s personal energy signature. It’s either his or Pu Jianming’s. Whichever the case, I hope the person it belongs to enjoys the gift I’m about to send. No need to thank me."
Putting the finishing touches to the prototype curse returning talisman she created, Anji activated the spell and watched as green light enveloped the miasma, changing parts of the original curse and neutralising it.
After the green light faded, Anji studied the brainwashing hairpin once more. It did not seem as if the spell or curse was active. It also did not feel like it had activated. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
Could it be that she had finally freed the first innocent victim’s soul?
