Chapter 111: Discussion
Tianhe sat forward on the sofa with both elbows resting against his knees, occasionally glancing toward Wuxia as though he still expected his old friend to disappear whenever he looked away.
Ruan Mei had accepted the situation considerably faster, although her eyes still followed Wuxia whenever he moved around the room.
Xingluo leaned against the opposite sofa and released a tired breath.
After fighting the Hell Hound, spending forty million credits on a corpse, watching that corpse's soul explode inside her bedroom, and then explaining why a dead man had been following her for weeks, she had officially lost any desire to deal with another surprise tonight.
Tianhe suddenly looked toward her.
"So he has really been attached to you this entire time?"
Xingluo nodded without much thought. "Pretty much."
"Since before the wilderness?"
"Yes."
"The military competition?"
"Yes."
"The legacy realm?"
"Obviously."
Tianhe's expression slowly became strange.
Wuxia noticed immediately. "Whatever you are thinking, stop."
Tianhe ignored him and continued looking toward Xingluo.
"So when Sister Luo says attached, she means he follows you everywhere?"
Xingluo frowned slightly. "There is a distance limit, although it has increased a lot compared to the beginning."
Tianhe nodded slowly and then his eyes brightened.
"Damn."
Wuxia's expression darkened before the next words even came.
"Were you with her when she went to the bathroom and stuff, my brother?"
The room became completely silent, Xingluo froze for half a second before colour rushed across her cheeks.
"Tianhe!"
Ruan Mei stared at him before suddenly covering her mouth and laughing.
Tianhe immediately joined her, while Xingluo grabbed the nearest cushion and threw it directly at him.
He caught it against his chest.
"What? I am asking an important question."
"What the hell is important about that?!"
"You said he follows you everywhere."
"That does not mean he watches me!"
Tianhe looked toward Wuxia with exaggerated suspicion. "Doesn't it?"
Wuxia stared at his old friend without speaking.
The expression upon his face became calm enough that Tianhe's laughter weakened slightly.
Dark soul power gathered around Wuxia's right hand.
Tianhe noticed it too late, Wuxia stepped forward and drove his fist directly into Tianhe's shoulder.
The blow contained enough soul force to send Tianhe stumbling sideways into the arm of the sofa, nearly knocking the cushion from his hands.
"Ow, fuck!"
Wuxia lowered his hand. "Ask another stupid question."
Tianhe rubbed his shoulder and looked toward him in disbelief.
"You bastard, you have been dead for weeks and the first thing you do after seeing me again is hit me?"
"You deserved considerably worse."
Ruan Mei was still laughing beside them, while Xingluo turned away and covered part of her burning face with one hand.
Tianhe looked toward her and immediately understood that continuing the topic would probably result in another attack.
He turned back toward Wuxia instead.
"So ghosts can punch people now."
"I have been able to use soul force for a long time."
"Convenient."
"It becomes especially convenient whenever you start speaking."
Tianhe laughed again before suddenly standing.
Wuxia narrowed his eyes. "What are you doing?"
Tianhe spread both arms.
"Come here, ghost brother."
Wuxia's expression changed immediately.
"Get the hell away from me."
Tianhe stepped forward anyway.
Wuxia raised one hand to push him back, but Tianhe moved around it and threw both arms toward his shoulders.
Wuxia expected them to pass straight through but they did not.
Tianhe's arms closed around his body and for several seconds, neither of them moved.
The laughter disappeared from Tianhe's face.
Wuxia slowly lowered his gaze toward the arms wrapped around him before looking back at his friend.
Tianhe stared at him with equally wide eyes.
Wuxia's expression became blank.
"Wait."
Tianhe loosened his grip slightly as Wuxia looked down at himself again before raising his head.
"How the fuck can you touch me?"
Tianhe blinked.
Wuxia pointed toward his own chest.
"Aren't I a ghost?"
Silence remained for another second, then Tianhe's mouth slowly curved upward.
"So that is what you care about?"
Wuxia's expression immediately darkened.
"Shut up."
The grin on Tianhe's face widened and he tightened both arms again.
"My poor ghost brother."
"Get the hell away from me."
"You came back from death and did not even visit me."
"Tianhe."
"We mourned you."
"I am warning you."
"You owe me emotional compensation."
Wuxia placed both hands against his chest and released another burst of soul force.
Tianhe was pushed away and stumbled backward several steps, but he recovered before reaching the sofa and immediately started laughing again.
Wuxia remained where he was with an increasingly irritated expression.
Watching the two of them, Xingluo and Ruan Mei exchanged a glance.
The exact same thought passed through both their minds.
Truly the dignified young master of the Miao family.
Tianhe adjusted his shirt as though nothing had happened.
"It is good to know death did not improve your personality."
Wuxia looked at him coldly. "It is disappointing to know nothing improved yours."
"Now, now, you missed me."
"I was considerably happier five minutes ago."
Tianhe laughed and dropped back onto the sofa.
