Apocalyptic Era: Starting from picking up a Bishoujo
Chapter 236 - 222 Lost Souls

Chapter 236: 222 Lost Souls

I have placed a "Firefly" at the Zhu family’s residence with a preset instruction, so that whenever Mr. Zhu or Zhu Shi call out my name, the "Firefly" will send me a notification. Now they have called me, so I temporarily shifted my attention there.

Mr. Zhu is currently living in another villa in Saltwater City, although it is not as large as the original Zhu family estate, it is spacious enough. Recently, he and Zhu Shi have been mainly busy diagnosing Changan’s condition.

Here, let’s talk about Changan’s situation in detail.

The process of Zhu Shi retrieving Changan was not as simple as directly picking him up and bringing him back, because I did not know whether I had burned the soul of Silver Moon or not, so no one could be sure if Silver Moon would appear on Changan again. If Silver Moon took action during the transportation, Zhu Shi would undoubtedly die.

Therefore, Zhu Shi also made a lot of preparations, and I used the "Firefly" as a medium to infiltrate all the heat in Changan’s body as a backup plan. Meanwhile, Mr. Zhu specifically went to an old Human Bureau outpost thousands of miles away, bringing with him the tools and materials needed to perform a "Spell specifically against Silver Moon."

According to Mr. Zhu, this was a defensive barrier spell developed by the Zhu family twenty years ago to combat the Great Demon Silver Moon while it was alive. Strictly speaking, it was a spell independently developed by Zhu Jiu, Zhu Shi’s mother, and its effect is "to block all attacks from Silver Moon."

Under the full force usage by Impermanence at the achieved level, this spell could even withstand Silver Moon for a whole second, even a nuclear explosion summoned by Silver Moon couldn’t penetrate it. Aside from Silver Moon’s attacks, this spell couldn’t block anything else, and any powerless child could easily pierce through it with a small knife. Zhu Jiu had mysteriously named this spell "Anti-Silver Moon Barrier." Both the effect and the name reflect years of grudge from the person involved.

In any case, although "withstanding for a second" does not sound very impressive, but for people and demons at the level of me and Silver Moon, a second is enough for many things to be done. In that time, I could completely subdue Silver Moon using the heat infiltrated throughout Changan’s body, or at the very least, shift the battlefield to a place that would not endanger others.

With this somewhat absurd sounding spell, and with my surveillance from the sidelines, Zhu Shi and Mr. Zhu were able to safely bring Changan back to Saltwater City.

In fact, even without so much effort, there probably wouldn’t have been any problems. Perhaps my sense of souls has improved, but ever since I defeated Silver Moon, I’ve felt that Silver Moon’s soul is probably no longer inside Changan’s body.

The problem occurred next, today, when the full diagnosis results of Changan finally came out. Mr. Zhu conveyed this message to me in a bedroom of the villa, with Zhu Shi standing beside him and Changan’s body lying on a nearby bed. Both of their faces were very grim. They gave me good news, and also bad news.

The good news is, my intuition was correct; Silver Moon’s soul has indeed disappeared.

The bad news, however, is that Changan’s soul was also not inside that body.

"This result actually came out during the first diagnosis, but just to be safe, I diagnosed it many times over using different methods..." Mr. Zhu sighed.

Upon hearing this, my first reaction was: "...Could it be that I burned Changan’s soul to death along with Silver Moon’s?"

Now, I have transformed the "Firefly" into a small Fireball, constructing a vocal organ from it to converse with Mr. Zhu and Zhu Shi.

Zhu Shi then asked, "Zhuang Cheng, was the flame you used specifically aimed at the soul or was it targeting both the soul and the body?"

"It was the latter," I replied.

"His own physical body is almost completely unscathed, which shows that your mercy must have worked. It’s impossible that only his soul was completely burned by you while his body remained unscathed," Zhu Shi stated.

That reassured me a bit, but how should this situation be explained now?

Since the soul has disappeared from the body, that means the person is dead, right? But from my observations, Changan seems as if he’s just asleep. He is breathing normally, and his heart is beating normally. It looks like a perfectly alive body.

The phenomenon of a body functioning normally while the soul has vanished is something I have seen elsewhere.

"Is it soul loss?" I blurted out.

Zhu Shi and Mr. Zhu looked at each other.

The latter said, "We also had the same suspicion, but... that’s unlikely."

"Is it because it’s too coincidental?" I asked.

