86. A vengeful spirit in the meditation hall

The temple of the Holy Wind, as it was called, had lots of sliding doors decorated with leaves, birds, and misty mountains, as well as red, straw matted floors that muffled the sound of our footsteps.

We kept casting wary glances around, but so far so good: Yin’s soul hadn’t attempted anything since we had entered the place. To Yamazaki’s request, the old priestess was leading us to where, four years ago, she had found her husband dead.

“Yi was a creature of habit,” she said, crossing an empty room. “He loved his job and spent many hours teaching. For generations, our temple has been both a spiritual school and a therapeutic center, so we received many different kinds of customers, and Yi guided them with as many different methods.”

“Really? Did he teach the Mount Hua Sect’s learnings?” Yamazaki inquired.

“He did, but not only those. He used to say, ‘One living being, one path’. Besides, he had to adapt to his public. He gave spiritual lessons to lots of problematic kids in the neighbourhood. Also, students often came to improve their concentration by learning meditation and basic techniques to balance one’s qi. Quite a few times, he helped people how to handle a newly acquired power.”

“Sounds like a great job. Did you work with him or…?”

“From time to time, but I personally focused on helping people rehabilitate from all sorts of qi deviation. That’s my job. So, yes, sometimes, we worked together, but not often. In the afternoon, we used to take a long walk on the sacred hill, but… he stopped doing that about a year before his death.”

Yamazaki cast us an intent glance, making us understand we would have to ask the questions from now. Noah cleared his throat.

“How do you know for sure that your husband’s soul is haunting this place?”

“… I cannot prove it,” she admitted. “All I can say is that the accidents began about three months after my husband’s death. Also, since then, there has been no dust in the house, as if someone was sweeping it away for me. Sometimes, I have the impression he is still lying beside me at night, and I hear him whisper.” She paused and sent a stern look at us. “Call me senile if you want.”

Noah made a face and hissed under his breath:

“So this temple is really haunted?”

“Didn’t the instructor say it already?” Styzz replied calmly and turned to the old priestess. “Could you tell us how he died?”

“He killed himself.”

The old lady’s prompt answer didn’t make it less shocking. For a moment, we could only hear the rain pounding against the roof. No one dared to say anything. Then I blurted out:

“Holy Gods… I am very sorry for your loss.”

Her eagle eyes turned to me for an instant.

“Don’t be. Life and death are in the order of nature.”

“Nature, huh,” Zeeta interjected. “If he committed suicide, why is he haunting this place? I mean,” he commented like an expert, “people mostly kill themselves to end their suffering; they don’t do it to cause trouble.”

The old priestess hesitated and shook her head without stopping. As she didn’t say anything, I suggested:

“Maybe he realized, as he died, that he didn’t want to die?”

“If people’s souls stayed behind for a reason like that, the houses would be packed with damned souls,” Yamazaki replied.

“What if he didn’t kill himself?” Eder conjectured in a whisper, as if the old lady couldn’t hear him.

“You mean someone else killed him?” Styzz replied under his breath.

“So he stayed to take revenge,” Noah nodded.

“But he can’t leave the temple, and the killer never came back,” Eder concluded.

“That makes sense,” Noah and Styzz said at once.

Zeeta clicked his tongue.

“Stop it, guys. His own wife says he killed himself. Don’t play detective.”

I felt Ray’s nod of agreement as Noah, Styzz, and Eder fell silent, only now realizing they might have behaved rudely in front of the dead’s wife. She had stopped in a room, before a door. To our right, the sliding door was wide open on a veranda, and we could see the rain beating on the road and the old trees of the sacred hill. The old lady then said:

“Yi loved life. He loved learning, teaching, and meditating. He also loved the Mount Hua Sect’s philosophy, though he never adhered completely to its ideas. Despite all that, he still abandoned me behind in the last stretch of our lives.” A wind chime tinkled outside, on the veranda, and she turned her sharp eyes to it for an instant. “You must know… During the last two years of his life, Yi grew very distrustful of strangers, and not without reason. A property company was pressuring him to put the sacred hill on sale. Several months later, he was wrongly accused of improper behavior by an infiltrated female disciple. Yi has always been an upright man: he was framed, obviously. However, he went on trial and lost. He avoided prison, but to pay the fine, he had to take out a loan from a man who turned out to be banding together with the property company. In the end, he could not make up his mind to sell the land to pay back the money. So he poisoned himself. That fool only knew how to deal with heavenly matters and got caught by the roots of evil just like the Dreamy Disciple of the fable.” She said those last words with a voice filled with warmth. Her face darkened as she added: “Not that I am any better. I couldn’t protect the sacred hill, either, and even though I managed to keep the temple, only our most faithful disciples still drop by to pay their respects. My only consolation is that my daughter never wished to inherit our school.”

