Chapter 82: Echoes

Qi Xia turned his head, his face expressionless as he stared at Jiang Ruoxue.

“What…?” he asked.

“Though I don’t know the reason, I’m not stupid,” Jiang Ruoxue said with a smile. “If you were afraid I’d stop you, why did you spare my life?”

Qi Xia clutched his wound, his face growing paler by the second.

“Let me guess,” she continued. “You want me to report back to the other Ji Dao Zhe, making everyone think that ‘Qi Xia has given up,’ which is why you left me alive, right?”

“Ji Dao Zhe?” Lin Geng and Zhang Chenze exchanged confused glances, completely baffled by her words.

“You’re certainly clever,” Jiang Ruoxue admitted, nodding. “But you got one thing wrong—I don’t care if you collect the three thousand six hundred Dao, and I won’t try to stop you.”

Qi Xia’s face darkened ominously, realizing all his plans had been seen through.

“Though we’re all Ji Dao Zhe, everyone has different goals,” Jiang Ruoxue explained. She removed a hair tie from her wrist, quickly tying her loose hair into a bun, then added, “Some thrive on disrupting games, others enjoy destroying Dao, and some pretend to be locals, swindling people on the streets. But I’m different.”

“What makes you different?” Qi Xia asked.

“I like experiencing various games and watching people scheme against each other,” she replied without hesitation. “We Ji Dao Zhe are a bunch of lunatics, con artists, and gamblers, but each of us is protecting this place in our own way. My method is to encourage good people to join the games.”

“So… you’re a Tuo?” Qi Xia asked pointedly.

“Tuo…?” Jiang Ruoxue pondered for a moment, then nodded. “If you put it that way… I suppose I am a Tuo, except no one’s paying me.”

Qi Xia fell silent, his mind racing with one persistent question—what exactly is Ji Dao?

“So what about you?” Jiang Ruoxue asked. “Are you really giving up?”

“What do you think?”

Qi Xia released his grip on the wound and showed her the blood on his fingers. “Can you heal me?”

“I can’t do that,” Jiang Ruoxue shook her head. “I can’t figure out the logical relationship to make you heal, or I’d definitely save you… after all, you just spared my life.”

Seeing that Qi Xia and his companions were still watching her warily, Jiang Ruoxue decided not to push further. She stretched lazily, revealing her sexy curves, and asked, “Are you going to kill me? If not, I’m leaving.”

The three of them weren’t hardened criminals, so they had no reason to kill Jiang Ruoxue. In fact, they realized they had no reason to keep her there either.

“Are you really leaving?” she confirmed again.

Getting no response, she sighed helplessly, shaking her head and triggering a distant bell toll.

Hearing the stirring sound, Qi Xia couldn’t hold back. “What does the bell signify?”

Jiang Ruoxue turned back, thought for a moment, and said, “Since you saved my life, I’ll make an exception and answer your question—but you have to answer one of mine in return.”

“Deal,” Qi Xia agreed.

Only then did Jiang Ruoxue explain, “As far as we know, the bell rings in two situations: first, when someone ‘hears the Hui Xiang,’ and second, when the ‘Hui Xiang disappears.’”

“What is Hui Xiang?” Qi Xia asked.

“That’s your second question,” Jiang Ruoxue replied, shaking her head. “Are we that close?”

Qi Xia clutched his wound, his complexion worsening.

Feeling a bit sorry for him, Jiang Ruoxue added, “Qi Xia, I’ll bend the rules and answer one more for you. Hui Xiang is an abstract concept—some people never understand it in their lifetime, and even if they do, they can’t harness its power. I’ve been lucky today; I succeeded with Hui Xiang twice in a row, which is why you’re all still alive.”

Zhang Chenze seemed to piece something together. “So it was you… the one I killed with the glass shard, you tampered with that…”

“If you’re still thinking in terms of ‘tampering,’ you’ll never grasp Hui Xiang,” Jiang Ruoxue said, turning to leave. After three steps, she paused as if remembering something. “Qi Xia, don’t suppress your sorrow. People only hear Hui Xiang in extreme emotions.”

With that, Jiang Ruoxue pushed open the inn door and stepped onto the street.

“Hey, didn’t you have a question for me?” Qi Xia called out from afar.

“I’ll owe it for now,” she replied without looking back, just waving her hand.

Her words left the others confused, but Qi Xia felt like he’d caught a clue.

From his understanding, Hui Xiang seemed to be some kind of supernatural ability.

It appeared randomly in certain people.

And whenever it happened, the great bell would ring, with a screen displaying “I heard the Hui Xiang.”

In other words, each time the bell rang before, someone had gained this ability called Hui Xiang. The second ring meant the user had hidden it… or perhaps died.

“Officer Li was a Hui Xiang user…” Qi Xia muttered to himself.

“Officer Li?” Lin Geng and Zhang Chenze both turned to him.

“The first bell rang just before Officer Li died, and the second rang after his death,” Qi Xia explained, trying to connect it to Officer Li’s strange behavior. “That means he gained the ability right before dying, but his actions were odd.”

Qi Xia pulled out an old metal lighter from his pocket and showed it to Lin Geng and Zhang Chenze. “He was like a magician, pulling a cigarette from an empty pack and a lighter from an empty pocket.”

“What?” Zhang Chenze looked at him in confusion. “Weren’t those things you gave him?”

“No,” Qi Xia shook his head. “I didn’t say anything earlier because I didn’t want to distract you, but now I think he temporarily gained that ability.”

“So you’re saying…” Lin Geng gestured with his hand, “this Hui Xiang ability… can make things appear out of nowhere?”

“No,” Qi Xia shook his head again. “If we carefully analyze Jiang Ruoxue’s words and tie it to everything that’s happened, we could make a bold assumption. This thing called Hui Xiang has different categories, and each person gets a unique ability. So far, we know of ‘Zhao Zai,’ ‘Jia Huo,’ and Officer Li’s ‘separation manipulation.’”

At that moment, Zhang Chenze nodded and chimed in, “Jiang Ruoxue’s ability is different from Officer Li’s too… it seems like she can control the ‘logical relationship’ of things…”