The fox spirit is urgent and swift like a law enforcement officer.

  I was in a daze, unaware of how much time had passed or how many places I had been to. In short, Lu Chengshan had sought out many people, including reclusive Taoist priests and Buddhist monks, as well as famous traditional Chinese medicine masters and foreign experts, but none of them were able to cure me.

  From their conversation, I learned about my situation. When Lu Chengshan cast a spell to disperse the fox demon's soul, he also dispersed mine at the same time. Although he stopped in time and didn't shock me to death on the spot, my soul was already incomplete and mixed with the fox demon's soul, entangled together and unable to separate.

  The human body has three souls and seven spirits, the three souls are hidden in the spirit, and the seven spirits are hidden in the physical body. The person's soul among the three souls controls thoughts and wisdom through the Tian Chong Spirit and Ling Hui Spirit among the seven spirits, controls the movement of the whole body through the Qi Spirit, Li Spirit, and Zhong Shu Spirit, and controls the state of essence and blood and physique through the Jing Spirit and Ying Spirit. This is a very complicated process, pulling one hair can move the whole body, as long as one soul or one spirit fails, it will cause serious consequences.

  I lost two souls and four spirits, the only one soul and two spirits left were suppressed by the demon fox, so I couldn't move at all. If it wasn't for my strong will to see my mother again, even the last bit of hearing and thinking ability would have been extinguished.

  The fox spirit's soul was much stronger than mine, but it was the first to be scattered by Lu Chengshan into two souls and four spirits, severely injured and paralyzed. It also wanted to compete with me for control, so it couldn't move my body either, and we were stuck in a stalemate. To put it simply, I became a vegetable, relying on nutrient solution to sustain life.

  It's easy to destroy but hard to build, it's not difficult to scatter a person's soul, but it's extremely hard to gather the scattered soul again. If you mix the souls of humans and demons together, it would be even harder to separate them again. To illustrate this, if you pour a bottle of black ink and a bottle of red ink into a cup at the same time and stir them up, it would be very difficult to separate them without any damage, and separating souls is millions of times more difficult than separating inks.

  What's more important is that Taoism has declined, and there are very few people who truly have skills. The so-called skilled people nowadays are not even as good as the Daoist boys who served several hundred years ago, so no one can solve difficult problems anymore. As for the emerging science, it cannot even confirm whether the soul exists or not, let alone treat it.

  After multiple ineffective treatments, Lu Chen Shan finally lost his patience. Coincidentally, the department he was temporarily assigned to had an urgent task, so he took the opportunity to slip away and sent me back to my hometown through relevant departments.

  That day, more than a dozen leaders from the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Education Bureau sent me home, with a grand procession that was very impressive and gave me great face. They said I had suddenly suffered a stroke during class, which is an incurable medical condition. Out of humanitarianism and the country's care for outstanding teachers, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Education Bureau provided a subsidy of 50,000 yuan. In addition, I was "injured on duty, honorably retired", awarded certificates and certificates, and can receive retirement benefits every month...

  Anyway, I'm already speechless, let them fabricate whatever they want.

  My mother fainted before she finished listening to the story. It's not easy for a widow with children to make ends meet, and she worked hard to raise me, struggling to send me to school. Finally, after waiting for so long, her son who was full of life went out upright but came back horizontal, without even any hope for treatment. At this moment, her heart was torn into pieces, falling into an endless abyss. What else could a rural woman with no education do except cry?

  My left and right neighbors and kind-hearted people from the same village came to visit me one after another, but except for shaking their heads and sighing, saying a few comforting words, sending some thoughtful gifts, they couldn't offer more help.

  In the end, only my mom, grandma, uncle and aunt were left at home. My grandfather had passed away, and grandma was a local who now lived with my uncle. Both my uncle and aunt were honest people, their child was in high school, and they weren't well off either, so they couldn't help much, all they could do was accompany my mom in tears and sighs.

  My mother was originally the daughter of a large landowner in Zhenghe County, but when my mother was born, her grandfather, as a "despotic landlord", had already been criticized and struggled against as an enemy of the class, all property was confiscated, and life was difficult. Later, they encountered the Great Famine of 1960, with seven or eight small children at home, on the verge of not being able to survive, so my mother was sold off.

  My mother later suffered a lot and had a deep grievance, with so many brothers and sisters, why was she the one to be sold? The parents were biased, and it's not that they couldn't blame her for being ruthless. So even though she found her relatives later, she didn't want to have anything to do with them. When I got into normal school, I borrowed money from several uncles, but after asking around, I only managed to borrow a total of 500 yuan, which hurt both my and my mother's pride, and afterwards we had even less contact with these relatives.

  To put it simply, there are no officials or wealthy people among my close relatives. When something like this happens, no one can help me, and it's even less possible to investigate the truth and settle accounts with Lu Chengshan.

  I was in a daze for a while, and when I came to my senses, I heard my grandmother accompanying someone into the room. The person coughed all the way, with shortness of breath, and just by hearing this coughing sound, I knew who it was. This person was fifty or sixty years old, with sparse, greasy hair stuck to his head, a waxen yellow complexion, thin eyebrows, small eyes, a pointed nose, and ears that seemed to be listening for something. His appearance was sleazy, and as a person, he was even more despicable. There was always a thick layer of oil stains on his clothes, emitting a foul odor that made people shudder.