The story struck me to the core. To think even spiritual places were being vandalized by such greedy vultures! But still, to poison oneself for that…

“I am very sorry to hear the sacred hill was sold,” Yamazaki said. “Can I know the name of that property company?”

She nodded.

“Of course. The names of the devils should be known. After all, I can’t help but think my husband was killed by them. The Sunbrick Company. I’ve heard it is owned by a very wealthy businessman from the Sunclaw family.”

We froze. The Sunclaw…? At that moment, to our left, a sliding door that had been left ajar closed with a sharp cracking noise. Holy Gods… Was Yi’s soul listening to us?

We glanced at Axel Sunclaw as discreetly as possible. He remained unfazed, and I was thinking that maybe it was best for the old priestess not to find out she had just let the culprit’s son in when he said:

“My father sure knows how to ruin people’s lives.” The atmosphere became icy. Looking bored, he exchanged a glance with Curry and asked: “Should I leave, ma’am?”

Yamazaki coughed, very embarrassed.

“Axel is the fifth child of the head of the Sunclaw. Sorry, I couldn’t know it would turn out—”

“No worries,” the old priestess cut him off and stared sternly at Axel. “Young man. Children mustn’t pay for their parents’ mistakes. I’ll let you work with your companions. However, please be careful. If Yi has heard us just now… he won’t have mercy.”

Her warning sounded almost like a threat. Axel smirked.

“I can already feel his hatred.”

“…!!”

“Can you?!” I asked.

“Just vaguely. It’s refreshing. So, ma’am?” he added under our companions’ shocked eyes. “Weren’t you leading us to where Yi died?”

The old priestess frowned but said nothing and continued to walk, slid a door open, and went out to an inner courtyard with, in the center, a circular garden bed covered with small blue flowers. The rain was beating against the pavement, and we took the way around, under the verandas. Just as I looked behind me, I saw Axel make a quick step to one side as if to dodge something. However, I could see nothing.

“Was it Yi’s soul? ” I asked, both worried and curious.

The Sunclaw went by me without a word. Was he actually just freaking out because of what the old lady had said? He wasn’t the type that got easily frightened, though. On his shoulders, Curry squeaked happily:

“Kurikurikuri!”

I couldn’t help but smile at the kompa… Axel cast me a glare over his shoulder. He really couldn’t stand a smile, even behind his back; but then why was he fine with Curry? Was it because the kompa was a magical creature?

As we caught up with the others, I sighted a middle-aged man, bare-chested and wearing simple short pants. Leaning against one of the wooden columns of the veranda, he was gazing at the rainy sky, letting the wind dishevel his already messy, black hair.

“My nephew, Wisdom,” the old priestess said, barely slowing down. “He likes to spend his days in this garden.”

I stared at Wisdom, wondering if he was ignoring us on purpose or was just too engrossed in his contemplation. Then, as we were leaving him behind, I met his eyes, very briefly. They were gleaming with such serenity that I felt, for an instant, as if I was watching the ocean through him… Such a weird feeling.

The old priestess slid a door open.

“This is the meditation hall. This is where my husband died.”

As we entered, I couldn’t not notice the red stains on the corner of one of the painted walls. Was it blood? The drawing, in itself, was magnificent: it represented a big tree that spread its seven branches all over the space, one for every type of crystal in the world, except the black and white crystals. On the lower part of the wall, the tree’s roots embraced an empty ellipse—the Earth, maybe?

“This is Hao Dalton, the founder of Mount Hua Sect,” Yamazaki said. He was looking at the wall in front, at the drawing of a young man with long, black hair; he was sitting cross-legged, a book in his left hand and a red flower in the other. The instructor added: “He is the Grandmaster of the sect and one of the Seven Immortals of Perfection.”

“An Immortal?” Noah whistled.

