Chapter 40: XiaoWei, thank you.
Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor-simpforlife, Proofreader-Ghostie
Bei Quan’s eyes were tightly closed and it didn’t look like he was going to wake up anytime soon.
Wei Fuyuan broke out in cold sweat.
He shot from both sides and slapped Bei Quan on the face, turning Bei Quan’s pale cheeks red.
But even then, Bei Quan didn’t show any signs of opening his eyes.
Moreover, his unconscious struggle became weaker and weaker. After grasping two fingers in the void, he hung down powerlessly and stopped moving.
“Pa!”
The sound of another incense breaking was faint, but it was heard very clearly in the silent night.
“It’s broken again!”
Tian Jia Xin screamed, “Another incense is broken!”
Wei Fuyuan looked around.
The incense on the left in the incense burner had also folded in half at the bottom. Only the last remaining incense of the three incense sticks was still burning rapidly, and the green smoke ascended slowly at an alarming rate.
——Before the three sticks of incense are burned, wake me up.
At that moment, Bei Quan’s last words rang in Wei Fuyuan’s mind like a reminder.
He wasn’t aware of how serious the consequences would be if he couldn’t wake up Bei Quan in time, but he didn’t want to wait around to see the outcome.
“What to do, what should I do!?”
Wei Fuyuan was sweating like a pig. Bei Quan’s eyes were still entirely closed, his lips gradually turning purple, and his chest fluctuation also ceased. He trembled to check Bei Quan’s condition by placing his fingers near Bei Quan’s nose, “He’s not breathing!”
Wei Fuyuan yelled at Tian Jia Xin.
But Tian Jia Xin too had no idea what to do.
Although he was a Tianqi doll who had been cultivating for 800 years, when plants became spirits, they had no fighting power. He usually uses a little diversionary tactic or evasion tactic to escape from a difficult situation. However, at such a crucial moment, he couldn’t find a way to bring Bei Quan’s soul back into his body. He didn’t know where exactly in the fragmented space his soul was trapped.
“I can’t help you!”
Tian Jia Xin looked at Bei Quan, who wasn’t breathing any more, and at the only small section of crumbling fragrance left in the incense burner. He burst into tears and screamed, “Didn’t Bei Quan ask you to help protect him? Why are you asking me now?”
Originally, with the way Wei Fuyuan’s temperament was, when this child talked back at him, he would definitely kick up a row.
But now that Bei Quan was hovering between a thin, flat line of life and death, Young Master Wei couldn’t think about any such things in his mind.
——Yes!
Wei Fuyuan’s thoughts were in disarray as he racked his brains.
——There must be a reason for Bei Quan to let himself be protected by him!
He forced himself to calm down.
——Bei Quan once said, what do I have?
——Correct! Merit! I have the light of merit in me!
Wei Fuyuan shouted to Tian Jia Xin, “Is my merit useful to Bei Quan?”
Tian Jia Xin was stunned.
In fact, he didn’t truly know, but now there seemed to be no other way.
“You, you try!”
Tian Jia Xin shed tears and shouted, “It’s better to pass Qi or anything. Give him your merits and virtues. Anyway, it’s better than just sitting there!”
Wei Fuyuan understood the word ‘passing Qi’.
——Isn’t this artificial respiration!?
Although Young Master Wei didn’t know whether his merits could be absorbed into Bei Quan by ‘passing Qi’ since Bei Quan wasn’t breathing now, artificial respiration would be the correct choice, right?
Thinking of this, he immediately stopped hesitating and threw himself on Bei Quan. Pinching his chin, he took a deep breath and with the little first aid knowledge that he had learned during military training two years ago, he put his lips on Bei Quan’s mouth, and blew.
Bei Quan’s lips were icy cold, but they were just as soft and felt like some kind of soft, pliable jelly.
But Wei Fuyuan didn’t hold any improper thoughts in his heart, he simply wanted Bei Quan to wake up.
Tian Jia Xin was as anxious as an ant sizzling on a hot pan, but he couldn’t do anything. He could only stare at the remaining section of the incense burner for a while and deeply realize what the phrase ‘spending each second like years’ felt like.
The intact incense stick was just the length of a tiny finger, and at the present burning pace, it would burn out in half a minute at most.
“Bei Quan!”
Wei Fuyuan refused to give up.
While desperately calling out his name, he breathed into the mouth of the unconscious man repeatedly.
Wei Fuyuan had no idea that the light of merit in his body, like a small firefly, had fused with Bei Quan’s soul through their constantly meeting lips.
—————————-
The girl, with whom he shared his senses, sank in the shallow river. Bei Quan was likewise detached from the girl’s soul’s residual memories at the time of her death.
According to the correct operation of soul separation, Bei Quan should follow the guidance of incense and immediately return to his body.
However, the place where the girl died was a fragmented space, where the entrance and exit were unknown. Even if she was already dead, she still couldn’t leave. Therefore, Bei Quan, who chased after her, was trapped there just like her.
From Bei Quan’s current perspective, he was like a grain of dust floating in the universe— surrounded by darkness, with neither light nor sound, desolate and aimlessly wandering around.
He looked around, trying to find a thread of the smoke or scent of the incense that would guide his soul back to the body. After finding no results, he recited the mantra silently, trying to find the connection with his body, but he still got nothing.
