The Search Begins

Wen Ning sent Meng Jiang a message, briefly explaining Xiao Ya's situation: she was fourteen or fifteen, had cerebral palsy, struggled to speak clearly, and had limited mobility. She had been bullied by her classmates in middle school, but a boy had protected her. She wanted to find him and thank him.

He added one last line: she didn't remember her Eight Characters of Birth or the exact day she had died. All she knew was that her name was Xiao Ya.

Meng Jiang replied quickly, though there was a hint of helplessness in her tone.

Wen Ning, you know we can't search the Book of Life and Death without her Eight Characters of Birth.

The Underworld's archive retrieval system uses soul signature codes, with the Eight Characters of Birth as the primary key. Without that, we can only run a fuzzy search. The system will return a huge number of matches, and there's no telling how long it would take to sift through them one by one.

Still, her saying her name is Xiao Ya does give us a lead. There are quite a few people nationwide in that age range named Xiao Ya, but I'll contact you when I make some progress.

Reading the message, Wen Ning also felt how difficult this would be.

He sent Meng Jiang another message.

If I brought her to the Underworld, could you compare her soul's fluctuations directly?

Meng Jiang did not agree with the suggestion: bringing an unregistered dead soul into the Underworld is against the rules in itself. Besides, she has no resentment, and her merit light is normal. Clearly, she isn't refusing reincarnation. She's lingering in the human world because of an unresolved attachment.

The Underworld won't give her a hard time over something like this, but we can't take her in yet, either. Find that attachment and resolve it, and she'll be able to move on naturally.

Wen Ning put down his phone and glanced at Xiao Ya, who was crouching in the corner. If he couldn't get answers from the Underworld, he would have to ask her himself.

"Xiao Ya, do you remember what city your home was in? Or roughly which province? Was there anything distinctive nearby?"

Xiao Ya hugged her knees and lowered her head, struggling hard to remember.

Only then did she haltingly manage a few words.

"There~ there were mountains~ lots~ lots of mountains~"

Wen Ning felt a little relieved. Mountains meant it wasn't a city on the plains.

"Then do you remember your school's name? Or anything beside the school that you can remember?"

Xiao Ya thought for another long while, then shook her head. She didn't remember the school's name or what her teachers were called.

She only remembered a very large tree by the school gate. It had white flowers, and every spring, it looked especially beautiful when the petals fell.

Sometimes the boy would wait for her beneath that tree and help chase away the people who wanted to bully her.

Wen Ning wrote all of this down: mountains, lots of mountains, a large tree with white flowers by the school gate.

He then asked what the boy's name was. Xiao Ya struggled for a long time before forcing out a name.

"A~ A Cheng~"

"A Cheng?" Wen Ning checked again.

Xiao Ya nodded hard, that faint light returning to her eyes. Her memory was poor. She couldn't remember her school, her teachers, or her home address, but she remembered the tree with white flowers and the boy named A Cheng.

She remembered him waiting beneath the tree for her to get out of school.

Wen Ning organized the information and sent it to Meng Jiang.

Meng Jiang soon replied that a few scattered fragments of information still weren't enough for an exact match. But since Xiao Ya remembered the village's general appearance and details of the school entrance, those memories must have left a deep impression on her.

She suggested that Xiao Ya first try her best to remember the name of her home village. Having the village's name would narrow the search considerably.

Wen Ning asked softly.

"Then do you remember which village your home was in? Or roughly where it was?"

This time, Xiao Ya thought longer than she had before. She closed her eyes, as though desperately trying to pull a loose thread from a tangled mass of memories.

Suddenly, she opened her eyes and forced out a few words.

"Liu~ Liujiabao~"

Wen Ning sent this information to Meng Jiang, who replied very quickly.

"There are dozens of villages nationwide called Liujiabao. But you said there were mountains, lots of them. Combined with that geographical feature, if we're certain Xiao Ya was local, we can focus mainly on a few counties and cities within the province. I'll put together a list tomorrow and send it to you."

Wen Ning thanked Meng Jiang, set his phone on the coffee table, and turned to look at Xiao Ya in the corner. Saying the village's name had clearly exhausted her. She leaned into the corner with her head tilted and her eyes half closed, still murmuring in a daze.

"Liujiabao~ gate~ big tree~"

Then her voice grew quieter and quieter, and her body dissolved into a wisp of faint mist that drifted into the Thunder Department Token Wen Ning had left at the corner of the table.

This was the natural dormancy that wandering souls entered after exhausting their spiritual energy. She had spoken too much and expended too much strength today. She needed to sleep before she could continue sustaining her form.

Wen Ning watched the mist disappear completely into the token and sighed.

He placed three sticks of incense in the burner on the altar and lit them, stepped back twice, and solemnly kowtowed three times, his forehead striking the floor. Then he addressed the divine statue.

"Godfather, I met a little girl today. Her life was far too hard. I'm going to help her fulfill this wish, no matter what. I may need to take a few days off to travel around."

The statue did not answer, but the incense smoke tilted slightly as he spoke.

To Wen Ning, its shape looked remarkably like a hand giving him a pat on the back of his head, neither too hard nor too soft.