“That’s right. He was born before the Big Blend with a very frail body, and he is one of the few people on Earth to have become an Immortal under the famous Crystal Rain. He told me once that he got the idea of founding the Mount Hua Sect thanks to all the hours he spent during his youth in seclusion, reading comi—er… books.”

He had almost said comics, hadn’t he? I gazed intently at the Grandmaster of Mount Hua Sect and just realized:

“Whoa. He looks just like your brother, Axel.”

The Sunclaw didn’t seem to hear me. He was glaring at the empty ellipse.

“Ah,” Yamazaki said, turning. “This is the Unity Tree. Look. In the trunk, you can see the white energy, the energy of the soul, while, at the bottom, the Endless Wind Lake, the Holy Lake, nurtures everything. We, members of the Mount Hua Sect, strive for immortality, but not that of the body, not even that of our soul. We strive for the immortality of the world, for an everlasting existence, an endless connexion, an eternal knowledge… That means we don’t defeat time or death. Instead, we learn how to accept them.”

I raised an eyebrow. I doubted that such a worldview was something specific to Mount Hua Sect.

“Why is the dark energy not represented?”

I winced a bit at Axel’s question but waited for the answer with curiosity. Yamazaki gave a thoughtful nod.

“Good question. The Unity Tree was created in an era when people knew very little about crystals. Not that we understand them completely now, but back in the day, they wrongly compared the dark and white energy to the yin and yang concept. Originally, it was said that the ‘dark soul’ was on the other side of the tree, and that’s why we cannot see it. Well, following the yin and yang concept, all nine crystals are interconnected, but just as the eight other energies mix together or unravel each other as they meet, dark energy almost never mixes. Instead, it changes the very nature of the energies it encounters. It is known as the reverse energy, after all. The balance bringer for some, the chaos bringer for others. It is the only energy,” he raised his eyes at the ceiling, “that can profane a soul.”

I followed his gaze and saw nothing more than the beams crossing the high ceiling. The old priestess sighed.

“So it is true. I didn’t just imagine it. Yi’s soul…”

Yamazaki looked at her and nodded, completing:

“Is still here. After four years.”

The old priestess was stoically trying hard not to lose her composure, so we tried hard, too, not to get emotional. Yamazaki added:

“Venerable lady, thanks for leading us here. We’ve accepted this request, so I’ll see that my trainees do a good job saving your husband’s soul.”

He bowed, and the old priestess bowed in return, saying:

“It is I who should thank you. I am pleasantly surprised to see that the Mount Hua Sect would still help us after our family quit the sect.”

“…? Oh. The secession happened over one hundred fifty years ago, though, madam. I am sure even our Grandmaster, who lived through the events, doesn’t hold a grudge against your family anymore.”

The old priestess’ lips went up a bit for the first time since we had met her. She bowed even deeper.

“I am glad to hear that from such an honorable disciple of the Mount Hua Sect. Now that you came, my mind is at ease. Please take your time.”

She cast Axel a severe glance before she left. After a silence, Styzz asked:

“Can Yi’s soul be saved, instructor?”

“It can. But you have to catch it first.”

His hands clutched behind his back, Yamazaki had returned to the contemplation of Hao Dalton with a glint of amusement in his eyes.

“Catch it?” Noah repeated. “How do you catch a soul?”

“Ah, well, you did say I shouldn’t intervene, so…” We snorted. Was he for real? “Heh. Okay, I’ll just give you a piece of advice because you did so well riding a bike for your first time, Noah.” Our instructor coughed to stifle a laugh under Noah’s glare and said more seriously: “Every damned soul has a core. First, you must locate it. Do your best.”

“You bet I will,” Noah retorted. He hesitated. “So? How do you locate a core?”

“Ah… Should I help you, after all?”

Noah grumbled under his breath, squinted his eyes, and walked around the hall, searching. Yamazaki sighed.

“We won’t get the job done today at this rate. Is it so hard to beg for my help?”

“Please, help!” I said, raising a hand.

“I was talking to No—”

Suddenly, Yamazaki slightly moved, and something sunk into the matted floor at great speed. It was a big, rusted nail that had fallen off one of the beams. Or more like, it felt as if someone had thrown it with all their strength. If Yamazaki hadn’t dodged it…

Our instructor had turned a bit pale.

“W-Well, guys, good luck. I think I’ll wait for you outsi—”

“Whaaat?!”

“I’m just kidding.”

We breathed out loudly. He laughed softly.