——That’s right.
Bei Quan laughed at the innocence in his heart. n0Velusb.C0m
Originally, he was merely a lonely soul and wild ghost, who could not enter the cycle of reincarnation because he had committed the crime of killing. Factually, the so-called corporeal body of his was a second-hand product that he borrowed passively.
The body and soul weren’t compatible in the first place so how could the soul and body be connected?
He couldn’t feel the critical moment arriving. In a sense, it could be considered as the cycle of the guilty are always punished and the kind-hearted are always rewarded under the law of Heaven. Appropriate retribution.
——But if I really can’t go back, it’s okay that Tian Jia Xin is there.
Bei Quan laughed by himself.
——That kid, I’m afraid he might be scared to death.
He could imagine Wei Fuyuan’s bewildered look guarding his corpse. Bei Quan felt amused and a bit remorseful.
At this moment, Bei Quan’s bangs that had fallen on his forehead moved slightly, and the hair at the end swept past his ears.
Bei Quan thought it was his illusion and reached out to touch it.
——What..!
He suddenly shuddered.
——It was indeed windy!
In a closed fragmented space where the entrance and exit were unknown, there was? wind!
Moreover, this wind could stir his soul!
Bei Quan’s heart jumped twice, and he looked up and followed the breeze.
The faint airflow became more and more prominent.
There was a slight golden light surging with the wind, like a twinkling river of stars, circling around his feet.
——It’s that kid!
Bei Quan had an epiphany.
He immediately stopped hesitating, took a step, and went straight towards the source of the golden light.
......
......
The final portion of incense ash fell along with the embers and burned out in an instant in the incense burner.
“Ha!”
Bei Quan suddenly took a sharp breath, and then seemed to choke. As soon as he turned over and sat up, he bent down and began to cough violently.
“Cough! Cough, Cough!”
Wei Fuyuan was startled by the sudden awakening of Bei Quan but the surprise quickly turned into joy.
Exhausted by the frequent emotional fluctuations, he almost collapsed.
Young Master Wei propped his hands on the ground and slowly walked forward with his worned out body, panting and raising his eyes to look at Bei Quan, whose cheeks were flushed with coughing.
“Fuck, it’s really... Great...”
He murmured, “You finally woke up...”
Tian Jia Xin had rushed over when Bei Quan woke up, helping him pat his back.
“You almost died just now, you know?”
Tian Jia Xin said angrily, “I told you not to use it! Look, all the incense is gone! A single second later and you wouldn’t have been able to come back!”
Bei Quan finally normalised his breathing and stopped coughing. He gently patted on Tian Jia Xin’s little head.
“Alright, alright I came back.”
After appeasing the angry Tianqi doll, he turned to see Wei Fuyuan, “Xiao Wei, thank you.”
Wei Fuyuan was stunned when he heard Bei Quan’s gratitude.
“Cough.”
He touched his nose and felt that his ears were a little warm.
“I didn’t, didn’t do anything...”
Young Master Wei was not self-conceited but really didn’t think his artificial respiration could do much.
——Speaking of it, the artificial respiration!
After the crisis was over, he just kissed... No, the feeling when he touched Bei Quan’s lips came back to his mind.
Wei Fuyuan’s eyes unconsciously moved to Bei Quan’s smiling lips.
The color of the other party’s violet lips had already returned to ruddy, slightly red and swollen, with a layer of squiggly water...
The red tide spread from Wei Fuyuan’s ears to his whole face.
“OK, OK!”
He waved his hand in confusion, trying to expel the cold yet soft, moist touch of Bei Quan’s lips from his brain.
“You just...well, I mean during the time you ‘slept’, what did you see?”
Hearing this, Bei Quan didn’t continue the topic but restrained the smile on his lips, and his expression became serious.
“Come here, it’s time to prepare.”
He stood up, turned back, and waved to Wei Fuyuan and Tian Jia Xin, “I found the entrance to the fragmented space.”
————————
Time was pressing. Bei Quan didn’t tell Wei Fuyuan and Tian Jia Xin about what he saw and heard in the fragmented space in detail, but instead told them that there were certain ‘things’ in that place.
“It was hard to judge in space before. Now that I see it, it seems that the girl who’s feelings I shared should be this one...”
Bei Quan sat down on a flimsy table and took out the summary file of the missing teachers and students. He turned to a page, and pointed at a person’s photo.
Wei Fuyuan and Tian Jia Xin bent down together to look and found that the name of the female student was Julie.
Tian Jia Xin was curious, “How do you know it’s hers?”
“I heard her call the names of the other two girls.”
Bei Quan had unmistakably used the exclusion method.
Just a second before the girl was pushed into the river by the paper people, he had glanced at the other’s reflection in the water. Although it was indistinct, it was indeed the girl named ‘Julie’ when compared with the picture.
“Well, now we know that at least one of these teachers and students is already dead.”
Tian Jia Xin picked up a red pen and drew a bright red cross above Julie’s photo.
Wei Fuyuan raised his eyebrows, “If the missing people are all in the same situation as Julie...”
Young Master Wei tried to recall what the boy named ‘Ayun’ said on the hotline.
“Does that mean that one of those missing teachers and students will die every day?”