One divination a day, a trainee celestial master

Li Xiuju's lips trembled, as if she wanted to say something, but her inferiority complex and timidity prevented her from uttering a single word.

After giving a few more instructions on the "anti-fraud guide," Xia Qiu hurriedly left, as there were still cases waiting for her, the criminal investigation team leader, to handle at the police station.

In the narrow inner room, silence returned.

This woman, who had suffered her whole life, was now clutching the faded hem of her clothes with her hands, calloused and cracked from years of manual labor. Her knuckles were white from the force, as if she were gripping a lifeline about to snap.

Li Xiuju was abandoned by her parents under a bridge in winter when she was less than 3 years old. Her grandmother took her in and brought her back home, where she was frozen and turning purple. Her grandmother was old and slow-moving, and raised her little by little by taking odd jobs such as sewing and washing clothes from the neighbors.

Because of malnutrition since childhood and the inability to afford treatment for high fevers, she suffered from polio as a sequela, leaving her with a limp in her right leg.

When she was seventeen, her only loving grandmother also died that winter. She became a truly helpless and disabled orphan.

It was during the most difficult winter of that year that she met Chen Sancan.

Chen Sancan was penniless back then. His parents had died early, and his family didn't even have a decent piece of furniture; their home was bare. When he married her, he scraped together every penny he could, and couldn't even come up with a dowry of 500 yuan.

But Li Xiuju didn't care at all, nor did she want it. She had never asked for anything in her life; all she wanted was a home of her own.

Although their married life was poor, the two supported each other through thick and thin. She had difficulty walking, so she took on some handicrafts at home; Chen Sancan asked someone to find him a job as a security guard at the Da Zhou Porcelain Factory. Although the salary was not high, he was honest and hardworking, and he handed over all his money to her every month.

Later, two more children were born. Although the family was poor, both the son and daughter were healthy, sensible, and well-behaved.

Looking at her two children and her husband who always came home from get off work with a simple smile, Li Xiuju felt that although her life had been hard and tiring, there was hope for the future.

……

However, fate is always cold and cruel. Its greatest skill is to multiply suffering in those who are already suffering.

"Hoo..." Li Xiuju pulled herself out of the bitterness, took a deep breath, and forcefully wiped away the tears from the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand.

Dragging his limp, he walked out of the inner room, his steps unsteady, to prepare dinner for his two hungry children in the kitchen.

I had just entered the living room when my son, who was sitting at the small folding wooden table, stood up. The sensible little boy didn't ask any questions, but simply handed his mother a workbook.

On that slightly yellowed blank exercise paper, a string of numbers was written in ballpoint pen: a phone number?

"Mom," the little boy whispered, pointing to the string of numbers, "that older brother in the Taoist robe wrote this before he left. He said that after the policewoman left, I should show this to my mom."

Li Xiuju was stunned. She stared at the phone number on the notebook, and a tiny flame flickered in her eyes, which had been filled with despair.

……

Half an hour later. It was completely dark, and the dim streetlights lit up the alley.

"Knock knock—" The rusty iron gate was knocked on again.

Li Xiuju limped over and jogged over to open the door.

Standing outside the door was Jiang Shou, who had returned. To avoid attracting the attention of the neighbors, he had taken off his conspicuous blue Taoist robe and changed back into his previous T-shirt and jeans.

Seeing Jiang Shou return, Li Xiuju's eyes instantly reddened. She gripped the iron gate, her voice trembling, "Taoist Master... the policewoman just told us about our family's situation. We... we don't have any extra money to donate to the temple. We can't even come up with a few hundred yuan..."

Looking at the woman in front of him, bent over by the weight of life, Jiang Shou's frustration at not making money vanished.

He smiled and said gently, "Sister-in-law, don't worry. As I said before, we Taoists act according to karma and do not accept gold or silver."

"Damn it, I'm getting better and better at saying that now." Jiang Shou silently gave himself a thumbs up for his noble soul.

Finally, Jiang Shou and Li Xiuju agreed to meet at 8:30 the next morning outside the intensive care unit on the third floor of the county hospital and go in together to "summon Chen Sancan's soul".

Li Xiuju didn't ask a single question like "Is it really going to work?" or "Will there be any danger?" She had no way out. The breadwinner of her family lay unconscious in the ICU, burning through borrowed money for his life-saving treatment every day. For her, whatever hope it was now, even if it seemed like a ridiculous straw, she was willing to cling to it desperately.

……

Silent all night.

The next morning, Jiang Shou got up very early. Today he was going to "defy the wind" in the fortress of science, so he couldn't wear a Taoist robe. After all, wearing that to the hospital would be too conspicuous; he'd be a walking target.

He changed into a plain gray tracksuit, carefully placed the "Soul-Summoning Talisman" he had drawn with half of his true energy close to his body, slung a backpack over his shoulder, and rode a three-wheeled motorcycle straight to the county hospital.

At 8:40 a.m., Jiang Shou and Li Xiuju met smoothly at the stairwell on the third floor of the inpatient department.