“I was the one who chose this job, after all. How could I leave my dear trainees alone?”

“Oi, sir,” Noah snapped from the other side of the hall. “The fact that the ghost threw a nail at you must mean he is close, right?”

“Oh, he is,” Yamazaki replied, nodding, warily covering his head with one hand. “I don’t know how it happened, but remember, trainees: if a soul remains after death, it always means that a dark core has been formed. A living soul is in balance with the universe, but Yi’s soul is not. It would disappear if it weren’t for that core. Also, a dark core needs to be bound to something. And that something—be it an item or a runic formation—gives Yi enough energy to haunt the whole temple. That is why, as long as we stay in this building, Yi will be close to us at any moment. Scary, huh? So, tell me now, trainees: how will you locate his core?”

His words filled me with dread as, bit by bit, the whole situation dawned on me. I barely heard the others talk and the instructor answer:

“… Locate first what is binding the core, you say? Not a bad idea, Eder. If it’s an item, it should be a powerful one, yes, but it’ll be hard to tell from its appearance. The last time I saved a damned soul, it had been trapped in a tree… Oh? Use a runic formation to find the core? Can you do it, Styzz? No? Then try something else.”

A soul.

My core was trembling inside me.

We were supposed to catch a soul. A bound soul just like mine. How come I hadn’t realized it sooner?

I looked at Ray abruptly. The young necromancer slightly winced and cast me a glance. His words flew through our necro-bond:

‘So you realized. At first, I thought Yamazaki had accepted this job because of the relationship this temple might have with the Mount Hua Sect. But I was at least partly wrong. He is a Dark Arts Regulator, after all. So, basically,’ I felt his worry as he concluded, ‘we are dealing with an undead.’

An undead human soul whose body was a whole temple. But who was its master? Could it be really an item?

And what would we do with Yi’s soul once we caught it?

We wouldn’t have to destroy it, right?

Right?

“Sir,” I suddenly said, cutting the conversation off. “Is Yi’s soul really Yi’s soul?”

Yamazaki raised his eyebrows.

“Mm. It is and it is not. It is a damned soul. As such, Yi’s soul was profaned and only part of it remains in the core. His vengeful thoughts against the Sunbrick Company make him what we call commonly a vengeful spirit or a vengeful ghost.”

A vengeful spirit. He meant Yi wasn’t the spiritual monk anymore but just a vengeful spirit… Was that true?

‘He is probably right,’ Ray commented telepathically. ‘Inner souls are very hard to preserve. A spirit like the one haunting this place cannot possibly have one.’

That didn’t mean that the undead soul dwelling now in the temple wasn’t as intelligent as any other undead. Arkill, Louise, Sora, and Uncle Adrian had also lost their inner souls when they had been revived, yet they were all wonderful people. So, maybe, the temple’s soul, too, was…?

Without warning, Noah put a hand on my head, pushing it forward and saying:

“Wake up, stupidstar! We’ve gotta catch the ghost.” At that moment, there was a loud thud against the roof that had nothing to do with the rain. The crimson-haired champ grinned nervously. “Heheheheh… You afraid, cowardstar? Admit it!”

Staring at the rain falling outside in the inner yard, I replied in a quiet voice:

“No. I’m curious. I’d like to meet that ghost.” I turned my eyes to Noah and blinked. “Aren’t you a bit pale?”

“Hah?! I’m not! Why would I be afraid of a vengeful spirit?”

“Well, you should. Look.” I pointed at the bloodstain on the wall of the Unity Tree. “The old lady didn’t tell us everything.”

Noah widened his eyes then snorted.

“What—?”

“It’s just paint,” Zeeta pointed out. Oh, was it?

Noah gasped:

“Don’t make things creepier than they already are, stupidstar!”

I chuckled.

“Sorry, champ.”

“So,” Yamazaki interjected, “Axel, Armen, and the Peacock, come: we’ll go search for the core.”

“Who’s the Peacock,” Noah snorted.

Yamazaki ignored him.

“Isabella, Eder, Styzz, and Ray, you look for the binder item, starting from this room: if that’s where Yi died, there is a high probability that the item is around here. If you find it, tell me at once. Do not touch it. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!”

A bolt of lightning flashed in the sky, and the whole temple trembled. As I walked out of the meditation hall with Axel and the Champ, I heard Styzz mutter behind:

“I have a bad feeling about this…”