Chapter 30 – Past Life: Five Years of Lonely Suffering

Of a group of more than a hundred people, only about sixty survived in the end. Those who refused to eat were simply cut down by a few men wielding knives.

How could they compare to those who constantly ate “meat” to replenish their strength? Those who couldn’t run anymore could only watch helplessly as blades came down on their heads.

Still, many of them held fast to one belief: they would rather be torn apart by wild beasts than remain in that hellish place. Taking advantage of the chaos, they fled into the dense forests on either side.

Later, the remaining group seemed even more numb—like dying old men pushing forward with empty eyes, desperately hoping the road ahead led to salvation.

If someone could see wandering souls, they would have discovered a red-eyed man with tears of blood repeatedly trying to gather the scattered bones on the ground in that desolate mountain forest.

He Yanxin wailed uncontrollably, crying in agony. The resentment he carried was enough to stir fierce ghost winds. But even after all this time, his grief hadn’t stirred the world one bit.

He had thought watching Granny Ge’s whole family die before his eyes was the worst pain he could endure—but that had only been the beginning of his suffering.

He wished he had gone mad. But as a ghost, he remained painfully aware and rational.

He didn’t even have the right to disappear. That thought filled He Yanxin with numb despair.

In the beginning, he clung to a tiny sliver of hope—maybe his wife had also become like him, a spirit. That way, they could reunite. But in the end, it was nothing but disappointment.

Even so, he refused to leave. He stayed by her remains, unmoving, as though hoping to grow roots there.

But he soon found he couldn’t even protect the bones. Wild beasts came down from the mountain and carried them away right before his eyes.

He couldn’t take it anymore—he fled from the scene as if flying.

He tried to brainwash himself into believing his wife and child hadn’t died—that they were just somewhere else, somewhere he didn’t know.

But his cursed clarity never let him believe the lie, not even for a moment.

Now, he was truly a wandering ghost, drifting through the human world. Without a wife or child, without a home, he had no destination—only endless wandering.

One day, by chance, he overheard people discussing the current political situation. And just like that, he found his purpose: to witness the downfall of the most despicable man of all—the Prince of Qi!

To be fair, anyone capable of becoming emperor is never simple.

True, the late emperor had given the Prince of Qi great conditions in Qizhou. But its central location meant that without outside allies, it was easy to be surrounded and slowly crushed.

The Prince of Qi’s rebellion was recklessly launched. He had no alliances, and his troops were a mess.

The Fourth Prince, Prince Jiang, whose fiefdom was in the relatively impoverished Jiangzhou, sent a few letters expressing his desire to “drink some soup if his brother got to eat meat.” But the proud Prince of Qi dismissed him with contempt.

Among the 160,000 troops hastily assembled, less than 40% had real training. The rest were ordinary people, merely hoping to eat.

Many had been starving so long their bodies were too weak. When battle came, desertions were frequent.

In the very first encounter with the imperial army, more than 40,000 soldiers were wiped out. Another 10,000 scattered and never returned to Qizhou.

How could such forces go up against the imperial army? Prince Qi had no choice but to abandon plans of directly attacking the capital and instead fortified Qizhou.

Qizhou’s geographic position was a real advantage—defend the checkpoints, and no one could break through. This led to a three-month stalemate between the two armies.

Seeing no success in storming the gates, General Jiang Yuancheng changed tactics. He left some troops to launch a feint at Julu Pass while leading his elite forces to strike the weakerly-defended Jutang Pass. With a swift attack, they broke into Qizhou.

Caught completely off guard, the Prince of Qi suffered loss after loss. He was forced to retreat with his guards protecting him as they fled sideways through the regions, pursued and attacked continuously for several more months.

Finally, the desperate Prince of Qi, along with his remaining followers and the last 3,000 soldiers, holed up in a small county town called Suyang—only to be surrounded by Jiang Yuancheng’s army once again.

Under siege, with food supplies exhausted and enemy forces closing in, the Prince of Qi’s ragtag army collapsed.

Their rebellion was always reckless—except they gambled with the lives of their own men. This was treason, the gravest of crimes.

Even the Prince of Qi’s advisors turned on him when they saw their hopes of achieving power vanish. The first to betray him was Di Fu.

The Prince of Qi was not only surrounded by the imperial army but also betrayed by his own people. In the end, only a few dozen loyal men remained by his side. He took his own life at the city wall.