  This old man is not only dirty, but also sick with contagious pulmonary tuberculosis. He coughs non-stop wherever he goes and spits randomly. Despite having such a disease, he still can't put down his cigarettes, and several of his fingers have turned yellow from smoking. What's even more disgusting is that he's lazy and gluttonous, always relying on others for food, speaking politely but acting ruthlessly, sometimes using his long fingernails to grab things to eat directly with his "black chicken claws". Since reading Mr. Lu Xun's "Kong Yiji", I have been referring to this man as Kong Yiji.

  I had heard that Kong Yiji was a geomancer, and some of the village's elderly people who were prone to superstition would often gather around him, but I had never heard that he had caught any ghosts or subdued any monsters. He was undoubtedly a charlatan who relied on swindling people out of food and drink, perhaps it was because my grandmother was frantic that she thought of inviting him over?

  I heard my grandmother and mother respectfully call him Mr. and ask him to sit down, offering tea and cigarettes. Kong Yiji said not to be polite, but he enjoyed sitting there, fully accepting the hospitality, and then asked me why I was like this, what had happened to me, but my mom and grandma couldn't answer a word, they didn't know what had happened to me at all.

  Kong Yiji began to examine my eyes, then pressed the pulse gate for a long time, and then touched the skull. Finally, his yellowish "braised chicken claws" stopped on my forehead, and a wave of nausea entered my brain...

  I actually felt his hand!

  I suddenly felt a little excited, for so long I had no other sensations except hearing, but just now I clearly felt him pressing my pulse gate, and now I can feel his breath entering my head, is my body starting to recover or does he have an extraordinary ability?

  "Sir, is there a way?" Grandma asked anxiously and fearfully.

  Kong Yiji started coughing incessantly and then sighed. After a long time, he said: "It's very serious, let me see his birth date."

  My mother hastily reported my birth year, month and day, Kong Yiji pinched his fingers and muttered to himself for a long time without making any noise. I seriously suspected that he was stalling for time, thinking of how to fool my family members. My illness was caused by Lu Chengshan's beating, what does it have to do with my birth year, month and day? Although I had seen the hanging ghost and fox spirit before, I still had a strong aversion to quacks, let alone such a despicable one like him.

  "If it were in previous years, I wouldn't have been so seriously ill, maybe there would still be a way..." Kong Yiji finally spoke up, but it was to give me a death notice.

  The mother and grandmother were like drowning people clutching at a straw, begging bitterly and promising heavy rewards. Sure enough, the old quack changed his tune: "From the eight characters, facial features and skeletal structure, there is still hope, I can try, but one of the medicines is hard to find..."

  Grandma hastily asked what medicine to take, even if it would cost her life she was willing.

  "If I'm not mistaken, his soul hasn't returned to its rightful place, and a demon has possessed him. If we try to save him, the demon will also reattach his soul... whether he can survive or not depends on the demon's mood..."

  My mother and grandmother were stunned, they had no idea what to do when faced with such a situation. And I was somewhat shocked, Kong Yiji was actually able to roughly say out my illness cause and symptoms, this is not an ordinary quack! I seemed to see a glimmer of starlight in the dark night, and saw a glimmer of hope in despair.

  Kong Yiji... No, from now on I'll just call him by his real name, Zhou Tan, Mr. Zhou.

  Zhou Tan seemed to be muttering to himself: "Although the heavenly soul and earthly soul are not in the body, as long as a person is still alive, they won't really disperse. The soul returns home and should still be able to summon it back; seven po souls scattered four po souls, but all are in the body, and there's still a possibility of reuniting... All other medicines are easy to find, just one ingredient, Nine Revolutions Resurrection Grass, is hard to find..."

  "What is Jiu Zhuan Huan Yang Cao?"

  "Resurrection grass is also called soul-reviving grass, longevity grass, and water-resurrecting grass. It's immortal and can revive after being dried out by soaking it in water. Ordinary resurrection grass is easy to find, but what I'm looking for is the kind that grows on extremely steep cliffs, having died and been reborn nine times or more. Within a few hundred miles of here, only the precipice at Xianyan Peak might have some."

  My mom and grandma were immediately stunned.

  I know what Xianyan is, it's a place that still belongs to the original forest, with steep and dangerous terrain, especially the four-sided cliff at the top of the mountain, where only one place can be climbed up. It is said that a long, long time ago, a female Taoist priestess cultivated immortality on the summit of the mountain, repeatedly showing divine signs, so someone built a small temple on the summit to worship the statue, called Xianniang, and the mountain was also named Xianyan.

  On the precipitous cliff of Xianyan, a kind of sandalwood grows slowly, taking 100 years to grow into a small tree and only after a thousand years does it have a little bit of real sandalwood in its heart, making it extremely precious. Within hundreds of miles, who doesn't know that the sandalwood tree is valuable? Until now, no one dares to take action, first because the cliff is too difficult to climb, and secondly, greedy thieves and medicine collectors mysteriously fell off the cliff. A hundred-meter-high cliff fall, several times without anyone dying, only seriously injured, so it's been passed down as a legend, who dares to go?

  Now Zhou Tan wants to go to Xianyan Peak to make medicine with the nine-turns Yang grass, which will surely worry me and my family to death.

  Zhou Tan smiled: "There is one person who can definitely bring it back, and that person is only Zhang Shu. As long as he's willing to go, first burn incense and pray in the temple, explain that it's for a life-saving purpose, don't be greedy and dig up other things, shouldn't have any problems."

  "Are you saying to call Old Lin over?"

  "That's right, it's him!"