THE YILING MATRIARCH

Chapter 32 : Tales of a Ghostly Maiden

A/N: Sorry for the long wait, but here I am (as promised to my passionate viewers). Hope you enjoy this chapter! Chapter 33 might take longer since school is quickly picking up the pace and work is a pain.

Having left Wangji behind in the company of the students, Meifeng led them back towards the house where the girl's ghost had been.

Upon seeing them, also hearing what we had just learned, she led them to a back-room where a long box- a coffin made out of black wood- laid in the center of the room. It had appeared to them mostly untouched, save for the few smudges on the surface that had been made simply over time by the aging material and the girl's hands that traced over the surface despite not being able to interact with the physical world anymore. Since the girl had no tongue to speak, Meifeng saw in her eyes and body posture that she wanted them to see what was inside.

Despite such actions of opening a coffin being considered rude, whatever was inside could possibly better help them understand what had happened in this tragic place, so Meifeng pushed the heavy lid aside just enough to peer its contents.

As a coffin should, it held within it a corpse belonging to someone who had long since passed, but this corpse was unlike one she had seen before. The stiffness of the body did nothing to distract the perfect state it was in; skin, which should've been shriveled and grey after losing its colour, was young and pale. Even the clothing and contents inside the above-ground tomb was too pristine, as if someone had purposefully preserved everything to absolute perfection.

While most grieving someone of the dearly departed would make sure the grave was 'comfortable' for the body, this was pushing her thoughts back to the uncomfortable conversation she had with Xue Yang and the soul he wanted pieced back together.

That soul had no doubt belonged to this person, and Xue Yang had wanted her to bring this dead man, the real Xiao Xingchen, back to life by using her strong Diabolism.

Communication with the apparition was impossible, having her tongue cut out at the root, but Inquiry was not the only way to learn what she wanted to desperately tell them. The only other method, however, was highly dangerous to use, not to mention a technique with one-hundred things that could go wrong during the Empathy; Jin Ling was the first to point this out vehemently.

"Are you crazy! Sure, it's pretty direct, but Empathy is a dark art that offers up your soul to a spirit. You'd also be allowing your body to be used as an unstable medium even though we don't know if this thing has good intentions or not! What if you can't come back!?" Jin Ling wasn't the only one disterbed by the risks, but with what options they had at the moment, this was their only thing they could do.

Putting all the needed items in place for the technique to take place, Meifeng found her mind began to fade while sitting in front of the ghostly girl, feeling her consciousness being pulled out of the way back into the one opposite of her until everything just went black.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It took only a moment for her eyes to adjust to her new surroundings, blinking strangely as the blinding sun hurt her eyes; if the girl had been blind, how could she see at all? Soaking this revelation in, Meifeng surmised that the girl hadn't been blind at all, but simply blessed with light colored eyes that made it easy to squeeze money out of people who might mistakenly feel sorry for a girl her age being unable to see as she saw the girl pretending to stumble against a wealthy looking man while swiping his change purse.

Haggling with food vendors who thought to swindle someone who could not see and being sexually harassed by older men also seemed to be a regular thing for the girl whose name she learned was A-Qing. Meifeng could feel her crossed feelings whenever this happened, hating being treated this way, but it was better than everyone learning she had been tricking them the entire time.