Chapter Twelve: Binding the Earth Spirit

“So I want you to seek justice for us! Even if we were meant to die, we did not deserve to die this way!”

The plea in the voice of the spectral bones was almost a roar, and the countless souls behind her wailed in unison, their agonized cries thunderous enough to shake the heavens. The sound moved Xiang Jiuxi to the core.

“But… how do you know all of this?” After a long silence, Xiang Jiuxi finally voiced his deepest doubt. After all, everything the bones recounted belonged to the highest order of secrets, inaccessible to ordinary people.

At this question, the entire place fell into utter silence.

There was no discernible expression on the face of the bones, but her body clearly faltered for a moment before she slowly lifted her hand and pointed behind Xiang Jiuxi.

Puzzled, Xiang Jiuxi was about to ask for clarification when a faint, pleading voice came from behind him.

“Save me…”

He turned instinctively—and the sight before him sent a chill down his spine.

Not far away stood a massive cross. At its peak hung a man, his body shriveled to bones. His eye sockets were sunken, utterly devoid of life. His withered skin clung tightly to sharp, protruding bones, an image steeped in death and gloom.

His arms were bound atop the cross, tattered clothes soaked with blood so dark it was almost black. And his legs—was there something wrong with them?

Looking closer, he realized: what legs? Only two skeletal limbs dangled there, still tethered by sinew. No flesh remained, only bones scored with claw marks and the traces of animal gnawing… Instantly, Xiang Jiuxi thought of the ghastly-faced monkeys that had escaped from the cave.

Had these souls been feeding human remains to the ghastly monkeys?

“Save… kill me, please… just kill me!”

When the man saw the bones and the souls behind her, he began to tremble violently. His skeletal legs swung wildly. Spotting Xiang Jiuxi, he seemed to glimpse the faint hope of salvation, screaming for release.

“He was a member of ‘Eden’.” The bones looked upon the cross with undisguised loathing, her voice ice-cold. “Now you understand. I learned everything from him.”

Xiang Jiuxi fell silent for a long moment before asking, his voice low, “How long have you been tormenting him like this?”

Detecting the accusation in his words, the bones did not justify herself. She only replied in a distant tone, “Would you like to end up as he did?”

Xiang Jiuxi sneered coldly. “I thought you were just ordinary people cruelly murdered, but I see you, too, are capable of such viciousness. If the fate of Earth’s survivors fell into your hands, perhaps you would repeat the same horrors!”

At these words, the bones was clearly taken aback. The wronged souls behind her could no longer restrain their fury. They burst from her control, surging toward Xiang Jiuxi.

Righteous and resolute, Xiang Jiuxi closed his eyes, as if awaiting judgment. Even if it cost his life, his innate pride refused to tolerate such base deeds.

“Enough!”

Suddenly, the bones let out a roar that shattered the silence, and the souls instantly scattered, leaving only Xiang Jiuxi and the bones facing each other on the empty ground.

She glanced at Xiang Jiuxi, then raised her bony hand and gently sliced at the top of the cross.

A crisp crack sounded. A living head tumbled from the cross and landed right at Xiang Jiuxi’s feet.

He looked coldly at the head, which wore a faint smile of relief, then kicked it away with indifference.

“Hm?” The bones seemed surprised by his reaction, tilting her head as she regarded him curiously.

Xiang Jiuxi, as if relieved of a burden, began pacing before her. “So, he was a member of Eden. Why did he come here?”

“He was sent by his organization to retrieve something.” The bones answered indifferently, her head swaying in rhythm with his steps.

“What was he looking for?”

“A crystal.”

“A crystal? What kind of crystal?”

“Why?” For the first time, the bones could not suppress her own confusion and turned the question back on Xiang Jiuxi.

“What do you mean, why?”

She pointed at the corpse on the cross, then at the head he’d kicked away, her head still cocked, eyes fixed on Xiang Jiuxi.

“Aren’t you able to see into the hearts of men? Why do you still have questions?”

“I can see your thoughts, but I still don’t understand. Why did you beg for his life at the risk of your own, only to kick his head away with such disdain?”

“I do things my way. I don’t need others to understand.”

The bones tilted her head even further, then moved closer, examining every inch of Xiang Jiuxi as if afraid to miss any detail.

In the space of a few heartbeats, she surveyed his whole life. Then, as if exhausted, she sank to the ground.

“In an ancient text, I once read: ‘The sage has no fixed heart, he takes the hearts of the people as his own.’ Today, I see that such people truly exist in this world—born as kings, descending to save the suffering masses.”

After speaking, she looked at Xiang Jiuxi with profound meaning.

He could not grasp the depth of her words and simply stood there, dazed.

Suddenly, the bones rose, resolute. “I will tell you everything, but first, you must swear to avenge us!”

Seeing that she was finally ready to speak, Xiang Jiuxi raised two fingers to the heavens and vowed with unwavering resolve, “I, Xiang Jiuxi, swear a solemn oath: I will clear the grievances of the innocent souls who died here. If I fail, may I lose my head!”

“Good!”

The bones accepted his oath and began her long account. “At first, I did not believe in spirits or evil gods. But things happened as they did.

Death is supposed to bring oblivion—this we all experienced. But after some unknown time, our consciousness began to return!”

Xiang Jiuxi listened intently, certain he was about to have his understanding upended once more.

“When I awoke, I found beside me a deep blue crystal, just the size of a palm, perfectly round and smooth, its substance dense and profound—I could not say what it was made of.

At first, I thought the heavens had taken pity and resurrected us poor souls. But when I tried to leave the cave, I found we could not part from that crystal. The farther we moved from it, the more our consciousness faded. The furthest we could go was the cave entrance. Beyond that, our minds would instantly dissolve, only to recover again after a long while, if we returned to the crystal.”

“A bound earth spirit?”

The first term that leapt to Xiang Jiuxi’s mind was a tale his father once told him, of spirits tethered to the land.

The bones neither confirmed nor denied, but continued. “Though we have no physical form, our consciousness objectively exists in this world. As when we were alive, we feel joy and sorrow, love and hate. The only difference is, we are forever bound here.

We thought we would always exist like this, until one day, a group of a dozen or so people broke into the cave…”

Xiang Jiuxi knew the crucial part was coming and focused all his attention, afraid to miss a single word.

“It was only then that I discovered I could control the surface consciousness of humans. I could even invade their deeper minds, excavating all the memories stored in their brains, including those corners forgotten even by themselves.”

She finished and glanced at Xiang Jiuxi.

After all the illusions he had just experienced, Xiang Jiuxi believed her completely. He nodded in approval, waiting for her to continue.

“From the memories of those intruders, I learned the truth about the massacre all those years ago. And more than that, I discovered other, even more mysterious secrets…”