“What?”
The wording of her question gave Bai Yunfei some pause. He turned around to stare at Huangfu Rui.
It was the way she asked the question that made him so confused.
Curious, Bai Yunfei was unable to stop himself from asking the girl, “Lil’Rui, why do you ask that? Do you see something?”
She nodded, “I can see something controlling him. There’s something that doesn’t belong stuck to his soul…”
“What?! You can see the Soul Puppetry itself?!”
This time, the others gave her a bewildered stare. The only reason Bai Yunfei knew Ye Cheng was a puppet was because of the memories he gleamed from the two Soul Kings he soulscanned. Without that, he wouldn’t have been able to tell a thing. If Huangfu Rui was able to see that, then that meant she was able to see the very nature of his soul, and that…
Tang Xinyun took Huangfu Rui’s hands into her own, “Are you being honest, Rui? Don’t be telling lies now…”
Huangfu Rui began to pout at the suspicion being heaped at her, “I’m not lying, sister Yun! I’m telling you I can see it! And…I think I can cure that…”
“What?!”
Bai Yunfei was deeply confused, but he found himself believing her words. “Are you honest? You can undo Soul Puppetry?! But how…how do you do it?”
Even Ye Zhiqiu was starting to find himself with hope again as he waited for the answer.
Now that she was the center of attention, Huangfu Rui found herself suddenly shy. “I’m not sure if I can undo it completely,” She twiddled her robes, “But…I feel like I might be able to remove that thing from his soul. That…should return him to normal…”
She said she ‘might’ be able to do it.
“Lil’Rui, how do you know? And why do you think you might be able to do it?”
“I…” Huangfu Rui shook her head, “I don’t really know why myself, but…it’s just a feeling I have…”
“……”
He found himself at a loss for words. If she didn’t have an explanation, who would?
Then it hit him, “Don’t tell me…this is because of the Symbiosis Imprint?!”
He knew it was impossible for Huangfu Rui to have this ‘power’ out of the blue. And if he thought about the difference between the Huangfu Rui of today and before, Dongfang Ming was the only explanation. And by extension, that meant the Symbiosis Imprint. All he knew about the imprint was what he heard firsthand from Dongfang Ming. While what he was told was most likely the truth, he still didn’t understand all of it, meaning there was still more to the imprint than Dongfang Ming had let on.
It was probable that the Symbiosis Imprint, a hated technique of Dongfang Ming’s revenge, had a shared background to ‘Soul Puppetry’…
Regardless of the case, Dongfang Ming was dead, and there was no chance he’d be able to find out more about it. If Huangfu Rui was indeed capable of undoing Soul Puppetry, then that’d be a great thing. Now was the best time to verify the truth and see if she was capable of such an act.
Bai Yunfei made up his mind. “Zhiqiu, I’d like to have her see if she can undo the Soul Puppetry on your father. We’ll need a quiet room, so have these people scatter first. We’ll wait until you’re better to continue on.”
……
It was only Ye Cheng that had been affected by Soul Puppetry. The Soul Refining School had spent many years keeping it a secret from the rest of the Ye, but now that the truth was out, the entire clan was furious. An uncle of Ye Zhiqiu, a Soul Exalt, had set about at once scouring the rest of their family for any other secrets while Bai Yunfei and the others were escorted to a guestroom.
With Ye Zhiqiu’s father being held captive and his acupoints blocked off, there was no way he could do anything. At the moment, his eyes were shut closed as he laid there on the bed, unconscious to the world like a statue.
Bai Yunfei couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary in his soul, but the Soul Sentinel Scarf had told him after a complete scan of his soul that there was an external power occupying a majority of his soul that was causing him to act this way. But there was no method of fixing that.
So, under the anxious eyes of everyone else, Huangfu Rui sat in front of the unconscious Ye Cheng and set to work. Her arms extended outward so that one palm was placed on top of his forehead and the other on his chest. Closing her eyes and focusing her spirit, Huangfu Rui began to transmit her soulforce from her body into his chest to cover his person…
Time trickled by slowly as everyone watched Huangfu Rui work on Ye Cheng. Ye Zhiqiu hadn’t even bothered to dedicate any of his soulforce to bettering his body as he watched nervously the procedure be done on his father.
“Ah….”
Huangfu Rui let out a sigh after a minute passed. Her shoulders loosened and her hands withdrew back to her sides. Wiping the droplets of sweat from her rosy face, Huangfu Rui leaned back against Tang Xinyun as if to rest.
“Are you alright?” A worried Tang Xinyun asked.
Huangfu Rui shook her head, fatigued, but otherwise happy with herself. “I’m fine. Sis Yun, Brother Yunfei, I didn’t lie…I managed to heal this uncle.”
“Really?!”
Bai Yunfei immediately turned to look back to Ye Cheng, curious about what new changes would surface now.
Likewise, Ye Zhiqiu was unable to hold back his curiosity and sprung to his father’s side at once.
Placing a hand on top of Ye Cheng, Bai Yunfei fed his soulforce into the man’s body. He couldn’t sense anything different than before. Letting the Soul Sentinel Scarf take over, Bai Yunfei waited until the Regalia had told him the abnormal presence in Ye Cheng’s soul was gone!
For the sake of being able to verify that, Bai Yunfei began to heal the man. Taking out a pill from his space ring, he fed it into the unconscious man’s mouth and had him swallow.
Moments later, Ye Cheng let out a groan before his eyes flickered awake to look around the room.
“Father!!”
“Dad!”
Ye Zhiqiu and Ye Zhiyun both cried out at once.
It…it had really worked!!
Even as he watched Ye Cheng struggle to gain his bearings, Bai Yunfei was confident that the man was back to normal again. He was ecstatic in this current moment, one, happy that his friend had his father back, and two, that there was finally a way to undo Soul Puppetry!
Well, calling it a ‘way’ was still a bit early since Huangfu Rui still didn’t know how to explain it. But that was important. The important thing was that Huangfu Rui had a very special and unique ‘power’ of undoing Soul Puppetry!
Holding in his excitement, Bai Yunfei remembered there was still something important at hand. It was vital that no outsider knew what happened here for now.
“Zhiqiu, news of your father being cured can’t be allowed to spread. Why don’t we bring your father into the Core World and let him recuperate there? You and Zhiyun can come with us while your uncle can take care of the internal matters…”