He Yanxin floated in the air and witnessed this historic moment.

This prince, pampered for over twenty years in the Great An Empire, died with his eyes wide open, muttering, “Why? Father…”

He Yanxin found it laughable.

“You ask why? And don’t I deserve to ask the same? What about the tens of thousands of soldiers and countless civilians who died because of your greed—don’t they deserve to ask why too?”

The tragedy that befell the people of Qizhou stemmed partly from natural disasters—but far more from man-made catastrophe.

Everyone who remained loyal to the Prince of Qi was convicted of treason—including all the officials in Qizhou who had supported him.

The men were executed by dismemberment. The women were all given white silk scarves—a forced suicide.

Even his five children were secretly executed. Their deaths were not recorded in any history book.

Root and branch, all removed. The new emperor knew this principle well.

One of those children had been born to Yi Lian, the once-beloved concubine. But in the end, both mother and child met the same fate—dead, their souls sent to the underworld.

He Yanxin watched their executions. To him, they were all perpetrators of the catastrophe and deserved to die.

Among the condemned was a man named Zijing, who even laughed as he said to a scarred man being executed beside him, “At least I got my revenge.”

He died smiling. But in his final moment, he seemed to whisper two words. He Yanxin couldn’t quite hear them.

From the moment the Prince of Qi announced his rebellion, it took less than two years for the curtain to fall on his farcical uprising.

Afterward, He Yanxin continued to drift aimlessly through the human world, returning only to Anshan Village and the place where his wife and child died.

He visited all kinds of temples, searching for a way to end his existence.

None of them hurt him—not even slightly.

He even entered the imperial palace, that place of ultimate power and holiness. The emperor himself couldn’t see him, let alone destroy him.

As a wandering ghost, he could not fall, be killed by knives, drowned by water, or burned by fire. He had, in a sense, become immortal.

But it was a kind of immortality He Yanxin never wanted.

He wandered like this for five years—until, one day, without warning, the soul of the original body simply vanished from the world.

When He Yanxin spoke about what those refugees had done to Lady Song and the others, he gagged and looked pale.

Tears welled up at the corners of his eyes. Whether from physical reaction or emotional influence from the original soul’s intense pain, it was hard to say.

For modern people, terms like “famine,” “two-legged sheep,” and “refugee horror” may only appear in history books—but they are enough to make one’s blood run cold.

Yet He Yanxin had lived it—seen it all through the eyes of the original soul. It was unbearable, tragic, and enraging.

Thankfully, he left out some of the more horrific details when telling Song Yeqing. Otherwise, even the knowledgeable young spiritual master would have thrown up.

Truly, to receive all the original soul’s memories—its crushing loneliness, agonizing pain, and those unbearable images—and not go mad? That was strength.

After all, even some readers at this point were already confused and dazed, unsure what the author was even writing. To clarify: this entire section describes the events of the past life.

Song Yeqing’s reaction was more restrained than He Yanxin’s. After all, she had seen all kinds of ghost deaths and even gruesome vengeful spirits devouring human flesh.

But when she thought of the two soft, obedient children and what became of them, her heart twisted with pain. Rage surged.

She looked down at her thin, weak hands and forced herself to calm down and think.

Maybe the original soul gave up her body so they could protect their loved ones.

But how did she end up crossing into this world with a mysterious spatial ability and gain access to He Yanxin’s five years of ghost memories?

With her father’s current position and strength, there’s no way he could secure such “compensation.” After all, promotions in the Underworld were notoriously difficult.

Could it be that they enlisted help from the ancestor of the Song family—the one who became a Lord of the Underworld? Song Yeqing speculated wildly.

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Underworld

In the Hall of Lords, an old man with youthful features and white hair sensed something. He smiled faintly.

“Much smarter than that fool Song Mingjing,” he murmured. “What a pity.”

The world that girl was sent to had no spiritual energy. Even the souls of the dead were collected by the Underworld at the exact moment they left the body.

He Yanxin’s five-year ghost experience wasn’t real—it was an illusion created from real memories, implanted into his soul at a specific moment. The illusion’s hallmark: vivid, lifelike suffering.

But with loss, there is also gain. So be it.

The man shook his head and motioned for the underworld messenger, who had paused upon hearing him speak, to continue his report.

(End of Chapter)