"Greetings, Holy Monk."
However frightening the old man looked, Li Xia still greeted him politely.
"Who are you? Why are you here?"
His amber eyes held confusion and startled suspicion.
Li Xia began talking to the legendary monk, using an explanation he had prepared beforehand:
"I am merely a monk with a few minor tricks.
I originally came to pay my respects to you.
Unexpectedly, because my contracted shikigami is somewhat special, after approaching this place, I faintly sensed sorrow coming from underground!
Curiosity got the better of me, so I went underground to investigate.
Only then did I discover that your soul had been trapped all along in this cold, desolate darkness."
"Curiosity got the better of you?"
"Of course I was curious. You are the most legendary monk of the past century or even several centuries, saving people from suffering and disaster, your name renowned throughout an era. I truly could not understand how someone like you could have left behind a trace of sorrow..."
Li Xia trailed off.
And he genuinely had been startled by the old man before him, whose body had long since died but whose soul remained.
Watching anime as a child, he had not thought much of mummies through a screen.
Today, meeting one's eyes at such close quarters kept making his skin crawl.
"Heh, rather laughable, isn't it? A saint who saved the people actually died in confusion and pain."
An unnerving smile suddenly appeared on Hakushin's stiff, mummified face.
It was a bitter smile.
Hearing this, Li Xia sighed with feeling:
"Indeed! Who could have imagined that someone so respected in life, still revered by countless people today, would have his soul trapped in his dead body all this time, unable to ascend to heaven!"
After his lament came silence.
Hakushin