Bai Yujun was left speechless.
Strangled to death by the hands of the one she loved most and dumped in the wilderness—he had been willing to abandon everything, even his own humanity, for the sake of his future. Yet Xia Lan had not turned resentful and become a vengeful ghost. Stubbornly, day after day, she waited in these desolate mountains for that heartless man to take her home, just as he had once deceived her into following him into these wild hills.
"How many years have you been dead?" Bai Yujun asked.
"A full seven years."
Seven years. That heartless bastard had likely long since married some minister's daughter and soared to great heights, feasting behind vermilion gates every day. How could he still remember a set of weathered old bones in these barren mountains?
"The paths of humans and ghosts are different. Since you have died, you should go where you belong. Let me send you on."
"No! I want to wait for Young Master Li to take me home!"
The female ghost Xia Lan was resolute. This was the greatest obsession she had clung to after death, impossible to shake. Bai Yujun was helpless about it. If she simply left her alone, a passing cultivator might casually scatter her soul before long. Or perhaps she would be devoured by a vicious ghost, losing any chance of reincarnation. Had she been an evil ghost, that would have been one thing, but she was kind-hearted and refused to become a vengeful ghost. She was a good person—or rather, a good ghost.
"He will not come back. Never. Even if you wait another hundred years, a thousand years, he will not return to take you home." Bai Yujun had no choice but to speak this cruel truth.
"No! He will come!