Judge of Souls - Chapter 97

Jiang Feng said a word to Chu Xuanliang, then first connected to Mrs. Miao’s signal.

“I was wrong, I was wrong,” the other side said frantically. “Come over, I’ll tell you everything!”

After she finished speaking, there were two screams, and it seemed very chaotic over there.

Mrs. Miao clutched her phone and ran away. Jiang Feng turned the volume to maximum and heard the other party’s gasping sounds, as well as suppressed cries.

Then came the sound of a door closing. Mrs. Miao aimed at the receiver again and cried, “Taoist priest, please come quickly. I don’t know what to do now. I’m being haunted!”

Jiang Feng asked, “Calm down a bit. Ghosts prefer to bully timid people. The more afraid you are, the more rampant it will become. Especially don’t hide in places with few people. Tell me, what did you encounter?”

Mrs. Miao listened to his words and seemed to open the door and go out again. She sniffled and said, “A baby’s soul. It just miscarried and has been following me, even trying to bite me. What should I do now?”

This statement was a bit strange, but Jiang Feng didn’t argue with her about it.

“It will take me at least three or four hours to get to your place,” Jiang Feng said. “You should find a place to stay first.”

Mrs. Miao then remembered this matter. “Then what should I do? Can you… can you come faster? Where should I hide?”

Jiang Feng said, “You can first choose a Taoist temple or Buddhist temple to stay in, try to stay in sunlight and places with many people. Don’t go to graveyards or hospitals. I’m coming over now.”

Mrs. Miao calmed down slightly. “Okay, okay.”

After hanging up on that side, Jiang Feng called Chu Xuanliang again. “She wants us to come over now.”

“Mm,” Chu Xuanliang said. “Let’s take the high-speed train, it’s faster. We can get there in an hour and a half. I’ll go buy tickets.”

Jiang Feng: “Good.”

When they met on the high-speed train, Chu Xuanliang’s matter still hadn’t been discussed.

Private matters weren’t good to discuss in public, but there were people all around them. The two of them sent messages on their phones.

Chu Xuanliang: I had a friend follow Mrs. Miao and her husband, and discovered that Mrs. Miao’s husband has been separated from her for a long time. She’s living alone now.

Jiang Feng: Divorced? Their relationship seemed pretty good before.

Chu Xuanliang: It looked pretty good, but they’re not divorced. I don’t know how to describe it either.

Chu Xuanliang: Her husband has a mistress outside, who is now pregnant, and her husband moved over to take care of her -.-#

Jiang Feng: ??

Chu Xuanliang: Today that mistress went to find Mrs. Miao… to show off, I guess? But suddenly she started bleeding heavily, was sent to the hospital, couldn’t save it, and miscarried.

Jiang Feng: ……

Chu Xuanliang: She was waiting outside. Then the incident happened. My friend saw her grabbing at thin air outside the operating room, knew a little about these things, and thought she must be possessed.

Jiang Feng looked up at Chu Xuanliang across from him.

Chu Xuanliang sighed and said, “Actually, I don’t really understand the world of rich people.”

Jiang Feng: “Mm……”

Actually, he didn’t understand much about many aspects of the human world.

Two and a half hours later, the two men met with Mrs. Miao in a tea house private room below a temple.

The soul of a just-miscarried baby was relatively fragile after all, and since Mrs. Miao wasn’t a direct relative, it was strange for it to harbor malice toward her. After leaving the hospital, it hadn’t continued pursuing her.

But the yin energy on Mrs. Miao’s body truly followed her like a shadow, never diminishing. Recently she had become increasingly haggard, her face had thinned to the point where it could barely hold flesh.

Mrs. Miao patted her chest, obviously still not recovered from her fright.

Jiang Feng said, “Then I’ll speak directly. Why is that baby following you? What did you do?”

“It has nothing to do with me,” Mrs. Miao said, covering her mouth. “The miscarriage… proves it’s real.”

Chu Xuanliang: “What?”

Mrs. Miao raised her eyelids and said, “My husband’s birth chart is…, born on…”

She reported a string of numbers, along with her husband’s family situation. Chu Xuanliang calculated with his fingers and said, “Your husband has a monk’s fate?”

The so-called monk’s fate didn’t mean being suitable to become a monk, but was a folk term referring to a destiny of having no descendants or offspring.

His bodily functions were normal, but any children conceived either couldn’t be born or wouldn’t live to adulthood if born. Even if they lived to adulthood, they would have short lives.

It wasn’t impossible to break this curse, but someone needed to take on the misfortune. In rural areas, there was a practice of exchanging newborn children with other families, raising them as if they belonged to other families. When the adopted child died, they would exchange back their biological child, and then they could basically raise them successfully.

