Our conversation over the phone remained muddled.
Meng Yifan and I still couldn't understand what the Seventh Master meant.
Perhaps it was because we knew nothing about the occult, so everything he said left us in a fog.
"Seventh Master, could you explain it in more detail...?"
"All right."
The Seventh Master sounded a little resigned, but he patiently explained, "According to legend, a person has three souls: the heavenly soul, the human soul, and the earth soul."
What was the heavenly soul?
The heavenly soul was also called the primary soul. After a person died, it returned to the heavens and became part of the universe's magnetic field.
The human soul was also known as the corpse-guarding soul or the bodily soul. After death, the corpse-guarding soul left the body within eight hours and wandered about. On the seventh night after death, it returned home to see its loved ones one last time, then went to its grave to keep an eternal vigil over the body.
The Seventh Master said there were many other principles concerning the corpse-guarding soul. For instance, the feng shui of a burial site affected a person's descendants through the corpse-guarding soul. Even when people paid their respects to their ancestors, it was actually the corpse-guarding soul they were honoring.
Finally came the earth soul, also called the karmic soul, which recorded all the good and evil a person had done in that lifetime.
Various legends said that wicked people went to hell to be punished, while good people could be reborn into a fortunate life. Those judgments were actually made based on the karmic soul.
Once the karmic soul had been judged and was permitted to reincarnate, the heavenly soul and human soul returned. The three souls reunited, giving rise to Seven Souls, and a new life was about to be born.
That was the entire cycle of reincarnation.
Meng Yifan and I listened intently, utterly stunned.
We had no idea whether any of it was true, but it certainly seemed to make sense.
"The reason Vengeful Ghosts harm people is that their resentment after death is so strong that it brings their karmic soul and corpse-guarding soul back together. But without the heavenly soul to keep them in check, their thoughts are almost entirely focused on one thing: fulfilling a wish from their lifetime, or taking revenge."
The Seventh Master explained in great detail. "But simply bringing the karmic soul and corpse-guarding soul back together doesn't accomplish much. A newly deceased spirit has very little energy and may even fear the yang energy of the living. That's why it needs time to develop, absorbing energy from the surrounding magnetic fields. We call this Soul Nurturing."
"Li Xiumei has been dead for fifteen years, and she died with tremendous resentment. That's how she became a Vengeful Ghost. Even someone with some spiritual skill would have trouble dealing with her."
I finally understood what the Seventh Master had meant earlier and picked up where he left off. "So Du Yuwei has only been dead for three months. She hasn't had what she needs to become a Vengeful Ghost. She might even be afraid of the yang energy of the living, let alone capable of frightening two grown men like Meng Yifan and me. Is that right?"
Men had strong yang energy, and young men in their prime had even more.
"Exactly!"
The Seventh Master grew serious again, clearly taking this very seriously. "She doesn't meet the conditions for becoming a Vengeful Ghost. You could call those the 'innate' conditions. But lacking innate conditions doesn't mean acquired ones can't make up for them."
I spoke up again, horrified. "By acquired conditions, do you mean what you mentioned earlier-raising a ghost?"
"That's right," said the Seventh Master. "In our circle, setting aside the rules of orthodox Daoism, we believe techniques themselves are neither good nor evil. What we fear is people deliberately misusing them."
"I've met quite a few people with some spiritual skill who couldn't recover from the grief of losing a child. They kept their children's spirits by their side and nurtured them with what little skill they possessed, not realizing that this went against the laws of nature. Such meager skills can easily cause a backlash, leaving their families destroyed and people dead. I've seen far too many cases like that."
Meng Yifan and I listened with chills running down our spines.
Once you entered this circle, you really could encounter every kind of strange and incredible thing.
Still, something like that also seemed only human...
"If my dad and grandpa died, I think I might do the same," I said.
The Seventh Master snorted. "What a devoted son you are."
Meng Yifan leaned closer. "Then who's raising the ghost? Du Ruhai or Lü Zhengxian?"
"That, I don't know," said the Seventh Master. "But whoever is raising her is most likely someone very close to her. Besides, she's still Du Ruhai's adopted daughter. To raise her ghost, they'd first need to get hold of her ashes. Who would dare touch them?"
No one would dare touch the ashes of Du Ruhai's adopted daughter.
Unless it was Du Ruhai himself, or Lü Zhengxian.
The Seventh Master sighed. "That isn't even the worst of it. Raising a ghost generally only brings harm to the person doing it and their family. But it often leads to another practice as well."
Curious, I quickly asked, "What practice?"
The Seventh Master refused to go on. From his tone, I could tell that whatever other practice ghost-raising led to was probably very serious.
"The most important thing now is to find Du Yuwei's ashes."
The Seventh Master continued, "She hasn't been dead long, so she'll be easier to deal with than Li Xiumei. As long as we find her ashes, I can help her pass on."
I told him that Brother Liu refused to help, so finding where Du Yuwei was buried would be difficult.
Lanjiang City was a huge city, with who knew how many cemeteries and columbaria. Searching them one by one would probably take ten days to half a month, at least.
By the time we finished, Meng Yifan and I would be ashes ourselves.
"I can ask around among people in our circle," the Seventh Master said. "A body has to be sent to a crematorium to be cremated, and Du Ruhai is well known. It should be easy to find out."
So we arranged to meet the Seventh Master for dinner.
He said he should be able to find out where Du Yuwei was buried that very day.
But at six that evening...
When we met the Seventh Master at a restaurant, he brought us some unwelcome news.
He had asked many friends to look into Du Yuwei's burial site that day, but not a single funeral home or crematorium in all of Lanjiang City, large or small, had received her body.
They hadn't even known there had been a death in Du Ruhai's family.
It was truly strange.
Since the funeral regulations had been implemented, cremation had been mandatory in Lanjiang City. The dead could only be cremated, not buried intact.
Even if Du Ruhai had the power, influence, and connections to insist on burying Du Yuwei's body, he would still have needed a professional full-service funeral team to transport it.
But the Seventh Master added, "No one has handled any funeral arrangements for the Du family in the past three months. If someone had, word would have spread through the circle long ago. Du Ruhai is a well-known figure, after all."
Meng Yifan looked dumbfounded. "She wasn't cremated or buried? Did he burn her at home himself?"
I was a little speechless. "What do you think this is, roasting a whole lamb? Like he could just do it himself. I think Du Ruhai might never have intended to dispose of Du Yuwei's body."
But she was already dead. If he wasn't going to dispose of her body, what did he want to do with it?
Keep it at home?
By then, all the dishes had arrived, but the Seventh Master didn't seem to have any appetite.
He looked at us with his brow tightly furrowed. "This is what worries me most-the other practice that people who raise ghosts can easily turn to."
Meng Yifan and I immediately grew nervous.
What exactly was this practice that the Seventh Master had waited until now to reveal?
Then he uttered a single phrase, and sure enough, it sent another chill through us.
"Resurrection Through a Corpse..."
Before you continue