"The Taoist technique of 'One Life, Two Souls' requires a close relative to be willing to act as a 'soul vessel.' Chen Bazhong swore an oath before the statue of the patriarch that if he could keep you safe, he would give up his own three souls and seven spirits in exchange for your lifelong clarity."
Liu Sandao patted me on the shoulder.
"Don't be silly! Don't think too much. He crossed his birth date and time out of the Book of Life and Death a long time ago. Now he's just a 'living dead' who survived by shielding you from disaster."
"Otherwise, why do you think you're still alive as a remnant soul? Why haven't any underworld officials come to take your soul? Why can you walk in the sunlight? It's because they're using their soul fire to sustain your soul!"
I shuddered and almost fell to the ground.
Yuan Ying's fingertips traced the "Three Yin Reincarnations" diagram in the Daoist Canon.
"The Half-Immortal was once tricked by Chen Bazhong, so this time he used 'Twin Yin Fates' to drag you in, trying to force you to be destroyed."
"But your grandfather had already foreseen this. He broke your destiny chart into seven pieces and hid them in seven yin eyes, just to make the demigods think that he was breaking the deadlock, when in fact he was helping you collect the souls of your previous nine lives."
Suddenly, Liu Sandao pulled a locust leaf from his pocket, and the veins of the leaf were engraved with the two characters "Chen Yan".
“You think you’re investigating a case? You’re wrong. Every time you unlock a Yin Eye, you’re recovering a memory that Chen Bazhong has hidden. That shattered soul jar is currently ‘nurturing’ the soul under the shrine. Once you’ve collected all seven life plates, you’ll be able to truly inherit his mantle as a formation master.”
The shrine suddenly made a soft "click" sound, and the peach wood sword in the ancestral master's hand slowly turned towards me, the paper ash on the sword tassel spelling out the character "承" (Cheng).
Looking at the two people in front of me, I seemed to understand something.
It turns out that every experience I had before was a reinforcement of the body he had built for me, a body that could withstand ten lifetimes of reincarnation.
"So that's why he wrote in his diary, 'It's worse to be a ghost than to be born as a daughter, she can shield her father from disaster'?"
Suddenly I realized: "He wasn't talking about Xiuxiu at all, he was talking about himself, about this 'old ghost' who shielded his grandson from nine disasters. I just thought I was following clues to investigate a case, how ridiculous!"
Yuan Ying didn't speak, but simply placed the paper figurines from the wooden box onto the shrine one by one.
When the ninth figure returned to its place, the eternal lamp suddenly lit up, brighter than ever before.
The image in the mirror gradually distorted, slowly forming a complete character "护" (protect).
"He used his own reincarnation to exchange for my new life."
I clenched my fist.
Is this the whole truth?
Grandpa has spent so many years living his life as a talisman in my destiny, a talisman that will protect me even if his soul is scattered.
Now that everything has been made public, everything is starting to overlap.
I know that the bell of the tenth cycle has already quietly rung.
That was my reincarnation, and the path my grandfather paved for me with his entire life, a path that would allow me to truly control my own destiny.
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