"Am I reincarnating? What am I reincarnating into?"
I was stunned by Liu Sandao's nonsensical "You are in reincarnation," and the force of his pulling on my eyelids still lingered on my palm.
Liu Sandao stared at my palm: "Look at these palm lines."
He poked at the "Li Gua" pattern on my palm with his fingernail.
“Normally, palm lines have three walls and five palaces, but your Li Palace has three extra spiral lines, which look just like the ‘Tai Guang Lun Zhuan Wen’ mentioned in the Yunji Qiqian.”
As he spoke, he suddenly looked up at Yuan Ying and said, "You used the Substitution Technique to change his birth chart, but you didn't expect that the fragment of the Reincarnation Soul had already burrowed into his Fetal Light Soul along the earth's veins?"
Yuan Ying's eyelashes trembled violently, and the Bagua mirror in her hand clattered to the ground.
"If the fragments of the soul master are not removed, his soul will swirl within the yin-yang rift with every breath he takes..."
"Turn around?"
Liu Sandao sneered and pulled out a leather-bound book titled "The Merit and Demerit Record of the Immortal Lord Taiwei" from his pocket: "The Daoist Canon says that 'the three souls circulate and the seven spirits revolve.' Now his fetal light soul is tainted by the filth of the revolving spirit, which is equivalent to opening a 'small hole in the Book of Life and Death.'"
"Look at the blood vessels in the whites of his eyes, aren't they arranged in a '卍' pattern? That's a sign that his spirit is being corrupted by evil spirits!"
I hurriedly moved closer to the bronze mirror and sure enough, I saw extremely fine blood-red lines floating deep in the whites of my eyes, as if someone had embroidered a circle of incantations around the pupils with the tip of a needle.
Yuan Ying suddenly started coughing.
"Brother Liu, just tell me straight, did I...?"
My throat tightened as I recalled the jar containing the fetal souls I had seen at the bottom of the well, engraved with my and Xiuxiu's birth dates: "Does this mean we've become the 'twin Yin-life people' the fortune teller spoke of, our souls forever trapped in this paper effigy?"
Just as Liu Sandao was about to speak, Yuan Ying suddenly coughed heavily.
"Knowing some things too clearly can be a form of torture."
She stared intently at the image of the patriarch on the shrine, her gaze fixed straight ahead.
"Torture?"
Liu Sandao suddenly stood up: "The paper lines on his palms are now appearing and disappearing, clearly indicating that his soul is repeatedly jumping between the 'human and paper realms'! Taoism says, 'When one soul falls, countless eons are born.' If his fetal soul is completely turned into paper, he will become a living dead, forever trapped in the cycle of fate!"
Yuan Ying's expression changed drastically. She grabbed the peach wood sword from the shrine and was about to smash it against the bronze mirror: "You think I don't want to talk about it? But the karmic debt of the Reincarnation Soul..."
"Enough!"
I yelled, "Can you guys at least say something I can understand?"
I snatched the "Taiwei Immortal Lord's Merit and Demerit Record" from Liu Sandao's hand and turned to the "Reincarnation" section.
"The cycle of reincarnation in Taoism is not the same as the Buddhist concept of cause and effect. It is the natural way of 'life arises from the gathering of qi, death arises from the dispersal of qi, death is followed by rebirth, and life is followed by death,' right?"
Liu Sandao was stunned, and Yuan Ying also stopped what she was doing, staring blankly at me.
I continued, “The Taiping Jing says, ‘The three souls and seven spirits return to heaven and earth, calm the body and preserve the spirit, and unite with the Dao.’ My current fetal light soul is tainted with filth, is it like mud and sand in a teapot, where water can still be poured but there are always residues?”
"That's right!"
Liu Sandao slapped his thigh: "Your fetal soul carries the 'life-substitute remnant mark' of the reincarnation soul. Every time you reincarnate, the remnant mark will attach to the new body, forming the 'continuation of fetal soul'."
“Just now I saw the swastika pattern on the whites of your eyes, which is the ‘reincarnation mark’ mentioned in the Lingbao Bifa, meaning that your soul has already accumulated ‘lifetime appearances’.”
Yuan Ying suddenly pressed down on my wrist, and a faint light seeped out from the crack in the Bagua mirror.
"But there is still hope. The Taoist canon says, 'To break the cycle of reincarnation, one must first understand one's karmic burdens.' The sins committed by our ancestors are borne by our descendants. You are suffering the backlash of the Reincarnation Soul. As long as you can sever these karmic burdens accumulated over lifetimes..."
"It can't be severed!"
Liu Sandao interrupted her, took down the copper wind chime from the doorway, the sound of which was clear and melodious, yet carried a chilling coldness.
“When I closed the door just now, I heard the wind chimes ring thirteen times—thirteen is a number associated with the underworld, meaning your soul has already been recorded in the underworld register. Did you see the ‘debt’ mark on your palm? That’s the ‘burden imprint’ left by the reincarnated soul, unless…”
He suddenly looked at Yuan Ying, his gaze sharp as a knife: "Unless someone takes the blame for him for these ten lifetimes of karmic debt, he and everyone around him will be implicated and forever become living targets for fate."
Yuan Ying's back slammed heavily against the shrine, and the peach wood sword in the ancestral master's statue suddenly fell to the ground with a clang.
The ashes on the sword tassel have all dissipated.
As I gazed in the direction where the sword tassel had fallen, I suddenly recalled the scene I had witnessed at the mass grave.
Beneath the wordless stele of the Half-Immortal, Yunfei's fetal soul cradles a paper-mache baby, the black holes in its eye sockets facing my direction.
My mind was buzzing, as if something was slowly etching a new mark of reincarnation deep within my soul.
"so……"
I took a deep breath and looked at the shadow of the old locust tree outside the window: "I'm like a cracked earthenware pot now. It can still hold water, but one day it will leak all the water. And what you're arguing about is whether to mend the pot now or wait until it's completely broken?"
Liu Sandao and Yuan Ying both fell silent.
The ever-burning lamp in front of the shrine suddenly burst into flames, casting the shadows of the three of us onto the wall, overlapping to form a blurry human figure.
"Let's go to Baiyun Temple tomorrow."
She suddenly spoke, her voice so soft it was as if she were afraid of waking something: "Borrow the 'Three Officials' letter' from Abbot Qingxu; perhaps it can rewrite your responsibilities..."
"It's too late."
Liu Sandao interrupted her and took out half a tattered copy of the "Luban Classic" from his pocket.
“Just now, when you were setting up the formation, I saw the Book of Life and Death in the Bone-Illuminating Mirror—under Chen Yan’s name, there’s a new line: ‘Reincarnation through ten lifetimes, becoming paper in ten lifetimes.’ This is the karma ordained by the underworld, unless…”
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