It was essentially trading one life for another.

In the old society, everyone could have many children, and with poor living conditions, having too many children would lead to abandonment anyway, so some people would do this. In modern society, no one would be willing to do this.

Besides, it was just a folk belief anyway—who would give away their own child to others to raise because of this?

Mrs. Miao said in a low voice, “Including the last time, I miscarried three times in total. Each time there would be different accidents, and I couldn’t give birth. Miscarriage is really too painful. At that time I could already feel the fetal movement, but it still died. You don’t understand what that feeling is like. I lived in collapse every day. Then I finally couldn’t reproduce anymore. I thought it was fate, ha, it really was fate, but it was my husband’s fate, not mine.”

Chu Xuanliang: “Your husband doesn’t know? So after you became infertile, he went and found a mistress?”

“Right. He doesn’t believe in ghosts and spirits. Even if he knew, he wouldn’t accept fate.” Mrs. Miao leaned back and rested against the chair back. “That woman is very spoiled, a female college student who hasn’t even entered society yet. She thought that by getting pregnant and giving birth to a son, she could make my husband divorce me, could enter society, and save herself decades of struggle. Some young people nowadays like to seduce other people’s husbands while acting righteous, because the quality men who enter society are basically already taken, so they can only be home-wreckers. They use their education to improve themselves just to find men, their life plan is to use true love as a cover to directly live a carefree kept woman’s life. Treating themselves as goods to be sold to the highest bidder—what has this society become?”

The original wife miscarried three times and then he went to find a mistress. They were also wondering what this society had become.

Mrs. Miao lowered her head, the corner of her mouth pulling into a smile. It was unclear whether it was a bitter smile or a sneer.

“From the time she got pregnant, she kept coming to show off to me, sending me photos of them together. That’s when I found out that they got together when I had miscarried less than two months earlier. At first my husband would still consider my feelings and deliberately hide it from me, but later when she got pregnant, after her persistent pestering, he just moved out directly.”

“I think he loves me. Sometimes I can clearly feel that he’s loving me. But more often, I feel very tired, very depressed. He can gently comfort me, but can’t spare time to see me, and I still have to maintain his good man image outside, telling others that I’m very happy. Why treat me like this? This isn’t my fault.”

Mrs. Miao patted her chest and said, “He’s gentle to everyone, anyone by his side can feel themselves being loved, and then can’t leave him. But I’m also the most special one, right? Because I married him.”

Chu Xuanliang was confused by her train of thought. Was this really the case?

It didn’t matter, he wasn’t good at providing emotional counseling anyway.

Mrs. Miao looked grief-stricken, her gaze flowing as she looked at the two men. The two opposite her looked apologetic.

They didn’t know what kind of agreement and comfort to give. Right, your cheating man still loves you?

Forget it.

Chu Xuanliang coughed. “So, then what?”

Mrs. Miao lightly pursed the corner of her lips, turned toward the window, and said, “I really wanted a child, very, very much. The blow was too great, so I kept the child from the last miscarriage.”

Jiang Feng: “Guman Thong?”

“I don’t know if that’s Guman Thong or not. Anyway, there was a Taoist priest who had me keep it in a bottle and put it under the bed. I won’t have children anymore, I only have it.” Mrs. Miao said, “Since then, I’ve had all sorts of problems, as you can see. But I don’t dare throw it away, the Taoist priest said that thing can’t be discarded casually. I wanted to ask that Taoist priest, but he disappeared.”

Jiang Feng: “Was it not raised properly?”

Chu Xuanliang: “Even improperly raised orthodox Guman Thong wouldn’t bring disasters. At most they’d throw tantrums, cry twice to disturb people. At most play some pranks. Obviously the little ghost you made is wrong.”

Jiang Feng: “Take us to see it.”

Mrs. Miao took a deep breath, stood up and said, “Let’s go.”

Mrs. Miao brought them home. She reached under the bedroom bed and pulled out a glass bottle, handing it to the two men.

A red lump of flesh in the shape of a baby was curled up in the bottle, with the bottle mouth sealed tightly with a yellow talisman.

Because the paper was curled, Chu Xuanliang couldn’t clearly distinguish the writing on the talisman. But this sealing method was obviously wrong—he’d never heard of any orthodox Taoist sect raising little ghosts this way.

Moreover, this was still her own biological child. Instead of quickly sending it to reincarnate, she kept it to create karma?

“Aren’t you afraid keeping this thing?” Chu Xuanliang said. “Although you can’t give birth yourself, you could adopt, right? Why must you keep a ghost by your side?”

