Chapter 371: Matters of the Soul

Majiang had visited this kind of place before, but no matter how many times he came, his feelings were never good. This place had two characteristics; the first was that there were many people, with the ancient civilization ruins packed with excited tourists. The second was that there were also many people practicing devoutly, spreading throughout the interior and exterior to chant sutras and pray.

These two groups of people were a great burden to a Telepath. Majiang was driven to distraction by the noise of the former and unconsciously "harassed" by the latter. After accompanying Guan Xinyue and Luo Qi for a while, he developed a splitting headache and went to the entrance to wait for them.

Guan Xinyue hesitated for a moment, and as a result, missed the chance to slip away with Majiang. Luo Qi's attention suddenly shifted away from a painting and turned toward her. It became nearly impossible for her to leave now; Luo Qi had suddenly become unusually sharp over the past few days, and if she dared to walk away from him now, it would be tantamount to announcing a break in their relationship to him.

She did not know why she felt this way, but she just knew it. In the past, she and Luo Qi could argue endlessly, but now she had to be cautious; she did not know why they had evolved into real, sharp-edged confrontations, standing on the brink of a total break. More importantly, she was a little afraid of Luo Qi. She had seen the attitude of other Mages toward Luo Qi; in the past, some of them did not like Luo Qi, and she had been angry then, feeling that none of them understood Luo Qi the way she did. But she had not expected things to get even worse—now, they all obeyed him.

This obedience carried a heavy, damp, and slippery quality, like a venomous snake coiling around their bodies, making Guan Xinyue want to scream. She followed her intuition; the old Luo Qi had once told her that there was nothing wrong with trusting one's intuition, because in the mental world, humans were almost completely blind and deaf, unable to clearly know what they were sensing, and in such unfavorable circumstances, trusting one's intuition was actually the best choice.

Her intuition also told her that Luo Qi must have threatened or blackmailed them; he had begun to become completely devoid of a bottom line. Although Guan Xinyue did not know what a bottom line should actually be—she was not even a Mage—she knew that the existence of a bottom line must have meaning. She had never believed that the word "soul" still had meaning in modern society, but now she truly and surely felt the existence of a soul, and for some reason, Luo Qi had sold his soul.

"Do you believe in the existence of the soul?" Luo Qi suddenly asked her.

Hearing this, Guan Xinyue was so startled she jumped. She turned to look at Luo Qi, her heart pounding, while images of evil ghosts on the walls seemed to leap under the lights, and countless skeletons and twisted corpses intertwined in the paintings. "In... in this kind of environment... of course... isn't everything here emphasizing the existence of the soul?"

Guan Xinyue defended herself, though she did not know if her defense was of any use. In the past, Luo Qi had promised not to pry into others' thoughts, and she had never doubted him; she had never even thought that Luo Qi would need to pry into her thoughts. There was no point in doing so; if Luo Qi wanted to know something, he could simply ask her, and she would not hide anything from him.

Now she looked at Luo Qi nervously, seeing only a sense of unfamiliarity in his eyes. It was as if she were facing someone she had never known. Even selling one's soul might not achieve such thorough coldness. She began to suspect, unable to help herself, that something had truly happened to Luo Qi during that accident.