Changan was possessed by the soul of Silver Moon, and then immediately wrapped up in a completely unrelated soul-loss incident—such a scenario is statistically very improbable, so it is more rational to treat it as a continuation of the "Silver Moon possession incident."

If such a level of coincidence happened to Mazao or me, it would be easy to explain. But Changan has been separated from me for a long time, he shouldn’t be within the range of impact of the Broom Star Physique anymore... or is my thinking wrong, as long as I still consider Changan a friend in my heart, can he still become "the factor that drags me into other abnormal events," preemptively involved in other supernatural incidents?

This reasoning doesn’t seem very sufficient. Mazao, who is closely related to me, is already a major related party in the soul loss events. What decisive change would it bring to make Changan a soul-loss patient now?

"It’s more than just coincidence, we have also confirmed it with Divination methods." Mr. Zhu thought for a while and said, "Zhuang Cheng, although you don’t practice Divination Spells, since you’ve dealt with so much Mysticism in the past, you should have some understanding of the principles of Divination.

"Just like how trained dogs, once they smell an object tainted with the target’s scent, will track down and locate the target. When demon hunters use Divination Spells for the purpose of tracking, having part of the target in hand allows them to trace back to the target’s main body.

"The girl by your side also encountered a similar situation, where Transcendentalism Mountain attempted to lock in on her whereabouts with Divination Spells using her hair and bodily fluids left in the hospital, but they were thwarted by other forces.

"And the problem with soul-loss patients is that their souls have vanished without a trace. But since we already have the ’patient’s body’ as a powerful ’Divination medium’, why can’t we use it to find back the ’patient’s soul’?"

That does make sense; I have actually never thought about this issue myself.

Although I don’t know why Mr. Zhu suddenly brought up the matter of soul-loss patients, assuming that all the souls of the soul-loss patients went to the Doomsday Era, then the answer is obvious.

"Because their souls are in a ’state that cannot be retrieved’?" I asked.

"Correct..." Mr. Zhu said solemnly, "The souls of the soul-loss patients have all died."

"What?" I exclaimed.

"This is the conclusion from the Divination Spells. No matter the method used for divination, Luo Mountain can only draw one conclusion. The souls of the soul-loss patients are dead, annihilated, void, non-existent," Mr. Zhu said.

I still did not give up my original hypothesis and asked, "Is it possible... their souls have gone to other spaces, or other times? Thus being judged as ’nonexistent in this world’?"

"Why would you think that?" Mr. Zhu was surprised and then said, "If they had gone to other spaces, even to the past or future, the Divination Spells would naturally give a corresponding conclusion. But the fact is, all the souls of the soul-loss patients are dead. This is a very precise description; there is no room for other interpretations."

"But I heard that the body organs of soul-loss patients are still functioning normally, and even the brain shows signs of conscious activity..."

"From a scientific standpoint, they are indeed still alive, but current science hasn’t touched the realm of the soul," Mr. Zhu said. "But as you said, since the souls have been annihilated, the bodies should also cease to function and begin to decay. This incongruity is now the hope for me and some families of soul-loss patients. Perhaps the soul-loss patients still have a chance..."

He seemed to recall his daughter Zhu Jiu, his voice becoming sorrowful.

I could only wait for him to cope. It wasn’t long before he pulled himself out of his emotion and continued: "...sorry, let’s continue from where we left off. The reason I concluded that Changan hasn’t fallen into soul loss is that the divination results show his soul isn’t dead yet."

"Was his soul taken by Silver Moon?" I quickly realized this possibility.

Under my barrage of Fireball spells, could Silver Moon have remained hidden within the explosion, forsaken Changan’s body, and taken his soul away from the battleground and fled?

Is this possible? No, this isn’t just about possibility... After all, even if she could escape, "fleeing with Changan’s soul" what use does that serve her?

If she wanted to use Changan for possession, then what matters to her should be Changan’s body. Coming from a friend might not be right, but what use could a guy like Changan’s soul possibly be?

"Perhaps." Mr. Zhu nodded.

"Can Divination methods be used to track where his soul was taken?" I asked.

"We are still trying. For now, we can’t track it; the Divination results are just blank," Mr. Zhu said. "Also, we better not expect Divination Spells to track Silver Moon.

"Silver Moon is the leading master of Illusion Techniques in the abnormal world, and her understanding of Illusion Techniques rivals that of the historical Great Impermanity. Human Divination experts attempting to divine information related to her would only result in divined fantasies."

"So you’re saying... we now have no leads?" I asked.