Passing by the nurses' station, a familiar nurse greeted Li Xiuju and asked who the young man next to her was. Following their pre-arranged story, Li Xiuju, though her eyes darting away, forced herself to say, "This is...this is Sancan's cousin from the countryside. He came to the city today to visit his brother."

The nurse didn't ask any more questions, nodded, and went about her business.

It's nine o'clock in the morning. The doctors in the intensive care unit have just finished their routine ward rounds.

Jiang Shou followed Li Xiuju, pushed open the heavy white double door, and entered the ICU ward filled with the beeping sounds of medical instruments.

On the hospital bed, Chen Sancan lay there like an empty shell, his face ashen, his vital signs barely maintained by a ventilator.

Li Xiuju stood by the hospital bed, her hands tightly clasped together, so nervous that she dared not even breathe, her eyes filled with hope as she looked at Jiang Shou beside her.

Jiang Shou stood at the foot of the bed and took a deep breath.

"It all hinges on this!"

He slowly closed his eyes, ignoring the beeping sounds from the surrounding instruments. His mind instantly sank, his thoughts sinking into the dantian below his abdomen as if they were tangible.

Within the dantian, the remaining wisp of true essence seemed to be awakened by its master's will, and began to vibrate gently and rotate faster in the void of the dantian.

"Chen Sancan." Jiang Shou silently murmured the name of the man on the hospital bed in his mind.

True energy flowed to his eyes! When Jiang Shou opened his eyes again, a faint blue light flashed in his eyes.

In the field of vision of the Qi Observation Technique, that blurry gray-black soul shadow once again appeared clearly before Jiang Shou's eyes!

It remained pitifully curled up in the shadows at the foot of the hospital bed. But compared to yesterday, its ghostly form appeared even dimmer and more transparent today, as if it might dissipate at any moment. It no longer even tried to burrow into the body on the bed; it simply instinctively cowered beside the body, unable to leave or return.

"If this drags on any longer, the soul will probably dissipate completely, and even a great immortal wouldn't be able to save it then."

Jiang Shou no longer hesitated. He slowly took out the [Soul Summoning Talisman] from his pocket.

With two fingers pinching the talisman, Jiang Shou's eyes instantly became incredibly sharp.

"rise!"

He gave a low shout in his heart. With his mind focused to the extreme, the true essence in his dantian was as if being pulled by an invisible thread, flowing slowly up his body's meridians like a rising tide.

It flowed over his shoulder, along the meridians of his arm, and unimpeded all the way to the fingertips of his right hand, where he was holding the talisman!

The next moment!

Li Xiuju, who was standing by watching nervously, suddenly widened her eyes and covered her mouth with both hands to prevent herself from screaming!

What did she see?!

She was utterly shocked to see that between the young man's two fingers, the original yellow talisman suddenly lit up!

It wasn't the entire sheet of paper that was glowing; rather, the incredibly intricate patterns drawn with red cinnabar on the talisman paper were illuminated from within by extremely fine bluish-white rays, as if a neon light tube had been instantly injected with electricity!

The light flowed along the trajectory of the runes, flashing brightly and dimly. It was as if... this talisman was breathing, following some mysterious rhythm!

Mysterious! Sacred! Incredible!

Although Li Xiuju didn't understand anything, as an ordinary person, witnessing this "miracle" that completely defied scientific common sense unfold before her eyes, a fervent light of hope instantly shone in her eyes!

Her legs went weak involuntarily, and with a "thump," she knelt down straight towards Jiang Shouhe's hospital bed, clasped her hands together, and tears welled up in her eyes.

At this moment, Jiang Shou's mind was completely absorbed in the talisman at his fingertips, and he had no time to pay attention to the woman's actions beside him.

The true essence has fully activated the soul-summoning talisman!

Jiang Shou's eyes widened, and his tongue thundered as he recited the incantation that seemed to contain the laws of heaven and earth:

"Guide the soul back to its rightful place!!!"

"Imperial Edict!!!"

The words had barely left his mouth!

"Whoosh~~" The soul-summoning talisman held between Jiang Shou's two fingers suddenly ignited into a ball of bluish-white flame without any source of fire!

The flames leaped, yet emitted not a trace of heat.

As the talisman burned rapidly in the bluish-white flames, it did not turn into black ash. Instead, it transformed into countless specks of pure, holy white light.

These white spots of light, as if drawn by an invisible force, converged in mid-air into a faintly glowing band of light, drifting toward Chen Sancan's lifeless body on the hospital bed.

In this dimly lit ward, the band of light formed from talisman paper was like a guiding lamp lit for lost souls in the endless darkness and fear!

The gray-black soul, which had been curled up in the corner at the foot of the bed and had given up struggling, was drawn in by this warm and reassuring light.

It suddenly raised that blurry face!

The next second, as if summoned by instinct, the soul transformed into a gray-black stream of light, following the guidance of the white light band, and pounced on the body on the hospital bed!

"Buzz..."

In Jiang Shou's True Essence Vision, the gray-black soul shadow and the physical body on the sickbed perfectly overlapped under the white light!