Ji Xinyue held A-Xin's hand, and this time she refused A-Xin's offer to teleport them home at once. Instead, they walked hand in hand, wandering through the hills and countryside with their beautiful scenery. Behind them lay Song Family Village—what had just happened there was, in Ji Xinyue's mind, the second happiest thing that had occurred to her in this world.
The first happiest thing: A-Xin had come.
The second happiest thing: those who did evil would face punishment. Even without a complete system of law to constrain them, they couldn't escape A-Xin's curse.
"What did you want to do?"
A-Xin had already guessed, but she asked anyway.
"I want to keep doing what I'm doing now." Ji Xinyue stopped walking and turned to face A-Xin, her cheeks going faintly pink as she looked at her. "And I want you by my side while I do it," she murmured. "A-Xin, am I being greedy, wanting everything at once?"
"Then I'll stay with you."
Greedy?
A-Xin smiled softly. No—this soul had never been greedy. If she were, she'd never have asked these questions; she'd never have quietly waited in one world after another, doing things that had nothing to do with her.
"A-Xin, after this we'll be trekking mountains and crossing rivers, going to little villages just like that one, over and over again. Won't you find it a bother?" Ji Xinyue tightened her grip on A-Xin's hand, gazing up at her with wide, earnest eyes. "Someone like you—how could you be made to do something like this?"
A-Xin was powerful and exalted—and here she was being dragged along to rescue a group of ordinary people, people A-Xin had never given a second thought to. From that single line—I could destroy tens of thousands of worlds in an instant—Ji Xinyue had already understood: A-Xin did not truly care about any of them. Not their living, not their dying; not their joys, not their sorrows. She watched it all from on high, detached and unmoved, a being beyond feeling.
It was Ji Xinyue who had drawn A-Xin down to this patch of earth. It was Ji Xinyue who had let the dust of the mortal world touch her. It was Ji Xinyue who had given her feeling. A-Xin was like a god who had stood high and apart, incapable of emotion—until she had fallen in love with her.
Ji Xinyue couldn't fathom A-Xin's true nature, and knew nothing of their shared past. But she had a vague sense of it: A-Xin must have been the first to fall. She only hoped that when the day came and all her memories returned, their history wouldn't turn out to be a tragedy—only a missed crossing of paths.
"What do you mean, how could I?"
A-Xin took Ji Xinyue's hand, and in an instant they were suspended high in the sky. Clouds drifted past their shoulders, and far below they could see everything, clear and small.
"Xinyue, you're overthinking it." A-Xin said. "There's nothing I can't do—only things I do or don't want to do. What you want is what I want."
"I know, A-Xin."
Ji Xinyue laughed suddenly. "Honestly, I just want to do more good deeds—build up some merit for myself. That way Heaven, seeing how many good deeds I've done, might let you find me a little sooner in the next life."
A-Xin gave a small nod and said nothing to correct her. Heaven had no power over her affairs. As for when she would find Ji Xinyue again—that, she couldn't say with certainty either. The seal she had placed was one she herself could not undo. The key to breaking it lay within this very soul.
But she could already feel it. It was almost time.
Her gaze rested on Ji Xinyue, passing through the body before her to the soul beneath—faintly shimmering with dense divine power. The seal, too, seemed considerably thinner than before. Clearly, the day of unraveling was drawing near.
After that, Ji Xinyue continued playing her role as an innocent young girl, a student, using herself as bait to lure in traffickers. With A-Xin's help, she wore a different face every time she appeared before them. However wary those men tried to be, they had no way to guard against her.
Sometimes she was pretty; sometimes plain; sometimes something in between. For the traffickers, it was an impossible defense—so impossible that they eventually became convinced the authorities must have dramatically increased their undercover forces.
A-Xin, meanwhile, remained hidden at Ji Xinyue's side at all times. Only Ji Xinyue could see her. With A-Xin there, Ji Xinyue grew bolder—no matter how dangerous a place was, even locations where Yun Shao was certain anyone who went in wouldn't come out alive, she went anyway. Because A-Xin was there. Nothing would happen to her.
Each time the police removed the women from another village, A-Xin would quietly lay her curse over it. From that point on, no more women bought from outside ever appeared in those villages. The men there no longer dared strike or curse their wives at will. And the women there no longer dared lure young girls into the village.
Time flew by—several years passed in what felt like a blink. The women who had been saved all came to call Ji Xinyue the Redeemer. Later, the state gave her an official commendation—and it was called exactly that: the Redeemer.
Worth mentioning: in university, Jiang Han had met a senior student who fell for her at first sight. Jiang Han, thinking she'd give it a try, became friends with him. He pursued her eagerly—but Jiang Han found that their values were often at odds. Debates would turn into arguments. She came to feel that this wasn't the sort of person she should be dating, and when he confessed, she turned him down.
She thought that would be the end of it. Instead, the senior nursed his resentment in silence, and at a party he arranged for someone to get Jiang Han drunk. He intended to take her to a hotel room. Jiang Han, half-conscious, was convinced she was finished.
What she couldn't have imagined: the moment he had barely gotten one piece of her clothing off, the man crumpled to the floor, writhing—clearly in tremendous pain. He stayed like that for a full half-hour, and during that time Jiang Han, despite her dazed state, managed to call the police.
Word had it that afterward, a certain part of that senior had... shrunk by half.
Jiang Han found this deeply unsettling. Was this divine punishment, sent down specifically for men who preyed on women? Whatever the case, she was profoundly grateful—and afterward, she made a point of never attending parties with alcohol again.
"What was his name?"
Some time later, when A-Xin and Ji Xinyue met with Jiang Han and heard her recount the incident with a shudder, they asked at exactly the same moment. After asking, they glanced at each other and smiled—a smile full of unspoken understanding. The meaning of that smile was something only they would ever know.
Jiang Han answered: "Song Xian."
Ji Xinyue said, "He's from Song Family Village."
"Song Family Village?" Jiang Han's eyes went wide. "That Song Family Village?" The fright of that night had stayed with her all these years. She had a very good idea of what A-Xin and Ji Xinyue had been doing all this time. Later she'd vaguely heard that those villages had stopped buying women. She'd found it strange—but hadn't thought too much about it.
Now, though, she thought it through. Her gaze settled on A-Xin—this woman who had worn white robes for ten years without change, whose face seemed not to have aged a single day since the first time Jiang Han had met her.
"Alright, there's another assignment from the top. Jiang Han, A-Xin and I have to go."
Jiang Han watched the two women walk away hand in hand, eyes full of warmth for each other, and said softly: "Safe travels, my Redeemer. Thank you—you saved me twice. May your love last forever."
—End of Arc—