Volume One, Chapter 105: Soul Thread

The young rat girl was still trying to make a desperate stand, her sharp teeth tearing savagely at the golden sealing net, only to have the spell upon it blast her mouth full of gaping holes. The holes were dark inside, and with the black baleful mist, her ghostly power slowly began to leak away.

“Are you really that eager to be reduced to ashes?”

Qin Yu raised an eyebrow and formed a hand seal to seal her mouth shut.

“Scree! Scree-scree!”

The girl rat trembled in hatred, but with too much of her power draining away, she slowly shrank back to the size of an ordinary child.

Seeing that nothing useful could be pried from her mouth, Qin Yu made another hand seal, and soon the Frost-Biting Sword solidified in her palm. “Then let me end your suffering!”

She lifted the sword high overhead, spiritual energy surging continuously into the blade.

Frost-Biting, whose full name was Azure Water Frost-Biting Sword, was shortened by Qin Yu to just Frost-Biting because she found the full name too troublesome.

“Spare her! Please, spare her!”

A flash of cunning flickered in Qin Yu’s eyes.

So you’re finally willing to come out?

The Frost-Biting Sword hovered in the air, only a finger’s breadth from the girl rat.

Under the sunlight, a sanitation worker in a yellow uniform sprinted toward the girl rat. She showed no fear of the creature’s horrifying appearance and threw her body in front of it.

“Yaoyao, are you all right?”

The girl rat’s restless eyes slowly grew calm when she saw the woman. She let out a soft, broken whimper, like a frightened child choking back sobs.

Her tiny body curled up within the great net, strangely pitiful to behold.

Qin Yu withdrew Frost-Biting, then pulled over a small stool and sat down. “Speak. What is going on with her?”

Seeing that Qin Yu was not surprised in the least, the woman took half a step back. “You deliberately used Yaoyao to draw me out?”

“You said this place was filthy and chaotic, so why is the photo of the excellent baby called Wang Chuyao on the honor wall by the entrance so clean?”

Defeated, the woman lowered her head, her voice listless. “That was the last moment Yaoyao existed in this world.”

Qin Yu swept her gaze around, her expression sharpening. “This place has been unable to find a tenant for five years. You taught her all that, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” The woman admitted it outright. Tears glimmered in her eyes as she asked back, “I only wanted to be with my Yaoyao. What did I do wrong?”

Qin Yu’s eyes darkened. “Five years ago, what exactly happened here?”

She tried to sense this piece of land with spiritual energy, but all she could feel was boundless sorrow.

Clearly, someone had used powerful spiritual energy to wash away everything that had once remained here.

The woman paid no mind to Qin Yu behind her. Her eyes were fixed entirely on Yaoyao, and in the gentlest tone she made her condition to Qin Yu. “Help my Yaoyao find release, and I will tell you everything.”

Qin Yu disliked bargaining very much. She let out a light hiss. “Fine. I’ll cut her down with one strike, and she’ll be released.”

“That is not the kind of release I mean.”

She turned back lightly and glanced at the sword in Qin Yu’s hand. “Don’t refuse me. I know you can do it.”

Qin Yu narrowed her eyes dangerously. “So you’ve studied me quite thoroughly?”

The woman smiled bitterly, with a mother’s stubborn resolve. “As long as it can help Yaoyao, I’ll do anything.”

“Fine. I agree.”

Only then did the tears that had long gathered in the woman’s eyes begin to fall, bead by bead, like a broken string of pearls.

Through the talisman, she stroked the girl rat’s head with tenderness and love. “Don’t be afraid, Yaoyao. Soon, you’ll be free.”

Qin Yu steadied her breath and chanted silently. All the spiritual energy in her body poured into the Frost-Biting Sword.

Once suffused with spiritual power, the pitch-black blade even gave off a faint green glow.

The immense force of that energy altered the surrounding field.

A moment ago, the sky had been clear for miles.

The next, dark clouds blotted out the sun.

“Move!”

At Qin Yu’s command, the woman’s body was thrown aside.

Azure Water Frost-Biting pointed straight at the girl rat.

Azure Water Frost-Biting: one thought gives life, one thought gives death.

Qin Yu raised her sword and brought it down toward the girl rat’s neck.

Yet the fierce sword aura, when it was only a few inches away, suddenly softened into something as pliant as silk wrapped around the finger.

Green spiritual energy leaped across the girl rat’s neck, moving with elegant grace and tracing one beautiful curve after another.

It was as though it were completing a delicate work of art.

Qin Yu pressed a hand to her forehead, speechless.

This Frost-Biting really loved making a spectacle of everything.

It was only when the threads around the girl rat’s neck were gradually peeled apart that everyone realized Frost-Biting was removing stitches.

The woman’s heart instantly shot up to her throat.

That person had said Yaoyao and the rat were bound by the same fate...

Soon, Frost-Biting’s movements slowed.

By then, the scene no longer looked like it was removing stitches at all. It looked more like bomb disposal.

Although the sword’s aura had slowed, every motion remained forceful and decisive, with not the slightest hesitation.

But when it came to the final step, Frost-Biting suddenly stopped.

At that moment, only two threads remained on the girl rat’s neck, one black and one red.

Qin Yu’s eyes widened.

Soul threads!

One belonged to the girl; the other to the rat bound to her.

If the two were to be separated, only one could remain.

Frost-Biting hesitated, which meant there was something wrong.

“Take me to Wang Chuyao!”

The woman blinked, stunned. “There isn’t any!”

“There isn’t?”

“Yaoyao died back then without even a whole body left, and besides me, no one remembers that she ever existed.”

“What’s going on? Why is this getting stranger by the minute?”

“Could Wang Chuyao be something Auntie imagined? A living person should leave traces behind if they ever existed. How could no one remember her?”

“I think so too. Could this woman have a split personality? Is she imagining she has a daughter?”

“That seems likely!”

“Then how do you explain this girl rat?”

“Stop guessing wildly. Wait for my wife to reveal the truth to you.”

“Where was the last place she disappeared?”

“The rooftop!”

Qin Yu used spiritual energy to support Wang Chuyao’s soul.

Then she cast a flight talisman.

Just as Lu Hualing climbed down from the railing, he saw a black shadow float upward.

He looked up. “Master! Why are you going up too?”

“Wait for me! Don’t leave me alone here!”