Mrs. Miao smoothed the hair by her ear. “I just couldn’t bear to part with it. I was confused at the time, I didn’t think much about it.”

Chu Xuanliang didn’t ask more questions. He had no interest in exploring the dark side of human nature. He’d take this little ghost back and see if it could be saved through proper rituals first.

Mrs. Miao kept staring at him, watching him put the bottle into his bag without saying anything, and only then finally looked away. Her shoulders dropped slightly, as if relaxing.

Just then, the door was opened from outside.

Her husband rushed straight in wearing his shoes, his eye sockets red, the wind around his body displaying his anger.

Mrs. Miao was frightened by his appearance and said timidly, “Husband!”

He had already rushed in front of her and directly swung his arm to slap her.

“Why did you harm Tiantian? Are you happy that she miscarried? Do you know that was my child! I valued him greatly—he would have been my first child! Even if you can’t give birth, you can’t be so vicious!”

Mrs. Miao held her face, looking as if she didn’t recognize him anymore. Blood trickled from the corner of her lips. She took two breaths before finally hearing her own voice say, “I didn’t!”

Her husband: “Then how could she miscarry!”

“How would I know!” Mrs. Miao shouted at him. “She just had an accident and you come to blame me. Did you ask me about it?”

Her husband: “She was with you last!”

Mrs. Miao: “The last time was at a coffee shop! There were other people there! If you’re capable, go ask them. I have nothing I can’t say!”

Her husband: “Then let’s go!”

Jiang Feng and Chu Xuanliang followed along.

The place where Mrs. Miao and that woman last met was at the coffee shop downstairs. The staff were still shaken by the morning’s miscarriage incident. When the parties involved came to ask with swollen faces, they quickly explained what had happened.

It basically matched what Mrs. Miao had said.

Her husband still didn’t believe it after hearing this and demanded they show him the surveillance footage. They could only helplessly go to the back rest room and bring out the surveillance for him to see.

They jumped to the time of the incident.

In the footage, Mrs. Miao had been drinking coffee the whole time without speaking, while the girl across from her was gesticulating and saying something. The two never made contact, then the girl called Tiantian suddenly collapsed. Subsequently, the staff, Mrs. Miao and others hurriedly went over and called emergency services.

After watching this scene, her husband’s expression immediately became awkward.

Mrs. Miao slumped to the ground and began crying and complaining. “You still don’t believe me! Do you have any conscience? I miscarried three times for you. What did you say before we got married? What are you doing now? I accepted that you found a mistress because my fate is bad. I endured when she came to show off to me, but you still hit me! Are you a man? Are you a man?!”

The staff looked at her with sympathy.

Chu Xuanliang took the mouse and rewound it, calling Jiang Feng over to look.

In the period before the miscarriage, the two indeed had no contact, but in the footage, there had been a stream of black energy spreading over, wrapping around the other person’s belly and beginning to tighten.

Finally the girl collapsed and miscarried.

Mrs. Miao should have been possessed by an evil ghost at the time, and when she went to meet the other person, it affected the other person’s child.

Jiang Feng looked over from above the computer. Mrs. Miao was sobbing in her husband’s arms. Meeting Jiang Feng’s cold gaze, she shrank back and looked away, her body also tensing up, then she turned and hugged her husband seeking comfort.

Her husband held her and said in a low voice, “I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean it. Sigh… I’m also very upset, but the person I love most is still you, you know that.”

Mrs. Miao nodded while choking back tears.

The staff member obviously shuddered, looking at them and shrugging.

The two men didn’t expose her… metaphysical matters weren’t good to publicize and were hard to explain. But they couldn’t stay in this place for another moment. They took the bottle and hurriedly left.

After exiting the door and getting completely away from that family, breathing fresh air, they felt the world was a bit more normal.

Chu Xuanliang said with his scalp tingling, “Staying with their family of several people, I felt like my brain was about to become abnormal. What kind of family ethics is this? Are they all crazy?”

Jiang Feng also felt very uncomfortable. “Let’s go back.”

Chu Xuanliang bought tickets for the nearest high-speed train and rushed back with Jiang Feng.

“Oh right, you should take the little Mountain God back,” Chu Xuanliang said with a bitter face. “Yes, the dog doesn’t cry anymore, but your son cries. When your son cries, my master wants to cry along. Not just at night—twenty-four hours. We can’t stand this life either. Qianyuan Temple… it wasn’t easy to develop to where it is today, it’s all our ancestors’ foundation.”

Jiang Feng: “……”