Chapter 74: A Sword’s Tip Determines Fate; Talismans Guide Past and Future Lives

The greatness of a mother’s love cannot be summed up in just a few words.

A mother’s love transcends race, life and death, even the boundaries between this world and the next.

Following my instructions, Qin Ruo left at once to buy mugwort, while I laid the child’s body gently on the coffee table.

Looking at her innocent face, I recalled how, only days ago, she had nestled in my arms, gnawing lightly on her own fingers.

A surge of unexplainable anger welled up within me.

“Little one, don’t worry. I won’t let your death remain a mystery.”

After unbuttoning the child’s clothing, I carefully turned her over.

A soul-binding curse was carved into her back, its sinister lines clear to my eyes.

I couldn’t help but wonder: what kind of person could be so ruthless? To cast such a deadly curse on a child barely over a year old, one that would not even spare her soul!

Flexing my hands, I took out a large piece of yellow cloth from my backpack and covered the child’s body.

Then, I retrieved a bottle of Grandpa’s treasured Erguotou liquor from my bag.

As soon as I twisted the cap, the sharp scent of strong spirits flooded my senses.

Swallowing, I took a mouthful of the liquor, then sprayed it over the yellow cloth covering the body.

But that was not all. Exhaling the alcoholic fumes, I bit open the tip of my right index finger and, using my blood, wrote four bold characters on the cloth: True Lord of Three Mao.

“By decree! With the True Lord of Three Mao present, let the wandering soul leave the mortal body!”

No sooner had my words subsided than the characters, written in blood, began to merge with the liquor on the cloth.

Gradually, the mingling of blood and spirits swirled across the yellow fabric, finally forming a small vortex.

Suddenly, I heard a cry—the head of a child emerged from the swirling vortex, but before a second had passed, it began to sink back down.

From beneath the yellow cloth, the body began to glow with tongues of fire.

“It’s you!”

I was using the wild Maoshan arts to force the child’s soul out of her corpse.

Originally, this curse would have slowly refined her soul within her body, but my intervention was about to extract it.

“Come out!”

With a roar, I grabbed hold of the child’s soul with one hand and swiftly wrapped it in the yellow cloth with the other.

The instant the cloth was lifted, flames from the inferno shot up three meters high, blackening the white ceiling above.

Instinctively, I took a step back. Even so, I caught the acrid scent of my already-thin bangs singeing in the heat.

Placing the soul-wrapped cloth behind me, a breeze tinged with sourness drifted through the room.

At that smell, a chill ran through my body. Under this sour wind, the infernal flames gradually receded, eventually returning to the corpse.

Glancing at the unscathed body on the coffee table, then at the charred ceiling, I let out a long sigh.

At least the soul had been drawn out, but I couldn’t just keep holding it in my hands.

Searching the room, I found an unopened canister of powdered milk in the cupboard.

I emptied the canister, slipped the damp yellow cloth inside, and sealed it with a soul-suppressing talisman.

Although extracting the soul would keep it safe from the internal fire for a short time, this was only a temporary measure.

If the soul-binding curse wasn’t broken, the soul would automatically return to the body and be consumed by the flames as soon as it was released.

And burning the body wouldn’t solve the problem either.

In simple terms, the corpse itself—with the curse—was a summoning tool that called the soul back.

“I found the mugwort!”

Qin Ruo returned swiftly, arms laden with two thick bundles of mugwort. Her eyes went first to the scorched ceiling and then to the milk canister sealed with a talisman.

“Boil the mugwort over high heat—start with a full pot.”

She nodded and hurried to the kitchen, while I rushed to the bathroom. Finding a bathtub, I took out cinnabar and used my finger to draw talismans inside and out along the tub’s surface.

“By urgent decree, as the law commands!”

With my fingers forming a sword, I pointed to the heavens and earth, guiding the talisman for this life and the next.

Spitting out the liquor-tinged saliva, I gently placed the child’s body in the tub.

At that moment, Qin Ruo brought in the first pot of boiling mugwort water.

Carrying it from the kitchen, I poured it all into the bathtub, filling the bathroom with billowing steam.

Amazingly, the symbols I’d drawn on the tub’s inner walls did not dissolve in the water at all.

“Hurry, boil more water—we need much more!” I shouted to Qin Ruo.

To break the soul-binding curse, each type of punishment required its own method.

For fire punishment, boiling mugwort water was the key.

First, the body must be soaked in the hot mugwort water for an hour. Once the water cooled, the tears and blood of a close relative had to be mixed and used to anoint a blade. Then, the section of skin bearing the curse would be cut away and cast into a site that restrains the curse’s power, thus breaking it.

In this way, the curse could be undone, and the soul finally set free.