Murim's Weakest Princess

Exchanging pleasantries with Pu Jianming made Anji more sure that something else was terribly wrong. Elder Shen would arrive in a few hours, so Anji did her best to buy time. However, the man had genuinely no idea he was working for a greater evil.

"Did you create the brainwashing hairpins?" Anji eventually cut to the chase. There were only so many stories about the Mystical Qilin Sect she could entertain him with. It would be unwise to feed her enemy information.

Not seemingly offended, Pu Jianming refilled the teapot with small spells similar to the ones used in the Mystical Qilin Sect. Not much in that aspect had changed since he left.

Almost with a sense of pride, the senior researcher beamed.

"Is that what they’ve been calling it? Yes, they were my creation, but the original name is the Soul Summoning hairpin. It took many years, but finally, we can end the cycle of suffering!"

End the cycle of suffering? The same hairpin that took hostage souls and lives? Anji could hardly believe her ears, but she continued to let the traitor talk as he brewed another batch of tea.

Soul Summoning was a project that had been shelved several centuries ago. As someone who used to work in the archives, Pu Jianming would have known about it. He used to work closely and was in contact with all the other Elders through his work under Elder Shen, helping with administration. As he explained his concept, Anji began to understand how he was the only person capable of summoning a soul.

Yet, there was a bigger question.

"You mentioned summoning souls," she pointed out. "Not even Elder Zhu could bring his dead wife back, and he had been researching for years. Why did you choose to complete this archived research when the person it meant the most to had already abandoned it?"

Anji was young and unawakened when Elder Zhu explained his love for his wife and necromancy. Souls were very mysterious and different from natural energy. At one point, Elder Zhu was the closest person to being able to summon souls. However, he abandoned that project after he understood the cost of doing it. Why would Pu Jianming devastate the living to bring back a broken fragment of souls who had already passed on? Where was he getting his sources for payment?

Almost as if he had been expecting the question, Pu Jianming gushed and pulled out his drafted work from a pocket-space pouch. It was a complex spell, and even Anji was surprised that he developed something similar to Senior Researcher Ke’s teleportation spell.

"Is that point-to-point teleportation?" she paused.

Grinning from ear to ear, Pu Jianming tutted.

"You’re close. I got the inspiration from her teacher. However, it works differently and can only function within an array. I’m not some mathematical genius like his protege, so the real storage is in my study, although I can retrieve just about anything in the Crystal Lake Town where the array is set up."

The revelation was both reassuring and frightening. The town was small, but the array was very advanced. Thankfully, Chang’an was not covered in the same array even if they were attempting to do so. The same cannot be said about Luoyang. Song Min might have enough time to do it in strategic locations even if he did not cover the entire city with an array of spells. Even someone like Pu Jianming had to maintain it with his internal energy. It was unsustainable to cover Luoyang with the same array without several advanced cultivators.

Nodding along for now, Anji let Pu Jianming show her his research notes. According to the rambling man, his soul-summoning spell allows blood relatives to call upon the souls of departed kin by activating a portion of their shared blood.

"It’s similar to possession and can only last for a few minutes, but this allows the deceased to continue living alongside their family," Pu Jianming appeared proud of himself. "Isn’t this a huge breakthrough? We could end the cycle of grief, and mortals can take another step towards immortality, even if they do not possess golden cores. The only downside is how the array must be maintained, as activating the spell draws on the power gathered in this array. I’ve been maintaining it daily to restore the energy conversion balance. It’s not a perfected formula, but it works amazingly well for a prototype. Maybe if my shifu were here, we could find a way to perfect this flag formation spell in the next few decades and expand the distribution of this product to everyone else."

Anji did not reply. Her eyes remained searching as she studied every component of the same spell she had reverse-engineered back in the Red Palace. Having spent so much time on it, she remembered every symbol and calculation. Yet, something was missing.

"Are you sure this is the exact spell you created, used in those Soul Summoning hairpins? The same one in the heads of people wearing them in this town?"

Unsure why Anji was asking that, Pu Jianming nodded. Every hairpin in circulation was made according to his design. He monitored the manufacturing process even if he did not make every single hairpin in person.

"Why? Is there a problem?"

A problem? Anji let out a soulless laugh, feeling numb. The dread in the pit of her stomach stopped it from spilling as she grabbed a brush and scribbled the three symbols puzzling her for the longest time.

"What about this?" she pressed the paper to his face. "Can you tell me you did not create this and don’t know anything about it?"

Looking at the three simple symbols, Pu Jianming’s smile finally faded.

"They are not my design," he turned serious. "Where did you find it? How do you know about this? It’s not in the Mystical Qilin Sect’s archives when I left."

Unable to muster any strength, Anji let the brush fall from her hand and slumped onto the stool. Originally, she thought she knew what those symbols meant. However, the look on Pu Jianming’s face as he revealed what they truly meant made Anji wish she had died in the ambush attack on the Red Palace instead.

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