Despite his words, the smile remaining on his face had changed slightly.
For the first time since recognising Wuxia upstairs, the disbelief inside his eyes had mostly disappeared.
The person standing before him was still translucent, still dead, and still connected to Xingluo through something neither of them properly understood.
Yet the familiar irritation was the same.
Somehow, that seemed to convince him more than every explanation Xingluo had given.
Ruan Mei finally stopped laughing and looked toward Wuxia.
"Wait."
Everyone turned toward her.
She pointed toward Tianhe.
"He actually touched you."
Wuxia's irritation faded.
"Yes."
Ruan Mei looked toward Tianhe's hands before returning her gaze to Wuxia.
"You pushed him using soul power, so that part makes sense, but he did not use anything when he grabbed you."
Tianhe looked at his own hands.
"I just hugged him."
"Unfortunately," Wuxia added.
Ruan Mei ignored him.
Xingluo also became more serious as she understood what Ruan Mei meant.
Wuxia had used soul power to interact with the physical world several times before, although doing so had once exhausted him considerably.
That had changed as his Authority grew stronger, but the principle remained the same.
He could choose to influence physical things.
Physical things were not supposed to influence him in return.
Tianhe looked toward Wuxia again before reaching one hand forward.
Wuxia moved away immediately.
"Do not touch me again."
"I only want to check."
"You already checked enough."
Tianhe lowered his hand with visible disappointment.
Ruan Mei leaned back against the sofa. "The strange explosion changed more than our eyesight."
Nobody answered immediately.
The crimson-black markings had disappeared from the walls shortly after the Veyran's soul collapsed, leaving no obvious damage behind.
However, everyone inside the villa had been exposed when the Death Seal released whatever power had been stored inside it.
Before that moment, Tianhe and Ruan Mei could neither see nor hear Wuxia.
Now they could do both and Tianhe had just touched him without using mana, a skill, or any other visible ability.
Wuxia looked toward the staircase leading upstairs.
"The seal affected the entire villa."
Xingluo nodded. "The privacy formation stopped everything from escaping outside."
"Which means both of them were inside its range when it happened."
Tianhe folded his arms. "Then the answer seems obvious."
Wuxia looked toward him.
"The seal did something to us."
"Maybe."
Tianhe frowned. "Maybe?"
"We do not know what the seal was originally supposed to do," Wuxia replied. "We do not know who placed it, why the Veyran possessed it, why that creature could already see me, or what Astrakh means."
He paused before adding, "Calling anything obvious right now would be stupid."
Tianhe considered that before nodding.
"Fair enough."
Tianhe looked between them.
"You two talk about things like this surprisingly casually."
Ruan Mei nodded. "They have probably been together too long."
Xingluo's expression changed immediately.
"Why did you say it like that?"
Ruan Mei gave her an innocent look. "Like what?"
"Exactly like that."
Wuxia ignored them and moved toward the large windows overlooking the private courtyard.
The academy residential district remained quiet outside.
Several lamps illuminated the paths between the villas, while the defensive formations surrounding each residence glowed faintly beneath the darkness.
Nobody else could be seen nearby, Wuxia's expression slowly became more serious.
"There is another problem."
The others gradually stopped talking, he turned away from the window.
"Until tonight, moving around this academy was easy because almost nobody could see me."
Xingluo understood immediately and her earlier embarrassment disappeared.
Tianhe also looked toward the windows.
"If whatever happened made you visible to everyone..."
"Then walking beside Xingluo becomes dangerous."
Ruan Mei frowned slightly. "Very dangerous."
The military already believed Xingluo possessed an unusual Companion Spirit connected to her evolved talent.
Mu Yaochen had examined Varkhiel personally and had clearly recognised that several parts of their explanation were incomplete.
If Wuxia suddenly became visible beside Xingluo, too many questions would appear at once.
More importantly, Wuxia was not merely some unknown spirit.
He had been Shen Wuxia of Tianchen University.
If the wrong person discovered that the supposedly dead son of Shen Tianheng and Bai Yuexin had returned as some unknown soul existence beside the newest S-rank student of Dragon Military Academy, the consequences would spread far beyond simple curiosity.
Xingluo looked toward him.
"So you cannot casually follow me tomorrow."
Wuxia raised an eyebrow. "I am attached to you."
"You know what I mean."
"I do."
Tianhe leaned back against the sofa.
"Then we first determine whether anyone outside this villa can see him."
Ruan Mei nodded. "Without announcing the dead man to the entire academy."
"Preferably."
Wuxia looked through the window again.
The privacy formation had contained the Death Seal's eruption completely.
If the change only affected those caught within that formation, then nothing outside had changed.
If the change had instead altered something inside Wuxia himself, tomorrow could become considerably more troublesome.
Xingluo released a long breath and sank deeper into the sofa.
"Wonderful."
She stared at the ceiling with an exhausted expression.
"I wanted one peaceful night."